Gt wt, I agree with your critique of my post. The weak spot in the cloud of scientists that you refer to is that the percentage of the observed rise in temperatures that can be attributed to man-made causes is unknowable. I made up 20% completely off the top of my head, but based on intuition about the forces involved generally. What percentage does your gut tell you? Do you think 90% of the observed rise in temperatures is man-made? If so, you get into some time-tracking problems, I think, since if it was that immediately responsive to the last few decades, it wouldn't have flattened. Anyway, that's a highly weak spot in the analysis.
As for future effects, I readily admit I am no expert, but I doubt it is a very precise prediction science. There are so many factors. Won't food production be better? Won't certain types of productivity go up? I don't know. Would you place the bad effects to good at 4:1? 6:1?
These unknowable factors make it hard to apprehend the situation. I do stand by my overall point, which is that the amount of future temperature rise or fall that is likely to be affected by our current policy is very small. Our approach should be to make a reasonable policy with the actual likely range of effect in mind, not a false impression of what is likely to happen.
P.S. I know that technically, data is a plural. By far, though, most people use data to mean a "set" of data, thus referring to it as a singular. If it makes you feel better, I do still use "whom" and the subjunctive case.