I'd say that this has been fairly well established. It's the burning of fossil fuels that has lead to the an increase in global temperature.
What seems to be lacking is a full understanding of the feedbacks in the system that have prevented this enormous release of CO2 from already cooking the planet.
The increase in CO2 so far has never been projected to "cook the planet", so there's no call for mysterious feedbacks which have prevented it. What
has happened is that the world has warmed pretty much in line with the way it was projected to thirty years ago - projections that were based on established science.
The feedbacks that were projected to
prevent that warming (principally based on cloud behaviour, but including Lindzen's Iris) didn't occur and there's no sign that they ever will.
The AGW proponents continue to insist the scientists have made conservative estimates in model predictions, but when you read the studies you find that when they input the actual measured data the models spiral out of control.
Utter nonsense. The models do
not spiral out-of-control. They are physical models which closely mimic the
actual behaviour of the climate, because they are based on the same physical principles and constants. Where you get this idea from escapes me. It's certainly not from reading the studies.
The models lack the fidelity to properly handle the data right now so they essentially tone it back.
Not so.
Climate models have not gone astray, they are following the actual path of development very well. What
has gone astray is the effect of climate change on ice, and for that they depend on what the ice-people say. Modelling ice behaviour (in the environment, not the laboratory) is a far more difficult task than modelling climate. And the ice people definitely erred on the side of caution.
This is understandable, of course. Glaciology self-selects for rather conservative people, people who don't need every day to present a new surprise. It was never an exciting subject until quite recently.
That's why you continue to get the claims that we are teetering on the verge a catastrophe. At any minute the feedbacks could all give out and the climate could find itself in a runaway state.
You have no good reason to think we
aren't on the verge of a catastrophe. Even without AGW the world would be in a sorry state, with Peak Oil, Peak Land, no Population Peak close to hand, and an inordinate amount of global production devoted to weaponry.
With AGW it just comes on that much sooner.
And the effects persist much longer, of course. That never helps in a crisis.
