Has atmospheric CO2 gone up since the beginning of the industrial revolution? … yes.
Is this CO2 increase largely due to man-made burning of carbon-containing fuels? … almost certainly, yes, but to a limited extent.
Has mankind ever seen such a large global mean surface temperature increase? … Yes, and more. The best example was the pre-industrial medieval warming period – roughly 850-1050 A.D., when there were vinyards in England, etc.
This earth has also experienced more profound temperature increases during pre-history. Available evidence also indicates that CO2 increases did not preceed, but followed such global temperature increases.
Isn’t our climate still warming? … I don’t believe so, but the jury’s still out. The warmest year in recenty history was actually 1998. Several places in Europe, the Mideast and Far East saw this past winter as their coldest in 50 to 100 yr. Climate and weather vary, dammit, regardless of human politics.
We should conserve fuel There ar damn good economic, national security, and geo-political reasons to conserve fuel. But CO2 emmissions is not one of them.
In many places, we have made the air unclean and unhealthy. We should burn our fuel as cleanly as possible, and we definitely can do better. Whe you look at the dirty air in Southern CA, in Salt Lake City, in El Paso, and many other places, you are seeing microparticulates, photochemical smog, and occasionally traces of acid mists. You are not seeing the invisible gas CO2.
Until the last few years all the climate modeling predicting global warming did not take into account varying solar activity. Some modeling now claims to account for such variation, although I question the accuracy of such. I still don’t think such modelling can predict past climate history with reasonable accuracy.
I’m an engineer whose carrer has required solving problems and getting things done using logic, reason and … science! I consider myself a political independent and am not registered with any political party. I question global warming alarmism. I ask why some are so afreaid to question global warming scenarios. Why to they hate science so much?
Finally, I don’t refer to global warming alarmists as “greenies”. I consider myself green, but do not see the very modest increase in atmospheric CO2 as harmful to the environment.
