Twin Fist, if you understood anything about science and how it's done you wouldn't say stuff like that.
First, nothing is
ever proven in science. Never. Not a bit. No way. Things are
disproven all the time. That's most of what you end up doing. You can gather evidence. Eventually if you have enough and it's good enough you can say "Unless something really strange comes along and upsets the apple cart we'll go with this hypothesis."
Second, you have some very odd ideas about what can and can't be done based on "natural" and "unnatural". Smallpox is 100% natural. We have undone it. We have "done something" about more species of plants and animals than anything since the great Pleistocene Die Off. We have "done something" about the great forests of the world, the former fish stocks in the oceans and the Colorado River which no longer reaches the ocean. We are currently "doing something" about the pH of the oceans which is leading to the decline of the remaining fish and the rise of squid and jellyfish. The Soviet Union "did something" about the Aral Sea. It has almost completely disappeared and will be gone from the maps in a few years. There's not a magic line on the ground with G-d on one side saying "I did this. You can't touch it."
Now that we've got that out of the way let's take a look at global warming.
There's no doubt that it's happening. It's happening in line with the more although not the most pessimistic models. And the rate is accelerating. Even the Bush Administration stopped trying to - in many cases illegally - suppress the evidence and replace truth with its self-serving lies. They just say that it would be too much of a burden to do anything about it, especially for the poor put-upon oil companies.
The Administration's cheerleaders and the oil industry have started saying "Don't worry. It will be warm. Warm is nice." These are the same people who said "The ozone hole doesn't exist." Then they said "It's natural." Then they said "We don't know why it's happening." Then they said "There's nothing we can do about it." Then they said "We couldn't possibly reduce CFCs. It would destroy the world economy." Then they said "People will just have to live with it. UV is good. People will have tans."
I remember how the Hoover Institution and the American Enterprise Institute suggested that tax incentives for sunblock and sunglasses were all we needed. How they planned to slather SPF-30 on each piece of krill in the Arctic ocean or fit Tibetan musk oxen with Raybans was an exercise left to the reader.
In fact, a somewhat younger Senator Gore was one of the first beating that drum. I think the Right never forgave him for being correct.
Well, it was happening. The evidence pointed to CFCs. Further research confirmed it. The rate was accelerating and doing so in line with both the high and low extremes of the world CFC budget.
Against the shrill squawking of Big Business global CFCs were drastically reduced. The ozone holes gradually closed although we are not back to where we were before CFCs. The world economy did not collapse. UV-related blindness in humans and birds in areas like Tierra del Fuego went back towards normal levels.
Go back a little further to acid rain.
Go back further to photochemical smog.
Go back further to the killer smogs of London.
The lies coming from those with a vested interest in the
status quo area always exactly the same. And their dupes and useful idiots follow along like a pack of yammering Bassett Hounds baying on command.
Moving to the present day, the data have been being collected since the 1980s. We've gotten a lot more sophisticated. We can measure solar flux directly and indirectly. We have ice-core data going back hundreds of thousands of years. We're damned good with it. We have gas budgets for areas all over the planet. There are direct and indirect historical records that give a pretty good idea of how much wood, coal, oil and gas we've been burning and how much excess methane has gone into the atmosphere due to agriculture.
The better the data and the better the tools for analyzing them the clearer the picture.
The current warming trend has been going on since the early Industrial Revolution. It is tied very nicely and cleanly with CO2 emissions from coal and later from petroleum. The ice core data, the other estimates of industrial uses of fuels, and the temperature data all line up as cleanly as you're likely to see in such a large and complicated system.
Solar fluctuations act as a
random effect
around the mean rise in temperatures. In other words, no matter what Rush told the dittoheads it isn't solar energy that has started mysteriously increasing. The much trumpeted "The Earth is getting warmer, but Science Proves that it's all because of increased solar radiation," turned out to be premature. By "premature" I mean "Actually, it turned out to have been 180 degrees due Mistaken."
No other proposed mechanism has even begun to explain the available data
much less make verifiable predictions. Throwing up a hundred "maybes" without testing them and without even bothering to say how they might be tested is not scientifically disproving global warming. It's a sign of the absence of science.
The
hypothesis is that the world is generally getting warmer and that the rate is accelerating overall. That hypothesis is very well established. We are already seeing a dramatic demonstration of the self-reinforcing nature of the ice-albedo feedback loop.
The
theory is that the majority of this warming may be attributed to human actions, particularly the burning of wood and fossil fuels, the growth in rice cultivation and cattle husbandry and more recently the unlocking of carbon reserves due to deforestation, the melting of permafrost and ocean die-offs.
The theory has been gathering momentum as we find more data which support it. The data are robust; they apply over a wide range of conditions, and data from several
entirely different sources confirm one another. It does a good job of explaining the observed phenomena and most importantly of predicting future events. It does not seem to be making any egregiously incorrect predictions.
More to the point, there is no other theory out there which explains what we see much less makes predictions which are even vaguely as good as those of the anthropogenic theory of climate change.
If you want to be taken seriously as a grown up much less a scientist here is how to start:
- Learn a little about how science is done. It's a fascinating subject that captures the imagination and ennobles the spirit while strengthening the mind. You don't need an advanced degree. A few good books can get you conversant very quickly
- Learn to think quantitatively and especially to think statistically. You have no idea how rare and important that ability is. If you say "There are lies, damned lies and statistics" or "Figures don't lie, but liars figure" then go back to the beginning you have serious remedial work to do.
- Try to understand at least the broad outlines of the subject under discussion.
- Find out what the major theories are.
- Get an idea about the data that support or drive them and where those come from.
If you find the theories unsatisfying this is what you need to do:
- Find out what the theories you don't like claim
- Find out what data they are supposed to explain
- Find out what predictions they make and how well those predictions hold up
- Come up with a hypothesis that is better supported by the data than the one you are rejecting.
- Develop a theory which explains your hypothesis.
- Use it to make predictions. These predictions must do a better job of explaining the observed data than the one which you want to discredit.
If you can do all of that, then you are doing serious science. You can't cherry pick. You can't ignore what you don't like. You have to take it all in and be brave and honest enough to change your mind and abandon your pet beliefs if they don't pass that fundamental test.
As they said at the end of Bible readings in high school chapel "Here endeth the lesson."
