I believe in global warming, but the quasi religious responses here are hard to read.
Conserving the environment and taking steps to reduce our impact on the planet is a good thing. To that end, I’m ok with believing in global warming. I believe some of the narrative is used for selfish ends (green energy companies are looking to make a profit, too) and abused, but on the whole it’s a noble cause.
The replies here that are more or less “wow, can you believe these people don’t trust the word of the priests?” are extremely tiring. “Science” in this division is little different from belief. None of us (experts included) have the data nor intellect to holistically evaluate a system as complex as our planet. Our current understanding is likely wrong in some way.
There are plenty of good reasons to preserve the planet. We don’t have to resort to heretic burning and tribal shaming. It’s short sighted and intellectually lazy.
If you don't want to trust the priests, fine. Go do the work yourself. Or take no position at all.
Actively rejecting the work of scientists based solely on ideology, that is religion, in the worst sense of the word. They're not heretics. They're just liars.
You could replace the word “scientist” with “priest” in your post and it would be no different.
Rejecting or accepting based on ideology is wrong. And given we lack the technical ability to fully understand global warming, there is no objective truth here.
Objective truth doesn’t have to be a stark black and white dichotomy. You don’t have to have 100% understanding or knowledge to observe that the probability of evidence is pointing to a certain end result (in this case, humanity is causing rapid changes to earths environment). To state that there is no objective truth is nihilism.
The debates get complicated but if you take the simplest model that the atmosphere absorbs more reflected sun due to the increased CO2, not worrying about all the other factors, and run the numbers the predicted warming matches the observed warming pretty well.
I think all the stuff in the above sentence is objectively true and observable.
> You could replace the word “scientist” with “priest” in your post and it would be no different.
No. Scientist seek to understand and change their beliefs as the facts become clear - the scientific method. Science is self correcting. Some people attack science for self-correcting, but that's literally the point of science.
Priests OTOH do not look to self-correct. Religion is built on myths, and without those myths it will no longer exist. The only ones relying on myths are those still denying climate change.
i mean, does it? we can't answer some really important questions about the nature of the universe, and we literally can't even start to model very important areas of physics that we know must have existed. it's hard to think we can honestly answer what exists versus what doesn't when we can't even comprehend or guess at the enormity of what's being asked.
• We know the effects of CO2 on the transmission of electromagnetic radiation and how this varies by frequency. Same for the other gases in the atmosphere.
• We know how much energy is coming into the system from solar radiation, which we also know accounts for almost all incoming energy. We know the frequency distribution of this energy.
• We can measure the outgoing energy, and see that there is an imbalance with incoming higher than outgoing.
• We can measure incoming and outgoing at the surface, and at various levels in the atmosphere, to track down where that net energy increase is ending up. Infrared is in the frequency range that CO2 blocks.
• We can measure incoming and outgoing energy at various levels in the atmosphere and measure temperature and see that blocking the outgoing infrared heats the atmosphere.
• We can see that this heating effect is a function of CO2 concentration, which he can observe is going up over time, and we can see that the amount of heating increase over time closely matches the amount of heating we would expect from the increasing CO2.
The above just takes lab work (e.g., characterizing how various gases affect radiation transmission), measurements of incoming and outgoing energy flow, spectrum, and temperature of the system as a whole (satellites can do this) and at the surface and at various layers of the atmosphere.
That shows that warming is occurring, and it is almost all due to increasing greenhouse gases.
That doesn't show that humans are responsible for this increasing gases. For that we have:
• Carbon comes in different isotopes. There is an isotope with a half-life of about 5700 years that is created in the upper atmosphere from cosmic rays and then spreads throughout the atmosphere. The other two isotopes common in the atmosphere are stable. By looking at the ratios of carbon isotopes in atmospheric CO2 we can determine that the large increases in atmospheric CO2 come from sources that have little or none of the radioactive carbon.
Living things and dead things that have not been dead for a very long time do have significant amounts of the radioactive isotope because living (this is the basis for carbon dating). That lets us rule out things like wildfires as a significant contribution to the increases CO2.
The major ways to get excess stable carbon isotopes in the atmosphere are volcanoes and digging up and burning fossil fuels. We know that most of the increase comes from fossil fuels rather than volcanoes or other geological activity because:
• We know how much fossil fuels are burned each year and so can calculate how much carbon that will release into the atmosphere and that accounts for almost all of the observed excess stable carbon.
• We can monitor volcanic activity and see that it is not high enough to be a major contributor. Maybe we've missed a lot of volcanoes or other geological sources, but if we have we know that they can't be omitting much because the ones we do know about plus the amount from our known fossil fuel use accounts for almost all of the observed excess.
> And given we lack the technical ability to fully understand global warming
I'm sorry, what?
We have total understanding of global warming: 1) CO2 traps heat, we know that from basic lab experiments, and 2) we're pumping massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, which we know from countless data points, both historical and contemporary.
When it comes to the basic fact of global warming, that's all you need to know.
Everything after that is forecasting impacts and associated trend lines.
unfortunately it's really common in humans to find ways to belong, and lots of people find this in politics. there are lies everywhere from everyone, there's a reason politicians have a reputation first and foremost as liars. and to pretend climate change isn't a political topic is burying one's head in the sand - people are going to lie about, which we factually see all the time.
however when you start to identify with a group, you start to reject anything that doesn't reinforce your existing stance and group think. this is a really human trait and goes back to humans needing to be able to feel things like guilt and shame and desiring things like acceptance and validation, because these traits were what allowed us to live as groups and in small societies, when being in these groups vs ostracized was the difference between life and death.
mansplaining aside, i agree. i do wish there was more honest and interesting discourse around many topics, rather than things devolving into "everything this sexual predator says is fake and wrong". which isn't to defend them, but rather to share the exhaustion that discussion that isnt focused around science and data and instead is mostly talking points from our overlords.
Conserving the environment and taking steps to reduce our impact on the planet is a good thing. To that end, I’m ok with believing in global warming. I believe some of the narrative is used for selfish ends (green energy companies are looking to make a profit, too) and abused, but on the whole it’s a noble cause.
The replies here that are more or less “wow, can you believe these people don’t trust the word of the priests?” are extremely tiring. “Science” in this division is little different from belief. None of us (experts included) have the data nor intellect to holistically evaluate a system as complex as our planet. Our current understanding is likely wrong in some way.
There are plenty of good reasons to preserve the planet. We don’t have to resort to heretic burning and tribal shaming. It’s short sighted and intellectually lazy.