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My point is, very simply, that there is insufficient evidence that so-called, global warming is anything other than a naturally occurring phenomenon.

Your point is incorrect.

Attribution of recent climate change

A quote from one of the many cited articles: "A recent paper (Estimation of natural and anthropogenic contributions to twentieth century temperature change, Tett SFB et al., JGR 2002), says that "Our analysis suggests that the early twentieth century warming can best be explained by a combination of warming due to increases in greenhouse gases and natural forcing, some cooling due to other anthropogenic forcings, and a substantial, but not implausible, contribution from internal variability. In the second half of the century we find that the warming is largely caused by changes in greenhouse gases, with changes in sulphates and, perhaps, volcanic aerosol offsetting approximately one third of the warming."

If the global temperatures at any time prior to the industrial revolution were ever equal to, or warmer than the present, then there are obviously natural mechanisms which were responsible for that increase and could be so, again, in the present.

"Could be responsible" does not mean that they are responsible. Please read the link that I provided. The scientists have assessed the contributions of natural factors and the assessment indicates that natural factors are insufficient to produce the major part of the observed warming trend.

Please read the link that I provided.

I have read your link and have found it to be not substantively different from many others like it that I have previously read. The significant sentence from that article is contained within its first paragraph:

…the proportion of this warming that is due to human influence is still open to question.

All of the conclusions in the link you referenced (like every other similar article) are based upon a mathematical model. Anybody who is reasonably facile with mathematics can tell you that a model is only useful in its predictive power if it can be retroactively applied to past conditions and produce “predictions” that, in fact, “mirror” the observations of that past time frame.

The chief problem with the predictive power of the model you referenced (and all others) central to the claim of so-called global warming is that there is no way to get a valid “prediction” of past events. As climate change, based upon inferences from the geological record, is a phenomenon that transpires over hundreds, if not thousands, of years, the very first problem concerning model predictions is that there are no accurate, comprehensive records of all of the climatic conditions for that length of time. It is only possible to infer gross changes from indirect evidence such as ice core drillings, etc. There are no records of solar activity or volcanic activity, etc.

We do not even have comprehensively accurate records of solar variations, one of the primary contributors to climate, more than half a century old. For that matter, we do not have any statistically valid, data observation compilations of the amount and compositions of gases put into the earth’s atmosphere by volcanic activity, let alone the total amount of such activity, more than a century ago. We do know from very limited observations that a single volcano can potentially “belch” more greenhouse gases and other, erstwhile, pollutant gases into the atmosphere in a single eruption than any possible industrial contribution. We also know that there at dozens of volcanoes erupting in various degrees at various locations all over the earth at any one moment. Unless, and until, a mathematical model can accurately account for such natural contributions to the atmosphere, it is worthless. Of course, those contributions have to comprehensively, accurately and precisely measured first, something that is still not being done.

We have no data on the so-called, “ozone hole” over Antarctica prior to the satellite age nor do we have unquestioned explanations as to that phenomenon’s recently observed variations, let alone its driving mechanism. Consequently, there are no accurate input data for a comprehensive climate model that goes far enough back to be useful in an accurate model.

There is a second problem with the global warming theory based upon models. There, similar to solar activity, volcanic activity, ozone hole variation, etc., is no detailed, accurate record of conditions of any climatological conditions that came about as a result of any “model input data” changes. (Accurate weather recordings only extend less than a century and a half into the past).

(metaphor alert for the next paragraph!!!)

Even disregarding all the above problems with so-called, global warming models, there is, yet, one that is “the elephant in the living room.” Simple statistical analysis of the variations that are postulated to have occurred in the past based upon observations of ice core drillings and ocean core samples, etc., reveal that the currently observed changes are not outside the expected range of natural variation. Therefore, those “learned” individuals who “run around with their hair on fire” screaming about global warming, haven’t a non-controversial “leg to stand on.”