Science AMA Series: I am John Cook, Climate Change Denial researcher, Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, and creator of SkepticalScience.com. Ask Me Anything!

We don't know how much is human CO2 and how much is something else.

False. We can look at such things as the isotopic ratios of the carbon in the atmosphere, and conclude it's not recent (due to the lack of short-lived C-14 isotopes), and it's not from the mantle via volcanoes (since the C-13 signature doesn't match that source); we can also look at the change in atmospheric oxygen over time - it's going down as the CO2 goes up, indicating that it's an oxidation reaction (C + O2 --> CO2) that's causing the observed increase. Simple video explanation from Dr. Richard Alley

The recent warming (1970s to 2010) was during a rising phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation[1] .

If this were really responsible for causing warming, we'd have to rewrite a couple centuries' worth of physical chemistry and subsidiary sciences and there'd be a Nobel Prize waiting for some folks; congratulations, they'd have just disproved the Laws of Thermodynamics. Cycles such as the AMO and PDO move energy around within parts of the system; they don't create it. Source

The satellite record does not show such a large rise in temperatures (which it should do, as AGW should show most strongly in the Troposphere).

False/misleading. "Satellite measurements do show warming in the Tropsphere when a cooling bias from the Stratosphere is removed. Warming trends agree well with surface temperatures and model predictions except near the Poles. Differences between various analyses are largely due to analysis techniques and compensations for satellite data issues." Source

/r/science Thread Parent