Hamiltonian
Member
Confidence not based on fact is nothing more than science by consensus.
What do you mean based on fact. Quantum mechanics illustrates the mechanism of radiative forcing quite well.
How do we know that it can't be explained by natural causes? We know so little about this subject that to come to that conclusion is absurd. So we are experiencing some warming these days....great! Things have been much warmer in the past. Did you know that in the past they even used to grow wine grapes in England? Was that not a natural occurrence?
Natural cycles are just that, cycles with a sinusoidal shape. The issue is not that at a peak we've had higher temperatures, or higher carbon dioxide levels. The issue is that there is a natural point on a curve where we ought to be, and we're heading way above that point.
Page 15. The charts indeed show increased measurements of CO2 and associated radiative forcing but this does not necessarily equate to causation of global warming. The last couple articles I posted dealt with the CO2 issue. And according to Singer/American Geophysical Society CO2 concentrations have been at least 20x higher in the past than today. So today's increases are not out of historical norm.
This is not simply correlation implies causality. The Earth absorbs energy from the sun. It has a natural tendency to release some of this energy back into the space in the form of black body radiation. Carbon dioxide has a spectral line within the frequency of the radiation heading back to space, so carbon dioxide absorbs that radiation and reflects it back to Earth, thus creating global warming.
OK, let's stay away from the wingnuts (does that include Al Gore?). Here is a much more rational article on the subject:
Perhaps it includes Al Gore. I have not seen his movie, so I can't say.
Understand that what we have to do to avoid Global Warming is inevitable and will have to happen sometime. Would this country not be a better place if we reduced our dependence upon foreign oil? We could take away such power from the Middle East if we had a cheap alternative to oil.