evidence: Here, too, commenters on this blog often claim that since recent periods in Earth’s past were almost as warm as it is now, we can’t know for sure that the CO2 we’ve added to the atmosphere is responsible for the observed recent warming. But in their paper, published in the journal Scientific Reports, the scientists confirmed that our emissions of greenhouse gases, "especially CO2, are the main causal drivers of the recent warming." [...] They’ve also never contended that CO2 is the sole factor driving climate changes over geologic history. As we’ve seen, however, it plays a key role: Without the CO2 thermostat, Earth would likely be a proverbial snowball.