The planet Earth is cooling. The interglacial climate period that has kept us warm for the last several thousand years, allowing civilization to rise and flourish, is over. Earth is about to return to the deep-freeze conditions of the last ice age that ended some 12,000 years ago when all of Canada and much of Europe were covered by the sort of thick continental glaciers that today blanket remote Greenland and Antarctica.
This scientific “truth” was drilled into me, a young geology undergrad in Calgary, by esteemed professors in basic courses at the beginning of the 1980s.
In the 1970s the media were abuzz with global-cooling scares. Cooling was supposedly a scientific fact.
Thankfully, the old fears of an impending new ice age have so far proved unfounded. But now, global warming has replaced the global-cooling craze.
This article is not, by any means, a final word. I am neither a climatologist nor a logician. My purpose is to encourage the readers to explore scientific logic, to always be skeptical, to question the methods and the motives, and to always be ready to wonder and be surprised.
Natural science is empirical. Empiricism says knowledge is derived from what we can sense or observe. Knowledge is gained by passive observation of natural occurrences or by active, preferably controlled, experiments.
Epistemology is the study of human knowledge. It deals with how we know things.
Much philosophical ink has been spilled on these subjects over the past several millennia. Too much of that ink flowed uselessly, or it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Only a few key points are summarized below.
Karl Popper (1950, 1968) was probably the past century’s foremost empirical philosopher. He taught that a legitimate scientific hypothesis must be falsifiable, i.e., capable of being disproved by subsequent observations or experiments. If a “theory rules out certain possible occurrences, … it will be falsified if these possible occurrences do in fact occur”.
An abstract hypothesis that is not capable of being falsified is not science at all. It is metaphysics – something worthless to science, even damaging, which scientists should avoid like the plague. If one discards falsifiability, then any arbitrary fantasy, postulation or assumption can call itself science. When empirical logical rigor dies, science dies.
In Popper’s scheme, where abstract hypotheses are constantly modified, discarded and created anew to account for accumulating facts, science should advance more or less smoothly. In the actual progress of science, however, there are fits and starts. Some new discoveries are more consequential than others.
Besides, as Kuhn (1962) noted, scientists need some common intellectual framework in which to interpret data and communicate with one another. These tentative abstract frameworks, or “paradigms”, can exist for a period of time, as pressure builds up from the growing volume of contrary facts.
When the pressure gets too much, a shift occurs to a new paradigm, and the cycle of new discovery and testable conceptualization starts again.
A fact is something we observe. Our observations are necessarily limited and subjective, but this is not an argument to abandon empiricism. A lack of empiricism leads to relativism and arbitrary postulations. On the contrary, the imperfection of observation is an argument to maximize the gathering of facts and tighten the empirical rigor.
Do observed facts represent “reality”? What is the phenomenon? These questions are at least as old as Ancient Greece, going back to Plato’s cave and Heraclitus’ note that “everything changes and nothing remains still” (see also Russell, 1961).
All these caveats complicate empirical thinking, but we have no alternative. Empiricism is the only way to keep ourselves disciplined and grounded in “reality”, whatever that is, as we expand our knowledge and avoid pitfalls.
Inductive reasoning works from the particular to the general, as it looks for a falsifiable scheme that explains all available relevant facts. This is the empirical way to develop testable hypotheses.
Deduction works the other way, from the general to the specific, by applying firm rules of logic to reach a conclusion. Deduction can be used to test hypotheses by making falsifiable predictions.
In Popper’s words, a fundamental question in empirical science is “how do we test scientific statements by their deductive consequences?”
For example, an abstract hypothesis may deductively predict that the rocks in a particular locality should be Silurian limestone. If Jurassic sandstone is found instead, the hypothesis is falsified.
If Silurian limestone does indeed crop out, the hypothesis is by no means proved correct: it has only passed one particular test and awaits many others.
Two major pitfalls can trip up the unwary and the lazy.
This is where today’s climate science often goes wrong. In Geoscience and climatology alike, hypotheses are too often canonized unskeptically.
The meticulous collection of facts is lazily disregarded in favor of grand but premature or idle theorizing and fancy-looking modeling. Arbitrary hypotheses are sometimes even used to insist without evidence on what the facts not are but what they should be.
“All models are wrong but some are useful” – George Box
A model is an abstraction, a conceptual representation of some phenomenon. It is neither truth nor an empirical fact. A model is something we formulate.
In natural sciences, it is a mentally contrived system, typically composed of linked elements, designed to represent some aspects of an empirically sensed reality.
Parameters are factors used to relate variables to their functions, so parameters can define how the function changes in response to the variables.
If enough of a system’s elements and links are known, the variables can be defined or at least constrained. This is the main purpose of scientific modeling. It can be done if a system is sufficiently well determined; i.e., the loose variables do not overwhelm what is known.
If the unconstrained variables are too many and the knowns too few, the system is underdetermined and it defies unique solution.
An abstract model is only as good as its known parameters, acknowledged variables, and assumptions. What do we assume about the system’s elements? And about ways in which they are linked?
Dealing with a complex phenomenon such as climate, with its multitude of unknown factors, influences, and links, one must be extremely cautious.
It is a common lack of knowledge that makes things deceptively appear simpler than they are. Climate is extremely complex, with a multitude of interconnected influences and feedbacks.
A conceptual model with too few interlinked elements reduces uncertainty and it may even enable a unique solution, but it may be too coarse to be useful. Simple models might have their uses, however, at the appropriate levels of the phenomenological hierarchy.
For example, for all we know, all atoms of the same isotope are the same. For some purposes, their behavior can thus be modeled with some simplicity. Yet, atomic physics and molecular chemistry do not define the variety of geologic features in the rocks: every basin and every mineral deposit is different from any other.
At these, higher levels of the phenomenological hierarchy, many small events – such as the Brownian motion of molecules, for example – average each other out and become irrelevant, while new complexity emerges.
The ever-more-rapid advances in computing power enable extremely elaborate and complex models. Unfortunately, modelers sometimes forget the phenomenon they are trying to represent and instead fall in love with the computer-generated abstractions. In the absence of sufficient factual (i.e. observational) constraints, model complexity must never become a self-purpose.
Mathematics is abstract. What is three? A number is an abstract means to count observed occurrences, but it is not these occurrences themselves (as in “three fingers”). Complex mathematics, by itself, does not make a model true.
It is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Without adequate factual constraints or realistic parameterization, too much math simply piles one abstraction on top of another.
As with any abstract scientific scheme or hypothesis, be it quantitative or qualitative, a model is empirically tested by its falsifiability. Do the observed facts accord with the model’s predictions?
The manner in which the term “model” is commonly misused in tectonics is highly misleading. In this misusage, what is called a model is merely a genetic tectonic scenario intended to account for some rock configuration.
Strictly speaking, these are not formal models, just loose and often speculative hypotheses or even fantasies. If they are not falsifiable, they should not be proposed.
In climatology, unknown variables are legion. It is a common mistake to take a climate model too seriously, even more so to canonize it. An arbitrarily chosen model becomes a false and misleading paradigm, leading scientists astray or diverting them to spend their time fighting to debunk it.
Science has been “settled” before, and not just for global cooling. In the 1890s, for example, some very prominent physicists thought that nothing much fundamentally new remained to be discovered in their science: classical mechanics and electromagnetics covered the main bases, and future research would be a matter of elaboration. However, in 1895 Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays, and in 1905 came Einstein.
Science is never settled. There is no last word. A good scientist is always a skeptic, never a denier. Personally, I am agnostic about anthropogenic global warming. I simply don’t know. Given the current state of knowledge, nobody knows – and I am happy to admit it. Clearly, though, the “official” global-warming dogma is bogus.
In contrast to the current debates about climate change, the science was much more compelling in identifying the causes of the depletion of the atmosphere’s ozone layer, which vitally protects us from harmful extraterrestrial radiation.
A particular type of man-made molecule was found to be at fault, with a particular sort of chemical reaction. The scientific case was empirically clear and relatively simple, and the consensus was genuine. The international Montreal Protocol in 1987 mandated a worldwide phase-out of the culprit chemicals.
Climate has been changing the entire time there’s been planet Earth, getting colder and warmer by turns. Identification of glacial deposits and facies in ancient sedimentary rocks makes this clear, as do studies of paleo-faunas and paleo-floras.
Glacial deposits and landforms are spectacular around Calgary, and the magnificent moraines in Wisconsin are the reason that the state’s name is attached to the last period of major glaciation.
What drove past climate changes? Perhaps fluctuations of solar output, or natural changes in the composition and particle load of the atmosphere, or variations in the Earth’s orbit. It has all been going on forever.
A famous Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius, in 1896 took a stab at explaining the ice ages in the geologic past. Based on the contemporary knowledge of chemistry and physics, he suggested that an increase in atmospheric CO2 should lead to an increase in the world’s temperature.
Since human industrial activity produces CO2 and other gases that supposedly warm the planet through a “greenhouse effect”, modern anti-capitalism activists conclude that the most advanced industrial countries are the culprits behind the man-made global warming.
Arrhenius’ scientific idea is a supposition that should be falsifiable, or testable based on observed facts. A tendency or a theoretical potentiality may well deserve serious consideration – but they are not facts. So far, the factual record is mixed. Perhaps it will take a lot longer before we reliably know what is actually happening with the climate.
Predictions such as Arrhenius’ are hypotheses. Only observations are facts. Climate models predicting global temperatures a century ahead are too dependent on assumptions to be reliable. They might as well be 10,000-year predictions.
One only needs to follow the news to know the official global-warming dogma stands falsified. No global warming has been measured for the last two decades.
The infamous “hockey-stick graph” in the 1990s predicted that we are about to imminently enter a new period of rapidly accelerated global warming. So far at least, nothing like this has occurred.
But a canonized model must be upheld. We are now told that the “missing” heat is hiding in the world’s oceans, soon to come out with a vengeance. Maybe it is, but in the absence of hard evidence, this is not science but merely Popper’s metaphysics.
The Arctic and Antarctic ice were supposed to melt away fast. The anomaly of the 2015-2016 strong El Niño aside, the recent years saw a growth of polar ice, preceded by a reduction since the 1990s.
And the Arctic and Antarctic ice do not shrink and grow in tandem. Are the re-grown ice caps here to stay? Will they keep growing? Will they shrink again?
It is much too soon to tell. At any rate, our modern factual knowledge of the climate is too limited to permit long-term predictions.
Leonardo DiCaprio, a Hollywood actor, was ridiculed when he proclaimed southern Alberta’s ageless chinook winds to be evidence of global warming. Less farcically, America’s venerable space agency, NASA, is often accused of fudging the data to make the recent decades’ global warming look bigger than it was.
This was allegedly done by artificially depressing the graphed temperature values from earlier in the 20th century, so any later increases would look steeper. Many academics defend NASA (they would, wouldn’t they?) but in the absence of open scientific transparency, how does one judge?
A false claim by the alarmists is that 97% of climate scientists believe global warming to be man-made and urgent. The roots of this claim vary but reportedly they tend to involve exaggerating the strength of stated convictions and the extent of reported individuals’ alarm.
The poll sample is sometimes small. Ask if there is global warming and if any of it is man-made, and most reasonable people’s answers (my own included) would be at least non-negative. However, that is no evidence of a consensus for urgency.
On the other extreme, to deny man-made drivers of climate change completely, as some activists do, is as problematic as it is to postulate them without question.
These activists deserve full credit for standing up to the warmist dogma, but their own absolutism itself should invite skepticism. A scientist is not a scientist if he is not a healthy skeptic.
What is going on with the climate? The point is, we don’t know.
Read rest at Recorder
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jerry krause
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Hi Henry,
You conclude your excellent, but quite long dissertation, with a question: “What is going on with the climate?” and with your answer: “The point is, we don’t know.”
I ask the question: Why do we not know? My answer is: First, climatology is merely the average of weather (meteorology) on a given day of the year at a given location. The principal factors of meteorology, hence climatology, are temperature, precipitation, and wind. The principle energy driver of these factors is solar radiation.
Even though weather has challenged the survival of humans ever since there have been humans. However, meteorology is a very infant science. Good empirical science requires instruments (technology) which allows us to actually observe our environment. I will not list what we did not know about the earth’s atmosphere before 1899, or before WWII.
Because of the discovery of the Jet Stream and invention of radar during WWII, a worldwide system atmospheric soundings were begun after WWII. But it was not until about 1990 we, the USA, began to fund a variety of empirical observational projects due to the development of the new technology which allowed them.
These projects now (some names have been changed since the projects beginnings) are the Soil Climate Analysis Network (SCAN), the Remote Automated Weather Station (RAWS), the Surface Radiation (SURFRAD), and the United States Climate Reference Network (USCRN).
(https://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/scan/)
(https://raws.dri.edu/)
(https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/surfrad/) (https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/uscrn/products/hourly02/)
However, I only learned of many of these projects and their data during the past two years. And only about the existence of RAWS project and its data less than 5 months ago. This because I had not read anyone referring to these projects data.
So my answer to your question—”What is going on with the climate?”—is: The great volume of the empirical data being measured (observed) during the past 25 years is being ignored.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Charles Higley
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It would be useful to recognize that the science behind CFCs hurting the ozone layer was false science perpetrated by Dupont Chemical to force the banning of their out-of-patent refrigerant and allow its replacements with an already patented new refrigerant that was much more expensive, of course. The scientist who produced the “science” demonizing CFCs, twenty years later (well after the patent was up for the new refrigerant), admitted to having cobbled up the false data.
We now know that ozone over the Antarctic is subject to the effects of solar UV radiation and nitrogen gas reactions, none of which have anything to do with human activities or chemicals.
Unfortunately, the lies of the CFC/ozone connection have not been well communicated such that the vast majority of people still think the Kyoto Protocol was a win. Silly rabbits, unaware of the fox sitting next to them.
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jerry krause
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Hi Charles.,
I was teaching chemistry at a community college when most of the General Chemistry textbooks were carrying the water for the atmospheric scientists (not for DuPont) and I was studying because I had to teach about the topic. My accessible journals were Science and Nature. And, of course, the atmospheric scientists writing about this proposed problem were puppets of Dupont. Not really. And I was able to communicate with DuPonts’s chief scientist who was trying to defend the use of the Freon refrigerants.
And yes, when DuPont quit defending their CFCs because they had developed an alternative, I understood immediately that the environmentalists had done DuPont a great favor. But I know it was the environmental community who created the issue and not DuPont. But DuPont was smart enough to see the writing on the wall and acted accordingly.
Have a good day, Jerry
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James McGinn
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Charles,
How about a class action lawsuit. The class (the plaintiffs) would be anybody that incurred increased cost due to this manufactured science.
Something to consider.
Dupont has deep pockets.
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
The ‘Missing Link’ of Meteorology’s Theory of Storms
http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=16329
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Paul Jones
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Keen upholds the above piece from a different perspective. UN-IPCC “guidelines” dictate that its science must fit data to desired conclusions, the obverse of what defines science. NASA, as well as NOAA, apparently merely continue to follow suit. But in this late stage of the post-modern era, where radical relativism reduces science merely to just another narrative, a story, and that reality is constructed, all epistemologies are forced at gunpoint into service to fit the needs of the state, social engineering into a global governmental system, a new world order. Climategate is a major chess piece moved in lock step to the drum of that world order.
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Shawn Marshall
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It is trivial to falsify or verify the ‘back radiation’ claim of climate alarmists. Simple experiments in a building with no solar insolation and no atmospheric ‘back radiation’ would do the trick.
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Geraint Hughes
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Here’s an experiment which proves that CO2 doesn’t cause back radiant heating to raise the temperature of objects emitting IR. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgjT_665T6U Enjoy.
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jerry krause
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Hi Geraint,
I do not accept that one can model (explain) the natural system with any artificial laboratory experiments any more than the natural system can be explained by any computer models.
You have to use instruments to directly observe the various factors involved in the natural system to explain (understand) the natural system.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Herb Rose
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Hi Jerry’
The natural system is a complex structure where there are many variables. Experimentation is used to limit the number of variables and observe the effects of isolated phenomena. Do you use spread sheets to see what the effect is on the whole the varying of the value of various data points will produce? Experimentation is critical to understanding how a system works.
Have a good day,
Herb
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jerry krause
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Hi PSI Readers and Herb,
Herb, thank you for your comments because they provide me opportunities to address certain history which I have not yet been able to include in an essay.
The 6th lecture of The Feynman Lectures on Physics was titled: Probability,
He began: “”Chance” is a word which is in common use everyday living. … By chance, we mean something like a guess. Why do we make guesses? We make guesses when we wish to make a judgment but have incomplete information or uncertain knowledge.” Finally, at the end of the lecture, Feynman addressed the topic of the uncertainty principle.
“The ideas of probability are certainly useful in describing the behavior of the 10^22 or so molecules in a sample of gas, for it is clearly impractical even to write down the position or velocity of each molecule. When probability was first applied to such problems, it was considered to be a convenience—a way of dealing with very complex situations. We now believe that the ideas of probability are essential to a description of atomic happenings. According to quantum mechanics, the mathematical theory of particles, there is always some uncertainty in the specification of positions and velocities. We can, at least, say that there is a certain probability that any particle will have a position near some coordinate x.”
Herb you wrote: “The natural system is a complex structure where there are many variables. Experimentation is used to limit the number of variables and observe the effects of isolated phenomena.” But you did not list the number of the principle (most fundamental) variables to which experimentation had limited the many variables, which had made the natural system to have such a complex structure, to a system with a much simpler structure, because of its many fewer variables.
I consider the experimental data, which I commonly review (study), limits these principle (fundamental) observed factors to the solar radiation, that is finally incident upon the earth’s surface, to the temperature, beginning with that of the earth’s surfaces and that of the a shallow atmospheric layers in contact with the surfaces, and to the wind speeds (and sometimes their directions) beginning with the shallow atmospheric layers in contact with the surfaces. Then studying the observed result (precipitation) of the related interactions of these three principle factors.
Much of this data to which I refer and study did not exist 25 years ago. And, I cannot remember you (Herb) ever referring to this recent data, which did not exist when most of the generally accepted ideas about meteorology and climatology were formulated.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Herb Rose
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Hi Henry et al,
Very good article but the basic problem with the AGW advocates is that they are not scientist or logical. They may have degrees and credentials (which they should forfeit in the coming cool down) but they are only propagandists paid by idiotic politicians to give support to their beliefs and allow them to waste money providing an illusion that they are doing something useful. The shills falsify data, use incorrect models, and invent ridiculous excuses to perpetuate their beliefs and income. I am sure that some live in a climate where they heat the nitrogen and oxygen in their homes to stay warm in winter. How can they make a claim that the sun cannot heat the atmosphere because these gases are transparent to infrared radiation? You are not dealing with logical or ethical individuals but people pushing an agenda. Neither logic or evidence will deter them from their efforts to rally the ignorant masses to their cause. The change will occur when the grand solar minimum now occurring causes the masses to realize they have been manipulated and turn on them.
The ozone hole is bogus science. Last time I looked there were not a lot of air conditioners in Antarctica.
The freon found in the Antarctic atmosphere is from governments using it as fuel to steer their spy satellites.
Have a good day,
Herb
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jerry krause
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Hi Herb,
You have just described the problems of some other people as if you yourself are immune to such problems. I have often made ‘intellectual’ mistakes and that is why in science courses my grade point average was not near 4.00 and still is as I make what I judge to be stupid mistakes.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Herb Rose
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Hi Jerry,
I know I make mistakes and admit it when I discover it. The key to progressing in knowledge is understanding that it is quite likely what you believe is wrong and probably will be shown to be wrong in the future. Being wrong is quite acceptable but taking disagreement as a personal attack just inhibits the development of knowledge. Our mistakes are what teach us lasting lessons and are for more important than what we get right. What I notice about AGW advocates is the same thing Andrew Tilley spoke of, an inability to accept reason and evidence that disagrees with their beliefs. You refuse to accept that Einstein’s decree that temperature is the mean kinetic energy of the molecules is wrong even though it is plainly evident that the kinetic energy of the molecules in 100 C steam is greater than the kinetic energy of 100 C water.
Have a good day,
Herb
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jerry krause
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Hi PSI Readers and Herb,
First, the Andrew Tilley to whom Herb referred, is at Three Big Nails In the CO2 Global Warming Coffin, and one of Andrew’s statements was ” is the same thing Andrew Tilley spoke of, an inability to accept reason and evidence that disagrees with their beliefs.
In a comment Andrew had stated: “So, that’s why, in trying to communicate with a non-scientific audience, I steer clear of data and try to rely on reason.”
Maybe I have not stated well that my ‘position’ is that in experimental science a scientist only reasons (ponders) the possible implications of reproducible observed fact (irregardless of whether to observed fact is quantitative or qualitative). The theoretical scientist reasons new ideas for which there is not yet any observed fact but this new idea, to qualify as a scientific idea must predict an observable fact which obviously must be one not yet observed.
Aristotle and friends, on the basis of evidence and reason concluded that (to generalize) bodies twice as heavy fell twice as fast. What was this evidence that everyone could admit was observed? I do not know but I speculate. If you were handled two bottles of equal size (volume), one filled with liquid water and the other with liquid mercury, and asked: Which bottle, when the two bottles were dropped at the same time from some high place, would strike the ground first? What would you reason if lived before the time of Galileo and had been taught all your life that a body twice as heavy fell twice as fast? Would not this idea, based on this sole physical evidence, appear to be rationally obvious?
My general chemistry professor, maybe from day one of the course, had a plywood cube which soon sat on the lecture bench as he told the class that the volume of this cube was 22.4 liters and that it contained 6.02 x 10^23 molecules air molecules (forget about the Argon atoms). It is often an argument that carbon dioxide molecules are only 00.04% of the molecules of the total atmospheric of the air, so something so small could never cause the atmosphere’s temperature to about 33oC greater than if there were no carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere. Which means there are 2.4 X 10^20 (which certainly is not a tiny number) carbon dioxide molecules in that 22.4 liter cube on the professor’s lecture desk. Of course, the non-science is likely know nothing of this and if one is arguing (debating) to make a point, would you point out that which makes your argument less effective? But the problem is maybe you do not even know about the number—6.02 x 10^23 (Avogadro’s number)
Carbon Dioxide molecules are observed by instruments to absorb a portion of the longwave infrared (IR) radiation being emitted by the atmosphere. And the downwelling longwave IR radiation is measured by the same instrument pointed upward as the one pointing downward to measure the very similar upwelling radiation being emitted by the earth’s surface. So the idea of the greenhouse effect is very logical (if certain common evidence is ignored) plus that there is a multitude of observed results which did not exist about 25 years ago which is also being ignored.
Have a good day, Jerry
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