If your stick is made out of carbon dioxide I doubt the angry beast will notice. In my view, and your post on cloud seems to support it, most of the late C20th warming was due to the increased insolation at the ocean surface rather than an increase in airbourne co2.
The match I have found between specific humidity near the tropopause and solar activity levels leads me to believe the water vapour feedback has a lot more to do with the sun than co2.
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/shumidity-ssn96.png?w=614
Since water vapour causes most of the greenhouse effect, I’m not too concerned about trace gas concentration changes. Water vapour concentration changes are the controlling influence on Earth’s internal energy balance, and it looks like solar activity levels are the controlling influence on water vapour concentration changes.
Given the deep dive in solar activity levels, it’s not surprising to me that plenty of rain has been falling over the last two years. Are there any goo measures of the average height of the tropopause accurate to within 200m we can consult?