The nature of Malinkovitch Cycles is reasonably well understood, and not related to Climate Change as it pertains to CO2 levels.
I certainly could not assert with any certainty that the increase of CO2 from 280 to 410 ppm cannot have a significant impact on our climate. It makes sense to me that it would have an impact. We may not be able to model that impact very well, a thing Judith Curry points out in her postings.
I've posted this before, but remember that all of the global warming / climate change stuff relies on several interrelated points:
- The earth is in a warming trend.
- CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
- Some portion of the warming of the last century and a half is due to CO2.
- Warming is bad for humanity.
- The "CO2 forcing / climate sensitivity" numbers are high enough that the Earth will warm enough to have significant / catastrophic negative effects.
- The technology and economics exist such that is capable to do something about it on a global basis.
- The cost of doing something now is a better economic trade-off than trying to use economic growth to mitigate the worst effects of it down the road.
No credible skeptic argues with #1-3. Anyone who argues those points, IMHO, is simply spouting nonsense that is completely unsupported by science.
There may be some legitimate debate on #3, based on HOW much of that warming trend is CO2 related and how much is related to the sun, the fact that we were coming out of a minimum already, and the earth was probably going to naturally warm between then and now.
All of the major points of contention are #4+. Is warming bad for humanity? How bad [how can we quantify it in human life and economic terms]? How much warming will there be [what's the climate sensitivity number]? Can we effectively forestall the warming without destroying the engine of our global economy, which today is fossil fuels?
As we see in another context right now, the question is at what point the cure is worse than the disease? And that's a really hard debate, because we have difficulty quantifying the potential harm, we have difficulty modeling the efficacy of our mitigations, and we start venturing into economics which is even more of a shaky science than climate modeling.
So when things get really complicated, does that mean people don't have an opinion? Of course not! This is America, dammit!
Hence the level of debate is dominated by people who don't realize they're perfect examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect.