Is there any issue more dependent on widespread lapses in critical thinking than the idea of man-caused global warming?
Nothing wrecks an argument faster than a question revealing a gaping hole in that argument’s fundamental premise. Notice the abundantly obvious derailment in this example:
“We need to do something about the proliferation of ghosts causing an unprecedented number of people to have nightmares lately. This problem leads to widespread sleeplessness, which in turn leads to a downturn in work productivity and overall economic hardship, and you are a cold-hearted capitalist pig if you deny the need for workers to be healthy.”
Any critical thinker will yell, “What?! Prove ghosts exist before you start calling me names!”
The so-called global warming crisis has gotten away with an equally preposterous premise — that human activity drives climate change — for nearly two decades, because that premise at least sounded plausible. After all, humans do damage the environment to some extent in various ways, and the weather does seem a bit weird lately, so maybe it’s possible that our greenhouse gas emissions have a detrimental effect. Plus, reporters tell us that scientists are saying this is so.
Overlooked by many is the very thing that’s kept the issue alive all this time. No different from in a ponzi scheme, the public must never lose confidence in the idea that this issue is a problem in need of a solution. The moment anything approaching a majority of people starts asking tough questions about skeptic scientists expressing legitimate opposition, the entire issue goes into a fatal tailspin, taking down all those who unquestioningly defend the idea.
Think about all the assertions we’ve heard and what happens when anybody starts asking critical questions using information that’s easier than ever to find on the internet.
Unfortunately, the CO2 being emitted by humans DOES drive climate change – even most “deniers” agree with this (the science of which was “discovered’ over 100 years ago). The major item of debate is how much the planet will warm with the additional CO2. Since there is a relative high probability that the warming will be significant by the end of the century (3-5 degrees C), taking no action to reduce CO2 emissions from the current accelerating rate has a very high probability both of causing major harm to the Earth’s ecosystem and of incurring significant costs.
So many points with which to disagree…
Greenhouse effect being a component of climate is not the same as CO2 driving climate change and in fact the IPCC’s Working Group 1 (The Scientific Basis) demonstrates clearly that enhanced greenhouse effect is likely to be trivial:
IPCC’s Forcing-Response relationship: http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/216.htm where ΔTs/ΔF = λ, i.e., climate sensitivity is equal to change in surface temperature divided by the change in forcing required to achieve it.
As Trenberth et al (1997, 2008); Pavlakis et al (http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/4/127/2004/acp-4-127-2004.pdf) and the World Radiation Monitoring Center – Baseline Surface Radiation Network (WRMC-BSRN) all tell us, earth’s natural greenhouse effect (back radiation) is achieved by about 330 Watts per meter squared (W/m2) and most people recognize earth’s greenhouse effect to be 33°C, making the IPCC’s all-feedback-inclusive real-world climate sensitivity 33/330 or 0.1°C/(W/m2).
The IPCC further assures us that 2xCO2 yields a change in forcing (ΔF) derived by the formula 5.35LN(2), or 3.7W/m2 or by using their climate sensitivity parameter +0.37°C.
Those are the real-world figures. The ones that you cite are from models replete with marvelous magical multipliers of no known real-world application.
There is no likelihood of high-degree change in global mean temperature and the only significant costs to be incurred are from attempting to address a non-extant problem.
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