[DustyMoment]

I fail to understand why there's an expectation of a simple correlation between increasing atmospheric CO2 and higher temperatures!

I concur, and that is the point I'm trying to make. The GW crowd has consistently harped on CO2 as the leading greenhouse gas and blah, blah, blah. According to Dr. Baliunas, There are 11 key gasses that comprise our atmosphere and climatologists understand how fewer than half of them affect overall temperature.

[cogitator]

The GW crowd has consistently harped on CO2 as the leading greenhouse gas and blah, blah, blah.

Unless there's a lot more methane (which could be an anthropogenic greenhouse gas if methane release from melting permafrost --> bogs increases), CO2 is going to have the largest effect on Earth's radiative balance.