"Pretty much all theoretical and observational evidence supports climate sensitivities larger than the no-feedback sensitivity, i.e., a positive feedback."

But only in the short term. This is like an eddy in the river. Sometimes water does flow uphill, but the general trend is that the river flows downhill and stays within the riverbanks. Over time, the river might shift, but rarely by accident.

Similarly, the climate changes, ice ages occur, droughts occur, but it tends to stay within certain bands.

"It's true that the climate system doesn't have a runaway positive feedback: when the response is large enough, the positive feedbacks weaken and the negative feedbacks strengthen."

Right, so the negative feedbacks are dominant. We all agree that climates change, that's obvious. It's also clear that they can change in ways we won't enjoy. The problem is when people claim to KNOW that there's a tipping point, and that they know where it is, and what causes it. This is just doomsday cultism, plain and simple.

The big question is "how much impact have we had on the climate?"

Rational discussion of that question is routinely sidelined.

"I've never understood why the group that believes we didn't do it think that means we can continue being oblivious."

That's because you haven't been listening. They don't think we "can continue being oblivious". They think something more like "our influence on the situation is insignificant" or "you there, with the ego, you're very funny".

All those ships we put in the ocean, they impact the tides, right? I mean, obviously, they displace water. Some of them displace many tons of water. Eek! High Tide! No shipping for a while! Hey, the tide went down, looks like we fixed it!

The alarm of climate change is based on the idea that positive feedback mechanisms will cause the climate to spin wildly out of control, that there's some "tipping point", and doom, doom, doom!

This is inconsistent with everything we know. Climate is dominated by negative feedback mechanisms. If you don't understand what I'm saying here, you don't deserve to participate in the conversation until you've come up to speed.

As for solar shades and other ideas.... Suppose we somehow managed to pull off something like that, and created a situation in which we have significant impact on climate. Who runs the thing? Politicians? A corporation? Majority vote, like the thermostat in the office? How secure is the system? What about maintenance?

"I'm a Project Manager who recently decided that I want/need to get my dev skills more up-to-date... Should I buy a number of cheaper PC's, or should I buy one monster machine and leverage virtual machine technology?"

You'll end up splitting your time between PM and development tasks, so you'll be coming up to speed for at least a year, and you simply won't need as much hardware as your developers. You won't be stressing your system as much as they stress theirs. With that in mind, consider spending the money on upgrading one of their systems, and using their old system for yourself. Ask them, they will know which of them could most use an upgrade.

If you end up with the best development system, you'll be seen as a pompous ass who thinks he's a developer, and you'll never get the support necessary to improve your skills.

I travel a lot. I've yet to have an issue with this.