It is. All the data shows it. It's known that it functions like a greenhouse gas. It traps in heat in the atmosphere that would have normally been radiated away into space.

The part you're missing is that heat was being trapped for a very long time, and because large heat gradients don't just sit in one place, that heat didn't just stay in the air. And water is a extremely good heat sink. So all that heat that's been trapped in by CO2 has been charging up the oceans over the decades. But we're at the tipping point now where the oceans can't pull in anymore, so that heat is staying in the air longer and longer. And hotter air holds more moisture, which makes the air "thirstier" and starts to pull out moisture from vegetation and trees. And then you have drier and more combustible stuff, thus more and more wildfires.

Now the heat in the ocean is hitting a point where it's radiating back out, that means a ton more moisture going into the atmosphere. And higher the humidity the more literal energy that air holds. And that means more frequent and stronger tornados, hurricanes, storms, wetter winters in some areas and colder drier in others. And so on.

Water vapour does have an impact, but it's a condensing agent. The more of it in the atmosphere, the more it wants to condense and get out of the atmosphere. It naturally has a equalizing effect, which is why earth's temps have been extremely stable over long periods. The rate of warming in the past 50 years cannot be explained by water vapour, there had to be an ongoing catalyst to force the temps higher and higher, otherwise the water vapour would condense faster and equalize.

The catalyst is CO2.

[–] DrStanleyGoodspeed@lemmy.zip 1 points 10 hours ago

I replied to the wrong thing. You may be right. CO2 may be playing a big part, but I just don’t think it’s the whole story. There is something else that is rocking the boat so to speak. CO2 just isn’t enough and there is legit data that contradicts the narrative of a pure CO2 driven change.