The carbon in the CO2 that you breath out comes from the carbon that you consume. That carbon - by virtue of its state - is part of an equilibrium carbon cycle that makes our planet habitable. I.e. the apple tree consumed CO2 from the atmosphere to create the apple that you ate, and you returned back to the atmosphere the carbon that the tree previously consumed.

Now consider the carbon that has been isolated from the cycle over billions of years as the planet became habitable to creatures such as ourselves and our non-human friends. That carbon is in the form of coal, oil, etc. If we leave that stuff in the ground we retain the current carbon equilibrium. If we burn it, we change the equilibrium by taking sequestered carbon from the ground that was "locked away" and add it to the atmospheric carbon cycle.

What exactly do you think the definition of a "climate change denier" is?

The important part isn't recognizing that climate change exists. The important part is recognizing why and what needs to be done about it.

You're misinformed about the science on this one...

Climate is indeed changing. What he's trying to argue is the role of CO2 in all of it.

100% right about this:"The important part is recognizing why".

So far no raw data has been made fully available to see see what, how, when and why. At least I was not able to find the data those graphs that you keep popping up are based on. I also don't remember seeing any of these graphs taking account solar activity either since that is our heat source after all.

It's meaning in the cultural zeitgeist, however, has evolved to include people who don't deny that the climate does change over time, or even is currently changing; but, who deny the science supporting anthropogenic climate change, specifically the clear impacts to atmospheric CO2 starting during the industrial revolution and driven primarily by fossil fuel emissions.

Essentially, I think most people would agree at this point that the common usage also includes people who deny we can/should do anything about climate change, or that the current situation vis-a-vis greatly accelerated climate change is our "fault."

The records re: CO2 are not hard to find, they come from ice cores and date back ~800,000 years.

You can start here, but there are plenty of independent resources online: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...

Then explain why China, despite having more than four times as many people as the US, only has twice the CO2 emissions?

Can you even link a single study that puts anything but fossil fuel use as the primary contributor (by a wide margin) to atmospheric CO2? Because I couldn't in several minutes of googling.

> Presumably the world can much more quickly (due to vegetation) remove CO2 compared to those other chemicals

If that were true, climatologists wouldn't be so concerned about the problem, they'd just be telling us to plant some more trees.

Science is based on empirical observation. The map is not the territory & models are often wrong. We don't even know how often the models are wrong.

If you have a better standard of judgement then by all means present contradictory data.

That is a remarkable claim - do you have a citation?

Regarding heavy metal pollutants etc - I agree that those are a concern, but that is more or less orthogonal to the climate crisis.

Then you can try a little bit harder and do 2nd, 3rd and other order effects and get a bit more precise estimates.

To say that a 2 ton car moving represents a tiny part of CO2 emissions and that breathing is killing the planet is ridiculous.