Global warming relies on and complies with well-established or at least reasonably sound physics at every step, if you want to disprove it the onus is on YOU.
You keep saying this, but you can't come up with a list of steps, and apparently aren't bothered in the slightest by this lack of information:)
Astrology and creationism both rely on clearly wrong and unfounded assertions that can be picked out which invalidate the entire theory
How do you determine whether or not something is "clearly wrong" or "unfounded"?
I'll give you a hint - to do this with the scientific method, we first look for the falsifiable hypothesis statement:)
Let's spin it around; can you personally imagine or propose falsifiable hypotheses for global warming?
I take it you really mean *anthropogenic* global warming (we've directly observed historical global warming and global cooling, all through non-anthropogenic means since it happened even in periods when humans didn't exist).
And actually, I've actually spent quite a bit of time trying to play devil's advocate for the CAGW hypothesis. So far, I've come up with lists of proposed future falsifications, proposed historical falsifications, and what are clearly insufficient and trivial (yet necessary) falsifications.
For future falsifications, it's "failure of models over X years". Problem of course is that any number X is arbitrary, and we've got myriad models that disagree with each other anyway, yet all firmly base their rationale on the premise that CO2 drives warming feedbacks greater than itself.
For historical falsifications, it seems to me many of them are already falsified, but they would have to include:
Historical warming of the same rate as modern warming Paleo record showing CO2 always lags temperature changes Historical high CO2 with low average global temperature Historical low CO2 with high average global temperature Paleo record showing CO2 and temperature are not correlated Show CO2 isotope ratios in the atmosphere indicate increases primarily from non-human sources Show warming periods in the past led to less extreme weather Show cooling periods in the past led to more extreme weather Interplanetary bodies, adjusted for distance to the sun, have average global temperatures that correlate with Earth's Show cloud feedbacks are on average negative
The most interesting one would be the interplanetary bodies one, but I don't think we've got easy access to the paleo records of Mars.
Here's the list of truly trivial falsifications that may be necessary but aren't even remotely sufficient:
Show that humans don't exist Show that CO2 does not have a specific absorption spectrum Show that humans don't emit CO2 Show that the global average temperature has not been rising in the industrial era Show that extreme weather events are declining in rate Show that H2O does not act as a feedback of specific magnitude to CO2 Show that the global average sea level has not been rising in the industrial era
The idea of falsifiability is so important to the scientific method, that it boggles the mind that for "settled science" they wouldn't already have a clearly defined set of necessary and sufficient falsifications. What we've got at the moment is little more than peer-reviewed climate astrology.
Now, what is it about Global Warming that is different than those other two?
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming lacks a falsifiable hypothesis. Both Evolution (natural selection) and Astronomy *have* falsifiable hypotheses.
Can you state, a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis of CAGW? Can you imagine any sorts of observations, past, present or future, that would be a solid falsification of CAGW?
CAGW, like Astrology, explains *everything* and therefore explains *nothing*.
Doesn't natural climate change occur slowly, over thousands of years?
No, actually, natural climate change happens at all time scales - day changes to night, seasons change into seasons, solar cycles, ENSO/PDO cycles, milankovitch cycles, all happen all of the time.
You can see this quite clearly in the ice core records, but any sort of temperature data will show that this is true -> climate is changing second to second, all the time.
Are you aware that the recent climate change pattern for the 20th century is much different that the historical changes?
It is quite the schoolboy error, isn't it:) We have hundreds, if not thousands of papers, written by hundreds, if not thousands of scientists, all trivially tacked with the "global warming" meme, and not *one* of them contains a clearly necessary and falsifiable hypotheses statement. You can prove my hypothesis here wrong by citing a *single* paper that contains a clearly necessary and falsifiable hypothesis statement of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (or whatever variation of AGW you'd like to assert).
We need to start teaching, once again, that in order to be science, one must start with the falsifiable hypothesis statement. Our detour into "science by anecdote" only confuses things like homeopathy, astrology, intelligent design and catastrophic anthropogenic global warming with real science.
The available scientific evidence appears to have led to a consensus that anthropogenic global warming exists and will result in a catastrophe. So the falsifiable hypothesis would be to do nothing and wait for the catastrophe.
First of all, science isn't based on consensus. Second of all, catastrophes can happen for all sorts of reasons - why should we believe that a catastrophe in say, 50 years, *must* be caused by CO2 emissions today? Thirdly, why can't we look at prior periods of high temperature, and the lack of catastrophe then, as a historical refutation of the hypothesis?
Strictly speaking, no scientific hypothesis or theory can be proved correct, only incorrect.
Exactly. In order to be a strong scientific hypothesis, we must have a set of falsifiable conditions, which, if *never* observed, almost assuredly implies that our hypothesis is true. Since catastrophes can happen for all sorts of reasons, at all sorts of global average temperatures and CO2 levels, simply observing the *lack* of a catastrophe seems like a *necessary* falsification, but certainly not a *sufficient* one.
if a fucking big volcano starts to rumble, spit out rocks, leak lava or whatever, the sensible thing is to start running, not quibble about exactly when it will explode, or whether or not it might just fizzle out
Running, I can agree with. Adaptation to current conditions is always a reasonable approach. However, throwing humans into the volcano to appease its appetite in the hope that our worship can somehow alter the flow of natural conditions, seems a bit unjustified:)
It is possible to make such a list, but unnecessary. Most of the steps involved are well-established physics.
A truly pseudo-scientific statement.
All of the positions of the stars and planets are well-established physics. Yet you'll have me believe that it is possible, but unnecessary, to provide falsifiability that connects those well-established physics to astrological charts?
The 2nd law of thermodynamics is well-established physics. Yet creationists point to it as a basis for rejecting evolution (since you cannot go from disorder to order).
You need to do more than simply say "well-established physics", and claim victory. You need to have the list, and it should thoroughly disturb you that such a list has not ever been compiled.
although we can indirectly increase water vapor concentration in the atmosphere by warming the climate with CO2 emissions, increasing evaporation and shifting the ocean/atmosphere equilibrium to increase atmospheric water vapor--which amplifies the warming effect of CO2
That's a vague assertion - and apparently based on incorrect premises:
"Computer models of AGW show positive feedback from water vapor by incorrectly assuming that relative humidity remains constant with warming while specific humidity increases."
We are, however, releasing lots of CO2, and about half of what we release is accumulating in the atmosphere.
Put $4 worth of quarters in your left hand. That represents 400ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. Now put $9960 worth of quarters in your right hand. I'll let you guess what that represents.
What, exactly, is your definition of "lots"?
And this could be a concern if the earth's biomass were changing appreciably. But it isn't.
That's another vague assertion. Do you even *have* a biomass index for the globe?
On the contrary, climate models make numerous testable predictions which have been confirmed by observation.
You're doing it backwards. Don't tell me about the ten-thousand white swans you saw - tell me about what *black* swan would falsify your hypothesis. Climate models make numerous testable predictions which have *failed* to be observed...yet you ignore those as irrelevant?
"Null hypothesis" has a meaning. It means "no change."
No, it doesn't. Null means "no relation". We have null hypotheses about all *sorts* of things that obviously change (say, the relationship between average gas prices and stock market averages) - you are truly torturing the definition if you're blithely asserting that it means "no change".
The null hypothesis is that average global CO2 levels have no causal relationship to average global temperatures. The burden of your falsifiable hypothesis is to show that it *does* have a causal relationship, and you must consider not only *necessary* factors, but also all factors required to *sufficiently* show there is no other possible explanation.
Which specific physical mechanism of climate change that has operated in the past do you imagine to be responsible for the current warming?
What specific physical mechanism of climate change that has operated in the past do you imagine to be responsible for any other period of historical warming? Have you cataloged all of those possible mechanisms? Have you excluded all of those possible mechanisms?
Your passionate belief that you can simply wave your hands, redefine "null" to mean "72F every day, unchanging, day or night, for all of eternity", and your clever bit about "oh, and now CO2 must be correct because you haven't identified the magical "nature" leprechaun of climate change that has never existed before" is amusing, but not convincing:)
Here's a quick exercise for you: Find out the total mass of the ocean. Multiply that by the heat content of H2O. Hold that number in your left hand. Now find out the total mass of the atmosphere. Multiply that by the heat content of any gaseous element you'd like. Hold that number in your right hand. Compare the two hands.
Now wipe your hands clean and put four dollars of quarters in your left hand to represent approximately 400 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. Now put enough quarters in your right hand to represent the *rest* of the atmosphere. Compare the two hands.
Context *matters*:)
The fact that it's happening is an absolute certainty just by numbers. The questions we should be asking is "How fast" and "By How Much?".
It's an absolute certainty that *anything* that emits CO2, be it your aunt Bertha yawning, or a butterfly in your backyard, is causing *some* non zero, positive effect on global average temperature. And the answer to "how fast" and "by how much" is "imperceptibly slowly" and "imperceptibly positive".
So yes, the most trivial form of AGW is true, just like the most trivial form of BYBGW (back yard butterfly global warming) is true. Now come up with a falsifiable hypothesis that shows that this will happen so much and so quickly that catastrophe must ensue. Show your work:)
but, if the world DOESN'T warm up then it has been falsified. Sure you have to give a set time like, if the world is colder one day that doesn't prove anything, but if the world just doesn't warm up according to predictions for a long time then obviously something's wrong.
The point is we can make predictions, and not only test them against historical data (ice core records, other proxies), and current, immediate data (today's global average temperature and CO2 levels), but we can also test them against *future* observations.
The way you could construct a falsifiable hypothesis is to say something like "if next year, CO2 emissions rise by 10ppm, but temperature only rises by 0.2C, our hypothesis is wrong". The problem with the anthropogenic global warming religion is that *any* future observations are simply excused with ad hoc special pleadings..similar to the ad hoc special pleadings of an astrologer who suddenly notes that because Mars was ascendant, and they didn't calculate that at the time of their predictions, that obviously things were different in reality.
A set of temperatures taken over a long period of time (say 50 years) that show a statistically significant decrease in average global temperature in addition to a significant increase in average global CO2 levels over the previous 50 years would falsify this hypothesis.
Okay, we've got ice core records that show a 400 - 800 year lag of CO2 to temperature, and many many periods of greater than 50 years where CO2 was rising, but temperatures were falling.
Ready to give up your belief system now that it's been falsified by your own definition?
And you can easily prove that CO2 re-radiates infrared, and therefore from basic physics that it must raise global temperature.
You can easily prove that H2O re-radiates infrared, and therefore from basic physics that it must raise global temperature.
You can easily prove that black paint re-radiates infrared, and therefore from basic physics that it must raise global temperature.
You can easily prove that animal life radiates infrared, and therefore from basic physics that it must raise global temperature.
The problem, of course, is that the *quantification* of the effect of any single observation we might make in the laboratory gets completely complicated once it hits the real world.
You clearly don't understand what "null hypothesis" means. It is not a magic incantation that you can intone to make your favorite hypothesis exempt from the standard criteria for any scientific hypothesis
You do understand that you're arguing against yourself now, right? You've intoned this magic incantation to make your favorite hypothesis exempt from the standard criteria of falsifiability:)
So there is only one null hypothesis of global climate, and that is the hypothesis that it is constant and unchanging.
That's batty. We have observed millions upon billions of years of *constant change* in global climate. You're going to throw away all that precedent and insist that we go with a null hypothesis which is trivially falsified?
That's the only null hypothesis that there is, and once the null hypothesis of zero change is excluded, it is gone--something else does not become the null hypothesis.
So what you're really arguing is that if you come up with a null hypothesis that is so ludicrous it's falsifiable on its face, you can therefore *eliminate* any null hypothesis from existence, and therefore put any remotely plausible hypothesis of your own on a pedestal and worship it?
If global warming does cause desertification of a country, that is a catastrophe to the people who live there not to other countries.
And if global warming does cause the expansion of arable land, and an increase in plant life in a country, that's a boon to the people who live there, and not to other countries.
Now, show me a falsifiable hypothesis statement. Desertification and un-desertification have happened in the past, with no relation to global average temperature. How are you going to quantify harms and boons in order to come up with a falsifiable hypothesis?
CO2-caused global warming? Falsifiable predictions include the stratosphere getting colder due to longwave absorption in the troposphere, nights getting warmer, and drops in longwave re-radiation measured by satellites.
Any greenhouse gas warming will cause that (or even terrestrial warming from oceans) - what makes any of that specific to CO2? Why not H2O?
More importantly, if CO2 causes global warming, why does the historical record show a lag of CO2 to temperature? How did CO2 know when to stop warming in the past?
Anthropogenic? Falsifiable predictions include an isotope ratio in the new CO2 compatible with fossil fuel use, and that non-anthropogenic CO2 sources aren't the cause of the increase.
"BOTTOM LINE: If the C13/C12 relationship during NATURAL inter-annual variability is the same as that found for the trends, how can people claim that the trend signal is MANMADE??"
Catastrophic? Falsifiable if the measured sensitivity of temperature to CO2 falls outside the calculated error bars, or if there's an observed epoch or calculated mechanism where the temperatures we're about to experience coexisted with sea levels that would not be catastrophic
We have observed epochs where temperatures that we are about to experience coexisted with sea levels that were not catastrophic - Holocene optimum and Medieval Warm Period for example (arguments as to the regional nature of the MWP are subject to the same scrutiny that say, paleo records of certain trees in regional areas would be subject to).
So, now that your falsifications have been shown, are you ready to give up your beliefs?
"Forest fires happen all the time from lightning strikes, so that forest fire cannot be due to me throwing my lit cigarette into a pile of dead leaves." Perhaps you can spot the fallacy when the same argument is placed in another context.
Actually, the CAGW argument is more like "Forest fires happen all the time from lightning strikes, so that a forest fire cannot be due to me driving my car, emitting CO2, causing more lightning storms, which then cause more lightning strikes, which means I'm now causing forest fires while driving to work."
You can observe a lit cigarette ignite a pile of dead leaves. You can't observe human CO2 emissions raising global average temperature (heck, you can't even observe global average temperature directly!).
Quite simply, identify the source of the natural variation and provide a plausible mechanism whereby it could produce such a large and prolonged increase in temperature
Natural climate change is the null hypothesis, it doesn't need to be proven - you're simply trying to shift the burden of proof on the negative. The argument of "gaps" is what creationists use to critique natural selection and evolution, do you really want to use the same argument as they do?
That's a monstrous task you're putting on me, I'm just one guy you know, and it's nothing you couldn't do yourself if you were really a skeptic...
Surely, if the science were so settled, this task would already be done by Realclimate, or skepticalscience, and you'd just give me a URL to reference:)
Isn't it interesting that you can't just send me a reference? Isn't it odd that you *believe* that such a list exists, even though you've never bothered to find it?
The way I see it, if I argue against a straw man of my own creation, you fault me for misrepresenting your position. And when I ask you to specifically represent your position, you assert that it's too hard of a task. You've got a "heads I win, tails you lose" proposition, and it simply isn't conducive to the scientific method.
A decrease in global average temperature and CO2 observations would falsify the hypothesis.
Be specific. How much of a decrease? Over how much time? What if CO2 continues to rise, and global average temperature doesn't rise as *much* as it was predicted?
And then, what about the "catastrophic" part? How do you measure that? What would falsify that?
An alien sensor log recording relevant data over the last, say, million years could also hypothetically test (and reject) the "anthropogenic" part.
So maybe say, ice core records which show CO2 lagging temperature changes?:) Not exactly alien technology, but a possible proxy for historical data:)
Are you actually asking for human-obtainable data that could falsify the hypothesis?
Yes, proxy data or direct measurements that would falsify the hypothesis, past, present or future.
First off, the globe warms, and the globe cools, always has always will. There is no hypothesis thus far that insists that the globe will continuously warm from now on.
That being said, for those people who insist that post 1950 global warming is because of humans, and that it is going to yield catastrophe by 2100, periods of cooling are simply excused away - temperatures could go down because of ENSO/PDO/Pinatubo, and the people who believe in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming would simply use that as an ad hoc special pleading, and insist that the last 17 years of cooling are just an expected pause before warming *really* takes off!
Which of course, is a big red flag that the whole idea is pseudo-science, not real science. A hypothesis which can explain *everything* explains *nothing*.
Your above examples are also precursors to their real sciences.
Fair enough, thinking about something without the scientific method can be an important thing - I'll grant you that. But in order for something to be truly scientific, we must start with the falsifiable hypothesis statement. This is a high bar to reach (unattainable by say, homeopathy, astrology, or catastrophic anthropogenic global warming), but it is an *important* bar to have.
The problem here is that we've failed to teach people what the *foundation* of science is. It's not consensus, and it's not authority, and it's certainly not peer review -> it is the falsifiable hypothesis statement.
Now, without it, yes, you can talk about interesting things - but science, it ain't.
Name each falsifiable step between the fundamental physics of CO2 spectrum absorption, and the idea that humanity's CO2 emissions are causing catastrophic global warming.
If you *don't* specify them (say, like astrologists who claim Mars has an influence on Pisces, but can't list all of the influences out), then you're simply hand waving. Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Yes, all things kept static, adding CO2 will add a bit of positive warming. But jumping from there to "CO2 is now the primary driver of global average temperature (although it wasn't in the past), and it's all because of humans, and the consequences are going to be dire" is a leap of faith, not of science.
I think you misunderstand - the creationist viewpoint does not allow for any observation to contradict it (i.e., God can do *anything*, and fabricate *any* evidence). The natural selection viewpoint *does* allow for observation to contradict it (i.e., a modern rabbit fossil in the precambrian).
It is a *weakness* of creationism that *all* observations are consistent with its rationale. It is a *strength* of evolution that there are possible observations that would falsify it.
Slashdot Mirror
You keep saying this, but you can't come up with a list of steps, and apparently aren't bothered in the slightest by this lack of information :)
How do you determine whether or not something is "clearly wrong" or "unfounded"?
I'll give you a hint - to do this with the scientific method, we first look for the falsifiable hypothesis statement :)
I take it you really mean *anthropogenic* global warming (we've directly observed historical global warming and global cooling, all through non-anthropogenic means since it happened even in periods when humans didn't exist).
And actually, I've actually spent quite a bit of time trying to play devil's advocate for the CAGW hypothesis. So far, I've come up with lists of proposed future falsifications, proposed historical falsifications, and what are clearly insufficient and trivial (yet necessary) falsifications.
For future falsifications, it's "failure of models over X years". Problem of course is that any number X is arbitrary, and we've got myriad models that disagree with each other anyway, yet all firmly base their rationale on the premise that CO2 drives warming feedbacks greater than itself.
For historical falsifications, it seems to me many of them are already falsified, but they would have to include:
Historical warming of the same rate as modern warming
Paleo record showing CO2 always lags temperature changes
Historical high CO2 with low average global temperature
Historical low CO2 with high average global temperature
Paleo record showing CO2 and temperature are not correlated
Show CO2 isotope ratios in the atmosphere indicate increases primarily from non-human sources
Show warming periods in the past led to less extreme weather
Show cooling periods in the past led to more extreme weather
Interplanetary bodies, adjusted for distance to the sun, have average global temperatures that correlate with Earth's
Show cloud feedbacks are on average negative
The most interesting one would be the interplanetary bodies one, but I don't think we've got easy access to the paleo records of Mars.
Here's the list of truly trivial falsifications that may be necessary but aren't even remotely sufficient:
Show that humans don't exist
Show that CO2 does not have a specific absorption spectrum
Show that humans don't emit CO2
Show that the global average temperature has not been rising in the industrial era
Show that extreme weather events are declining in rate
Show that H2O does not act as a feedback of specific magnitude to CO2
Show that the global average sea level has not been rising in the industrial era
The idea of falsifiability is so important to the scientific method, that it boggles the mind that for "settled science" they wouldn't already have a clearly defined set of necessary and sufficient falsifications. What we've got at the moment is little more than peer-reviewed climate astrology.
Find a modern rabbit fossil in the pre-cambrian.
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming lacks a falsifiable hypothesis. Both Evolution (natural selection) and Astronomy *have* falsifiable hypotheses.
Can you state, a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis of CAGW? Can you imagine any sorts of observations, past, present or future, that would be a solid falsification of CAGW?
CAGW, like Astrology, explains *everything* and therefore explains *nothing*.
No, actually, natural climate change happens at all time scales - day changes to night, seasons change into seasons, solar cycles, ENSO/PDO cycles, milankovitch cycles, all happen all of the time.
You can see this quite clearly in the ice core records, but any sort of temperature data will show that this is true -> climate is changing second to second, all the time.
Really?
http://www.climate-movie.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/slide48.jpg
Can you pick the right one?
It is quite the schoolboy error, isn't it :) We have hundreds, if not thousands of papers, written by hundreds, if not thousands of scientists, all trivially tacked with the "global warming" meme, and not *one* of them contains a clearly necessary and falsifiable hypotheses statement. You can prove my hypothesis here wrong by citing a *single* paper that contains a clearly necessary and falsifiable hypothesis statement of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (or whatever variation of AGW you'd like to assert).
We need to start teaching, once again, that in order to be science, one must start with the falsifiable hypothesis statement. Our detour into "science by anecdote" only confuses things like homeopathy, astrology, intelligent design and catastrophic anthropogenic global warming with real science.
First of all, science isn't based on consensus. Second of all, catastrophes can happen for all sorts of reasons - why should we believe that a catastrophe in say, 50 years, *must* be caused by CO2 emissions today? Thirdly, why can't we look at prior periods of high temperature, and the lack of catastrophe then, as a historical refutation of the hypothesis?
Exactly. In order to be a strong scientific hypothesis, we must have a set of falsifiable conditions, which, if *never* observed, almost assuredly implies that our hypothesis is true. Since catastrophes can happen for all sorts of reasons, at all sorts of global average temperatures and CO2 levels, simply observing the *lack* of a catastrophe seems like a *necessary* falsification, but certainly not a *sufficient* one.
Running, I can agree with. Adaptation to current conditions is always a reasonable approach. However, throwing humans into the volcano to appease its appetite in the hope that our worship can somehow alter the flow of natural conditions, seems a bit unjustified :)
A truly pseudo-scientific statement.
All of the positions of the stars and planets are well-established physics. Yet you'll have me believe that it is possible, but unnecessary, to provide falsifiability that connects those well-established physics to astrological charts?
The 2nd law of thermodynamics is well-established physics. Yet creationists point to it as a basis for rejecting evolution (since you cannot go from disorder to order).
You need to do more than simply say "well-established physics", and claim victory. You need to have the list, and it should thoroughly disturb you that such a list has not ever been compiled.
That's a vague assertion - and apparently based on incorrect premises:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/08/support-for-the-saturated-greenhouse-effect-leaves-the-likelihood-of-agw-tipping-points-in-the-cold/
"Computer models of AGW show positive feedback from water vapor by incorrectly assuming that relative humidity remains constant with warming while specific humidity increases."
Put $4 worth of quarters in your left hand. That represents 400ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. Now put $9960 worth of quarters in your right hand. I'll let you guess what that represents.
What, exactly, is your definition of "lots"?
That's another vague assertion. Do you even *have* a biomass index for the globe?
You're doing it backwards. Don't tell me about the ten-thousand white swans you saw - tell me about what *black* swan would falsify your hypothesis. Climate models make numerous testable predictions which have *failed* to be observed...yet you ignore those as irrelevant?
No, it doesn't. Null means "no relation". We have null hypotheses about all *sorts* of things that obviously change (say, the relationship between average gas prices and stock market averages) - you are truly torturing the definition if you're blithely asserting that it means "no change".
The null hypothesis is that average global CO2 levels have no causal relationship to average global temperatures. The burden of your falsifiable hypothesis is to show that it *does* have a causal relationship, and you must consider not only *necessary* factors, but also all factors required to *sufficiently* show there is no other possible explanation.
What specific physical mechanism of climate change that has operated in the past do you imagine to be responsible for any other period of historical warming? Have you cataloged all of those possible mechanisms? Have you excluded all of those possible mechanisms?
Your passionate belief that you can simply wave your hands, redefine "null" to mean "72F every day, unchanging, day or night, for all of eternity", and your clever bit about "oh, and now CO2 must be correct because you haven't identified the magical "nature" leprechaun of climate change that has never existed before" is amusing, but not convincing :)
#2 - We've seen this before in the ice core record (in fact, we've seen a fall in average temperatures while greenhouse gases *increase* in level.
#3 - The 2008 recession has given us a sample of CO2 reduction, and there has been no measurable effect.
Now that your falsifications have been shown, are you ready to give up your beliefs?
Here's a quick exercise for you: Find out the total mass of the ocean. Multiply that by the heat content of H2O. Hold that number in your left hand. Now find out the total mass of the atmosphere. Multiply that by the heat content of any gaseous element you'd like. Hold that number in your right hand. Compare the two hands.
Now wipe your hands clean and put four dollars of quarters in your left hand to represent approximately 400 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. Now put enough quarters in your right hand to represent the *rest* of the atmosphere. Compare the two hands.
Context *matters* :)
It's an absolute certainty that *anything* that emits CO2, be it your aunt Bertha yawning, or a butterfly in your backyard, is causing *some* non zero, positive effect on global average temperature. And the answer to "how fast" and "by how much" is "imperceptibly slowly" and "imperceptibly positive".
So yes, the most trivial form of AGW is true, just like the most trivial form of BYBGW (back yard butterfly global warming) is true. Now come up with a falsifiable hypothesis that shows that this will happen so much and so quickly that catastrophe must ensue. Show your work :)
How long? 1 year? 5 years? 14 years? http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to:2012/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to:2012/trend
I'll assert something is wrong *right now*. Now, what kind of excuse are you going to use to explain away 14 years of cooling?
The point is we can make predictions, and not only test them against historical data (ice core records, other proxies), and current, immediate data (today's global average temperature and CO2 levels), but we can also test them against *future* observations.
The way you could construct a falsifiable hypothesis is to say something like "if next year, CO2 emissions rise by 10ppm, but temperature only rises by 0.2C, our hypothesis is wrong". The problem with the anthropogenic global warming religion is that *any* future observations are simply excused with ad hoc special pleadings..similar to the ad hoc special pleadings of an astrologer who suddenly notes that because Mars was ascendant, and they didn't calculate that at the time of their predictions, that obviously things were different in reality.
Okay, we've got ice core records that show a 400 - 800 year lag of CO2 to temperature, and many many periods of greater than 50 years where CO2 was rising, but temperatures were falling.
Ready to give up your belief system now that it's been falsified by your own definition?
You can easily prove that H2O re-radiates infrared, and therefore from basic physics that it must raise global temperature.
You can easily prove that black paint re-radiates infrared, and therefore from basic physics that it must raise global temperature.
You can easily prove that animal life radiates infrared, and therefore from basic physics that it must raise global temperature.
The problem, of course, is that the *quantification* of the effect of any single observation we might make in the laboratory gets completely complicated once it hits the real world.
You do understand that you're arguing against yourself now, right? You've intoned this magic incantation to make your favorite hypothesis exempt from the standard criteria of falsifiability :)
That's batty. We have observed millions upon billions of years of *constant change* in global climate. You're going to throw away all that precedent and insist that we go with a null hypothesis which is trivially falsified?
So what you're really arguing is that if you come up with a null hypothesis that is so ludicrous it's falsifiable on its face, you can therefore *eliminate* any null hypothesis from existence, and therefore put any remotely plausible hypothesis of your own on a pedestal and worship it?
ROTFLMAO!
Okay, try again :)
And if global warming does cause the expansion of arable land, and an increase in plant life in a country, that's a boon to the people who live there, and not to other countries.
Now, show me a falsifiable hypothesis statement. Desertification and un-desertification have happened in the past, with no relation to global average temperature. How are you going to quantify harms and boons in order to come up with a falsifiable hypothesis?
We've seen this in ice cores, with a lag of CO2 response to temperature.
Now that you've been falsified, are you ready to give up your belief?
Any greenhouse gas warming will cause that (or even terrestrial warming from oceans) - what makes any of that specific to CO2? Why not H2O?
More importantly, if CO2 causes global warming, why does the historical record show a lag of CO2 to temperature? How did CO2 know when to stop warming in the past?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/28/spencer-pt2-more-co2-peculiarities-the-c13c12-isotope-ratio/
"BOTTOM LINE: If the C13/C12 relationship during NATURAL inter-annual variability is the same as that found for the trends, how can people claim that the trend signal is MANMADE??"
We have observed epochs where temperatures that we are about to experience coexisted with sea levels that were not catastrophic - Holocene optimum and Medieval Warm Period for example (arguments as to the regional nature of the MWP are subject to the same scrutiny that say, paleo records of certain trees in regional areas would be subject to).
So, now that your falsifications have been shown, are you ready to give up your beliefs?
Actually, the CAGW argument is more like "Forest fires happen all the time from lightning strikes, so that a forest fire cannot be due to me driving my car, emitting CO2, causing more lightning storms, which then cause more lightning strikes, which means I'm now causing forest fires while driving to work."
You can observe a lit cigarette ignite a pile of dead leaves. You can't observe human CO2 emissions raising global average temperature (heck, you can't even observe global average temperature directly!).
Natural climate change is the null hypothesis, it doesn't need to be proven - you're simply trying to shift the burden of proof on the negative. The argument of "gaps" is what creationists use to critique natural selection and evolution, do you really want to use the same argument as they do?
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
Surely, if the science were so settled, this task would already be done by Realclimate, or skepticalscience, and you'd just give me a URL to reference :)
Isn't it interesting that you can't just send me a reference? Isn't it odd that you *believe* that such a list exists, even though you've never bothered to find it?
The way I see it, if I argue against a straw man of my own creation, you fault me for misrepresenting your position. And when I ask you to specifically represent your position, you assert that it's too hard of a task. You've got a "heads I win, tails you lose" proposition, and it simply isn't conducive to the scientific method.
Be specific. How much of a decrease? Over how much time? What if CO2 continues to rise, and global average temperature doesn't rise as *much* as it was predicted?
And then, what about the "catastrophic" part? How do you measure that? What would falsify that?
So maybe say, ice core records which show CO2 lagging temperature changes? :) Not exactly alien technology, but a possible proxy for historical data :)
Yes, proxy data or direct measurements that would falsify the hypothesis, past, present or future.
First off, the globe warms, and the globe cools, always has always will. There is no hypothesis thus far that insists that the globe will continuously warm from now on.
That being said, for those people who insist that post 1950 global warming is because of humans, and that it is going to yield catastrophe by 2100, periods of cooling are simply excused away - temperatures could go down because of ENSO/PDO/Pinatubo, and the people who believe in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming would simply use that as an ad hoc special pleading, and insist that the last 17 years of cooling are just an expected pause before warming *really* takes off!
Which of course, is a big red flag that the whole idea is pseudo-science, not real science. A hypothesis which can explain *everything* explains *nothing*.
Fair enough, thinking about something without the scientific method can be an important thing - I'll grant you that. But in order for something to be truly scientific, we must start with the falsifiable hypothesis statement. This is a high bar to reach (unattainable by say, homeopathy, astrology, or catastrophic anthropogenic global warming), but it is an *important* bar to have.
The problem here is that we've failed to teach people what the *foundation* of science is. It's not consensus, and it's not authority, and it's certainly not peer review -> it is the falsifiable hypothesis statement.
Now, without it, yes, you can talk about interesting things - but science, it ain't.
Name each falsifiable step between the fundamental physics of CO2 spectrum absorption, and the idea that humanity's CO2 emissions are causing catastrophic global warming.
If you *don't* specify them (say, like astrologists who claim Mars has an influence on Pisces, but can't list all of the influences out), then you're simply hand waving. Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Yes, all things kept static, adding CO2 will add a bit of positive warming. But jumping from there to "CO2 is now the primary driver of global average temperature (although it wasn't in the past), and it's all because of humans, and the consequences are going to be dire" is a leap of faith, not of science.
I think you misunderstand - the creationist viewpoint does not allow for any observation to contradict it (i.e., God can do *anything*, and fabricate *any* evidence). The natural selection viewpoint *does* allow for observation to contradict it (i.e., a modern rabbit fossil in the precambrian).
It is a *weakness* of creationism that *all* observations are consistent with its rationale. It is a *strength* of evolution that there are possible observations that would falsify it.