Temperatures rising! What we REALLY know about climate change.

Update: Since I wrote this, there have been more and more extreme climate events. The warming and melting of the arctic is having an increasingly powerful effect on weather farther south, from a hurricane that retained its strength and crossed overland from Louisiana to New York to freezing weather in Texas.

Here is another of my posts that explains in detail where these extreme events are coming from.

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Original article:

The first half of 2017 was the second-hottest first six calendar months on record, behind only 2016.

This article notes that this is significant because this year there is no El Niño, which can temporarily raise global average temperatures.

That's after correcting for all the "figures don't lie but liars can figure" distractions out there, global warming is a fact and is a clear threat.

For those of you unclear about the details, here is a primer:

• Science is about explanations that are consistent with observed facts, updated as observed facts become more and more accurate.  The most simple, straightforward explanations are the best, and when proposed explanations are tested, there needs to be broad agreement that the observed facts ARE well explained.
  
• We know that the Earth is warming. Multiple independent sources of data tell us this. It may vary a bit from year to year, but the trend is upward. Within reasonable limits of error, these different independent sources agree.
  
• We know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. We know that about twice as much carbon dioxide (CO2) is appearing in the atmosphere as what the Earth can take back out via natural processes. We know that industry in general, and the fossil fuel industry in particular, emits huge quantities of carbon dioxide. We know that the parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere has been going up since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
  
• We know that water vapor has significantly more effect as a greenhouse gas than CO2, but stays in the air for only a few days whereas CO2 stays for decades. We know that warmer air has more carrying capacity for water vapor and that the water vapor mostly resides in the upper atmosphere (meaning that what happens on the ground, like drought, is not particularly relevant because it is a local/regional thing). We know that water vapor concentrations at high altitudes have been climbing at a statistically significant rate. So, the warming caused by the elevated CO2 is amplified.
  
• We also know that in the prehistoric past, when the temperature was sometimes higher, the CO2 PPM was also higher. We know that there are natural sources that can cause increases in CO2, notably volcanoes, but the number of volcanic eruptions and other natural sources in the last century is not consistent with the observed increase in CO2 and other less significant greenhouse gases.
  
• So the question is "where is the CO2 coming from?"
  
• The hypothesis that man-made CO2 is not the cause of global warming is not consistent with the facts. If man-made CO2 is somehow not a contributing factor, then where is the excess CO2 coming from? Those who would try to shrug global warming off as a "natural cycle" are not explaining anything. A "natural cycle" still has causes and effects that can be studied and understood, particularly when they are happening NOW and not in the ancient past.

To be fair, there have been attempts to suggest other causes for the climbing temperatures, but they are all over the map. There is no alternative explanation that has stood up to repeated independent testing, the way the human-produced CO2 explanation has.

So there it is. The ONLY consistent answer to the question of where the CO2 is coming from is human sources, primarily the energy industry burning fossil fuels.

It's inconvenient because solving the problem could reduce business profits for a while, but if we DON'T solve the problem, the global turmoil will also be bad for business.  Relatively modest changes now can reduce or prevent huge catastrophes in the future.

Climate Change Skeptics aren't Skeptics

When it comes to science, skeptics are people who question beliefs as the result of scientific scrutiny.

On the other hand, people making political arguments professing skepticism about climate change are more likely to be non-scientific in how they reach their conclusions.

So what does a true skeptic conclude about human-caused climate change?

Russell's Teapot and Climate Change

In 1952, Bertrand Russell wrote that when a claim is made that is not supported by science, the person making the claim has the burden to prove it. Those denying the claim do not have the the burden disprove it.

Russell was writing in the context of religion, i.e. about people believing in God even though science can neither prove or disprove whether God exists, but I have been thinking recently about how this principle works in other settings, like climate change.

Russell said that if he asserts that a teapot orbits the sun between Earth and Mars, too small to observe by any telescope, we would NOT believe him, even though there is no way to disprove that it exists.

Russell held that just because a claim has NOT BEEN disproved does not mean that it IS factual. In fact, if there is no existing way to DISPROVE an assertion, then for all practical purposes, it is NOT true, or so goes Russell's argument.

We have LOTS deniers in America today. Because a scientific finding contradicts their world view, they struggle to undermine the science, in effect to disprove the scientific assertion. Often they use logical fallacies or inductive logic (reaching general conclusions from limited small amounts of data).  They contend that there is a controversy, when there really is not.  However, THEIR assertion that there is doubt is disproved by the preponderance of evidence.

The assertion on the other side of the question is that humans are emitting the greenhouse gases that are changing the climate. Every time the assertion has been tested by a fair scientific evaluation, it turns out to be correct (within small tolerances of error).  So the only avenue available to disprove the science...has not produced evidence of disproof.

The assertion that humans are causing climate change is proved.  The assertion that the science is invalid is disproved.

Ergo, according to Russell's framework we must ACCEPT the scientific conclusion that humans are affecting the climate, and that this affect is undesirable.

Could VALID disproof be discovered in the future?  Scientists are open to new evidence that changes our understanding, but it needs to be powerful to shake the broad and persuasive current evidence, not logical fallacies.

Climate Change Deniers

Increased flooding is one of the most common extreme weather consequences of global warming. 

I came across the tired old arguments of climate change deniers recently, in a Facebook group as it happens.  As usual, a few folks were parroting back the usual logical fallacies like "when it's -15 degrees, nobody talks about global warming."

Actually, scientists do. Science is about explanations that are consistent with observed facts, updated as observed facts become more and more accurate.

We know that the Earth is warming. We know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. We know that about twice as much carbon dioxide is appearing in the atmosphere as what the Earth can take back out via natural processes. We know that industry in general, and fossils fuel industry in particular, emits huge quantities of carbon dioxide. We know that the parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere has been going up since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

We know that water vapor has significantly more effect as a greenhouse gas than CO2, but stays in the air for only a few days whereas CO2 stays for decades. We know that warmer air has more carrying capacity for water vapor and that the water vapor mostly resides in the upper atmosphere (meaning that what happens on the ground, like drought, it not particularly relevant because it is a local/regional thing). We know that water vapor concentrations at high altitude have been climbing at a statistically significant rate. So, the warming caused by the elevated CO2 is amplified, reinforcing itself because the warmer air holds more water vapor, causing even warmer air.

We also know that in the past, when the temperature was higher, the CO2 in the atmosphere was also higher. We know that there are natural sources that can cause increases in CO2, notably volcanoes, but the number of volcanic eruptions and other natural sources in the last century is not sufficient to explain the observed increase in CO2 and other less significant greenhouse gases.  Similarly, the deforestation of the Amazon has reduced the ability of the planet to turn CO2 back into oxygen, but not enough to fully explain the CO2 increase.

So the question is "what is the source of the excess CO2?"

The hypothesis that man-made CO2 is NOT the cause of global warming is NOT consistent with the facts. Human industry is CLEARLY producing large amounts of CO2. If man-made CO2 is somehow not the determining factor, then where is the excess CO2 coming from?

Those who would try to shrug global warming off as a "natural cycle" are not explaining anything.  A "natural cycle" still has causes and effects that can be studied and understood, particularly when they are happening NOW and not in the ancient past.

The natural-plus-man-made CO2 is causing the planet to warm. This is disrupting long-term weather patterns.  One result is more extreme weather events.

And, yes, some places DO get colder or more snow in the winter, because shifting currents and winds take arctic air to places it has not been before.

Some thoughts about solving the problem in my next post.