Dr. Lovejoy:
You state “The scientific debate is now over, the moment of closure has now arrived”
I would submit that the debate has MUCH farther to go.
Much has been written about the role of greenhouse gasses in climate change, but it can easily be shown that increasisng levels of CO2 have NO climatic effect.
Anthropogenic global warming is real, but the actual cause is the reduction in the amount of stromgly dimming anthropogenic sulfur dioxide aerosol emissions into the troposphere due to Clean Air efforts.
The IPCC’s diagram of radiative forcings shows a negative forcing for SO2, but has no component for the positive forcing resulting from their removal from the atmosphere. This is a major error. Their removal results in cleaner, more transparent air, which allows the sun to naturally increase the warming of the Earth’s surface (and which is mistakenly attributed to greenhouse gasses).
The reduction in the net amount of global SO2 emissions since about 1972 is approx. 38 million tonnes The Climate Sensitivity factor to their removal is approx. .02 deg. C. of temp. rise for each net Megatonne of reduction in SO2 emissions (as derived from the 1991 volcanic eruptions). The amount of warming due to their removal is so large that there is simply no room for any additional warming from any
non-solar source such as greenhouse gasses. For example, .02 x 38 + 0.76 deg. C, which is within a few hundreth’s of a degree of 2015’s average global temperature.
Continued efforts to further reduce SO2 emissions will guarantee even higher temperatures, which is why thie scientific debate MUST continue.
As noted above, CO2 has no discernable climatic effect.