For a hypothesis to reach the status of being a legit theory, it requires withstanding the onslaught of observed empirical evidence. The CAGW hypothesis is no such animal.
Known by its more contemporary aliases, such as ''climate crisis," "climate emergency," "climate collapse," or "existential threat," the CAGW has zero empirical evidence to support it.
Unlike the related hypothesis regarding greenhouse gases (GHG) and global warming, at least the GHG hypothesis has warming global temperature data that somewhat coincides with increasing atmospheric CO2 levels, putting aside the growing possibility that the purported cause-and-effect direction is probably the reverse.
In order to reach a CAGW climate disaster, global warming temperatures must change rapidly in an accelerating manner that will initiate a 'tipping point' for the climate.
The rapid acceleration would present its occurrence in a continuous increasing of the slope, i.e., trend, of temperatures, such as monthly temperatures. Each subsequent month would represent a greater temperature magnitude increase than the month before, hypothetically.
But those tipping point precursors are not occurring in the real-world climate.
For example, it is agreed by all climate scientists that oceans play a very major role in the world's climate and its global temperatures due to their being both the world's largest carbon sink and its largest heat content storage.
However, despite these characteristics, in totality, the global oceans HAVE NOT warmed since the year 2014. And certainly, there is no empirical evidence that oceans exhibit constant temperature increases of magnitude.
Quite the contrary, combined oceans exhibit a regular pattern of temperature decreases and increases, as the adjacent plot of NOAA's monthly ocean data indicates.
Specifically, this is a plot (dark blue) of moving 5-year temperature changes ending each month of the 60-year period from March 1963 through March 2023.
[Explanation: the first data point is the temperature change for the 60 months ending on March 30, 1963; and the chart's last temperature change data point is for the five 5 years (i.e. 60 months) ending on March 2023.]
The chart also includes a plot (green) of the moving 60-month CO2 level changes over the same sixty year period, plus a linear trend for both CO2 changes and ocean temperature changes.
The trend of the 60-month CO2 changes significantly exceeds the slight positive trend of ocean temperature changes by a factor of 117x. This huge differential undercuts the belief that global warming is primarily the result of GHGs. Which is confirmed by the paltry R^2 of +0.06 - an almost non-existent relationship between 5-year atmospheric CO2 changes and 5-year changes in ocean temperature.
Not only are the large increases in CO2 levels not causing a concerning uptick of temperature change magnitude, it also has not lead to any type of acceleration, per the linear trend since 1963.
Specifically, with a trend of a tiny +0.0001°C, that would project out 20 years to be an increase of 5-year temperature changes to an insignificant amount of +0.024 - definitely not an existential threat of 'runaway warming' or a CAGW 'climate crisis' as portrayed by bureaucrats, politicians and Hollywood celebrities.
So, if 5 years of increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere barely influence 5-year changes in temperature over a 60-year span, either in magnitude or acceleration rate, then it is highly unlikely that this trace gas would cause a catastrophic climate disaster or an extinction event.
Thus, it is fair to state that for all those scientists pushing a narrative of an imminent climate change catastrophe from CO2 without the requisite empirical evidence, this has become the real climate science crisis facing society.
Additional global and regional temperature charts.
Notes: Temperature and CO2 data sources.Excel used to calculate 60-mth (5-yr) temperature and CO2 changes; used to calculate the respective trends; used to calculate correlation and r-squared; used to plot the chart.