Posted by ChrisH on 24/02/2020 10:24:48:
"…….somewhere between 90% and 100% that agree humans are responsible for climate change………"
Come on, really? Please explain therefore why climate changed when there wasn't humans around, millions of years ago, or more comparatively recently, over the last few thousand years when there were world populations back then of maybe only a few millions.
Climate has always changed, the only augment today surely is how much are humans currently aggravating it.
Chris
Chris,
The problem is the speed with which climate is changing. Previous climate change was a slow process taking at least tens of thousands of years to shift and more usually tens of millions or longer. The first clues something strange was happening to our climate appeared only 50 years ago, and – whatever is causing it – the change is accelerating.
Unfortunately cause and effect aren't bleeding obvious yet, and it will be too late when it is. The evidence isn't as clear-cut as that proving the earth orbits the sun rather than the other way round. (Can anyone prove that without looking it up!)
Instead evidence pointing to global warming consists of a mass of data from many different research fields collected over different time periods. Highly indigestible to the man in the street, just as are the data-sets used for next week's weather forecast and managing the futures market. While it's possible to dismiss data-sets one at a time, it's much harder to explain away a common trend in the same direction coming from different sources.
Equally important, there isn't an obvious alternative that explains the data. If the cause of global warming isn't human activity, then what is? That question is hard to answer. One reeponse is outright denial that there is any such thing as climate change; this one held water 20 years ago, now it's looking foolish. Otherwise, it's necessary to come up with an effect capable of causing the whole planet to warm as quickly as it is. What, how?
Past climate change has been explained reasonably well, such as prolific plant growth taking hundreds of millions of years to convert Carbon Dioxide to the Oxygen we breath today. But as far as I know, no-one in the Deny Camp has a hypothesis explaining what's happening at the moment. Instead it's easier to cherry pick point weaknesses in the complex evidence in favour, and it's usually done by people like us with a relatively poor grasp of science, statistical methods, and scientific method. Bloke down the Pub talking 'common-sense', or god forbid a politician, is much more user-friendly, even though they're guessing. Chaps who fill out a cryptic crossword without reading the clues get quick convincing results, wonderful apart from being completely wrong!
Experts aren't infallible, but it's far more likely they will get the right answer than averagely intelligent chaps dipping haphazardly into unfamiliar subjects. Good example on the forum at the moment. The discussion about tensioning boring bars has reached the stage where a Finite Element Method analysis would be helpful. Although FEM is a well established technique, we're stuck because we don't appear to have a member able to use it. Despite that I think we all know it would be stupid to reject FEM as a meaningful tool just because wonderfully talented Model Engineers don't understand how to drive it. Yet faulty logic is applied to climate change: it's being rejected because people don't like the idea and can't be convinced because they don't understand the analysis. They might believe it when there is no transport, no electricity, no water, and no food…
Dave