You are admitting two things here:
1) You think that my education would provide me the ability to understand climate change, or you would have no problem to believe it.
2) You have no education that you think would provide you the ability to understand climate change, or you would say so, instead of obviously listing nonsense qualifications.
The argument "climate change is a natural process" is very simplistic.
It's like saying that murder doesn't exist, because people die of natural causes.
There are ways to understand the difference, e.g. "This 20 y.o. man was found dead, with a small hole in the back of his head, and his face missing. We think he didn't die of 'natural causes'!".
Climates indeed change naturally too. We know that, because civilizations of old have been keeping some records about the weather and the climate, since the Sumerians and Babylonians 3000 BCE. Ancient Greeks have been trying to explain the weather since 400 BCE. Aristotle wrote Meteorologica (~340 BCE). It's understandable why they wanted to know. Their lives dependent on their harvests succeeding.
The first scientists to proposed that much of Europe and North America had once been covered by vast ice sheets, were Swiss geologist in 1837, known as the Ice Age Theory. Their evidence was physical marks on the landscape that could only be explained by massive moving ice sheets.
Later in the 19th century, geologists found alternating layers of glacial deposits and warmer-climate sediments and fossils indicating repeated cold and warm periods. This led to the idea that Earth had experienced multiple ice ages, not just one.
In the early 20th century, Serbian mathematician Milutin Milanković proposed that variations in Earth’s orbit and tilt drive long-term climate cycles.
These are now called Milankovitch cycles, and they explain:
- Ice ages (~100,000-year cycles)
- Warmer interglacial periods (like today)
This work connected astronomy with geology, creating modern paleoclimatology.
Later contributions:
- Astronomy (orbital cycles)
- Physics (climate modeling)
- Paleontology (fossil evidence)
- Geochemistry (ice cores, isotopes)
Those those studies with ice cores and isotopes are important. Scientists drill deep into ice sheets in places like Antarctica and Greenland. Each year, snowfall forms a new layer. Over thousands of years, these layers compress into ice. A deep core is like a timeline of Earth’s atmosphere. Some Antarctic cores go back 800,000+ years.
Scientists can measure the Carbon dioxide, Methane and Nitrous oxide concentrations, in trapped bubbles in the ice. They can also measure the age of the ice by measuring the Oxygen Isotopes in the water molecules of the ice.
They started doing this in the 1960s. The Major global concern about climate change didn't take off until the 1980s.
Anyhow, from ice cores alone, we now have a very accurate, direct record of atmospheric CO₂ going back about 800,000 years. This record covers about 8 full glacial–interglacial cycles. Other measurements support those measurements, like on Marine sediments, Fossil leaves, Cave Deposit, Boron isotopes in marine carbonates and Oxygen isotopes and trace elements (Mg, Sr) in stalagmites and stalactites and basic observations from geologists.
That ~800,000 Years of history from the measurements shows that the CO₂ never exceeded ~300 ppm NATURALLY. The natural range is:
- Typical glacial periods: ~180–200 ppm CO₂
- Typical interglacial periods (warm periods): ~270–300 ppm CO₂
Based on orbital position and Milankovitch cycles, NATURAL CO₂ today would likely have been around 280 ppm.
As of 2026, atmospheric CO₂ is over 420 ppm. THIS IS NOT NORMAL!!!
March 2017: 406,92 ppm
Current Weekly Avg (Feb 2026): ~428.10 ppm
I am indeed left-wing. How does worrying about the climate serve my purpose of lowering inequality, people having safe jobs that pay for their bills, universal housing, universal healthcare, universal education, nature preservation, women's control over their own bodies, racial/gender/LGBTQ+ equity, taking corruption out of politics, and free speech that doesn't prop up hate and propaganda with social media algorithms?
I am 52 years old and born in a mild climate. I have SEEN the climate change in my life. That is impossible for climates that change naturally slowly over many THOUSANDS of years. I have EYES and a BRAIN.
How about you? Are you telling me that you have not noticed?
Or do you buy the story that humanity can just cut down ~35%
of the forest area in the world and emit 38 billion metric tons of CO₂/year,
without that having an effect? How does that make sense to you?