4 ms·

This sentiment is not correct - causal explanations do matter. The statistical evidence for global warming is not particularly strong, as temperature data is ve

This sentiment is not correct - causal explanations do matter. The statistical evidence for global warming is not particularly strong, as temperature data is very noisy. If we didn't have a causal explanation there would not be a scientific consensus behind climate change. That adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere changes the climate is more like gravity - we have clear physics on why things fall when you drop them, and if we somehow were adding mass to the center of the earth we know what effect this would have. More generally you are correct, we don't know exactly how much the earth will warm or if there are complicated feedback mechanisms in place that could cause this warming to speed up or reverse course. We can't even reliably say that next year will be hotter than this year (actually it probably will be cooler because this year has been unusually hot).

gd1 10y ago
Indeed, but it is really only the system response we are interested in. As you admit, a clear causal explanation for how a single input forcing is increasing doesn't automatically get us to a position where we can predict the overall system response. Or predict whether a given system response will have some positive or negative second order effect. We have a clear causal physical explanation that eating fat should make you fatter right? Are you willing to say that? Or would you qualify yourself - 'eating more fat will make you fatter in the absence of negative feedbacks (perhaps the fat reduces your appetite more than carbs or protein?) and assuming that all other inputs (exercise level etc) remain constant'.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]