Yes CO2 plays some small role, but we don't know how much.

I think a lot of people pretend they know, in order to get more grants and push their agenda.

Ironically, just yesterday I was watching a lecture by an eminent professor of political theory who said that climate 'scientists' were no longer communicating by e-mail, because they feared 'government surveillance' - though I think it has more to do with the East Anglia hacks.

This is critical to the debate, because of CO2 is only responsible for 5% or even 50% of the temperature rise, then it means the extremely expensive, herculean, anti-development efforts aimed at reducing CO2 emissions are wasteful and stupid.

I would say that even if CO2 is responsible for 100%, all this nonsense would be very stupid. It would just shift the balance a bit on how cost-effective gas-powered power plants are vs. nuclear power plants.

I'll just add that while I know very little of this subject, I can see that CO2 may be responsible for 150% of the current temperature rise. Suppose other factors resulted in the temperature falling, but CO2 made up for all of that and then some.

If they told the truth - which is "well, scientists believe that there is some relationship between CO2 and temperature, but correlation is not causation, and the truth is that we simply don't know. we do know that human CO2 emissions are a small fraction of natural process emissions, and that solar activity makes a big difference on temperature, and that there are confounding factors like increased cloud cover reflecting light. every model we have used which held CO2 as a strong cause have turned out to be completely wrong." - you wouldn't be willing to buy a Tesla and ride a bike to work and eat the bugs and vote Democrat.

I'm not willing to eat the bugs regardless of anything.

Historically CO2 rises AFTER temperature, not before

As in my original post, I'll have to point out that even as you (rightly) disbelieve the MSM, it doesn't mean that you should automatically believe sources that tell you what you want to believe.

Why is it bad if the earth gets a little warmer? Where is the science that proves that warmer = bad?

It isn't. Historically, it has been pretty good, as in the Medieval Optimum - at least in Europe. That said, when you have 9 billion people adjusted to current temperatures, it wouldn't be great if there was an average temperature increase of 3 degrees C, particularly as it is more extreme on the extremes.

For me, it's great, because my little corner of hell is slightly less cold (though not in the beginning of December).

China, India, and Africa give 0 fucks about white liberals whining about mother earth

Unless they are paid off. And rightly so.

and the growth in their CO2 emissions DWARFS the cuts made by the West. So there is literally nothing we can do that matters. You think putting solar panels on your roof matters? You think forgoing that vacation matters? You might as well be trying to empty the ocean with a bucket.

I've told this to cultists many times. Doesn't work. It's a religion to them. Cutting carbon emissions is like saying 'hail Mary', though I wouldn't want to disrespect a religion that did some actual good in the world.

It's a common trick all libtards use. They used it constantly during COVID: (1) problem happens, (2) DO SOMETHING that doesn't help, and actually harms, (3) problem resolves on its own, (4) take credit.

It's as old as time. Sowell describers how they did the same thing with 'sex education', which created the problem of teenage pregnancies, which then becomes a reason for more 'sex education', because... only a genius does the same thing that hasn't worked while expecting a different result.

Too bad most people are too stupid to learn them and most people are happier just being NPCs and being told what to think.

I don't know what to do about it.

If you believe what they say at face value, you would say "nuclear is not perfect, it has its own problems, but there are no perfect solutions, and nuclear is the least-bad option, so we need to embrace it".

LOL! You make better arguments for envirocultists than they do.

This isn't what they do. Instead they push wind and solar exclusively because they know that wind and solar don't work (because grid demand doesn't perfectly line up with sunshine & wind). They know batteries aren't a solution. They hate hydro too, because it WORKS.

I can guarantee you that when the grid starts failing because of all the wind and solar, they'll blame it on Vladimir Putin or on fossil fuels, and say that this is all the more reason to move more quickly to 'renewables' more quickly. I like to think that people will be smart enough to catch up on this, but looking around, people just believe regime propaganda without question.

They look at cities and think they're ugly. They look at a forest and think it's beautiful.

And so do I. But that is no reason to destroy the city. Well, except if it's Baltimore (pls no bully NSA, it's a joke).

The root of the propaganda is a combination of (1) embittered usually marxist intellectuals who hate industrialists, developers, and capitalism, using environmentalism as a weapon against their hate objects, plus (2) their allies, the capitalist green grifters, who are looking to suck the government taxpayer teat for subsidies to enrich themselves in the "green" economy, plus (3) academics who gets huge government research grants and want to enrich themselves with climate "science" grifting.

I seldom agree with you completely. But here I have to.