It seems that many simple minds would make of climate science a single variable equation.
I think that to be folly.
I agree. Fortunately climate change scientists do not do that.
One would think that anyone who had looked at Milankovitch's equations would tend to think in multiple variables.
As climate change scientists do. They examine thousands of variables, and eliminate potential causes one by one until they are left with the actual causative agents.
For example, by examining the output of the sun over the past few decades, and by realizing that solar output is decreasing, they have been able to eliminate that as a cause of warming.
In particular, the persistent 400-kyr periodicity should peak one's curiosity.(Do you know what earth's climate was like 400 kyrs ago?)
We have a reasonable idea.
Do you know what the climate was like 66 million years ago?
Extrapolating long term patterns from short term observations in also, most likely, folly.
Indeed. But extrapolating century-long patterns from decades-long patterns is . . . what science is very good at. Similar to how a doctor can extrapolate the next decades of your life from the years of observations he has of your health, your activity level, your diet, your habits, your history etc. Indeed, they do a very good job at that - which is why we can say with great certainty that smoking is, in general, bad for you, and quitting is a very good idea.
Now, a dedicated smoker, determined to both keep smoking and justify his decision, may well try his best to cast doubt upon that. "Do you have ANY IDEA how complicated the human body is? Claiming that you can extrapolate the next five decades of my life from one thing I do is folly. Why not study my bone density, or my telomere length, or my liver function before claiming that smoking is bad and I should quit?"
Fortunately, we have proxy information from ice and deep sea cores.
Many variables, and many paths to knowledge for those who would look.
Agreed! Fortunately we have thousands of scientists who have done that work and now know a lot more about how the planet's climate works. Pretending that one has "inside knowledge" that invalidates all that work is folly.