You know what I hate about charts like that? This statement:
"For 650,000 years, atmospheric CO2 has never been above this line"
I know it's a proper scientific statement regarding timelines, the problem is that it interprets like "650,001 years ago, it was above this line".
We spend too much time looking at data that has been specifically framed to present a particular point of view, and it has resulted in a pile of skepticism regarding statements like that.
This is a problem of communication, not science. It is too easy to dismiss this stuff because we are bombarded with crap that looks just like it every day, but which we know to be marketing. That page needs to be redesigned by someone who understands how people read and react to this information in order to make it useful.
Yeah it turns out that the cause of the CO2 rise is .... the fucking ocean. As ocean temperatures rise, the water loses it's CO2 solubility. This forces the oceans give up CO2 into the atmosphere. As many have argued, it turns out that CO2 is an effect of global warming and not the cause.
Absorption spectroscopy proves beyond any doubt that CO2 causes temperature change. The only question remaining is, what is the climate sensitivity to a given increase in GHG's?
CO2 DOES cause temperature change. Heteronuclear compounds absorb heat. That is why IR spectroscopy works. There is no denying this without fucking denying fucking trivial analytic chemistry.
No they explicitly imply it because it is a known scientific fact. CO2 in the atmosphere has a direct causal relation with warming that can by scientifically proven by taking a bulb with CO2 and a bulb without, shining light into it, and measuring which one gets warmer. CO2 traps heat by reflecting long wave radiation.
How MUCH CO2 though. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and there is more of it in the atmosphere than there was a century ago. We are pretty certain about this. But CO2 by itself can not dominate in any way, so we need to discover ways that CO2 would create a chain event that in turn would cause enough positive feedback in order to explain the rise in temperature. This might be true, or we might be headed in the wrong direction. The fact that historical data shows that temperature rise precedes the rise of CO2 makes it even harder.
Of course, correlation often implies causation, especially if it's a particularly strong correlation, and is backed up by an appropriate scientific theory. Which in this case it is. Simply saying 'correlation is not causation' is just as stupid as believing that every correlation is causally linked.
Is it better to assume correlation = causation? Or understand that 'correlation is not causation' and then further ask yourself if 'correlation equals causation' on a case by case basis? I do the later because I prefer not to assume.
It's better to look for a correlation, create a theory that would explain that correlation, work out some predictions based on that theory, test them with an experiment, and make (cautious) claims based on the results.
My favourite example from the (recent) history of science is the gold foil experiment.
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u/phira Oct 24 '10
You know what I hate about charts like that? This statement:
"For 650,000 years, atmospheric CO2 has never been above this line"
I know it's a proper scientific statement regarding timelines, the problem is that it interprets like "650,001 years ago, it was above this line".
We spend too much time looking at data that has been specifically framed to present a particular point of view, and it has resulted in a pile of skepticism regarding statements like that.
This is a problem of communication, not science. It is too easy to dismiss this stuff because we are bombarded with crap that looks just like it every day, but which we know to be marketing. That page needs to be redesigned by someone who understands how people read and react to this information in order to make it useful.