# How many people take Global Warming totally on faith? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 21, 2007, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356 "2007-08-21T13:06:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2007, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/201 "2007-08-22T22:54:19Z")
[QUOTE=kanicbird] > [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > Surely you jest. The profitability from corn-based biofuel is high enough that it would make economic sense to turn fallow land into active cropland without affecting the food supply one whit.Strike one, that link I cited shows how corn prices have ALREADY shot up causing real hardship to people in Mexico, and that trend is expected to continue, unless someone steps in and passes laws against it. You’re talking about sweet corn (people food) as opposed to feed corn (cattle food), which can be used to produce biofuel. Once conversion facilities are available so that shipping isn’t so much of an issue, then biofuel can be produced locally in areas like here (Montana) on land that is currently not being used for crops. How, exactly, does that hurt anyone? And do you have any stats on feed corn to back up what you’re saying? [QUOTE=kanicbird] > [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > What you’re really saying is that the concept of AGW meets your religion’s definition of a “false god.” Then you make the unsupported leap to “AGW is a religion.” Do you know of any theologist, scientist, philosopher, atheist, or practitioner of any other religion that would agree with your position? Anyone with any credentials whatsoever? Strike two, money is well recognized in Christian circles as a possible false god. For that matter anything you make your life’s priority. God wants to be first, put anything or anyone above God and that becomes your god. The process of worshiping god is your religious practices. [/QUOTE] Did you even _read_ what you’re responding to? (a) I didn’t argue with your premise that money is considered a false god by some Christians. (b) I asked for anyone that could support your “leap of faith” (cause it certainly isn’t a leap of logic) that goes from “some Christians consider money a false god” to “AGW is a religion.” You failed to provide anything that supports this. Your personal belief that “X” is a false god does not in any way imply that belief in “X” is a religion. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2007, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/202 "2007-08-22T23:13:43Z")
[QUOTE=Quartz] Before you go down this line, consider that there have been times when there was vastly more CO[sub]2[/sub] in the atmosphere, yet the Earth sufferred ice ages even then. There is no simple link between CO[sub]2[/sub] levels and temperature. There may be a complex one, but there’s no simple one. [/QUOTE] Sure, I don’t want to oversimplify anything - indeed we don’t know for sure what other factors may have driven temperature changes in either direction in the past; what we _do_ know is that CO2 is a greenhouse Gas, and that there appears to be a correlation (which, yes, _might not_ demonstrate causation, but that’s not the same as saying it _doesn’t_) between recent rises in atmospheric CO2 and global warming. I guess we could wait until we can prove it for absolute certain, but if we do that and it turns out there is a strong anthropogenic component, will there still be time to act and will we have the ability to do it? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/203 "2007-08-23T00:16:05Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] Without a huge amount of trouble, one put together 100 different models of the stock market using yearly stock market averages from 1990 to 2000 and run them all out to 2006. Most likely, 1 or 2 of the 100 will match the more recent data pretty well. How much would you pay for those 1 or 2? More than $1000? More than $10,000? More than $100,000? Personally, I would pay nothing. [/quote] You’d obviously need a lot more input than the yearly averages. A model that could predict the market would need economic data input, input on politics and other news (look how Nigeria affected oil prices), and whole bunch of other stuff. Given that, if we got one good match I’d be surprised. However, since the match would be to a within a certain range to be considered good, there might well be more than one model differing significantly on coefficients with low weights. All of those might work. Given that, and assurances that I’d be the only one with the model (since the existence of the model might affect the market) and that the model was not tuned with the later data, I might well bet $10K on it. I’d run some statistical analysis on the results first, of course, but I’d guess that under my very strict scenario p would be \<\< 0.01 > [@](#): > > Not exactly, but I’m taking issue with the manner of testing. Ultimately, it appears that AGW supporters are not seriously risking their hypothesis. > > But here’s a test that would satisfy me and could possibly be done today: > > Take the source code from Hansen’s 1988 model and re-compile it using known figures for emissions. Compare it to actual temperature data. I predict a bad fit. (This experiment could be done only if Hansen actually published the source code for his model.) > > Would you predict a good fit? I’m not a climatologist, so I have no idea. Is AGW solely tied to a particular model? I’m all for opening the source code, though. However, if any model is open, and the way the coefficients get tuned based on historical data is clear, it should be possible to test any model in this way. I wouldn’t trust any model that didn’t pass this sort of test, which is different from saying that I wouldn’t trust any model at all in principle. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/204 "2007-08-23T00:46:49Z")
[QUOTE=Voyager] You’d obviously need a lot more input than the yearly averages. A model that could predict the market would need economic data input, input on politics and other news (look how Nigeria affected oil prices), and whole bunch of other stuff. [/quote] I was a bit unclear . . . the output would be the yearly averages. > [@](#): > > Given that, if we got one good match I’d be surprised. We need to define what a good match is. Let’s do it this way: For any given year, it’s possible to bet whether the stock market will go up more than 5%; up between 0 and 5%; or down. A good match is a model that’s right more than 85% of the time. So in the years 2000 through 2006, it’s right 5 out of 6 years. Obviously a stock market model that’s right more than 85% of the time would let you make a lot of money and is worth a good deal if you have exclusive rights to it. > [@](#): > > I’m not a climatologist, so I have no idea. Is AGW solely tied to a particular model? If it’s not tied to a particular model, then it doesn’t really prove anything to show that a particular model fits a the data. It’s like painting a bulls-eye on the barn after you’ve fired your shot. It really comes down to risk. If a hypothesis can’t be risked, then it’s probably not scientific. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/205 "2007-08-23T01:15:09Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] Without a huge amount of trouble, one put together 100 different models of the stock market using yearly stock market averages from 1990 to 2000 and run them all out to 2006. Most likely, 1 or 2 of the 100 will match the more recent data pretty well. How much would you pay for those 1 or 2? More than $1000? More than $10,000? More than $100,000? Personally, I would pay nothing. [/quote] As I have noted, climate models are different than the sorts of models that you are talking about. They are based on physical principles. They are not fits to data. And, there are so many degrees of freedom that one couldn’t possibly fit to all of them even if one tried. There are tons of things to look at to see how well a climate model is modeling the climate…and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of papers looking at these. > [@](#): > > Not exactly, but I’m taking issue with the manner of testing. Ultimately, it appears that AGW supporters are not seriously risking their hypothesis. > > But here’s a test that would satisfy me and could possibly be done today: > > Take the source code from Hansen’s 1988 model and re-compile it using known figures for emissions. Compare it to actual temperature data. I predict a bad fit. (This experiment could be done only if Hansen actually published the source code for his model.) > > Would you predict a good fit? I told you that this was essentially done. You seem to be fixated on re-compiling the code and running it again when there is absolutely no reason one has to do this. The model was run for 3 different scenarios of forcings. One of the scenarios is actually very close to the reality that panned out. And, the results of this model show that the temperature trend predicted over the last two decades is in good agreement with the actual temperature trend. It seems like you are just erecting artificial hoops for people to jump through in order to avoid accepting the results. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/206 "2007-08-23T01:24:28Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] Not really a test of AGW though. [/quote] You seem to be good at coming up with excuses not to accept results. The point is that this comes as close to a “natural experiment” over a relatively short period of time to test if the climate responds to forcings in the way that the climate models predict. Since we don’t have earths at our disposal to run AGW experiments on, this is the sort of testing that we can do. > [@](#): > > That may be, but it doesn’t contradict my statement that AGW hasn’t been tested. Well, the point is that mechanistic models generally are tested differently than empirical models. One can focus on the individual mechanisms and whether they are being correctly modeled. One can also use data that is historical to test the model because this data was not directly used to “train” the model. > [@](#): > > Again my question: > > How much would you pay for a stock market model that has been tested by seeing how well it fits with historical data? Well, for one thing financial markets don’t operate on fundamental physical principles. If the model was based on fundamental principles, if the model had very few parameters and these parameters were not able to be tuned to provide a fit to the historical data, then I would pay a lot for such a model. (However, I don’t think it is likely that such a model will be developed.) ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/207 "2007-08-23T02:53:25Z")
[QUOTE=Quartz] There’s absolutely no actual evidence for the A in AGW. Lots of models but no actual evidence. [/QUOTE] That’s not true. If I have a black box with two holes in it, and every time I stick a pole into one hole, a ball shoots out the other exactly 0.25 seconds later and this has held constant for 1000 tries, I’d feel I had sufficient evidence that sticking the pole in the hole is what is making the ball shoot out even though I wouldn’t actually know what was happening inside the black box. Now the same thing with Global Warming. If I can experiment on how light behaves in air that contains X mix of gaseous compounds and be able to tell you what will happen if you change the compound as you change it towards Y based on experimentation, then that’s a viable proof. We know what compounds are being released into the air due to human technology, so we know what should happen. Given that what is happening is following the prediction, that’s pretty darned good proof. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/208 "2007-08-23T04:54:27Z")
[QUOTE=kanicbird] Speculating on a reason a rich evil member of a political party has a advantage to strike fear in the heart of the general public, so he offers hard working, but barely making it scientist a bribe, maybe cash, or nice cushy government job or grant, to research AGW in a way that favors that end. Yes total speculation, but lower class people corrupted by the rich is not unheard of in human history. [/QUOTE] You have a hard time sticking to your own arguments, don’t you? First it was Evil Scientists, now they are poor deluded fools being duped by some Evil Politician - I’ll speculate you are referring to Al Gore here but I’m willing to be corrected. You’re great at asking for proof from others and not so great at providing it yourself for your wild assertions. I bet the other AGW deniers are embarrassed you’re in their camp. 1. what IS the “reason a rich evil member of a political party has a advantage to strike fear in the heart of the general public”? 2. “he offers hard working, but barely making it scientist a bribe, maybe cash, or nice cushy government job or grant, to research AGW in a way that favors that end” - any evidence whatsoever for this vicious allegation? Does this person really have the resources to bribe virtually every working climatologist in the world, not one of whom had the integrity to refuse, and/or expose the corruption and graft? How do you explain your move from Evil Scientist to Poor Hard Working Scientist in the space of a single day? Is it just that you realised how evil, vile, and flat-out unsubstantiated your accusation was, and so have picked a more universally hated target? Is it inconceivable to you that these people came to their conclusions by honest intellectual endeavour and hold the positions they hold because it seems to them to most likely be the truth? Is your only method of argument to demonize (literally in your case) your philosophical opponents? 1. “lower class people corrupted by the rich is not unheard of in human history” - oh really? Name, say, 6 occurrences. Note that if you can, you are acknowledging that these occurrences become public knowledge - if so why has this not occurred in this case? ---
**Author:** ![matt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@matt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/209 "2007-08-23T11:03:19Z")
[QUOTE=Der Trihs] Fine, it’s not often mentioned by laymen ( but certainly is by actual scientists), but so what ? [/quote] Well, at the risk of actually returning to the OP, this thread is supposed to be about laymen. CO2 and the “greenhouse effect” are certainly in the mainstream press, I think I’ve seen the positive feedbacks I mentioned earlier in the mainstream press, but negative feedbacks, not so much. [QUOTE=Der Trihs] Of course negative feedback exists, but there’s no reason to believe that will conveniently keep the global climate where we want it, when it hasn’t in the past. [/quote] Agreed. And that point should be well known to laymen also! [QUOTE=Der Trihs] And climatologists **do** factor negative feedback into their models; this is a non-issue. [/QUOTE] I don’t know enough about the area to comment, I’ll leave **jshore** and **intention** to fight that one out. Posts 185 and 193 from [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=432201&page=4) don’t inspire confidence in some of the models, if they’re true. The whole climate change debate has picked up a lot of baggage;- political, economic, and unfortunately moral. Historically, environmental activism has concerned itself with such issues as pollution, deforestation, pesticides, hunting to extinction. Activists have regarded themselves with a fair amount of justification as the good guys battling the bad guys;- greedy, cynical and unscrupulous organisations, corporations and governments. A battle worth fighting, and having a large dollop of romantic appeal into the bargain. This history seems to have spilled over to the climate change debate. Good versus Evil. (Read some of the “global warming denial machine” thread I linked to above for examples of this!) I suspect a lot of people take AGW on faith, not out of deference to authority but because they want to be on the side of the “good guys”. I get the impression that in the USA, being an AGW sceptic lumps you in with Republican homophobic pro-war anti-abortionists… ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/210 "2007-08-23T11:47:26Z")
[QUOTE=kanicbird] Strike two, money is well recognized in Christian circles as a possible false god. [/QUOTE] I dunno. [Jesus Christ himself, in the flesh, seems to like it quite a bit.](http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=2925021&page=1) ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/211 "2007-08-23T14:16:00Z")
[QUOTE=jshore] As I have noted, climate models are different than the sorts of models that you are talking about. They are based on physical principles. They are not fits to data. [/quote] I suspect it’s a little bit of both. Otherwise there would be only 1 climate model. Just like stock market models are based partly on economic principles and partly on “fits to data” > [@](#): > > I told you that this was essentially done. Not really, but let me ask you this: Which of Hansen’s scenarios – A, B, or C – reflects the emissions that took place between 1988 and the present? I’m just asking for a letter here: A, B, or C. > [@](#): > > It seems like you are just erecting artificial hoops for people to jump through in order to avoid accepting the results. It may seem that way to you, but you are incorrect. I am willing to risk my beliefs. Are you willing to risk yours? ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/212 "2007-08-23T14:20:49Z")
[QUOTE=jshore] You seem to be good at coming up with excuses not to accept results. [/quote] I think the problem is that you are good at coming up with examples that don’t really support your claim. > [@](#): > > Since we don’t have earths at our disposal to run AGW experiments on, this is the sort of testing that we can do. If there hasn’t been a test that puts the hypothesis at risk, then the hypothesis hasn’t been tested. It’s that simple. > [@](#): > > Well, for one thing financial markets don’t operate on fundamental physical principles. If the model was based on fundamental principles, if the model had very few parameters and these parameters were not able to be tuned to provide a fit to the historical data, then I would pay a lot for such a model. (However, I don’t think it is likely that such a model will be developed.) How many parameters do you think are used in a climate model used by AGW supporters? ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/213 "2007-08-23T14:27:42Z")
[QUOTE=Sage Rat] That’s not true. If I have a black box with two holes in it, and every time I stick a pole into one hole, a ball shoots out the other exactly 0.25 seconds later and this has held constant for 1000 tries, I’d feel I had sufficient evidence that sticking the pole in the hole is what is making the ball shoot out even though I wouldn’t actually know what was happening inside the black box. Now the same thing with Global Warming. If I can experiment on how light behaves in air that contains X mix of gaseous compounds and be able to tell you what will happen if you change the compound as you change it towards Y based on experimentation, then that’s a viable proof. [/quote] It may very well be. In another thread, the following experiment was proposed: Take three or four sealed terraria (containing dirt, rocks, and water) that are the same except that they have varying amounts of carbon dioxide. One has 280 ppm, one has 350 ppm and one has 450 ppm. Put them all in front of a full spectrum lamp and measure their temperatures over a few days. I predict that there will be no significant difference in temperature. What would you predict? Are you willing to put your beliefs at risk? ---
**Author:** ![Lightnin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightnin/32/180_2.png) [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/214 "2007-08-23T14:36:12Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] I predict that there will be no significant difference in temperature. [/QUOTE] Define “significant”. Obviously, the smaller the test environment, the smaller the temperature variance will be. I suspect that, in the case of terraria, the temperature variance will be so small as to be undetectable. But then, I’m not a climatologist. Besides, if this simple test could yield useful data, why hasn’t it already been done? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/215 "2007-08-23T14:38:53Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] Take three or four sealed terraria (containing dirt, rocks, and water) that are the same except that they have varying amounts of carbon dioxide. One has 280 ppm, one has 350 ppm and one has 450 ppm. Put them all in front of a full spectrum lamp and measure their temperatures over a few days. I predict that there will be no significant difference in temperature. [/QUOTE] What about the temperature after, say, twenty minutes? That they will all reach similar peak temperatures eventually doesn’t mean they all have the same response. Apart from that, it sounds like a really poorly designed experiment anyway. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/216 "2007-08-23T14:42:50Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] It may very well be. In another thread, the following experiment was proposed: Take three or four sealed terraria (containing dirt, rocks, and water) that are the same except that they have varying amounts of carbon dioxide. One has 280 ppm, one has 350 ppm and one has 450 ppm. Put them all in front of a full spectrum lamp and measure their temperatures over a few days. I predict that there will be no significant difference in temperature. What would you predict? Are you willing to put your beliefs at risk? [/QUOTE] That ‘model’ is so unutterably simplistic that no result it came up with would tell you anything whatsoever about AGW. That you can even propose this with a straight face suggests you do not have the understanding or knowledge to have an opinion on the science. Get back to us when the Earth is encased in a dome though. AGW is not a belief. That carbon dioxide is one of the many greenhouse gases is also a fact. It is up to deniers, (who IMHO should be treated with the same scorn and derision creationists and Holocaust Deniers are met with) to explain why carbon dioxide, methane etc are not functioning as their chemistry dictates. Deniers are the one making the outrageous claims so it’s up to them to come up with the extraordinary proof. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/217 "2007-08-23T15:10:06Z")
[QUOTE=Lightnin’] Define “significant”. [/quote] A difference that is less than 5% likely to be due to chance. > [@](#): > > Besides, if this simple test could yield useful data, why hasn’t it already been done? I’m not a climatologist either. So I don’t know. > [@](#): > > What about the temperature after, say, twenty minutes? That they will all reach similar peak temperatures eventually doesn’t mean they all have the same response That would be an interesting thing to measure too. > [@](#): > > Apart from that, it sounds like a really poorly designed experiment anyway. Why? Because it actually puts the hypothesis at risk? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/218 "2007-08-23T15:12:38Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] Why? Because it actually puts the hypothesis at risk? [/QUOTE] No, because there really might not be that many similarities between planet Earth and a small terrarium. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/219 "2007-08-23T15:20:51Z")
[QUOTE=tagos] That ‘model’ is so unutterably simplistic that no result it came up with would tell you anything whatsoever about AGW. [/quote] It’s funny you should say that, because pro-AGW posts are sometimes just as simplistic. From this very thread: > [@](#): > > CO2 Is transparent to ultraviolet radiation and opaque to infrared. The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more heat is trapped. Do you doubt this? * * * > [@](#): > > That you can even propose this with a straight face suggests you do not have the understanding or knowledge to have an opinion on the science. Can I take it, then, that ijn your opinion, anyone who makes arguments such as the one I quoted above likely does not have the understanding or knowledge to have an opinion on science? Or do you reserve ad hominem attacks for people you disagree with? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/220 "2007-08-23T15:24:11Z")
The absorption properties of CO2 _have_ been subject to experiment though - do you acknowledge that? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356.md?page=12)