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RE: Way out of proportion
I agree that it's a pretty strong case, but if so, then why is there so much dissent among climate scientists?
There's very little dissent among climate scientists. Just like there's very little dissent among biologists about evolution. They argue over things like the relative strength of various parameters in the model, but the big picture has very few dissenters.
Don't mistake conservative media rationalizations for scientific dissent. There's a great deal of money spent to try to create a sense of doubt and uncertainty about the issue. ExxonMobil alone has given $3 million in support of organizations that do so.
The climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that global warming is happening, it's not a "minor" occurrence, and it's almost certainly caused by human activity. They disagree over what we should do about it, and over whether we can do anything. Some disagree over the actual mechanism, like whether CO2 emissions are the primary cause, or if it's deforestation reaching a tipping point or whatever. But the scientific community isn't debating whether it's man-made or not - except to the extent that they're forced to respond to the oil-industry promoted Rush Limbaugh's of the world.
Even the charts only address the last 1,000 years..what about the 1,000 years before that, and the 1,000 years before that, etc.? The problem is we just don't know, and probably can't know completely.
I think you underestimate what science is capable of - I'm not all that shocked, given your religious beliefs. There's some built-in anti-scientific bias there.
Those particular charts just address the last millennium. But they're hardly the only data on which the global warming consensus is based. It's another widespread myth among the nay-sayers that the global warming "hysteria" is built on just one alarming bit of data. That's false. There are lots of ways of measuring historical temperatures and they all agree - it's happening. Here's a graph that pieces together a few different models showing the reconstructed temperatures over the last half a billion years. The right-hand end shows that the coming peak isn't just hot for the last thousand years - it's at least a ten thousand year peak or even a hundred thousand year peak. Now, you've got to be very careful in looking at data like this that's combined from a number of sources - it's risky to look at more than broad trends. But it's clearly not just a short-term thing.
You may be correct with you carbon sequestering system solution
Sequestration is only a short-term solution. It's to keep us from losing Venice (and New York and Miami and so on) before we can get a real solution.
I think a long term solution is to work on directly manipulating the Earth's albedo. After all, 100% of the heat the Earth receives comes from the sun. Any warming or cooling effects represent changes in the rate at which the Earth absorbs solar radiation. If we want it to be cooler, we need to reflect more of that radiation away, preventing it from being absorbed. One fairly simple approach is to increase cloud cover. Fluffy white clouds also reflect lots of solar radiation. Making clouds isn't hard, either. It's an engineering problem, more than a scientific research project.
Obviously, we'd want to have some models indicating just how much more cloud cover we want, and whether there are any unintended consequences, but it seems like a viable concept to investigate.
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RE: Way out of proportion
Now, I'll grant - I suppose it's possible that there's some natural warming cycle that could be represented in that data, but the fact that the graph pretty much launches upward at the same time the Industrial Revolution took off is an incredibly suspicious coincidence. That evidence alone makes a pretty strong prima facie case for the man-made global warming hypothesis, and it's something that needs to be directly addressed.
I agree that it's a pretty strong case, but if so, then why is there so much dissent among climate scientists? I don't have any answers. To my 'untrained' eye, however, one thing for sure winter in the Northern US is not as cold or snowy as it was even in the last 30 years. But..I still don't know how much is natural and how much is man-made. Even the charts only address the last 1,000 years..what about the 1,000 years before that, and the 1,000 years before that, etc.? The problem is we just don't know, and probably can't know completely.
You may be correct with you carbon sequestering system solution---I'd love to think so..but my gut reaction is that the damage is done, and while we can slow it down, we won't stop the inevitible.
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