[onewhippedpuppy]

Originally Posted by RWebb

Matt - human based inputs of atmospheric CO2 have increased by huge amounts. Right?

CO2 is a GHG. RIght?

Before that CO2 sources were fairly balanced with CO2 sinks. RIght?

Thus, we would expect warming. Scientists have shown a close match of the magnitude of warming with expectations from GHG inputs.

The blip notion is indeed a conflating of time scales. What we are concerned about is the next few decades and a few centuries. Without doubt the sun will go out, continents will float around on the plates (changing ocean circulations and regional if not global climates) & etc. THose are interesting to geologists planetologists and biologists, but are not issues of concern for planning.

The real questions now are how bad it will get, and where. (and what to do about it - DoD has some ideas to handle the expected increase of instability in desertified regions - it will not be pretty)

In regards to quantitative data I totally believe you, these are measurable things. But my biggest question still remains - how can it be proven that the climactic changes observed would not have happened anyway, in the absence of man? Not the individual measurable changes to atmospheric elements such as CO2 (which are but one piece of the puzzle), but the actual shifts to the climate?