CO2 and the correlation with rising atmospheric temperatures

[BillTre]

I want provable facts using known information that reaches actual conclusions, that everyone knows is FACT!

This is an unobtainable goal in the modern world, especially when there are so many people with a variety of reasons to contest any particular fact that conflicts with something of import to them.
Example: flat earthers do not accept the Earth being round is a fact.
Alternatively, one could also hypothesize that you are not a human but some computer program posting here, thus disputing the "fact" that you are a human rather than a machine.
These kinds not serious kinds of arguments are pretty bogus.

Evolution is provable science fact, but evolving from one species to another is not. Yet some teach Darwin as if it was fact. The Japanese were considerably shorter than Americans in WWII, but after changing to our Western diet, they began growing taller...evolving. To jump from that fact to monkeys changing to human is a serious stretch.

This is wrong in many ways:
How is it that species are not evolving into different species if evolution is a provable fact?
How is it that evolution is a provable fact if Darwin was not right (on most things)?
Perhaps this is some form of sarcasm on your part (I can't tell, if so my apologies).
Any changes in the height of a Japanese population does not have to be attributed to evolution rather than perhaps better nutrition or some other non-genetic, non-evolutionary cause.

 

[russ_watters]

.Scott, my real problem with so-called science on climate change is the reference to "consensus" among scientists. Science is the ability to perform a repeatable test in order to prove or disprove something. Supposedly, science is set-in-stone once the studies/tests are complete, and no guess-work is involved once that work is done.

Ok, so this is a broader problem than climate change itself, it's a misunderstanding of what science is/how it works. There is no such thing as set-in-stone in science. There is only a spectrum of confidence level in a theory.

More fuel with cooler denser air at a 14.7:1 ratio, makes for better combustion. That is science fact.

Correct, but this is data, not theory. Data is the facts of what happened, theory is the explanation. Data informs theory, but theory generally does not become data.

And even data isn't 100%. Data always has error associated with the measurement. This is a particular problem with climate change, where the data is noisy - it varies a lot on its own and the trend we're looking for is small.

That said, my understanding of the current state of the science is that the following are very solid:

• The data is has become clear that the climate is warming, and at a historic rate.
• The data is clear the CO2 (and other gases) are greennhouse gases because they block IR radiation.
• The data is clear that the concentration of CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) is rising and that measured human releases are most of it.
• Therefore, the theory that humans are causing global warming is very strongly accepted.

The reason you can't say this theory is as strong as, for example, Special Relativity, is that the data is noisy...not that it prevents crackpots from disbelief of Relativity. But you're unlikely to find a scientist in a relevant discipline anywhere who doesn't accept SR and only a very small handful who do not accept that humans are causing global warming.

Extending:

• The prediction based on that theory is something like 0.3C per decade for the next few decades.

Because the data is noisy and weather/climate is chaotic (there are a lot of variables), the confidence level in this prediction is high but not really high. And predictions of secondary and tertiary effects such as damage or cost are very low confidence (and many not even scientific anyway).

 

[PeterDonis]

The data is has become clear that the climate is warming, and at a historic rate.

I think the confidence in "the climate is warming" is high, but I don't think the confidence in "at a historic rate" (by which I think you mean "at a rate that is larger than what has been seen before in human history") is as high.

Therefore, the theory that humans are causing global warming is very strongly accepted.

There is a missing piece in the chain of reasoning here, though: how confident are we that there are no other drivers of climate change that are significant? The argument that there aren't, i.e., that CO2 is the only significant driver (and therefore human CO2 emissions are the only significant driver), depends on climate models, and climate model predictions based on CO2 being the only significant driver only match observed warming rates well in the latter half of the 20th century. Climate models under-predict warming for the early 20th century (because there wasn't much CO2 rise then, but there was significant warming) and over-predict warming for the early 21st century (because there has been signficant CO2 rise, but little to no warming). So our confidence in "humans are causing global warming" should not be as high as our confidence in "humans are causing most of the rise in CO2 levels"; or, to put it another way, the variance between model predictions and observations in the early 20th century and early 21st century should raise the significant possibility that there are other drivers of climate change that the models are not capturing, and we need to understand what those are.

 

[Genava]

There is a missing piece in the chain of reasoning here, though: how confident are we that there are no other drivers of climate change that are significant? The argument that there aren't, i.e., that CO2 is the only significant driver (and therefore human CO2 emissions are the only significant driver), depends on climate models, and climate model predictions based on CO2 being the only significant driver only match observed warming rates well in the latter half of the 20th century. Climate models under-predict warming for the early 20th century (because there wasn't much CO2 rise then, but there was significant warming) and over-predict warming for the early 21st century (because there has been signficant CO2 rise, but little to no warming). So our confidence in "humans are causing global warming" should not be as high as our confidence in "humans are causing most of the rise in CO2 levels"; or, to put it another way, the variance between model predictions and observations in the early 20th century and early 21st century should raise the significant possibility that there are other drivers of climate change that the models are not capturing, and we need to understand what those are.

I agree. It is why there is a lot of work around energy budget/balance of the Earth. And it is why I put these two publications in the first place:

Today, we have satellite data supporting that theory:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/2008BAMS2634.1

And direct measurement of the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14240

Measuring the climate forcing parameters is one of the key topic to improve the models and the predictions. But is it to explain most of the warming? I don't think so. The uncertainties and variability in the models depend more on:
- Policy scenarios
- Heat redistribution on the Earth's surface
- Water-CO2 feedback
- Vegetation productivity feedback (related with the water cycle as well)
etc.

It is not really about possible unknown sources. It is about knowing how the system reacts with an increase of thermal energy. A warming of the air temperature is only one expression of this increase.

 

[Genava]

My issue is not with the facts but with how they are acquired.

First you told us you are looking for facts and now you are looking for something else... something else which is related to your distrust of a part of the scientific community based on ..? It is not science clearly.

 

[BillTre]

To evolve simply means change over time, and the Japanese grew taller only after switching to a more Western diet.

So, now you are using "evolve" (in a scientific forum where commonly understood meanings of words is important) to mean the same thing as "change"?
Why not use change, a simpler and more direct word? Change is used a lot in the scientific world using the meaning you explained.

So now you are denying evolution of life by natural selection based on a hoax no one believes and a bunch of not knowing about modern biology and human evolution.

Please educate yourself or stick to your primary issue here.

 

[Genava]

Genava, I am not looking for something else and I have faith in science...just not some who want more $$$ for their projects. However, I am skeptical about the numbers used, as are many in this debate. When I put numbers into a formula for say RPM at a given MPH, I must make sure "all" factors are included and correct. Final gear ratio, tire diameter, where (RPM) does the engine make max torque, am I using a true drag number for friction on the ground and air-drag, is my frontal area number right, and on it goes. And that is just for a motor vehicle speed/rpm relation. ANY of those number changes can drastically alter RPM or MPH or both. Those of us over 60 can remember the lies, yes lies, we were told in the 70's about America freezing by the year 2000. That did instill a degree of skepticism. Water boils at 212f and freezes at 32f...FACT, unless one injects gasses or anti-freeze, or some other outside influence. That is the kind of certainty I am looking to see. I TRUST science, but not scientists. I am here because I have watched this site for some time and trust the people. If I sometimes sound distrusting, it is not aimed at people here.

Ok. Then for example there are several introductory articles about climate change on the webpage of the American Chemical Society, what do you think of them?
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatesciencenarratives.html

 

[russ_watters]

I don't think that this supports your statement that the US has "dropped its [C]O2 levels dramatically over the past 4 decades". Perhaps we've trimmed them.

This thread is moving fast so I may have missed the clearing-up of this one, but it is probably a reference to per capita carbon emissions, which have in fact been dropping for 45 years:
https://www.google.com/search?ei=Ff...4j2...0...1..gws-wiz...0i71j0i131.5uiuU4glwsg
[not sure how to embed this google chart, sorry]

This follows the peaking of per capita energy use, aka "energy intensity".

 

[OCR]

not sure how to embed this google chart, sorry

Screen shot ?

.

 

[DrClaude]

Thread closed pending moderation.

 

[berkeman]

After a long Mentor discussion, the thread will remain closed.