You are not asking the correct questions.
1) How much of the climate change is naturally occurring (we have been in an interglacial period for about 12,000 years) and how much is anthropogenic?
2) Do we have a “problem”?
3) If we do have a “problem”, can we do anything about it?
Some of the warming is anthropogenic. We know that increases in CO2 creates some warming and land use changes also creates changes. How much? This is hard to quantify since our direct measurements are limited and have been homogenized to some degree. I suspect it is not as much as you think.
Do we have a problem? Also hard to say. Predictions are based on numerical modeling scenarios. Unfortunately, activists, politicians, and the media have latched onto the 8.5 scenario. Perhaps it is not the most likely scenario. We do know from radiative transfer calculations that CO2 increases causes warming but the dire predictions require positive feedbacks from the CO2 forced warming. This is hard to get correct in a numerical model. This is still an area of active research and it isn’t clear to me that the modeling is sufficiently advanced to be used as a tool for developing public policy.
If we have a “problem”, can we do anything about it? Yes, but it is not what you think. Reducing CO2 emissions to a large degree is not really possible because of developing countries. Migration from impacted areas is probably what will need to be done. This has been common throughout history. Dikes for water control in low lying areas may become more common as sea levels will continue to rise, regardless of the anthropogenic warming perturbation on the natural warming (because we are in an interglacial period).
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Originally Posted by Arctic Fox
No, because we listened to the vast majority of scientists who believed in the seriousness of it and the World got together and severely limited the use of chlorofluorocarbons which were causing the hole so, since then, the hole has significantly reduced in size.
Call me old-fashioned but I prefer to take my climate advice from the 80+% of scientists who now believe that climate change is a result of mankind's actions than from some rabid TV news program. Act now and we can reverse it. Keep kicking the can down the road and your grandchildren will look back in 20 years and think what selfish idiots we were when all of the evidence was telling us exactly what we needed to do to start cleaning up our mess but we opted to ignore it just so we could continue to live our wasteful lifestyles.
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