posted by O-Trap
I know a couple people personally who are in research in that or related fields. In personal conversations with them, they've been pretty candid that their own charting and observation doesn't indicate it as "settled."
Having said that, they do also all seem to have seen something to make them think there's some merit to the man-influenced climate change to a negative degree, but they all essentially agreed that it's been grossly exaggerated based on anything they can tell.
Obviously, that's not meant to convince anyone. These were casual conversations on the topic. They do give me some pause, though.
I used to do research in a similar field (moved on to much better paying jobs than research). To be specific I did baseline research on industrial furnace emissions and proper burner (things making the fire) design to mitigate/lower the emissions out of the furnaces. And I am talking huge industrial furnaces, not small mom and pop stuff.
I can tell you my view is about the same as your acquaintances. Are humans having some negative effect? Most likely (although to be 100% candid we are doing MUCH better now than we did in previous decades...CFCs, VOCs, etc that tore the Ozone layer have almost been eliminated...and the ozone layer has repaired itself). Is the world coming to a crashing end due to climate change? Almost certainly not.
People don't realize how much better/cleaner our emissions aer now than it was a couple decades ago. Heck, just a catalytic converter on cars alone has cleaned up most cities air quality.
Things we REALLY need to worry about are being taken care of (CFCs, VOCs, NOx, SOx, CO, CH4, etc) however, CO2 isn't really that harmful to the environment and we still are trying to lower it anyway just in case.
Remember, CO2 is actually making the planet greener (think an actual greenhouse, they increase their CO2 on purpose to make plants grow faster). The world has actually gotten more "green" in the last couple decades. Now, I am not saying "pump more CO2!". I am saying that there are positive effects that help offset the negative at times.
With all that said, I have driven fuel efficient cars (Focus) for the last 15 years, as I see no need to dump more CO2 into the air than I personally have to.
