Even the most die hard, green climate scientist who spouts CO2 catastrophe hysteria does not really believe in the unicorn of climate mythology - the mythical CO2 'control knob' - an anti-science myth pushed by the likes of Al Gore, Bill McKibben, Obama and scientist Leo DiCaprio...and there is a very substantial reason why scientists don't believe it...all the empirical evidence easily refutes its existence.....
Climate scientists who are not of the payroll of 'Big Green' NGOs, nor dependent on government research grants, find it much easier to speak out against the utter nonsense and myths of anti-CO2 activists and the slimy crony-greens.
An example: As climate scientist Judith Curry indicates, there is no basis for a magical 'knob' that would allow today's politicians and bureaucrats to dial-in a desired climate outcome for next month, or the next year, or the next decade, or the next century.
The facts, simply stated: There is no science, no computer model, nor any available mechanism(s) that would allow today's humans to tweak CO2 emissions a certain way in order to produce a future climate of specific attributes by, say, 2050.
It's what is referred to as, "no frakking way."
The inner circle of establishment climate science knows this, yet due to political agenda reasons, they are forced to deliver lip service to the ludicrous 'knob' analogies.
The massive failure of billion$ climate models and the ongoing 17+ year pause in global warming provide the necessary and vivid testimonials to the fallacy of a climate thermostat knob, whether controlling natural and/or human CO2 emissions.
In addition, there is the latest empirical evidence that completely invalidates the 'knob' assertion.
This adjacent plot of 5-year temperature change versus 5-year atmospheric CO2 level change is based on the most recent empirical evidence published by the government's GISS/NASA scientists (and they happen to be some of the largest proponents of chicken little global warming calamities).
This empirical science published by NASA is undeniable, and most alarmist scientists accept, although grudgingly - the relationship between changes in atmospheric CO2 levels and changes in temperature are, at best, significantly lame weak.
Indeed, the two dataset plots reveal zero relationship with a correlation that produces a r2 barely above zero. A non-existent relationship from 1880 to the end of August 2014,
Look at the green and red fitted trends. Obviously, the green CO2 trend exhibits rapid, accelerating and even exponential growth after 1950. And the global temps? The red temperature trend depicts very little growth in temperature change, and currently exhibits a deceleration that climate models and "experts" never predicted.
In fact, one could surmise that the temperature changes reflect a natural cycle of ups/downs (ie. a pattern), which the accelerating CO2 growth has absolutely zero influence on.
Ergo, the 'control knob' proposition has the same likelihood of reality as those space alien abductions one reads about, Big Foot enrolling at Univ. of Washington, Congress balancing the budget, or Earth developing a climate of "boiling" oceans.
Which is why at least 97% of actual climate scientists categorically reject this particular brand of Hollywood anti-science fantasy.
And yes, one can be a member of the 97% who believe humans have a warming influence on climate, and yet, still completely reject the existence of this particular mythical CO2 unicorn.
Additional temperature and climate charts.
Note: Temperature dataset; CO2 datasets. Excel was used to calculate 5-yr changes (ie. differences); and to produce plots and 6th order polynomials. To calculate a 5-yr. temp. change example: subtract the August 2009 temp. anomaly from the August 2104 anomaly. The same subtraction method used to calculate 5-yr. CO2 level (ppm) changes. Starting with January 1885, the 5-yr chg. calculations can be made for each subsequent month (GISS/NASA monthly dataset commences at January 1880).