“Remember people, 98% of the CO2 released every year is “good”; only the 2% from people is bad and polluting”
Well… sort of… not quite.
In a balanced system, CO2 is constantly recycled (remember learning about the “Carbon Cycle” in high-school science decades ago?)
But burning fossil fuels is adding CO2 to this system. Now, it’s a small amount each year, but since CO2 lingers for centuries it accumulates with each passing year, like a savings plan. Currently almost half the CO2 in the atmosphere is the result of burning fossil fuels.
(And how can “they” tell that? Pretty easily, actually. Carbon comes in several isotopes - Carbon-12, -13, and -14. Carbon-14 comes from cosmic rays hitting regular carbon atoms in the atmosphere. But buried underground, away from cosmic rays, C-14 decays at steady rate. This is the basis of “carbon-14 dating” used by archeologists.
The carbon found in coal and oil is devoid of C-14 - it’s long since decayed away. Burning it puts it back in the atmosphere where it dilutes the amount of C-14 already present. It’s easy enough to measure how much total CO2 is present in the atmosphere. Then compare it to how much is CO2 with C-14. The result is how much CO2 came from burning fossil fuels, which is about 47%, almost doubling the amount of CO2 present).
Now the system can re-balance itself… but only to a point. Predicting that exact point is subject to conjecture, but it’s like predicting a hurricane a day or two out - they may not know the exact ZIP code will get hit, but it’s coming none-the-less.