> The problem with correlations are that you need a large volume of data to suggest causation. We don’t have that.

Just based on this sentence I have a hard time believing you really are a scientist as you claim. There is no requirement on large volume of data to suggest causation. In fact no amount of data and correlation by itself can establish causation, because they are very different concepts (Hence the correlation!=causation). You need mechanisms to explain the causations, and you need to verify the mechanisms. This has been done extensively for climate change.

> Because of those claims of causation, the field has lost significant credibility

I would say your claims lost you a lot of credibility just now.

That's fair and I understand that. My point, is we have trouble even suggesting causation. We have one event (industrialization) and one suspected effect (warming temps). Without another time-series of data for comparison we don't know what the natural state of the world even is given the margin of error (we're only talking 1-2 degrees C).

We don't have the full dataset so effectively we're seeing two lines go up at the same time and claiming one is causing the other.

We can't even really make a correlation case, besides to say these two time series loosely correlate.

Put another way, we suspect one event causes another, which are tracked via a time series. Normally, when you're discussing causality you'd looking for multiple instances of said event causing another. We don't have that. Hence, we're effectively shooting in the dark.

I think seasons aren't really a relevant example of climate changing. Here's the Wikipedia definition of climate: "Climate is the long-term pattern of weather in an area, typically averaged over a period of 30 years." [1]

You do have a point on credibility though, in that over-politicization causes the field to look much less credible.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Climate&oldid=104...

I was simply trying to illustrate -- assume we didn't know about earths tilt; one would suspect something like the moon or stars causes the seasons (as they did historically).

IMO as we don't have accurate data measuring far enough back we're effectively shooting in the dark.

It's fine to say, these two things could be correlated, it's another to say these things are correlated AND to fix it we have to force everyone to stop traveling, be less healthy (eating a worse diet), etc.

You are creating an impossible burden of proof (causation, which in the Pearlian sense can maybe only be established when observing interventional data, which we can't have) while ignoring the balance of probabilities and possible harm done. This comic illustrates the scale of previous deviations, including the ice age one you keep harping on about

https://xkcd.com/1732/

If you drink a bunch of methanol and then go blind without knowing the exact biochemistry, you don't say "eh, there's no causation proven yet" and keep drinking, you stop the things which correlate until you can show they are safe. Where's your credibility? What have you done to give an alternative explanation to anthropogenic climate change? If you don't have one, you aren't acting in good faith here