To me, whilst it seems important to find out why, our ignorance of the causes should not be used as an excuse for our inaction.
Really? We don't need to understand the system before deciding how to "fix" it? We can just go monkeying around, implement some trillion dollar policy, and just "hope" it works? Hey, I guess at the very least, we can say we're doing
something. Will that assuage the collective Western guilt?
If we don't understand the processes at work, we can never know how effective our corrective measures will be. We'll be resorting to shooting in the dark. Perhaps that doesn't sound like a problem for some - but in a world of finite resources, it's nothing but irresponsible.
Any idea on how many degrees of warming we'll save if Kyoto gets implemented? Didn't think so.
In fact one of the possible causes of this trend has been identified. Maybe we can help the situation to get no worse if we try, without any great hardship, to limit the use of energy obtained from coal.
No great hardship - please. Tell that to China, India or any other developing country that are pulling themselves out of poverty, with the help of fossil fuels.
By the way, nice way of wrapping your "fact" up with handy qualifiers (possible and maybe). Seems to be a common occurrence with climate change speak these days. (e.g. hurricanes
may increase due to global warming)
