3 ms·
Your point doesn't have a point. If the question is "is there global warming, and are human beings substantially responsible?", the answer is "yes". You're say
by jpxxx 14y ago
Your point doesn't have a point. If the question is "is there global warming, and are human beings substantially responsible?", the answer is "yes". You're saying "but it could always be no".
The answer is "yes", and some point past that is where the discussion currently exists.
- ekianjo 14y agoMaybe you did not get what I mean. I am saying there is no such thing as Scientific certitude just on the basis of people agreeing with each other. Scientific certitude is driven by an explanation of what is actually occuring, experimentation and reproduction of experiments. There is no way to "experiment" with Climate Change therefore all your models are just models and cannot be proved by experimentation. They are just theories, like Einstein's theory of relativity, which took a long time to be actually proven by experimental data.
- jpxxx 14y agoThe downer of having only one Earth to work with is that you have only one Earth to work with. Models, measurements, their comparisons to expected outcomes are all that we've got in this particular scientific department. The "experiment" is comparing your best model with what happened before and what happens next, not with running the same thing a thousand times.
- ekianjo 14y agoAs I mentioned in another post, a "model" only works within its known limits. If the Earth is getting warmer outside of the limits of the established model, your model is not valid anymore. You know the xkcd joke about extrapolation, I guess? I remember Al Gore showing the level of CO2 increase by jumping on an elevator and saying "imagine how much this increase will bring the temperature up!". But truth is, we don't know, nobody knows how much it will increase. There is no model data for that.