NationStates Jolt Archive

Not that I trust answers from here, but then again, it's so politically charged that it's fun to read. Anyhow, the climate is warming, there's no doubt about that. At least in the past century or so. There's also no doubt that CO2 levels in the atmosphere started to spike right around the Industrial Revolution, and have accelarated ever since. I doubt that it's coincidence.
But here's my question: are the two necessarily related? So far, the best evidence I have seen is associative. That's good, but it's not enough to establish a causal relationship between CO2 emissions and warming. That's not to say that they aren't. However, I'm curious to know if anyone has tried a controlled experiment to establish such a relationship.

Without any CO2 or other greenhouse gases, the planet would be an iceball. It is well established that this and a few other gases trap heat from the sun, keeping the planet at a reasonable level.

So, isn't it then logical that if a little CO2 traps a little heat, then more traps more heat? It's just the way the chemical reacts to specific frequencies of sunlight, really. A fairly basic concept. This is a known property of CO2.

The relationship strongly correlates, yes. And we know that warm temperatures do not cause more CO2 to spontaneously generate. It is a causal one.

Also, it is interesting to note that the largest extinction event in Earth's history, the Permo-Triassic extinction (not the Cretaceous-Tertiary, which was the dinosaur killing asteroid one) was quite likely caused by similar changes to atmospheric composition causing rapid climate change.