If the questions that are posed by the public are silly or lacking in substance due to lack of background knowledge, then there are ways that the concepts can be explained in lay terms. Some scientists have chosen to try to do that, but my complaints have been that so far I haven’t found them to be doing a great job of it- though Jim’s recent link seems to fill in some of the blanks that I’ve been seeking.

In contrast, many critics draw conclusions without going through this laborious scientific process .

As to my complaint about ad hominem attacks, as you can see I have no problem with you responding to me with legitimate criticisms and providing evidence to refute something that I say.

If you don’t want posts critical of what you write so you can claim its an ad hominem attack don’t write things that justify it. You write

No one has offered a shred of proof, as far as I’ve been able to find, that CO2 is significantly causing a major amount of warming and in fact much of the causal relationship may be the other way around (as temperature rises, CO2 goes up as a result of the warming.)

In fact you’ve made this claim before and the articles that counter this claim of yours have been linked to. You choose to ignore those citations and make the same claim again. Why shouldn’t you be criticized for this deception? Shall we go through it again?

Here’s an article by Spencer Weart on the site for the American Institute of Physics discussing the history of research on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Here is a much more abbreviated summary of some of the earlier discoveries from a series on NPR and a series of answers to questions from listeners in the same series. As far as bringing up the question of CO2 increase lagging temperatures, this article has also been pointed out before. All of this has been pointed to before in response to your earlier identical claims. Apparently you choose to ignore them because you certainly haven’t pointed out any decent sources that invalidate them.

Of course, I’m not surprised. We are, after all, still debating the theory of evolution in this country.

As far as I’m concerned, the debate is over.
The only legitimate area to examine is how best to address the problem. Luckily, the number of businesses and state/local governments interested and acting on the advice or real scientists is increasing. in spite of all the doubtintg ’scientists’.

I think the point on which I differ with you on the ‘real world science’ is just one of degree (when the discussion moves to the realm of solutions, I realize that people have to decide to stop debating cause, but the pure scientists shouldn’t stop questioning). And, in your comparison of climate science vs. biological systems, I almost feel that it’s worse to have a real world approach with the climate science because the theories don’t lend themselves to falsifiability well so there’s more danger of the theory taking on a dogmatic character. I read this recently, and it articulates my point more clearly than I can:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/lakatos/scienceAndPseudoscienceTranscript.htm

And in case anyone is wondering, I do think that we should put massive effort into moving away from oil dependency, but I feel that way mainly for all of the other reasons besides global warming (other pollutants, scarcity of remaining reserves, dependency on mideast oil, etc). I think we’d be better off if the global warming part was put into perspective because those who overstate the case for it only give ammunition to those who oppose them (like the oil lobby).

And she is right that science shouldn’t accept things as true for lack of alternatives. No matter how good a scientist one is, they are improved immensely by knowing when to say “I don’t know.” I’ve noticed that done properly this gets you immense respect…even from the scientists that seem unable to admit it themselves. If you have a hypothesis about something new, it shouldn’t be accepted until there is sufficient evidence. What her view comes down to is a lack of understanding about what science in the real world looks like. The common idea of science comes almost entirely from physics. But for most complex problems there is no “universal” reference frame that makes all measurements simple, let alone closed form solutions and you’re constantly groping for straws. [This caused my physics minded turned research doctor coworker to have an existential crisis.]

What she (and the mainstream public, and many scientists themselves don’t want to think about) fail to understand is that at this point the bulk of our operational scientific knowledge about biology and other systems is entirely based on correlations, and the study into the underyling “cause” is done primary to identify new elements to test for correlations. From my (admittedly rough) understanding, I’d say that we are about 3-4x more sure of the CO2 “cause” with the climate than even some of the most rudimentary biological systems. Definitely more than about how breathing works, which is where I work…but that hasn’t stopped us from developing techniques that have saved hundreds of thousands of people or helping train athletes better or even giving insight into evolutionary processes.

But if they key is something else (wator vapor increasing and then increased cloud cover beginning to have more of a cooling effect than a warming one, for example- or quite possibly, some other factor that we just haven’t even grasped yet), then there may be other ways to intervene that would be far more significant (and maybe less costly) than attempting to manipulate CO2 levels.

Oh there definitely are other ways CS that are far far easier to do and more effective than CO2 modulation. It involves pumping a ton of reflective particles into the atmosphere, for instance sulfur. Of course if we pumped enough sulfur up there to stop the process i’m not sure there would be much left down here to save.

Also volcanoes and asteroids do a wonderful job because they fill up the sky with so much dust. In fact that was what my “(nearly)” specifically was referring to. The idea (which I personally think is reasonable with what we know) is that CO2 is a catalyst for creating an enormous increase in water vapor due to feedback loops. Sure it eventually comes back, but not until the cycle is completed. That’s why the Younger Dryas event was such a noticeable phenomenon and if the asteroid theory is right it fits in with our current knowledge.

More or less the only way we know to stop it is from catastrophic external events/modulation or we could make giant devices to lessen solar power coming down or something but that sounds very unfeasible and I don’t know what consequences it’d have.

What you can do is come up with another hypothesis (most people think this is what the word theory means), a test that should fail if your hypothesis is wrong – and does not (falsifiability), and repeatabiliy. At that point you may have the beginnings of a theory like gravity, or evolution…

The problem here is that the system is large, complex and dynamic as has been stated. Best we are likely to do is indeed ’strong correlations’, which we have quite a few of. And nothing else so far has come along that is a better explination of what is happening than global warming that is at least partially resulting in man made.

I will also point out that the money to be made (funding) scientifically is damn easy if you are anti-global warming, and much harder to raise otherwise. Let us add that we have an administration in the past that has allegedly gone as far as telling public Uni’s that they should un-invite pro-global warming researchers, and has threatened to cut funding various research projects if they don’t.

Now think that the money says ‘no global warming’, the politicos pressure uni’s that there is no global warming… And, still the vast majority of scientists accept global warming now. That does not make them right of course. But, it does put some perspective on it.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with using CO2 as a main driver of warming as a working hypothesis, but the scientists who do so should recognize that without some evidence of cause and effect, there are other plausible explanations and over time, a new explanation may develop which might better explain the observations. They are not correct to say that since no one has yet been able to do that, it lends more credence to their hypothesis- it remains just one of several possible explanations.

mikkel said:

The theory is that in low temperatures have some catalyst for making them rise, which increases CO2 rapidly and that increase starts a (nearly) irreversable process that eventually causes other things like water vapor and other stuff to increase.

I have to quibble with the ‘(nearly) irreversible’ part. Every time that temperatures rose in the past, they also fell eventually without any human intervention. So obviously this process has an endpoint (although admittedly, probably not an end point that we could live with- even if the temperature was compatible with human life there would likely be catastrophic geographical changes). But it seems to me that it’s key to figure out what has happened historically when temperatures have peaked and then begun to fall. If the answer is that this only happens after all carbon in the natural cycle has been released then yes, the key is going to be to handle our carbon emissions (because if we’re putting more carbon into the atmosphere than the natural cycle would, then we’re really exacerbating the upswing of the cycle). But if they key is something else (wator vapor increasing and then increased cloud cover beginning to have more of a cooling effect than a warming one, for example- or quite possibly, some other factor that we just haven’t even grasped yet), then there may be other ways to intervene that would be far more significant (and maybe less costly) than attempting to manipulate CO2 levels.

But what Jim said is that instead of the scientists looking at skepticism in a healthy way, they are saying that unless an alternative theory can be proven then their consensus one is true by default.

She then claims that this is politics, not science. Wow, this shows complete ignorance of science as much if not more than any other post she’s ever made. It’s not politics. That is precisely how science works. If you have an alternative idea then you have to prove it to the rest of the scientific community in your field. How the heck else did you think it worked, CS? How else do you think it could work? The English language lacks words to describe how foolish that post was. I could say many other things about it less complimentary but I’m trying to hold myself back. But yes, once the overwhelming majority of scientists in a field believe that an explanation has been found for a given phenomenon has been found you have to prove it wrong before your alternative is going to be accepted. Frankly, there is no better way to do it or else we’d stilll be accepting the geocentric view of the universe.

I think Gore uses apocalyptic language because otherwise the problem won’t be viewed with any urgency

I’m not sure that an issue has to be “the single greatest threat to our society” to be viewed with urgency, and toning down the rhetoric would likely go a long way to make the message more palatable. Telling people that “the planet is getting warmer, and that warming is causing changes that will have destabilizing effects around the globe” is an abstract enough idea that a lot of people don’t see how it will affect them personally, and apocalyptic rhetoric won’t change that. As an example, note the glib “I’m just gonna buy land in the middle of Florida and wait until it’s beachfront property” responses – people may get that seas will rise, but they can’t wrap their minds around the problems that will cause. It will only be when fish stocks move out of traditional fishing grounds and destroy local industries, or glaciers melt and surrounding communities lose their water supply that people will fully grasp the seriousness of the problem.

There are a ton of good reasons to take global warming seriously, and a ton of things that can be done now to start addressing the issue. However, the stubbornness of the far right, and the hysteria of the far left are both major barriers to taking even the simple steps to address what is going to be a very serious problem.