I once took a sociology class in college. In one of the first few classes the instructor went over correlation and causation by talking about the fact that ice cream sales were correlated with rape... and then asked the class why that may be...
The reason the two are correlated is so obvious that I did not even bother to raise my hand... one girl did and was called on and answered (she was not joking, or trying to be witty) "Maybe the rapers like to celebrate by having ice cream?" (yes, she said 'rapers')
It was painful to hear but I smiled- I knew this would be an easy 'A'
The fact that we are increasing the CO2 concentration is not in question.
The physics says that increasing CO2 will trap more solar radiation and skew the energy balance towards warming.
We SEE this warming occurring...
The causation is known, and was predicted long before the data showed undeniable correlation.
Exxon knew 4 decades ago.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/
Exxon was aware of climate change, as early as 1977, 11 years before it became a public issue, according to a recent investigation from InsideClimate News. This knowledge did not prevent the company (now ExxonMobil and the world’s largest oil and gas company) from spending decades refusing to publicly acknowledge climate change and even promoting climate misinformation—an approach many have likened to the lies spread by the tobacco industry regarding the health risks of smoking. Both industries were conscious that their products wouldn’t stay profitable once the world understood the risks, so much so that they used the same consultants to develop strategies on how to communicate with the public.
Experts, however, aren’t terribly surprised. “It’s never been remotely plausible that they did not understand the science,” says Naomi Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard University. But as it turns out, Exxon didn’t just understand the science, the company actively engaged with it. In the 1970s and 1980s it employed top scientists to look into the issue and launched its own ambitious research program that empirically sampled carbon dioxide and built rigorous climate models. Exxon even spent more than $1 million on a tanker project that would tackle how much CO2 is absorbed by the oceans. It was one of the biggest scientific questions of the time, meaning that Exxon was truly conducting unprecedented research.
I see some try to argue that it is hubris to think we puny humans can affect the climate, but we know how much CO2 we are putting into the system, and that the amount we are putting in will lead to the sort of warming we are seeing... The 'hubris' is to think that the habitability of our planet is less important than your profits or your political dogma...
So the 'hubris' argument is Total Bullshit...
