I did read the article but it did not give me answers. At least until I went through a link or two.
Anyway, Paul Homewood's argument is compelling but I'm going to stick to my original thought process:
Adding a lot of CO2 and carbon into the air faster than the world can handle can't be good.
There's only so much you can do with a thought process of making things up, Dave. Either the evidence shows it is good or that it is bad. If people really cared about the environment, they'd be worried about the methane (cow) farms polluting the air, not the carbon dioxide polluters.
Hang on, basic googling is telling me that CO
2 is significantly worse than methane. Atmospheric methane has increased since 1750 by up to 170%, CO
2 has only increased by 41%. However, the increase in CO
2 over that period means an increase in radiative forcing of 1.88 W/m
2, while the change in methane has only resulted in 0.49 W/m
2. A significant chunk of CO
2 emissions are the result of electricity generation, almost double that of transportation, so efforts should be (and are being, mostly) aimed at moving from coal fired plants.
Also, I'm tired of seeing the ignorant accuse the scientific community of number fixing. Scrutiny and criticism are some of the most important components of the scientific method.