Anthropogenic emissions dominate climate change, and will for the remainder of the athropocene. The jury is in.
You are the one lacking heliocentrism. You think the climate revolves around human activity.
Regardless of the cause, I think both of you would be doing well to think about how to produce food and energy and breathable air in a warming and ever industrializing world, and how much government intervention is needed (if any).
The greenhouse effect as described involves CO2 as a gas blocking a narrow band of IR solar light from being re-emitted into outer space. This is a probabilistic process, as gas molecules are in constant motion as are photons. As you increase the concentration of CO2, the effect becomes saturated, since the gas is already stacked in three dimensions. So there is less IR energy to absorb that isn't already being captured.
Clouds and atmospheric H2O have a much higher impact on climate. These are driven by oceanic patterns (which themselves are caused by geologic and solar forces).
...
>There isn't even that much carbon on planet earth
I think there is. I believe it's generally accepted that on the order of 20,000-100,000 times the atmospheric CO2 is found in rocks on Earth. Not even necessarily including the mantle.
"The amount of carbon in the atmosphere as CO2 is only .00095% of the total carbon on Earth."
https://projectvesta.org/wiki/long-term-carbonate-cycle/
"...the atmosphere, storing 735 gigatons (0.001%) of the world’s carbon as carbon dioxide (CO2)...and 62,000,000 gigatons (99.9%) in sedimentary rocks (e.g., limestone and dolomite)"
https://biocyclopedia.com/index/algae/biogeochemical_role_of...
I didn't really think this was obscure.
I'm sure NASA or some other credible scientific organization must have reported on this highly intriguing idea. Link?
Insolation-driven 100,000-year glacial cycles and hysteresis of ice-sheet volume
"Carbon dioxide is involved, but is not determinative, in the evolution of the 100,000-year glacial cycles."
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12374
Here's a good talk from NASA JPL last year stating we still have a very poor model for changes in cloud cover over time and the dramatic effect clouds have on climate :
The Holocene Asian monsoon: links to solar changes and North Atlantic climate
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15879216/
Synchronous 500-year oscillations of monsoon climate and human activity in Northeast Asia
"This ~500-year cyclicity in the monsoon and thus environmental change triggered the development of prehistoric cultures in Northeast China. The cyclicity is apparently linked to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, against the background of long-term Holocene climatic evolution."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6739325/
Impacts of the north and tropical Atlantic Ocean on the Antarctic Peninsula and sea ice
"We suggest that the north and tropical Atlantic is important for projections of future climate change in Antarctica, and has the potential to affect the global thermohaline circulation6 and sea-level change3,12."
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12945
Etc, etc...there's probably thousands of studies on the AMO, PDO, NAO, ENSO, etc. On pubmed, Nature, etc. I highly recommend taking a look at some of those.
Yet the first link your provide in response to my query is discussing cycles with periods of 100,000 years, with no mention of anything related to the modern climate change events (at least, nothing in the abstract).
... What’s the deal? This is a complete non-sequitor.
> And the oceanic cycles absolutely dominate climate change.
And then goes on to provide you studies about oceanic cycles that stand unchallenged.
It was a misleading change of topic.
That's true by definition, since the anthropocene is defined as the geologic era where humans have had a measurable effect on the geologic record.
The anthropocene may or may not actually exist for future species' geologists. One fairly likely scenario I can imagine is that global warming leads to mass migrations, which lead to nuclear war, which lead to the deaths of 90% of the human population and the reversal of anthropogenic climate change. Boom, global warming solved...except that'll be cold comfort (literally) for the 90% of us who are dead.
If it happens, it'll probably happen before 2100, which means the anthropocene will last less than 150 years, a blink of an eye in geologic time. Future dino-geologists will observe it as a very thin layer that led to a change in the radiation signature and composition of elements in the earth's crust, as well as a small mass extinction. Come to think of it, that's not all that different from the K-T boundary.