+Myth: Attributing Warming to CO2 Involves the Fallaciously Inferring Causation from a Mere Correlation

The outline for this post is as follows:

1. The Myth and Its Flaw
2. Context and Analysis (divided into multiple sections)
3. Posts Providing Further Information and Analysis
4. References

This is the "+References" version of this post, which means that this post contains my full list of references and citations. If you would like an abbreviated and easier to read version, then please go to the "main version" of this post.

References are cited as follows: "[#]", with "#" corresponding to the reference number given in the References section at the end of this post.

1.  The Myth and Its Flaw

Changing carbon dioxide (CO2) levels correlate with long-term temperature changes on Earth [5; 11 - 21; 447; 1055; 1069, figure 1 (with temperature change in panel d updated in 1057); 1589; 1604; 2576; 2577]. There is also an evidence-based [7 - 10; 34 - 74; 84; 202, chapter 3; 394; 684; 887; 1078; 1101; 1108; 1185; 1357; 1658; 1659; 1741; 1754; 1787; 1831; 1836, pages 22 - 24; 1838, page 57; 2484] scientific consensus [31, table 1 (particularly: 28; 574; 2534; 2535; 2536, updated in 32, figure 2 v007 on page 11, and 33, page 49 {with 2485 - 2495}); 499, page 28 in chapter 2; 500] that humans caused most of the recent global warming, predominately via increasing levels of greenhouse gases such as CO2 (just as there is an evidence-based scientific consensus on other topics [22 - 30; 309 - 312; 314; 331, page 3.8; 399; 943 - 946; 947, table 3 on page 4594; 1363; 1435]). Therefore scientists attribute most of the recent warming to man-made release of CO2. Some critics object to this causal attribution, since the critics claim the attribution involves incorrectly inferring causation from correlation [75 - 83; 85 - 87; 89 - 93; 95; 96]. The critics' claim is the myth this blogpost focuses on.

Myth: Attributing Warming to CO2 Involves the Fallaciously Inferring Causation from a Mere Correlation

The outline for this post is as follows:

1. The Myth and Its Flaw
2. Context and Analysis (divided into multiple sections)
3. Posts Providing Further Information and Analysis
4. References

This is the "main version" version of this post, which means that this post lacks most of my references and citations. If you would like a more comprehensive version with all the references and citations, then please go to the "+References" version of this post.

References are cited as follows: "[#]", with "#" corresponding to the reference number given in the References section at the end of this post.

1.  The Myth and Its Flaw

Changing carbon dioxide (CO2) levels correlate with long-term temperature changes on Earth. There is also an evidence-based scientific consensus that humans caused most of the recent global warming, predominately via increasing levels of greenhouse gases such as CO2 (just as there is an evidence-based scientific consensus on other topics). Therefore scientists attribute most of the recent warming to man-made release of CO2. Some critics object to this causal attribution, since the critics claim the attribution involves incorrectly inferring causation from correlation. The critics' claim is the myth this blogpost focuses on.