Quote Originally Posted by FreelancePoliceman View Post
Humans are the main factor in climate change. Point to any other reasonable factor. You spoke rightly when you said "we" don't know to what degree climate change is anthropogenic; you won't learn anything you don't care to. The scientific community, on the other hand, does know -- and has been telling the world for decades, only to be discredited by useful idiots who prattle on about how "we" can't know this and that, and so any action taken would be too extreme -- think of the economic costs of saving the planet! And regardless of how my post "seems" to you, as I've said, climate change is already happening. There is definite proof of this. Human society will be violently shaken in the coming decades -- but the nature of the beast is such that the worst of its effects are sudden. ""We"" needed immediate and drastic action long, long ago, and ""we"" still need it -- but now only to mitigate the worst consequences of ""our"" inaction.
Most scientists are uncertain on how much climate change is anthropogenic:

Surely the most suspicious “97 percent” study was conducted in 2013 by Australian scientist John Cook — author of the 2011 book Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand and creator of the blog Skeptical Science (subtitle: “Getting skeptical about global warming skepticism.”). In an analysis of 12,000 abstracts, he found “a 97% consensus among papers taking a position on the cause of global warming in the peer-reviewed literature that humans are responsible.” “Among papers taking a position” is a significant qualifier: Only 34 percent of the papers Cook examined expressed any opinion about anthropogenic climate change at all. Since 33 percent appeared to endorse anthropogenic climate change, he divided 33 by 34 and — voilà — 97 percent! When David Legates, a University of Delaware professor who formerly headed the university’s Center for Climatic Research, recreated Cook’s study, he found that “only 41 papers — 0.3 percent of all 11,944 abstracts or 1.0 percent of the 4,014 expressing an opinion, and not 97.1 percent,” endorsed what Cook claimed. Several scientists whose papers were included in Cook’s initial sample also protested that they had been misinterpreted. “Significant questions about anthropogenic influences on climate remain,” Legates concluded.!
So apparently only 34% of scientists even mentioned anthropogenic on the papers derived from the 97% meaning the 97% number is bunk since it is only looking at scientists that even mentioned anthropohenic climate change. The other 66% neglected to make any mention of it only agreed that global warming was occurring.

A 2012 poll of American Meteorological Society members also reported a diversity of opinion. Of the 1,862 members who responded (a quarter of the organization), 59 percent stated that human activity was the primary cause of global warming, and 11 percent attributed the phenomenon to human activity and natural causes in about equal measure, while just under a quarter (23 percent) said enough is not yet known to make any determination. Seventy-six percent said that warming over the next century would be “very” or “somewhat” harmful, but of those, only 22 percent thought that “all” or a “large” amount of the harm could be prevented “through mitigation and adaptation measures.”
59% believed it was attributed to human activity, 11% attributed it to human activity and natural causes in about equal measure and 23% said they were unsure. 76% believed global warming would be harmful down the road, but only 22% of them believed we could do anything about it to stop it.

And according to a study of 1,868 scientists working in climate-related fields, conducted just this year by the PBL Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency, three in ten respondents said that less than half of global warming since 1951 could be attributed to human activity, or that they did not know.
In this survey 30% of scientists said that human activity contributed to less than half of global warming or they were unsure.

Anyways, my point with all this is that a good chunk of scientists just like us are unsure about how much of global warming is anthropogenic and how much of it is natural. They are also unsure about if we can do anything to stop it from getting worse. The true meaning of science is being skeptical to the consensus and open minded to alternatives. Not by dogmatically claiming that global warming is ~95%+ human caused, which is merely an appeal to authority, which you have just done with this post. Maybe global warming is ~95% human caused, maybe it is only ~5% human caused or more realistically it could be anywhere in between.

The point is scientists are just like us, they don't know everything about what is causing global warming. Just look at how scientists constantly change opinion on simple matters like on whether eggs are good for us or not and global warming is far more difficult to decipher. I just want to make clear again: I believe global warming is real and I believe human activity is a factor, but I am not certain on how much of that is human activity and how much of it is natural just like a good chunk of scientists are. Misinformation like the 97% statistic that global warming is human activity that was dependent on selection bias by ignoring 66% of scientists is why I will refrain from drawing any conclusions.