It is ridiculous to assume a couple centuries of collected instrument data (sort of) overlaid on icecore data etc..points to the industrial revolution as a causative agent for 'global warming'. In my opinion there is not even close to enough data to speak to causation. Correlation? Sure. But that's different.
I think of few of you here might be misunderstanding the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change. It has nothing to do with observing CO2 rises and temperature increases and assuming they are correlated. Those observations are merely the confirmation of the theory. Global temperature increases were being predicted at the start of the industrial revolution, though people didn't believe it would happen quite so fast.
How good are we at predicting Hurricanes...based on climate models and past seasons and lots of 'scientific data'?
How good are we at predicting earthquakes based on known earthquake zones, past earthquakes?
How good are we predicting the weather more than a couple days out?
How good are we at predicting stock market movements?
Long term climate change is a lot less like predicting the stock market or earthquakes than it is like predicting how hot a pot will get when set over a heat source of known temperature. This is simple physics we're dealing with. Global average temperatures are not a random walk, not a stochastic realization, not a roll of the dice. They are a cumulative expression of finite and measurable environmental inputs.
It just so happens to be my opinion that the complexity of a system like 'climate' is so outrageously beyond our current grasp that drawing such conclusions as "Humans Cause Climate Change" is tenuous at best.
I'd agree with you if you were talking about weather, or the predicted high on June 21st in Juno in 2100. But global average temperatures under rising CO2 emissions? That's more like predicting an LA traffic jam during rush hour. The specific details really aren't significant. That shit is backing up every Friday afternoon like clockwork and you'd be blind to expect otherwise.
Perhaps this graph will assist with that determination:
I'm confused. Are you suggesting that your cited graph which shows 400,000 years of temperature and CO2 levels moving in lockstep together is evidence that the two measurements are unrelated? Coincidental?
These experimental results/theoretical predictions...source?
Here's one possible source for you:
Arrhenius, 1896. I cite it as a particularly early citation that global emissions were predicted to result in global temperature increases. It predates any of the current debate. Hell, it predates the theory of relativity.
the mainstream global warming activists want more restrictions and higher taxes. That's why the science is being scrutinized and people are denying that it's a legitimate phenomenon.
I'm not sure about that, and I think this is the really interesting part of the story...
Ordinary people are denying global warming is real because they have been deceived by a mutlibillion dollar advertising campaign, perpetrated by an industry that ultimately knows too much science to believe its own propaganda. By contrast, the outspoken activists calling for an end to fossil fuel use are deceived as to the vital role that fossil fuels play in our society. It's a complicated double cross.
Our global economy runs on fossil fuels, both figuratively and literally. There is no more valued commodity, no larger corporations, no more widespread and vital item to churning the economic engine. But the people who profit from this system have long understood that this miracle fuel source, responsible for everything from the industrial revolution onwards, is a finite resource with devastating environmental consequences reaching thousands of years into the future.
If people really understood those consequences, they might stop using fossil fuels suddenly, and that would be catastrophic. Even the most die hard hippy activist doesn't want to crash the world economy just to save the polar bears. Billions would die without fossil fuels.
So the oil and gas companies make hay while the sun shines. They keep the engine turning, they get fabulously wealthy, and we all try to quietly siphon off little slivers of that profit to find and implement alternatives so that our eventual weaning will be a slightly softer landing, instead of a hard reset.
President Obama, for example, once championed the climate change cause. Then he won a major election, and somebody quietly took him into a back room somewhere and explained that oil companies, though corrupt, are the basis of our entire civilization and that curtailing fossil fuel use could potentially disrupt the entire geopolitical balance. Nation states would fail. Superpowers would crumble. Nobody is seriously considering going down that road. And he hasn't really mentioned it since.
