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You and GP both have spherical cow ideas about how GHGs impact the climate. Yes, we can create an ideal lab "climate" and demonstrate some GHGs cause warming.

You and GP both have spherical cow ideas about how GHGs impact the climate. Yes, we can create an ideal lab "climate" and demonstrate some GHGs cause warming. The global climate is much, much more complicated. What is the impact of GHG-caused warming on cloud formation? What is the impact of same on jetstreams? Chaos Theory was started as a result of the complexity of weather prediction, which is simply short-term climate forecasting. The two variables I mentioned are just two, and they are dizzingly complex to model. It is not as simple as "GHG++ == HEAT++". Further, taking a step back: If we could agree on exactly how GHGs impact the global climate, then can we get a number on how much humans impact the climate at all? The way climate change alarmists seem to think, the climate would be absolutely static were it not for our industrial revolution. So what is it? If humans got GHGs to zero, how much less would the climate change? Are we responsible for 1% of overall change? 50%? 100%? Pretending these are simple or obvious questions is absurd. I've read hundreds of papers on climate change. These topics never seem to come up. Rarely do climate scientists mention the sun, which seems to be treated like a static heat bulb in the sky that gives off an steady, constant flow of energy, which couldn't be further from the truth! Even the name of the topic, Climate Change, describing it as some kind of problem in itself--if the climate were static it'd be a HUGE alarm! The climate has always changed. Then a step back even further: The climate has changed throughout civilization and it appears that large-scale civilizations grow in population during periods of warming, and shrink (sometimes drastically), during periods of cooling. So how much warming is acceptable? It seems the goal is to get to zero change (lol) or to cooling. Why is that the necessarily best way? The entire field is super-complex, and because of the political environment, even asking questions such as the above make it impossible to actually do science--only one view is acceptable.

eutropia 5y ago
Appealing to complexity doesn’t make basics like conservation of matter go away. The Climate is extremely complex, and will not be entirely understood in our lifetimes; but I’m not interested in litigating my way to a perfect climate model. I’ll leave that to climatologists or whatever. I’ll state my policy position (the end result of whatever one’s understanding of the problem is anyway) and leave it at that: My position is that mankind ought to follow what I was taught in scouts: “leave no trace”. Return GHGs to preindustrial levels, control all other pollutants in a similarly strict sense. Work towards solving the problems we have with deforestation and destruction of habitats, etc. All while maintaining freedom of reproduction for everyone, and continuing to improve quality of life for humans everywhere. Not exactly an easy feat. That world (the preindustrial world) changed according to its own whims and patterns, but it was beautiful and humans thrived in it. Knowing that a much warmer planet would look different and likely be less hospitable makes me want to avoid that outcome; however I’ve made my peace with the high likelihood that I wont see “garden earth”. We’re working with a system we don’t understand against a timetable we can’t see while people make money every time they slow us down.
- burntsushi 5y ago
  > My position is that mankind ought to follow what I was taught in scouts: “leave no trace”. This position isn't really coherent on its own, because with enough time, it doesn't matter what we do: there won't be a trace of us left. So really, you need to say what you mean by "trace" and on what time scale. Your time scale can't be zero, because then we couldn't build anything. But it can't be arbitrarily long either, because then it ceases to be any kind of restraint at all.
  - eutropia 5y ago
    I thought I laid out what I meant by that in the following paragraphs -- it was intended as a finger pointed at the moon, not a prescriptive maxim to be taken literally. A goal to work towards instead of "everyone do whatever is profitable for them in the near term"... In the very long term it would be awesome if our industrial systems emitted only manageable waste heat and the produced good, with all waste streams recycled or otherwise kept from contaminating the environment; but this is pure sci-fi utopian optimism on my part.
    - burntsushi 5y ago
      Fair enough.
burntsushi 5y ago
> You and GP both have spherical cow ideas about how GHGs impact the climate. I didn't tell you what I believe. I was trying to communicate how y'all might be talking past one another. If anything, teasing apart these positions (and the positions inbetween) is exactly the opposite of a spherical cow. Which seems to be exactly what you're saying. So it seems like you've completely misinterpreted my comment.
mcguire 5y ago
"I've read hundreds of papers on climate change. These topics never seem to come up. Rarely do climate scientists mention the sun, which seems to be treated like a static heat bulb in the sky that gives off an steady, constant flow of energy, which couldn't be further from the truth!" These statements are contradictory. "Modelling the impact of solar variability on climate" (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364682698001175 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13646...) "Climate change and solar variability: What's new under the sun?" (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012821X06004328 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00128...) "Significant impact of forcing uncertainty in a large ensemble of climate model simulations" (https://www.pnas.org/content/118/23/e2016549118.short https://www.pnas.org/content/118/23/e2016549118.short) "Has solar variability caused climate change that affected human culture?" (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0273117707001895 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02731...) "Do Models Underestimate the Solar Contribution to Recent Climate Change?" (https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/16/24/1520-0442_2003_016_4079_dmutsc_2.0.co_2.xml?tab_body=pdf https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/16/24/1520-0...) Hell, Roy Spencer has made much of his career off blaming what climate change he admits exists on solar variability.

eutropia 5y ago

Appealing to complexity doesn’t make basics like conservation of matter go away. The Climate is extremely complex, and will not be entirely understood in our lifetimes; but I’m not interested in litigating my way to a perfect climate model. I’ll leave that to climatologists or whatever. I’ll state my policy position (the end result of whatever one’s understanding of the problem is anyway) and leave it at that: My position is that mankind ought to follow what I was taught in scouts: “leave no trace”. Return GHGs to preindustrial levels, control all other pollutants in a similarly strict sense. Work towards solving the problems we have with deforestation and destruction of habitats, etc. All while maintaining freedom of reproduction for everyone, and continuing to improve quality of life for humans everywhere. Not exactly an easy feat. That world (the preindustrial world) changed according to its own whims and patterns, but it was beautiful and humans thrived in it. Knowing that a much warmer planet would look different and likely be less hospitable makes me want to avoid that outcome; however I’ve made my peace with the high likelihood that I wont see “garden earth”. We’re working with a system we don’t understand against a timetable we can’t see while people make money every time they slow us down.

burntsushi 5y ago
> My position is that mankind ought to follow what I was taught in scouts: “leave no trace”. This position isn't really coherent on its own, because with enough time, it doesn't matter what we do: there won't be a trace of us left. So really, you need to say what you mean by "trace" and on what time scale. Your time scale can't be zero, because then we couldn't build anything. But it can't be arbitrarily long either, because then it ceases to be any kind of restraint at all.
- eutropia 5y ago
  I thought I laid out what I meant by that in the following paragraphs -- it was intended as a finger pointed at the moon, not a prescriptive maxim to be taken literally. A goal to work towards instead of "everyone do whatever is profitable for them in the near term"... In the very long term it would be awesome if our industrial systems emitted only manageable waste heat and the produced good, with all waste streams recycled or otherwise kept from contaminating the environment; but this is pure sci-fi utopian optimism on my part.
  - burntsushi 5y ago
    Fair enough.

burntsushi 5y ago

> You and GP both have spherical cow ideas about how GHGs impact the climate. I didn't tell you what I believe. I was trying to communicate how y'all might be talking past one another. If anything, teasing apart these positions (and the positions inbetween) is exactly the opposite of a spherical cow. Which seems to be exactly what you're saying. So it seems like you've completely misinterpreted my comment.

mcguire 5y ago

"I've read hundreds of papers on climate change. These topics never seem to come up. Rarely do climate scientists mention the sun, which seems to be treated like a static heat bulb in the sky that gives off an steady, constant flow of energy, which couldn't be further from the truth!" These statements are contradictory. "Modelling the impact of solar variability on climate" (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364682698001175 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13646...) "Climate change and solar variability: What's new under the sun?" (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012821X06004328 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00128...) "Significant impact of forcing uncertainty in a large ensemble of climate model simulations" (https://www.pnas.org/content/118/23/e2016549118.short https://www.pnas.org/content/118/23/e2016549118.short) "Has solar variability caused climate change that affected human culture?" (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0273117707001895 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02731...) "Do Models Underestimate the Solar Contribution to Recent Climate Change?" (https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/16/24/1520-0442_2003_016_4079_dmutsc_2.0.co_2.xml?tab_body=pdf https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/16/24/1520-0...) Hell, Roy Spencer has made much of his career off blaming what climate change he admits exists on solar variability.