Brian Angliss Says:
My understanding that climate disruption is anthropogenic isn’t a question of faith… It’s a question of overwhelming scientific evidence and logic. Here’s a list of facts:
• Climate sensitivity is most likely between 1.7 and 4.5 deg C/CO2 doubling (actually the energy retained by said doubling, making this an energy unit) and is most likely 3 deg C because observations and empirical data based on multiple paleoclimate reconstructions, the observed effects of volcanism on climate, as well as the modern observed temperatures. None of these independent data sets require modeling.
• Atmospheric CO2 is increasing due to the combustion of formerly sequestered fossil fuels. This is an empirical result based on the isotopic signatures of CO2 in the atmosphere and an accounting of where the observed increase in CO2 could be coming from.
• Atmospheric CO2 absorbs IR wavelengths and scatters it, changing the optical properties of the atmosphere as the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere change.
• The jet streams have shifted poleward as predicted.
• The tropopause has increased in altitude as predicted.
• The stratosphere has cooled while the troposphere has warmed. This is consistent with only one known source of tropospheric heating – greenhouse gases. Unless the physics of thermodynamic heat transfer through the atmosphere is entirely wrong, the sun cannot be the source of this heating because in that case, the stratosphere would also be heating. This has been measured using both satellites and radiosondes.
All of these facts are so well understood that the burden of proof is no longer with the people proposing that these are facts, but rather with the people arguing that they are erroneous. None of them can be simply rejected out of hand as being false, and none of them require any “belief” whatsoever.
The only explanation that fits ALL the facts to date is that human-emitted CO2 is the predominant cause.
Now, all that being said, research is ongoing into clouds, into so-called black carbon, into the effects of aerosols, and models are being refined with better spatial and temporal accuracy.
So the science continues to improve and should continue to be improved via research. And there’s an outside possibility that something will turn up that turns all this on its head.
But given the strength of the evidence, it’s unreasonable to reject making changes to the way we power and move our civilization. I’m all for arguing over the best way to make those changes, but we’re years if not decades past the point where we should have stopped arguing about the necessity of those changes.