# 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:** 12
**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, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/221 "2007-08-23T15:25:11Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout] No, because there really might not be that many similarities between planet Earth and a small terrarium. [/QUOTE] So use big terraria. The word “small” does not appear in my post. If building terraria the size of aircraft hangars would let humanity resolve the AGW issue once and for all, it would surely be worth it. ---
**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, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/222 "2007-08-23T15:26:11Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] It’s funny you should say that, because pro-AGW posts are sometimes just as simplistic. From this very thread: * * * 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? [/QUOTE] That was an observation not an attack. Anyone who can’t see that ‘experiment’ is utter nonsense is not qualified to express an opinion. Compared to that ‘experiment’ the simple unqualified statement about co2 is einsteinian. All other things being equal (which is the big ‘all’) more co2 means increase in temp. But climate isn’t governed by one variable so such a linear model is not useful. ---
**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, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/223 "2007-08-23T15:27:48Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] So use big terraria. The word “small” does not appear in my post. If building terraria the size of aircraft hangars would let humanity resolve the AGW issue once and for all, it would surely be worth it. [/QUOTE] Until the Earth acquires a dome or a roof it doesn’t matter what size the testbed. ---
**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, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/224 "2007-08-23T15:37:02Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] So use big terraria. The word “small” does not appear in my post. [/QUOTE] But you have them each lit by a ‘lamp’ (singular), so it’s pretty clear you had small ones in mind. ---
**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, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/225 "2007-08-23T15:42:33Z")
[Global Warming: How do we know science is right?](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,289647,00.html?sPage=fnc.science/naturalscience) > [@](#): > > Best predictor wins > > Contrary to popular parlance, science can never truly “prove” a theory. Science simply arrives at the best explanation of how the world works. Global warming can no more be “proven” than the theory of continental drift, the theory of evolution or the concept that germs carry diseases. > > “All science is fallible,” Oreskes told LiveScience. “Climate science shouldn’t be expected to stand up to some fantasy standard that no science can live up to.” > > Instead, a variety of methods and standards are used to evaluate the viability of different scientific explanations and theories. One such standard is how well a theory predicts the outcome of an event, and climate change theory has proven to be a strong predictor. > > The effects of putting massive amounts of carbon dioxide in the air were predicted as long ago as the early 20th century by Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius. > > Noted oceanographer Roger Revelle’s 1957 predictions that carbon dioxide would build up in the atmosphere and cause noticeable changes by the year 2000 have been borne out by numerous studies, as has Princeton climatologist Suki Manabe’s 1980 prediction that the Earth’s poles would be first to see the effects of global warming. > > Also in the 1980s, NASA climatologist James Hansen predicted with high accuracy what the global average temperature would be in 30 years time (now the present day). > > Hansen’s model predictions are “a shining example of a successful prediction in climate science,” said climatologist Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University. > > Schmidt says that predictions by those who doubted global warming have failed to come true. > > “Why don’t you trust a psychic? Because their predictions are wrong,” he told LiveScience. “The credibility goes to the side that gets these predictions right.” > [@](#): > > Future predictions > > One of the remaining skeptics, is MIT meteorologist Richard Lindzen. While he acknowledges the trends of rising temperatures and greenhouse gases, Lindzen expressed his doubt on man’s culpability in the case and casts doubt on the dire predictions made by some climate models, in an April 2006 editorial for The Wall Street Journal. > > “What the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man’s responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred,” Lindzen wrote. > > To be sure, there is a certain degree of uncertainty involved in modeling and predicting future changes in the climate, but “you don’t need to have a climate model to know that climate change is a problem,” Oreskes said. > > Climate scientists have clearly met the burden of proof with the mounting evidence they’ve assembled and the strong predictive power of global warming theory, Oreskes said-- global warming is something to pay attention to. > > Schmidt agrees. “All of these little things just reinforce the big picture,” he said. “And the big picture is very worrying.” ---
**Author:** ![Autumn\_Almanac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d26b3c/32.png) [@Autumn\_Almanac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autumn_Almanac)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/226 "2007-08-23T15:48:23Z")
If pro-AGW sentiment is “religious,” could anti-AGW be considered equally “religious” for largely the same reasons (laypeople take the word of perceived authority, certain powerful people stand to gain wealth if their view prevails, etc.)? Why shouldn’t it apply both ways? ---
**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, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/227 "2007-08-23T15:52:04Z")
[QUOTE=tagos] That was an observation not an attack. [/quote] I’m tempted to make a few “observations” about your ignorance. However, I will refrain. > [@](#): > > Anyone who can’t see that ‘experiment’ is utter nonsense is not qualified to express an opinion. Why exactly is it “nonsense”? Is it because the global climate is too complex to be simulated with such a simple model? ---
**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, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/228 "2007-08-23T15:53:26Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout] But you have them each lit by a ‘lamp’ (singular), so it’s pretty clear you had small ones in mind. [/QUOTE] Actually I didn’t have any particular size in mind. But please tell me what size you would consider to be adequate and why. ---
**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, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/229 "2007-08-23T15:55:28Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] I’m tempted to make a few “observations” about your ignorance. However, I will refrain. Why exactly is it “nonsense”? Is it because the global climate is too complex to be simulated with such a simple model? [/QUOTE] You can knock yourself out. I’ve clearly forgotten more about science than you know. And I’ll leave it to others with more patience than I to explain why a small micro-environment sealed in a glass dome isn’t even a vague approximate to the Earth for any basis let alone climate modelling. Not that it should need explaining to anyone. ---
**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, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/230 "2007-08-23T15:56:49Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] Actually I didn’t have any particular size in mind. But please tell me what size you would consider to be adequate and why. [/QUOTE] No size rescues the idea. FCOL - the earth has an atmosphere performing heat exchange functions, not a friggin’ tin roof or glass dome. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/231 "2007-08-23T16:04:00Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] A difference that is less than 5% likely to be due to chance. I’m not a climatologist either. So I don’t know. That would be an interesting thing to measure too. Why? Because it actually puts the hypothesis at risk? [/QUOTE] Ok then back to school experiments: [http://www.espere.net/Unitedkingdom/water/uk\_watexpgreenhouse.htm](http://www.espere.net/Unitedkingdom/water/uk_watexpgreenhouse.htm) > [@](#): > > An important fraction of the sunlight reaching the earth’s surface is absorbed, transformed into thermal energy and emitted again as infrared radiation. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are these gases who efficiently absorb this infrared radiation emitted by the earth in order to keep the heat in the atmosphere like in a greenhouse. > > In order to investigate this phenomenon we carry out the following experiment: > > Experimental setup: > > Glass vessels containing air (right) and CO2 (left) > two lights of identical output > two pans with water > black cardboard > Temperature feeler (data registration by a computer) > [@](#): > > air > the infrared radiation emitted by the cardboard leaves the vessel without any significant absorption. The increase in tempearture is less. > [@](#): > > carbon dioxide > the infrared radiation emitted by the cardboard, is absorbed by the CO2 and causes an increase of heat in the vessel. > [@](#): > > Time.. T (air).. T (CO2) > [min].. [°C]… [°C] > 0… 22… 22 > 5… 32… 37 > 10… 35… 40 > 15… 40… 45 > 20… 44… 50 After 10 minutes, the difference is more than 8% ---
**Author:** ![LilShieste](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9f8e36/32.png) [@LilShieste](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LilShieste)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/232 "2007-08-23T16:09:57Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] How long of a time? [/quote] I’ll stick my head out and guess one ice age back. It could very well even be beyond that, though. > [@brazil84](#): > > I can do better than that. Your own graph shows a temperature drop of more than 0.2 degrees C between 1900 and 1910. That’s more than .02 degrees per year, or more than triple the rate of temperature change that you claim is unprecedented (or hasn’t happened in a really long time). > > A similar rapid drop occurred between 1940 and 1950, according to your own data. We’re not talking about fluctuations of 0.2 degrees in the span of 10 years; those have happened before. What _hasn’t_ happened before (recently, anyway) is a fluctuation of 0.8 degrees within the span of 125 years. This is kind of why attention was drawn to it in the first place, eh? In reality, I just should have nipped your proposal of looking at the yearly average of fluctuation in the bud when I had the chance. When you do this, you lose track of the actual time span in which the change is occurring, which is a severe oversight in cases like this. For example: imagine a 150 year window. Say between 0 and 75 (on the x-axis), the average temperature fluctuation jumps from 0.2 degrees to 1.5 degrees. Then, from 75 to 150, it dives back down to 0.2 degrees. If we look at the average, we end up saying, “Look, the average fluctuation is nothing new (0.2 degrees), so what’s the big deal?” The big deal isn’t visible through the average - it actually hides the problem. LilShieste ---
**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, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/233 "2007-08-23T16:15:47Z")
[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] The basic problems with this experiment are the following: (1) While the absorptive properties of CO2 in the infrared are well-known, it does take a fair bit of calculation with radiative transfer codes to translate this into what the effect forcing in W/m2 is for the earth’s atmosphere. And, an important component of this is the fact that in the troposphere the temperature decreases with height. This is important because at the end of the day, the radiative forcing arises because the net effect of increasing CO2 is to raise the effective level from which the atmosphere re-emits energy back into space. Since it is cooling as you go up and since the power emitted by an object goes as the 4th power of the temperature, this results in less energy being emitted which puts the earth out of radiative balance (i.e., it then receives more energy from the sun than it re-emits). This causes the atmosphere to warm until it gets back into radiative balance. Clearly, this whole scenario would be hard to re-enact in a terrarium of any realistic size we could build. However, the calculations to determine this radiative forcing are so well-settled that even skeptics like Richard Lindzen agree with the accepted value of ~3.7 W/m2 for a doubling of CO2. (2) Going from radiative forcing to the resulting temperature change requires modeling of the atmosphere & oceans & land & cryosphere, etc. since the various feedback effects discussed above come into play. These feedback effects are the source of the greatest uncertainty in how large a warming gets produced (i.e., what the climate sensitivity to increased CO2 is). There are really no shortcuts to actually seeing how the entire system responds, which is why looking at the response to the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo or looking at the transitions from ice age to interglacial periods are important things to test whether the models are realistic. ---
**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, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/234 "2007-08-23T16:16:15Z")
[QUOTE=GIGObuster] After 10 minutes, the difference is more than 8% [/QUOTE] That’s an interesting experiment. I see that a difference in CO2 levels of 280,000 per cent made an 8% difference in temperature. I wonder what sort of difference in temperature you would find if the difference in CO2 levels had been 25 per cent. Instead of 280000 percent. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/235 "2007-08-23T16:20:11Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] That’s an interesting experiment. I see that a difference in CO2 levels of 280,000 per cent made an 8% difference in temperature. I wonder what sort of difference in temperature you would find if the difference in CO2 levels had been 25 per cent. Instead of 280000 percent. [/QUOTE] Much less of course, because **tagos** is correct. ---
**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, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/236 "2007-08-23T16:21:53Z")
[QUOTE=tagos] You can knock yourself out. I’ve clearly forgotten more about science than you know. And I’ll leave it to others with more patience than I to explain why a small micro-environment sealed in a glass dome isn’t even a vague approximate to the Earth for any basis let alone climate modelling. [/quote] Ok, so you refuse to back up your claims. I will draw my own conclusion. ---
**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, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/237 "2007-08-23T16:24:13Z")
[QUOTE=jshore] The basic problems with this experiment are the following: (1) While the absorptive properties of CO2 in the infrared are well-known, it does take a fair bit of calculation with radiative transfer codes to translate this into what the effect forcing in W/m2 is for the earth’s atmosphere. And, an important component of this is the fact that in the troposphere the temperature decreases with height. This is important because at the end of the day, the radiative forcing arises because the net effect of increasing CO2 is to raise the effective level from which the atmosphere re-emits energy back into space. Since it is cooling as you go up and since the power emitted by an object goes as the 4th power of the temperature, this results in less energy being emitted which puts the earth out of radiative balance (i.e., it then receives more energy from the sun than it re-emits). This causes the atmosphere to warm until it gets back into radiative balance. Clearly, this whole scenario would be hard to re-enact in a terrarium of any realistic size we could build. However, the calculations to determine this radiative forcing are so well-settled that even skeptics like Richard Lindzen agree with the accepted value of ~3.7 W/m2 for a doubling of CO2. (2) Going from radiative forcing to the resulting temperature change requires modeling of the atmosphere & oceans & land & cryosphere, etc. since the various feedback effects discussed above come into play. These feedback effects are the source of the greatest uncertainty in how large a warming gets produced (i.e., what the climate sensitivity to increased CO2 is). There are really no shortcuts to actually seeing how the entire system responds, which is why looking at the response to the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo or looking at the transitions from ice age to interglacial periods are important things to test whether the models are realistic. [/QUOTE] Maybe so. But this all supports my position that AGW is essentially untested. ---
**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, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/238 "2007-08-23T16:26:55Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] If there hasn’t been a test that puts the hypothesis at risk, then the hypothesis hasn’t been tested. It’s that simple. [/quote] All of the experiments I discussed put the hypothesis at risk. E.g., if the response of the climate system to the Mt. Pinatubo eruption was much less pronounced than the climate models predict, that would be a problem for the AGW hypothesis (or, more precisely, the hypothesis that the warming due to greenhouse gases would be significant). Likewise, if Hansen’s 1988 modeling exercise had significantly overestimated the warming seen over the following 2 decades, that would have been a problem. > [@](#): > > How many parameters do you think are used in a climate model used by AGW supporters? Climate models apparently have something on the order of 10 or 20 parameters for processes that they can’t resolve on the scale of the model and thus must be parametrized, I believe. However, most of them are constrained by the present climatology and they tend not to be parameters that allow significant flexibility in fitting to historical data on global temperature trends. Furthermore, the [climateprediction.net](http://climateprediction.net) experiment looked into varying many of these parameters over physically-plausible ranges and [found](http://climateprediction.net/science/pubs/nature_first_results.pdf) that, while they could produce some very high values for climate sensitivity, they could not produce very low values…and most of the values produced were in the range of what is generally accepted to be the likely value. ---
**Author:** ![LilShieste](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9f8e36/32.png) [@LilShieste](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LilShieste)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2007, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/239 "2007-08-23T16:30:46Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] Maybe so. But this all supports my position that AGW is essentially untested. [/QUOTE] How did you conclude that from **jshore** ’s post? I actually had the opposite conclusion (i.e., it’s tested as well as it possibly can be). 😕 LilShieste ---
**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, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356/240 "2007-08-23T16:31:30Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] I was a bit unclear . . . the output would be the yearly averages. 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. [/quote] I was assuming a bit more of an output. With that simple a result, I agree that many models would guess right, and the test for a good model would be a lot more stringent. You’d need a lot of results to drive the p value down to reasonable numbers. I’d want a lot more output in order to test the model in any reasonable way. > [@](#): > > 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. It’s all about the ability to make predictions - everyone who creates models knows this.. It is trivial to draw a best fit line through any set of points, but that is useless. So, if the models got made with all the data, and not tested, I’d agree - but then all scientists doing models would be witlings. This I doubt. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-take-global-warming-totally-on-faith/416356.md?page=13)