In my eyes it is a pity that the whole discussion about man-made global warming pivots around evidence.
It will be very hard to get evidence even if it is true. Because we're standing on the scale, so to say. We don't have another globe to experiment on and compare the difference.
Why do we need proof to accept global warming is real?
97% of climate scientists did not need proof to believe global warming is real. They saw a concept and determined that's the way things work. At that point it is a theory, a hypothesis: so they compared it to the logical other hypothesis (the actions of man have little effect on global warming, if any).
97% of them believe the first hypothesis is the most likely.
How can that be?
How could it be that doctors in the 50's claimed that smoking cigarettes was harmful?
They saw people die of lung cancer in increasing numbers, black lungs and all, but they did not know which one of the many chemicals in the tar was causing the cancer, if at all; as the tobacco industry was keen to point out. Yet they were adamant that smoking was causing the cancer. As they saw what happened before their eyes.
How could it be that when Einstein explained his
theory of relativity in public for the first time, no less than 8 people in the audience understood what he meant?
None of those 8 had any proof at that point, nor had Einstein.
But there was that experiment to measure the speed of light which gave always the same result, regardless of the speed of the measuring equipment. In any direction.
It is impossible to measure the speed of the Earth compared to 'the Universe', at least not by using light!
That result does not fit in the Newtonian system of space and time but Einsteins system was based on it, so naturally it fits. The faster you move, the slower your time proceeds. If you move very fast forward, almost at the speed of light, and you would project a light beam ahead or aft that would look the same; the photons race out at light speed compared to your time.
To the observer on the outside the photons you emit would still have light speed too; compared to the spaceship they move away from it at
lightspeed c -
spaceship-speed spss.
Time aboard the spaceship proceeds at (c - spss) / c (compared to the observer).
Speed is distance over time, so if time slows it seems you cover more distance; the observed speed is increased by c / (c - spss).
This creates the illusion aboard that the spaceship is moving very much faster than light speed; you could fly to the other end of the universe in your lifetime if you get very near the (real) light speed. The destination would age billions of years during your journey, though. Don't expect to find home like you left it when you go back...
For our observer outside the light emitted up front of the craft gets out at vehicle speed plus light speed times vehicle time: spss + c * ((c - spss) / c) = spss + (c - spss) = c. As expected.
This has implications for energy as well, as Einstein demonstrated by using a cat (as often) like this:
All this means is that things are mathematically sound, even if the effects look strange from the outside (disregarding speed). It is not proof (that
came later).
Then Charles Darwin's
Theory of Evolution.
Now here's a theory that is controversial to this day, yet the vast majority of scientists accept it without a wink.
The basics are simple: each individual in the offspring of an organism has slightly different properties than its parent(s), some beneficial to its chances of reproduction, some not so.
Breeders know this and carefully select the offspring with the properties they want for further breeding. The same happens in the wild, where the survivors have offspring and spread their beneficial genetic mutations.
The controversy mainly is played out on the fact that creatures do have very complex systems that consist of several parts that have no function on their own, but only when combined to the system they form. Darwin believed progress was necessarily slow, as it would take numerous slight modifications to fully develop a new property. Such complex systems could not evolve by gradual improvements through natural selection, it is thought.
Well in fact it took life billions of years to evolve from its bare beginnings to a level where it became advanced enough to employ sexual reproduction (as opposed to asexual reproduction). But that was biology's big bang: the
Cambrian explosion.
In a short period of 30 million years the main branches between all life forms appeared. The selection mechanism itself had evolved to become much more effective and it had broken the complexity threshold. From now on organisms would have fairly complex structures, and if one or a combination of them had a desired side effect, that effect would become a new goal for the combined structure, wearing off all the redundant attributes needed only for its original goal over time increasing its efficiency; all that remained was that bespoke uncannily complex system that 'could not have evolved by itself'...
As breeders and biologists know, selection does not always take minute steps. Darwin was wrong at that. But in his time there was no knowledge of DNA, RNA, switch genes, cellular inclusions, retroviruses etc. so he is excused.
In his time, Darwin was reluctant to publish
On the Origin of Species as he foresaw the implications. One of them was that this mechanism of natural selection does not stop at organisms; it applies to man-made organizational structures too such as countries, political parties, commercial enterprises and religions. Not only did the theory question the Bible's story of Creation, it provided a means to investigate the workings of religion by itself.
One can only wonder how many of those who opposed the theory with Genesis in hand did fear an analysis of the Untouchable even more.
The
Flat Earth Society is a solid mainstay against the false presumption by astronauts, globe makers and airline passengers that the earth is a sphere.
When photo's from space show the earth as a sphere that's because the lenses in those cameras are round; they deform the light and hide the true flatness of our planet.
Some people set up elaborate arguments that the sun is many millions of miles away, yet some parts of the earth are in the dark while others are in bright sunlight, but that is obviously a scheme to mislead them. They know the earh is flat because they don't fall off it, as they would if it was a sphere. The further you travel, the more the land would tilt until you cannot stop sliding off.
That doesn't happen, so it cannot be a sphere; it is flat.
And so they remain in peace and watch the
Truman Show on their tellies.
What lung surgeons, relativists, evolutionists, flat eartheners and climate scientists have in common is that they did not need any proof to get convinced.
They saw what was happening or learned and understood the concept.
Now I deliberately left out describing a concept of global warming until now. Here goes.
Almost all human activity happens in the
Biosphere.
We've been shooting some junk out, and we've buried some deep into bedrock, but most of our junk ends up somewhere in our own space.
We have been taking things in though. Oil, gas and coal in gigantic quantities. Carbohydrates, either buried below our biosphere since the birth of the planet or accumulated over hundreds of millions of years in sediments. All brought to the surface in a few centuries and burnt.
That carbon, burnt and well, gets into and stays in the biosphere. It has nowhere to go. Some of it will end up in sediments around the world, but we're adding carbon at least a million times as fast as it has been dropping out traditionally.
Carbon dioxide dissolves in water to become
carbonic acid, leading to
ocean acidification:
Quote:
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A 2012 paper in the journal Science examined the geological record in an attempt to find a historical analog for current global conditions as well as those of the future. The researchers determined that the current rate of ocean acidification is faster than at any time in the past 300 million years.
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Volcanoes emit more CO
2 than the whole of humanity, you say?
On a good day, yes.
Over a year, definitely not unless it is a truly apocalyptic event.
Over the decades: unthinkable. We do know about atmospheric CO
2 and ocean acidity:
Ocean Acidification Graph | Smithsonian Ocean Portal. The buildup is gradual, and increasing in rate.
Now the seas are still basic. But the closer the pH gets to 7, the less is needed to make it sink even further. There is no stopping it as it only absorbed half of the carbon dioxide in the athmosphere yet; it will continue doing so even if we stop all CO
2 emissions right now... or until the pH drops below 6, at which point the acidity drives it back into its gaseous non-ionic state. Most sea species would be extinct by then and future archeologists would wonder why our sea resorts had ski lifts.
Acidity is rising and there's no way to stop it if we don't stop feeding it. The signs are there. the
data is there.
But most of all, we had more than a hunch that we could not keep pushing carbon into the biosphere, at a rate of
36 gigaton a year (that would be about 18,011 cubic kilometers or 4321 cubic miles of CO
2 gas, enough to cover the whole area of the USA in a more than man-high layer of pure CO
2 gas. Every year over. That would be a bad idea.) without facing the consequences.
One can argue that there are other reasons than relativity why light gets bent around heavy objects. But relativity is real because we understand how it works, and it is the only way to explain why light behaves the way it does speed wise.
One can argue evolution is too blunt to create such intricate patterns as can be found in nature. But we understand its workings and use its mechanism actively to breed properties into plants and animals, fight diseases, etc.
One can argue that global warming is a natural process and man-made emissions have no influence. But we know we feed the system with extra carbon and we do see the atmosphere and seas acidify accordingly; the CO
2 has nowhere else to go.
If you truly understand the concept then any evidence only confirms what you already know.