According to the AGW scientists, it will take centuries for the current CO2 to work through the system.
End of quote
Hmm ... I'm not aware that this is the claim. Do you have any sources for who says this?
What I recall hearing is that we have about 1C of warming built into the "pipeline" and if we were to all die tomorrow as you suggested we'd still end up with that extra degree but as to the "half-life" I'm not sure, I guess I'll have to go look ... (a few hours later)
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1994/93GB03392.shtml suggests the half life of CO2 in the atmosphere is 31 years.
From http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/07/co2-is-not-the-only-ghg/ I get a much more complicated answer.
"For CH4 or CO2, the chemistry is more complicated (much more so for CO2) and half-lives less useful a concept. For CH4, 12 years for the perturbative half-life (longer than the ~8 year residence time) is reasonable, while for CO2 the best approximation is a combination of 5 different exponential processes with half lives that range from 3 to 100,000 years. Thus there is a component of CO2 emissions (roughly 15%) that is effectively in the atmosphere forever. - gavin"
The following has even more details and instead of half life they get into what they call GWP (global warming potential) whatever that means.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/03/how-long-will-global-warming-last/
The bottom line seems like there are some very long term components of CO2 life as well as short term components and that the problem is quite complex given multiple sequestration processes that vary with respect to the rate of CO2 injection. I also can't seem to find a source for the "fact" that even if we were to stop today we'd still have 1C built into the pipeline but still that is a useful way to look at it.
The thing is that the predicted effects vary in severity along with the temperature rise. A 1C rise might not be so bad. I think the goal was to limit the total rise to 2C which also imples that 2C might not be so bad. I assume this is simply based on how high water levels rise but then there are other effects that may not be linear like drought.
So your question is why do anything since we're going to get the full effect of "predictions" no matter what. My answer is that I don't believe that to be true, I believe that the higher CO2 goes the worse things will be and so there is always at least some incremental benefit to doing what is possible to keep levels as low as you can even if you think those efforts are "half-assed."
As far as methane it seems that methane decays into CO2 in about 5 years and so although methane is a far more powerful GHG it's net effect is not nearly as great and quickly becomes just another contribution of CO2.