Then how do you view me? Because I find myself drawn to Captain Morgans side.
Honestly, I have no idea what a lot of your views are on this. I don't know if you lean towards the unrealistic view of what science is like Captain Morgan. I don't know if you think the IPCC arrives at pre-made conclusions like he does. I don't know what you think on a whole host of issues relevant here.
But I have in the past seen you modify your questions after reading relevant literature. So in that way, you're already a few steps ahead of Captain Morgan.
Yes, so long as all the controls can be effectively measured, non?
Of course. At work we inject our control fish with saline, the same volume as the treatment groups get.
Modeling experiments use control runs too.
Agreed, all undeniable facts.
That's good. If you take those each by themselves, there's all sorts of things which could cause them separately. Increase in solar could cause more tropospheric warming. But it wouldn't cause ocean acidification, and it wouldn't cause the stratosphere to cool. Many volcanoes erupting could cause ocean acidification, but it would cool the troposphere and warm the stratosphere. Enhanced greenhouse is the only cause which satisfies all of the parameters we are measuring. The so-called fingerprints of each suspect are distinct, because the physics of each, are different. A forcing of 1 watt per square meter is still adding the same amount of heat, but depending on what perturbation is causing that forcing, will determine the character of the climactic change we observe.
Where my confusion stems from, is the immediate dismissal of other factors, that don't seem to have a static rate of measurement of influence, ie; solar, or a history of warming and cooling phases.
The IPCC never dismissed solar, and the IPCC is reviewing the literature that is out there. Solar was a big part of the early warming in the 20th century. The climatologists have studied this in detail. The second half of the 20th century has seen a decrease in the solar forcing. In fact, as the last decade has been the warmest decade we've measured, the solar forcing has been in a deep minimum, the lowest of the past century. So, while solar has impacted our climate, and will continue to, at present it is actually damping the warming we would otherwise be experiencing.
And again, if solar were dominating the enhanced greenhouse, then we would not see a cooling stratosphere.
Again, the evidence of a changing world is right out my front door. I will not deny it is changing. I see the effects daily, I feel them daily.
Yes, most people will admit the world is changing. Some don't. Some think the planet is cooling. Why they are wrong goes back to my rabble about statistics.
While there is no denying that, there is evidence that the world does from time to time, warm up by itself (So to speak). And again, I will not even remotely attempt to say that we humans have had no adverse effect on that.
Sure. Paleoclimate studies are very important. They help to constrain our estimates of how sensitive the climate is to forced changes. Which helps us narrow the bounds when we look to the future. A remarkable detail is that large changes, are more likely than very small changes. Or going back to the statistics, there have been climate changes that are way, way out on the tail end of the distribution. Highly significant. Outliers, sure, but highly significant.
Those times in the past where the climate has responded extremely to changes, that's not comforting, and if anything the uncertainty with regards to the future should be an impetus to act, not to wait and see.
But isn't the proven science, merely leaning on the increase of CO2, in our atmosphere. And the theory of the correlation, just that, a theory?
No. I'll explain.
A correlation by itself is meaningless. But that's not all we have. We have experiments that prove that some gases will become excited, and the bonds between the atoms in a greenhouse molecule will vibrate and rotate, and contort. This increases the energy stored in the molecule, chemists would call the molecule excited. Molecules will release energy to go back to their rest state. So when the infrared energy is bounced off our planet, and up into the atmosphere, the greenhouse bonds resonate as the infrared hits them. They absorb that energy, become excited, and release that energy.
We have measured less energy escaping to space. If the planet warms because of more solar, then the energy leaving goes up, as our planet warms. If the planet warms because we have a stronger greenhouse effect, then less energy returns to space, which also means the stratosphere cools.
So, we have observations, experimental data, and a theory which is agreeing with the observed evidence.
