As consensus builds within the scientific community, there seems little doubt that a shift in Earth Climate is occuring. That said, we can debate the cause until Hell freezes over (pun intended), but there will likely not be conclusive evidence for such a complicated proccess for decades. Instead we might want to focus on adapting to the inevitable, and preparing for possible impact from the change....rather than arguing over its cause.
Regardless of what Mankind does as far as prevention/reversal, we will not change the future result of this climate event, and would serve our species well to get past the silly, pointless finger pointing in favor of what we do best....evaluating and adapting to our environment.
I found this most recent synopsis very powerful, and the team of scientists involved exceptionally qualified for the study:
"Executive Summary
Overview
The best estimate of global surface temperature change is a 0.6°C increase since the late 19th century with a 95% confidence interval of 0.4 to 0.8°C. The increase in temperature of 0.15°C compared to that assessed in the IPCC WGI Second Assessment Report (IPCC, 1996) (hereafter SAR) is partly due to the additional data for the last five years, together with improved methods of analysis and the fact that the SAR decided not to update the value in the First Assessment Report, despite slight additional warming. It is likely that there have been real differences between the rate of warming in the troposphere and the surface over the last twenty years, which are not fully understood. New palaeoclimate analyses for the last 1,000 years over the Northern Hemisphere indicate that the magnitude of 20th century warming is likely to have been the largest of any century during this period. In addition, the 1990s are likely to have been the warmest decade of the millennium. New analyses indicate that the global ocean has warmed significantly since the late 1940s: more than half of the increase in heat content has occurred in the upper 300 m, mainly since the late 1950s. The warming is superimposed on strong global decadal variability. Night minimum temperatures are continuing to increase, lengthening the freeze-free season in many mid- and high latitude regions. There has been a reduction in the frequency of extreme low temperatures, without an equivalent increase in the frequency of extreme high temperatures. Over the last twenty-five years, it is likely that atmospheric water vapour has increased over the Northern Hemisphere in many regions. There has been quite a widespread reduction in daily and other sub-monthly time-scales of temperature variability during the 20th century. New evidence shows a decline in Arctic sea-ice extent, particularly in spring and summer. Consistent with this finding are analyses showing a near 40% decrease in the average thickness of summer Arctic sea ice over approximately the last thirty years, though uncertainties are difficult to estimate and the influence of multi-decadal variability cannot yet be assessed. Widespread increases are likely to have occurred in the proportion of total precipitation derived from heavy and extreme precipitation events over land in the mid- and high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. "
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/048.htm