I just don't understand the reasoning of the many who call themselves climate change skeptics.
Let's pretend it's not about earth, for a moment, and just some black box, hovering in a vacuum, with a big lightbulb shining next to it. Practically all its energy comes from the lightbulb (the rest from the residual heat within, and some dim source of central power), and practically all of its cooling consists in radiating infrared back outward. Now you put a layer of glass, which infrared cannot penetrate, over the black box, and wait, and see what happens.
The infrared is significantly absorbed by the glass, largely radiated back to the box, and thus the largest channel for cooling -- and pretty much the only one that will work over a long period of time -- has been attenuated.
Now replace the black box by earth, the lightbulb by the sun, and the glass by CO2.
The black box would have to be totally weird in order to keep from heating up. It might, for some time, somehow redirect some of the heat into less observable sections of its mass (e.g. the lower levels of the earth's oceans, which have a much greater heat capacity than its atmosphere), but this cannot last forever. It might also become more reflective, absorbing less light (e.g. the earth's clouds, desertification)? Except clouds are totally observable, and an opposite effect comes from the melting snows and ice caps and constructed asphalt we add in urban areas: all of which have radiance and albedos observable from the outside (e.g. our satellites). Finally, the black box radiation is proportional to the fourth power of the temperature, so even if the percentage of radiated power that reaches the outside of the glass is diminished, if the temperature of the primary radiative bodies becomes less even, such that ∫T(new)^4 dA >> ∫T(old)^4 dA, the temperature can stay roughly constant. Other than that, there's close to nothing that can be done: that box will very probably rise in temperature, and almost certainly the climate will change.
Skeptics correctly points out that the lightbulb varies in power output. And the black box is moving a bit relative to the light -- further away or closer by -- shinier or cooler or more black parts facing the light at any given time. They also point out that the glass isn't the only thing surrounding the black box -- for example they have noticed also a shiny layer of dust on the glass (aerosols), and an even bigger layer of glass underneath the glass we'd place (water vapor). And they point out that the layer of black paint appears to be, in a great proportion, liquid, and with a high heat capacity, and churning cyclically, and that there's a lot of it, so that in any one instance a cooler or a warmer parcel of that liquid is showing.
None of this changes a thing about the fact that if we put yet another layer of glass on the box, the smart money is on it heating, and certainly on it changing. How could it not? At this point the onus is totally on these climate change skeptics to suggest a means by which the box is supposed to stay exactly the same.
Which brings up an interesting point. Maybe it is not so necessary that the Earth stays the same. Maybe there are credible arguments that explain that, really, the box won't change that much, and for the teeming, glass manufacturing cultures of microbes living under the glass that these changes are not really such a big deal.
Some scientists, who I respect very much -- Freeman Dyson for example, make this very argument. I respectfully disagree with him, as I think that there's far too much risk in disrupting the biosphere, and that the disruption, famine, and loss of ecosystems and species that have already occurred are too great a price to pay, that oil wars, tyrannies, and people dying of respiratory illness from coal plants aren't exactly positive either, and estimates of the probability of some catastrophic event happening, like say, Greenland melting, the consequences of which are too dire to imagine, range somewhere between 10% and 80%.
But that's a philosophical disagreement. What we have with 'skeptics' is a scientific disagreement: the great majority say either that it is happening, but only as part of natural variation, and they had nothing to do with it, or that it isn't happening at all. Which, at this point, seem more like the antics of a child screaming 'I didn't do it,' or putting their hands to their ears, singing 'la la la, I can't hear you!' than of a calm and reasoned scientist -- or skeptic -- examining the assumptions of a majority opinion. Their conclusions are already drawn.
What's wrong with a little skepticism? There is a whole lot of bs passed off as science regarding climate change. In particular the models which claim to predict the temperature centuries form now by modeling a chaotic system with boxes 100mi in width using parameters with +-10% error _each year_ is ridiculous.
Plus what do you want us to do? Spend trillions we don't have to try and reduce our oil consumption by a fraction? Other countries will just burn anything we don't.
Not if alternatives achieve unsubsidized competitiveness, which is precisely what some are trying to achieve.
The internet is a chaotic system if you choose packets as your unit of granularity, and yet this message still came over the wire intact. The wiring inside a bomb impacted by an outside force is a chaotic system with plenty of uncertainty as to what's inside, but you would still be unwise to kick it. Gas flow in jet engines is a highly turbulent and chaotic system with measured temperature variation from the best models exceeding in many cases 20%, and yet jets will still fly.
You don't need a perfect model to arrive at an accurate prediction, you don't need a terribly accurate prediction in order to arrive at a general appraisal of a situation, and you don't even need a general appraisal of a situation to ascertain risk worthy of action.
Frankly, it should be probably be enough to say "we know that most of the energy the Earth receives is from the sun, and we know that most of the energy is dissipates is through infrared. We also know that the Earth is an extremely complex, strongly coupled, and chaotic system, in which the details of every component can never be known, and being able to predict with a high level of confidence what the effects of any major change would be is unlikely. Maybe we should probably stop fucking with the Earth's primary means of cooling?"
There is nothing wrong with skepticism, per se. Skepticism is a positive, and it is a very worthy thing to root out the bs from the science. But it must be weighed against two things: the need to come to some decisions in a limited timeframe, and the fact that people often managed to justify to themselves, using any means at their disposal, their continued action or inaction. Too often 'climate change skeptics' claim that due to unacceptable uncertainty, they're going to continue doing what they're doing -- or -- that it isn't happening at all -- or -- that it's just part of the natural variation, when simple physics tells us that if you significantly modify a primary means of forcing a system then at least something about it must change.
Let's pretend it's not about earth, for a moment, and just some black box, hovering in a vacuum, with a big lightbulb shining next to it. Practically all its energy comes from the lightbulb (the rest from the residual heat within, and some dim source of central power), and practically all of its cooling consists in radiating infrared back outward. Now you put a layer of glass, which infrared cannot penetrate, over the black box, and wait, and see what happens.
The infrared is significantly absorbed by the glass, largely radiated back to the box, and thus the largest channel for cooling -- and pretty much the only one that will work over a long period of time -- has been attenuated.
Now replace the black box by earth, the lightbulb by the sun, and the glass by CO2.
The black box would have to be totally weird in order to keep from heating up. It might, for some time, somehow redirect some of the heat into less observable sections of its mass (e.g. the lower levels of the earth's oceans, which have a much greater heat capacity than its atmosphere), but this cannot last forever. It might also become more reflective, absorbing less light (e.g. the earth's clouds, desertification)? Except clouds are totally observable, and an opposite effect comes from the melting snows and ice caps and constructed asphalt we add in urban areas: all of which have radiance and albedos observable from the outside (e.g. our satellites). Finally, the black box radiation is proportional to the fourth power of the temperature, so even if the percentage of radiated power that reaches the outside of the glass is diminished, if the temperature of the primary radiative bodies becomes less even, such that ∫T(new)^4 dA >> ∫T(old)^4 dA, the temperature can stay roughly constant. Other than that, there's close to nothing that can be done: that box will very probably rise in temperature, and almost certainly the climate will change.
Skeptics correctly points out that the lightbulb varies in power output. And the black box is moving a bit relative to the light -- further away or closer by -- shinier or cooler or more black parts facing the light at any given time. They also point out that the glass isn't the only thing surrounding the black box -- for example they have noticed also a shiny layer of dust on the glass (aerosols), and an even bigger layer of glass underneath the glass we'd place (water vapor). And they point out that the layer of black paint appears to be, in a great proportion, liquid, and with a high heat capacity, and churning cyclically, and that there's a lot of it, so that in any one instance a cooler or a warmer parcel of that liquid is showing.
None of this changes a thing about the fact that if we put yet another layer of glass on the box, the smart money is on it heating, and certainly on it changing. How could it not? At this point the onus is totally on these climate change skeptics to suggest a means by which the box is supposed to stay exactly the same.
Which brings up an interesting point. Maybe it is not so necessary that the Earth stays the same. Maybe there are credible arguments that explain that, really, the box won't change that much, and for the teeming, glass manufacturing cultures of microbes living under the glass that these changes are not really such a big deal.
Some scientists, who I respect very much -- Freeman Dyson for example, make this very argument. I respectfully disagree with him, as I think that there's far too much risk in disrupting the biosphere, and that the disruption, famine, and loss of ecosystems and species that have already occurred are too great a price to pay, that oil wars, tyrannies, and people dying of respiratory illness from coal plants aren't exactly positive either, and estimates of the probability of some catastrophic event happening, like say, Greenland melting, the consequences of which are too dire to imagine, range somewhere between 10% and 80%.
But that's a philosophical disagreement. What we have with 'skeptics' is a scientific disagreement: the great majority say either that it is happening, but only as part of natural variation, and they had nothing to do with it, or that it isn't happening at all. Which, at this point, seem more like the antics of a child screaming 'I didn't do it,' or putting their hands to their ears, singing 'la la la, I can't hear you!' than of a calm and reasoned scientist -- or skeptic -- examining the assumptions of a majority opinion. Their conclusions are already drawn.