Lee is spot on about us not having time to go into everything deeply, and his plea for epistemic humility.
Nobody has the time and the expertise to check everything they read, so then discussions often devolve into a googling contest, which is like an epistemic version of a WW1 trench battle -- the side having the largest amounts of bullets wins, but at great cost.
For instance, I followed that link that Matt provided to convince us that we really know for sure that CO2 is the main driver of warming, but the argument there basically argues that in climate simulation studies, the only way we can account for the warming is by assuming CO2 is the driver. In other words, we don't know any better way to simulate it. That is not a refutation of Moore's point. It could well be that we simply don't know how to simulate all the relevant factors (it's really hard, and the models have so far been quite bad at predicting the future). I also personally reconstructed the NOAA changes in the raw temperature data record, something that isn't mentioned in the provided refutation link, and there's a lot more to say about that than "They were right in adjusting the data", as most left-wing media sources reported (e.g., https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/feb/08/no-climate-conspiracy-noaa-temperature-adjustments-bring-data-closer-to-pristine). The quote in that latter article that "Over the last decade there are plenty of issues with the raw data, but they tend to roughly cancel out in their trend effects." can easily be disproved statistically -- there is a clear trend in those raw-data changes, and the trend is clearly climate-narrative-confirming.
Now I certainly don't want to go into that rabbit hole with y'all, as I really have better things to do. I just wanted to make the point that IF one does go into studying the claims in googled links in depth, things are usually not as clear-cut as they appear on the surface. And that holds for both sides of any debate. Sadly, I have to concede that the postmodernists were right that "truth" is often subjective, and largely determined by the power of narrative.
There is another dimension and that is what constitutes fact. What is fact and what is interpretation? This also gets blurred. Throughout history humans have interpreted all sorts of phenomena and authoritatively deemed their interpretation as fact. This is true of the sciences as well. Eg, Ptolemy vs Copernicus (note that the leading forces opposed to Copernicus via Galileo were the scientists). Or Lemarck vs
The point is that scientific interpretations of phenomena many times are treated and commanded as facts. Just look at the recent scientific expertise behind gender transition or the whole Covid policies.
In addition, we may be wrong about what we call facts. A primary way of knowing is through our senses. However, our senses are fraught with errors. We need to be open to questioning what we call facts themselves.
Lastly, science by consensus may not be so reliable for generating quality knowledge.
Here's the part I don't understand. (I'm most definitely not a climatologist.). If the atmosphere traps heat by reflecting it back to earth, then why doesn't the very same atmosphere block the radiation from reaching earth in the first place? It is, after all, not directional.
One thought experiment done a few ways--we model the atmosphere as a sphere, say, 10 miles above the earth.
Case 1: 100% reflectivity. In this instance, no infrared (IR) reaches earth, so there's no (OK--minimal) surface heating.
Case 2: 0% reflectivity. In this instance, all the IR reaching the atmosphere reaches the earth's surface, but there's zero heat trapping since it can't reflect it back to earth, so again, at most minimal heating.
Case 3: 50% reflectivity. Here it gets a tad more interesting. 50% of the IR reaches the earth and bounces. Of that 50% that bounces, 50% of ~it~ , i.e. 25% of what reached the outside of the atmosphere in the first place, escapes on the first bounce, leaving 25% bouncing back to earth. But then that bounces and another 50% of the 25%, or 12.5% escapes. Etc. The sequence rapidly converges to zero left behind.
Cases 4 and 5 imagine 25% and 75% reflectance. In each case, you still get a series converging to zero, just at slightly different rates.
Well, you say, the rate's the big difference--there's plenty time to warm up the earth, etc. Except that there isn't: IR is still light traveling at c, which is motoring along at 1 ft/nanosecond--so bouncing back and forth over 20 miles takes about 2 microseconds. Equilibrium--series convergence in this case--happens faster than an eye blink.
So, how is this supposed to work to produce global warming and climate change again? I'm s sure I'm missing something, but I'll be damned if I can figure it out.
Lee is spot on about us not having time to go into everything deeply, and his plea for epistemic humility.
Nobody has the time and the expertise to check everything they read, so then discussions often devolve into a googling contest, which is like an epistemic version of a WW1 trench battle -- the side having the largest amounts of bullets wins, but at great cost.
For instance, I followed that link that Matt provided to convince us that we really know for sure that CO2 is the main driver of warming, but the argument there basically argues that in climate simulation studies, the only way we can account for the warming is by assuming CO2 is the driver. In other words, we don't know any better way to simulate it. That is not a refutation of Moore's point. It could well be that we simply don't know how to simulate all the relevant factors (it's really hard, and the models have so far been quite bad at predicting the future). I also personally reconstructed the NOAA changes in the raw temperature data record, something that isn't mentioned in the provided refutation link, and there's a lot more to say about that than "They were right in adjusting the data", as most left-wing media sources reported (e.g., https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/feb/08/no-climate-conspiracy-noaa-temperature-adjustments-bring-data-closer-to-pristine). The quote in that latter article that "Over the last decade there are plenty of issues with the raw data, but they tend to roughly cancel out in their trend effects." can easily be disproved statistically -- there is a clear trend in those raw-data changes, and the trend is clearly climate-narrative-confirming.
Now I certainly don't want to go into that rabbit hole with y'all, as I really have better things to do. I just wanted to make the point that IF one does go into studying the claims in googled links in depth, things are usually not as clear-cut as they appear on the surface. And that holds for both sides of any debate. Sadly, I have to concede that the postmodernists were right that "truth" is often subjective, and largely determined by the power of narrative.
There is another dimension and that is what constitutes fact. What is fact and what is interpretation? This also gets blurred. Throughout history humans have interpreted all sorts of phenomena and authoritatively deemed their interpretation as fact. This is true of the sciences as well. Eg, Ptolemy vs Copernicus (note that the leading forces opposed to Copernicus via Galileo were the scientists). Or Lemarck vs
Darwin.
(My fingers are too big for my phone)
The point is that scientific interpretations of phenomena many times are treated and commanded as facts. Just look at the recent scientific expertise behind gender transition or the whole Covid policies.
In addition, we may be wrong about what we call facts. A primary way of knowing is through our senses. However, our senses are fraught with errors. We need to be open to questioning what we call facts themselves.
Lastly, science by consensus may not be so reliable for generating quality knowledge.
Here's the part I don't understand. (I'm most definitely not a climatologist.). If the atmosphere traps heat by reflecting it back to earth, then why doesn't the very same atmosphere block the radiation from reaching earth in the first place? It is, after all, not directional.
One thought experiment done a few ways--we model the atmosphere as a sphere, say, 10 miles above the earth.
Case 1: 100% reflectivity. In this instance, no infrared (IR) reaches earth, so there's no (OK--minimal) surface heating.
Case 2: 0% reflectivity. In this instance, all the IR reaching the atmosphere reaches the earth's surface, but there's zero heat trapping since it can't reflect it back to earth, so again, at most minimal heating.
Case 3: 50% reflectivity. Here it gets a tad more interesting. 50% of the IR reaches the earth and bounces. Of that 50% that bounces, 50% of ~it~ , i.e. 25% of what reached the outside of the atmosphere in the first place, escapes on the first bounce, leaving 25% bouncing back to earth. But then that bounces and another 50% of the 25%, or 12.5% escapes. Etc. The sequence rapidly converges to zero left behind.
Cases 4 and 5 imagine 25% and 75% reflectance. In each case, you still get a series converging to zero, just at slightly different rates.
Well, you say, the rate's the big difference--there's plenty time to warm up the earth, etc. Except that there isn't: IR is still light traveling at c, which is motoring along at 1 ft/nanosecond--so bouncing back and forth over 20 miles takes about 2 microseconds. Equilibrium--series convergence in this case--happens faster than an eye blink.
So, how is this supposed to work to produce global warming and climate change again? I'm s sure I'm missing something, but I'll be damned if I can figure it out.