This also makes it much more of an interesting bet as in survival terms it has actual teeth, especially since the cooling period hasn't really cooled but has stayed pretty flat instead. I suggest at least hedging that it might in fact rise, given the loss if it does. Nothing wrong with making some hedge funds after all, honest foundation of the economy and all that.

Besides, other than saying that the climate is just too complex to make these predictions, I haven't ever heard a plausible argument against extending the simple observation that a volume of air enclosing an absorbing and emitting solid when exposed to a wideband source of light (the sun being a good example) will trap heat in different amounts dependent on the concentration of the gases in the volume and that CO2 is one of the gases that increases this effect if you start with a mix the same as our atmosphere.