In October 2024,@BillNye told MSNBC viewers that if Americans voted for Kamala Harris, we could stop destructive hurricanes like Helene and Milton from forming in the North Atlantic by stopping climate change. Funnily enough, Trump won the election and last year was the first time in a decade that no hurricanes made landfall in the U.S. despite La Niña conditions. This year, none have hit the mainland and in fact, there have been no hurricanes at all in the Atlantic up to this point, the first time since at least 1941, largely thanks to Saharan dust and El Niño-induced wind shear.

“CO₂ physics is [sic] settled.” Yes and no. And definitely not in the sense you are arguing here. The only thing that is settled is that CO₂ is an efficient absorber (and emitter) of radiation in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, particularly the 2.0, 2.7, 4.3, and 15 μm bands. That is to say, by adding more of it to the atmosphere it should, all else being equal, cause some warming in the troposphere (lower atmosphere). Almost every scientist I know agrees with these basic concepts, so that's not really debated. There are a few scientists who will surely disagree with these basics, but I consider them fringe. What is very much up for debate, though, is exactly how much global warming since, say, 1850 has been due to CO₂ emissions from mankind's burning of carbon-based energy sources (i.e., coal, oil, and gas) to satisfy our electricity and transportation demand. It has been proven that CO₂ is a “greenhouse gas.” It has not been proven, however, that all (or even most) of the warming since 1850 has been anthropogenic in origin. Claims that it is are almost entirely a matter of speculation, “scientific” faith, and circular reasoning. Some of it most definitely has been because of the laws of radiative heat transfer. But just because it has been a contributor does not necessarily mean that it has been the sole cause, especially given it cannot explain most of the warming from the end of the Little Ice Age through the mid-1940s. Climate “scientists” cannot get their climate models to produce accurate hindcasts of 20th century global mean surface temperature (GMST) observations without having precursory knowledge of 20th century observations to calibrate their models to. That's curve fitting, not science. When global climate models (GCMs) are input with the supposedly “settled physics” you mentioned, the energy fluxes in and out of the Earth’s atmosphere are not in balance, which causes the models to drift into unrealistic climate states (running either too hot or too cold, but usually too hot). Rather than doing real science to try figuring out why the best physics we have do not yield correct values, “scientists” simply assume that these energy fluxes were in balance before the Industrial Revolution. They will then adjust any uncertain parameters (e.g., cloud feedbacks and aerosol forcing) to force energy flows to balance. They then essentially assume there are no natural pathways that can cause energy imbalance in the climate system, so they program in CO₂ forcing, the climate system warms in response, and they say, “See!? CO₂ caused the observed warming. It's basic physics. It's settled.” And that's what the IPCC did in Figure 1 from FAQ3.1 in AR6 on the left. 🔗ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downl… But that CO₂ has caused all of the observed warming not what the “basic physics” show. It was assumed at the outset by the climate modelers. That is a closed loop of circular reasoning, not dispassionate science. At best, it proves that CO₂ has contributed to at least some of the warming since 1850, but how much is an entirely open discussion. We also know that GCM outputs are statistical curve fitting because while the real world GMST response to a forcing has one deterministic value, the range of uncertainty in the CMIP6 models with respect to the atmospheric aerosol contribution to GMST changes since 1850 has a 1°C spread. If you take the median of the CMIP6 models shown below in Figure 3.8 (which I have annotated) from IPCC AR6 WG1, the uncertainty is a whopping 125%. If you don’t know that vital piece of information about aerosol forcing and its contribution to GMST changes, then by definition, you cannot have confidence in anything else, including both the CO₂ and other GHG contributions. 🔗ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downl… I don't deny that CO₂ has had some effect (no serious person does), but it has not been definitively proven to be the sole cause of warming since 1850 (contrary to claims by the IPCC and other government agencies and universities) due to the problems I outlined above. But I'll play devil's advocate here; even if CO₂ is the climate control knob, the evidence that it is a major environmental and economic problem is even more uncertain and speculative. Even if it continues to warm up, overall quality of life is expected to improve by 2100 by almost every relevant metric including higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality (unless there is a rise in Linsday Clancy-like women), higher incomes, better healthcare, increased access to clean drinking water and food, and reduced poverty. What's not to love there?