I should follow my own advice and just shut up because nothing I have to add here will be of any value to naysayers. But.......
We humans have been around for a couple hundred thousand years. There has been significant climate change during that time all by natural cycles that had nothing to do with us. Ice ages and warming ups have occurred. But the big population explosion for humans has really happened in only the last 10,000 years. Part of that has had to do with the "Goldilocks" climate we have been experiencing since the last ice age. This has allowed hunting and gathering to be mostly replaced with the much more productive plant and animal agriculture.
Then the industrial revolution came around we started using vast amounts of cheap energy to fuel it. Stored carbon that took millions of years to accumulate was suddenly being released into the atmosphere.
At some point science was able to figure out how to measure atmospheric CO2 and we discovered that it was increasing. We know from ice core samples that there is a correlation between high levels of atmospheric CO2 and warmer global periods. The greenhouse effect. Atmospheric CO2 acts like a blanket to trap heat. As oceans begin to heat up and polar ice melts weather patterns are disrupted and larger hurricanes fueled by warmer water are more common.
All this has been predicted by scientists long ago. But the speed of the warming has actually been grossly underestimated. Most of the models did not account for a thawing permafrost to give up vast amounts of methane which is even worse that CO2 in trapping heat.
Atmospheric CO2 levels are double what they were 400,000 years ago and increasing faster than what normal climate change is capable of with the exception of catastrophic events like volcano eruptions or large meteor strikes.
This is as close as you can get to proving that man's activities are causing this acceleration of global warming. Scientists will always phrase things as "may" or "might" because it is so complex nobody can say definitively exactly how all this comes together. But there is complete accord with scientists worldwide that this is happening and we are responsible for it. Except for a handful of "Youtube" scientists that seem to get funding from the energy sector who are always shouting hoax! I once upon a time looked at funding for some the more notorious contributors and found they we're all financially supported by the fossil fuels industry.
I keep getting asked for proof. If you really had an open mind you can find "proof" or as close to it as allowed in the realm of math and science by looking this stuff up. And if you think of the physics of it all it does make perfect sense. Walk into a greenhouse if you don't believe me.
OK I'll shut up.
Good rational post, beaverpeeler, and I am not asking for proof. In fact, let's just assume you are right on everything above.
If the industrial revolution and population explosion are the causes of climate change, then to fix it we would need to reverse both the industrial revolution and the population explosion. I don't see anyone stepping forward to voluntarily sacrifice their lives or their family to reduce CO2 levels. Neither do I see a significant majority of folks willing to go off grid and live in pre-industrial revolution conditions.
Perhaps a better way to look at this is from a cost/benefit perspective. The benefits of the industrial revolution are vast have been a tremendous improvement in everyone's way of life. The cost (if industrialization caused or contributed to this) may be living in the future on a somewhat warmer planet.
Perhaps a better approach than the futility of trying to reset things back to an earlier age, is to focus our efforts on trying to best adapt to the reality of what current weather conditions are. That would serve us well regardless if the warming pattern is caused by human activity or naturally ocurring.