And here's the gist of why the science of climate change is sound: all the pieces of independent evidence consistently point towards the same explanations of the observed data, and the resulting model has predictive capacity.
Though climate change is mostly empirical, we can retroactively analyze the precision of the models and their assumptions. And those assumptions, barring certain issues that are known and understood, are being constantly corrected.
What exactly do climate contrarians have? They dispute individual pieces of data but have no cohesive hypothesis to explain the observations of changes in the natural environment.
Typical example: someone will dispute the data regarding temperature change. So let's assume that it turns out there are inconsistencies in temperature readings. Then what's the natural phenomenon that explains the exponential increase in glacial melt across the world?
Another one: they dispute the influence of CO2 emissions on climate. Fine, what's the oher potential explanation that derives in even better models for explaining the observed climate phenomena?
It's the same story, over and over again, with every singular piece of evidence disputed by nutjobs: Antarctic melt and geological temperature fluxes, ocean acidification, precipitation changes and ENSO, sea level. It's a neverending parade of clowns who cannot piece together the entirety of evidence to make coherent, high-level explanations that derive in knowledge.
It's a neverending parade of clowns who cannot piece together the entirety of evidence to make coherent, high-level explanations that derive in knowledge.
Oh, I don't know about that. I'm pretty sure most of them can piece it together, but they deliberately don't because that isn't the answer they want. The big money denialists certainly understand the big picture, but it's tactically more effective for them to attack the small bits in order to engender doubt in people who actively want to believe the scientists are wrong.
Projections of warming have certainly exceeded that which has been observed. I'd be interested to know what data convinces you of the reality of CAGW (<<catastrophic>> anthropogenic global warming).
Have you yourself come across many examples of cherry picking, curve fitting (Are not the dire predictions of CAGW based exactly on that?), ignoring inconvenient data and of course disregarding known physics (one trusts that Richard Lindzen ex-MIT meteorology professor, has not been guilty of that)? Or are you just quoting reports that happen to give a clear pass to CAGW proponents?
No, they have not. Climate models have been consistent in their predictions. What's your source that catastrophic AGW is not there? We currently have temperature models from RCP2.6 to 8.5, all of which point to positively, extinction-inducing situations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration_P...
We know that the amount of emissions being made will alter the ocean Ph to the point where a significan amount of phitoplankton will not be able to adapt. We know the effects that projected climate change scenarios will have on plants because we understand their growth patterns extremely well under different presence of atmospheric CO2.
We are currently observing an exponential increase in glacial melt throughout the world in which sea level rise will have significant effects in all coastal cities of the world.
We are seeing already the absolutely catastrophic effects of this year's El Niño on Boreal forests. Ask anyone in the Pacific Northwest in the US and Canada how the fire season is going.
The amount of empirical evidence, even without models, is so overwhelmingly terrifying that there is no reason why this shouldn't be the primary concern of all governments with an interest on their population's welfare beyond the next 20 years.
Any non-expert has a very limited capability of reviewing any significant fraction of published literature on such a vast field in detail, yet alone understand it or put it into proper perspective.
Therefore, we (me, you and the parent poster included) do need to rely on experts to get an impression of what is most likely to be true. If you imagine you can do this yourself to any significant degree, you are almost certainly deluding yourself.
That's why a figure such as 97% is so convincing, the remaining 3% (including Dr. Lindzen) nonwithstanding.
Except when the prevailing "consensus" is wrong and has been deceitfully pushed forward to enslave everyone else.
If one follows the argument for CO2 as culprit for global warming than our energy problems are solved. All we have to do is build a CO2 power plant. We can use a candle and have infinity energy. Actually, no one else need more than a candle to do anything else. If we follow it to conclusion, we can melt the Golden Gate bridge with a candle.
Any high school kid should be able to debunk this whole hallucinatory craziness that has spread in our society because nowadays no one care to spare a minute to actually think about the absurdity of the things they hear here and there. And oh, if its on CNN, or someone with "credentials" said it, then of course it is true. Well good luck.
There is no significant ocean level change. Ask the Dutch. The moment they flee the Netherlands, then we may talk.
Glaciers are rescinding because that is what they have been doing since the end of the last ice age (otherwise we would still be on a ice age). They didn't started rescinding 30 years ago, or 150 years ago. It is an ongoing process. Like climate is an ongoing process. It is not "climate change", as a noun, it's climate changeS, as sentence. It has been doing so for, at least, the past 4 billion years. That is the "norm", that it changes. Sometimes those changes are just more accentuated. There is absolutely no evidence (despite what everyone wants to convince themselves, wants to "believe" - science has gone from this a long time ago!) for CO2, let alone human influence on climate on a global scale.
The article on The Guardian is deceitful. They should actually explain how they got to the 97%. Not that it matter anyway. Science is not a democracy; otherwise we could all "vote" for a free-gravity day so we could all enjoy a day floating.
Those proposing the AGW cannot prove or advance their point. Models are video-games. Shall we start giving driver's licence to those scoring high on Need for Speed? It's a model, they are conceived to increase temperature if you increase CO2. That's what it's going to do. It is programmed to do just that, because that is how it was conceived.
That is in no way to say we should not look for renewable resources (since the other one will eventually end anyway), nor that we should go on living like there's no tomorrow (for certainly there won't be). CO2 is not a pollutant. It is a fundamental element for life and it makes not direct harm.
If we continue on this path of demonizing the CO2 the consequences will be way worse than a thousand degrees increase in temperature.
Clime do changes and all the living creatures on this planet will face it. We must adapt, but we cannot change it. Not for better anyway and if we try we'll just make thing a thousand times worse. Drought will come, tempests, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, volcanoes, they will come (and go) no matter what. We should and do need to be as prepared to them as possible, but we cannot stop those phenomena from happening, no more than we can hold the Sun in the middle of the sky.
What should be addressed is what to do. Because when changes comes and they will indeed come, regardless, it won't care about political borders, religion, skin color, gender, age.
This has long ceased to be a scientific debate. The science part is very simple: they cannot sustain their arguments and the hypothesis fails. Now the political/religious debate is another matter entirely. And that is the most important one, because it can makes us slaves (Hitler will look like a kindergarten prankster), or it can condemn half or more of the population of the world to its own luck.
There should be no debate. There is no men made global warming by CO2. But climate do changes and will change. The Sahara was not always a desert. Nor the Amazon was always a forest. It's not us; that's just Nature. But we should control pollution (air, soil and water), try to improve recycling (still very inefficient), have better, renewable and more efficient sources, means of transportation and storage of energy. We should do that for all the right reasons and not the wrong one; certainly not based on lies and deceits.
And we do need to understand the issue. This is one of the most challenging points in human life. It is certainly the most important issue of at least the past ten thousand years. The science of it is actually not complicated at all (high school knowledge). It doesn't mean we understand how it works; but we can certainly say how it doens't work. And boy, with CO2, it does not work!
I think the most telling part is that 97% are agreeing on the same source of global warming, while the remaining 3% have contradictory explanation. The case would be stronger if there was one single alternate theory.
In case anyone else was wondering, the John Cook who worked on the paper is the one from the Global Change Institute [0], not the one from Singular Value Consulting/the Endeavour blog [1].
Next thing they will try is enlisting well known unqualified public Personalities like AL Gore to scare the public with threats of mass extinction and pictures of drowning polar bears...
Though climate change is mostly empirical, we can retroactively analyze the precision of the models and their assumptions. And those assumptions, barring certain issues that are known and understood, are being constantly corrected.
What exactly do climate contrarians have? They dispute individual pieces of data but have no cohesive hypothesis to explain the observations of changes in the natural environment.
Typical example: someone will dispute the data regarding temperature change. So let's assume that it turns out there are inconsistencies in temperature readings. Then what's the natural phenomenon that explains the exponential increase in glacial melt across the world?
Another one: they dispute the influence of CO2 emissions on climate. Fine, what's the oher potential explanation that derives in even better models for explaining the observed climate phenomena?
It's the same story, over and over again, with every singular piece of evidence disputed by nutjobs: Antarctic melt and geological temperature fluxes, ocean acidification, precipitation changes and ENSO, sea level. It's a neverending parade of clowns who cannot piece together the entirety of evidence to make coherent, high-level explanations that derive in knowledge.