So the planetary climate system has some sort of volition like living beings?
OK, before we get back to the climate system, we need to establish some clarity about biological systems in general.
Here's a
definition of volition: the capability of
conscious choice and decision and intention.
You are falling into an incorrect line of reasoning by using the word "volition". I
purposefully (because I am a conscious being)
chose (made a decision about) the examples I used - bacteria and sunflower - to illustrate my point that living things can act "purposefully" even if they have no volition, that is, no capacity for
conscious choice and "intention".
Let me state that very explicitly: neither bacteria nor sunflowers possess consciousness like humans, and therefore are not capable of making rational choices. They are not self-aware like humans are.
The problem is that you - and most people who are not familiar with cognitive sciences - do not distinguish between cognition and consciousness.
Cognition is simply "knowing", able to detect differences in their environment that are relevant to their survival, but it does NOT imply rational thought or even self-awareness.
By contrast,
consciousness is knowing that you know. Humans are conscious. We know that we know. We are self-aware; we make rational decisions. We have volition. We're discussing that now.
Bacteria and sunflowers are
not conscious. Cognate? Yes. Conscious? No. They have no volition. (Neither does the climate system.)
Bacteria "know" where food is and will move towards it. Light-seeking bacteria, some algae & sunflowers know where the sun is and can follow it. Planaria worms, on the other hand, know where the sun is and move away from it (they want shade, not sun). Yet none of these creatures are conscious. They aren't making conscious, rational choices. Their choices are hardwired. There is no volition. Their cognition is simply a faculty that has been naturally selected during their evolution because it allows them to stay alive longer than other variations of their species that are not cognate. The bacterium that "knows" (not consciously) where food is stays alive; those that can't find the food die. Simple as that.
Consciousness - knowing that you know, being able to make rational decisions based on evidence gathered, having volition and free will, self-awareness - requires a well-developed brain, probably considerably more developed than a bumble bee.
If you can't grasp that distinction, then this discussion is going nowhere and we'll just leave it where it is. (But then I won't be able to address your interesting question.)
The climate system is
not conscious.
It has no volition. It has no power to make rational decisions, and no self-awareness. Yet, it responds to outside stimuli much like a bacterium would even though - like a bacterium - the responses of that system are hard wired, much like those of a bacterium or sunflower. Yet, it in a sense, it is acting cognitively (again, NOT consciously) because the climate system involves living components that play a very significant role in climate (see my earlier references
to Spencer Weart's essay on the role of biosphere in climate).
That's why I made reference to oxygen and methane above. No one in this forum, no one in science, can explain using physics and chemistry alone why Earth's atmosphere is 20.9% molecular oxygen with measurable quantities of methane present (right now, 1750 ppb). Those molecules are biological products. Without life on this planet, there would be no free O2 in the atmosphere, and no methane. Those biological entities are part of the system, and therefore play a role in its dynamics. Yet again, there is no consciousness involved, no volition. It's just an automatic response.
Systems respond to changes. They don't need to be conscious (like humans) in order to do so. Sometimes, negative feedback processes kick in that automatically (without thought) correct the change. This happens daily in your physiology. If you get too hot, you start sweating automatically, without thinking about it. If you get too cold, you start shivering, automatically. Your blood glucose levels automatically adjust (as long as you follow your cognition and eat food). There is no consciousness involved in temperature regulation by sweating and shivering. It just happens. Likewise with blood glucose (and every other nutrient, hormone and antibody in your blood). It's automatic. But it's also purposeful. There is no denying that.
Sometimes, when negative feedback processes fail, positive feedback kicks in that amplify deviations from "normal" and shove the system into a new state. (That's what's happening now in the climate system.)
Again, to be as clear as possible, with climate regulation
there is no thought on the part of the global system.
It has no volition. The adjustment of the climate by the system is as automatic as your own physiology adjusting your temperature. The adjustment of CO2 is as automatic as your own physiology's regulation of your blood CO2 (which, if it varies by a tiny fraction of a fraction, will kill you in seconds due to change in blood pH).
Finally, anyone who accuses me of advancing a religious argument around this issue doesn't know me very well. I'm as atheist as they come. Just read my posts in the APS thread on "What religion are you?" or something like that. This is pure science, not new age hogwash or superstition.