Global Warming is a failed hypothesis. I don’t think science mag got the memo that it’s failed to such a degree the hypothesis was renamed the more ambiguous Climate Change.
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v4/graph_data/Glob...
The earth had ice caps about half the time over the last 500m years. Melting and re-glaciation are normal processes. [2]
Let's talk about sea level. Since emerging from the last glacial period, sea levels have been rising for the past 8k-10k years, steadily. There has been no deviation during human industrialization from this trend. When we're shown graphs going back 50-100 years, the fact that this is within trend is conveniently omitted. [3]
The data showing that the climate is behaving abnormally or out of trend is sparse at best. At worst, we don't really have it. What we're working off of is the hypothesis that co2 affects the climate in a meaningful and measureable way--this is what climate models are trying to show. However, thus far the models have struggled to make accurate predictions. [4]
We can go back to ice core samples. We see that current co2 levels are measuring much higher than previously in the ice cores. It seems like this would be a major clue but the methods of measurement are different. The data obtained is not fully reliable. However, let's assume they're reliable. Then it does not explain why temperates are failing to deviate from historical trends in a way related to these samples with regard to the measurements made today. [5]
In the last 65m years, solar luminence increases brought about by the constant increases of heavier elements in the sun notwithstanding, we find ourselves in one of the coldest periods. Current temps are measuring lower than in previous 100k year cycles which means we will either warm further or that this is an extra-cold period out-of-trend.
Most importantly, as mentioned before, the models built off of co2 levels are doing a poor job with their predictive power. For a final thing to think about, consider some of the best data we have about historical temperates (bucketed logarithmic scale) and realize that we are nowhere near out of trend [6] and that the two rightmost data points are not actual, yet rather predictions made by models we've already established to be incomplete.
I work in the field. The fact that I have to make a throwaway account and toe the line in my profession should say enough about how hard it is to have this conversation without regurgitating dogma.
[1] https://i.imgur.com/wwaOQz0.png [2] https://i.imgur.com/KYw9DCK.png [3] https://i.imgur.com/UTaqhXl.png [4] https://i.imgur.com/nizfzQS.png [5] https://i.imgur.com/7nZ50Gb.png [6] https://i.imgur.com/b9DBMr1.png
The earth has warmed ~1 degree in a matter of decades. Since you accept this and it's only the human/CO2e influence you doubt then the onus is on you to explain where this tremendous amount of energy has come from. So where is this energy coming from? Which branch of science are you about to shake the foundation of to claim your nobel prize?
Really, we’re trying our best but science is messy.
Climate scientists have observed a massive amount of extra energy, come up with an explanation and tested it. All you've done is say it's not that.
Because of this, current political solutions are the equivalent of debugging a billion line program by randomly changing various functions, where each change costs billions of dollars.
You can't say "the data does not support Newton's laws" unless you have another hypothesis like relativity that can provide a better fit to the data. Then you can say that the data favours relativity over Newton, and by how much. You can also ignore the data and use theoretical arguments to say that relativity is a more plausible law to govern the universe than Newton's, but you need a really good theoretical foundation for that.
So if you think theory X is wrong, you must have at least a set of theories Y that you are willing to entertain as being more correct than X.
That's why GP and I are curious about what alternative hypotheses you are evaluating that you seem to think might better explain what's going on than CO2 does.
CO2 has a lot going for it as a hypothesis. It's a simple mechanism, easy to understand, proven to work on Venus, and it's rapidly changing along the same timescale that temperature is changing. It does also have an unfortunate political implication because its atmospheric concentration correlates with the use of particular energy sources. But setting politics aside and just thinking scientifically, I'm interested to hear what has you convinced that CO2 is not an adequate explanation for what we're observing.
One nit: observing that Newtonian physics don’t hold up perfectly at all times would not necessitate having to immediately provide an alternative explanation but would motivate the search for one in the absence of such.
This recent meta-analysis found the opposite, that the models are generally fairly accurate:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/stud...
Additionally, on a practical level, it doesn't matter if there were major warming spikes millions of years ago. Civilization has only existed for ~10k years, at most.
It seems incredibly irresponsible to bet everything on the chance that human civilization won't suffer stability issues from the enormous changes across the planet and to our current way of life that a 4-5° (or more) rapid increase would cause. It's not unlikely that warming of those levels over the next ~100 years could result in hundreds of millions of desperate migrants, drought and other extreme weather, widespread ecosystem collapse, catastrophic breakdown of supply chains and basic infrastructure, major war, etc.
Life on Earth can recover from that. It has done so before. Human civilization probably won't be so unfazed. Let's just fix the damn carbon emissions. It will be much, much easier than dealing with the global crises unchecked climate change will bring. And on the plus side, doing so will also result in new technological development and economic growth.
Because someone put it on a graph does not make the explanation simple.
In 2005, the National Academies of Sciences published a pamphlet that expressed the viewpoint that “climate change” was a more scientifically comprehensive description of what was happening to the planet. “The phrase ‘climate change’ is growing in preferred use to ‘global warming’ because it helps convey that there are changes in addition to rising temperatures,” it said.[1]
1-https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/...
The optics of the naming of a hypothesis is counter to the philosophy at the heart scientific inquiry.