Reducing pollution is contributing to global warming?

   / Reducing pollution is contributing to global warming? #162  
Gravity isn't the theory, the theory is explaining why gravity does what it does. Might seem like a subtle semantic argument, but it's a very important distinction.

If I meant anything other than that it'd require a whole different field of inquiry, and one not normally associated with what one might normally call science. Don't you agree?
 
   / Reducing pollution is contributing to global warming? #163  
If I meant anything other than that it'd require a whole different field of inquiry, and one not normally associated with what one might normally call science. Don't you agree?
Now your talking over my head. Are you saying that there are different kinds of science?
 
   / Reducing pollution is contributing to global warming? #164  
Now your talking over my head. Are you saying that there are different kinds of science?
not over your head, I'm just being oblique.
Different kinds of science?
A question with some pretty interesting possible answers for example: is metaphisics a science?
Most folks would say that hobgoblins and spooks and things that go bump in the night can't possibly be a real scientific endeavor.
Others might say that our ideas about the real world (thus the fields of the observational sciences) are entirely limited by our ability to observe and if we can't observe it then we tend not to attempt to study it.
But over the centuries and decades, our ability to observe has grown. Microscopes helped us see things that made us sick whereas before we just blamed it on gods and devils.
So are those things that go bump in the night just poppycock or might there be things we can not now detect?
Don't ask me. I haven't a clue.
 
   / Reducing pollution is contributing to global warming? #165  
not over your head, I'm just being oblique.
Different kinds of science?
A question with some pretty interesting possible answers for example: is metaphisics a science?
Most folks would say that hobgoblins and spooks and things that go bump in the night can't possibly be a real scientific endeavor.
Others might say that our ideas about the real world (thus the fields of the observational sciences) are entirely limited by our ability to observe and if we can't observe it then we tend not to attempt to study it.
But over the centuries and decades, our ability to observe has grown. Microscopes helped us see things that made us sick whereas before we just blamed it on gods and devils.
So are those things that go bump in the night just poppycock or might there be things we can not now detect?
Don't ask me. I haven't a clue.
I think i see what you are saying. I'm guessing that "science" is a method, not so much the subject of what is being studied. For instance, until recently, and still rare to find real science being used in the study of sociology, and far as i can see no science method being used by economist.
 
   / Reducing pollution is contributing to global warming? #167  
This is what the Green side wants in every car because fossil are bad for the environment.

 
   / Reducing pollution is contributing to global warming? #168  
This is what the Green side wants in every car because fossil are bad for the environment.


Oh Lithium mining? Don’t you worry about that one little bit. We will take advantage of those poor people off in foreign lands making sure they die good & early mining the lithium for those chinese car batteries. :sneaky:
 
   / Reducing pollution is contributing to global warming? #169  
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   / Reducing pollution is contributing to global warming? #170  
Surely you don't need to be told what a fact is in the field of science.
Gravity remains to this day just a theory and there are three main contenders for explaining it and none work and play well with the others.

How long has science been studying gravity? I'ts just one phenomena that can be examined in isolation.
To think that anyone will have stumbled upon absolute truth in a field as ferociously complex as planetary climatology in a few short years and especially with the dearth of real data that exists well, it is more than a stretch.
All we have to date are opinions and theories.
Perfection is the enemy of good enough. Gravity is real. If you don't like it as a geodesic in space-time, you are welcome to come up with your own explanation, but relativity explains it so well that it has never failed an experimental test.

Anthropogenic global warming was predicted a century ago, and what do you know, it happened. It is happening. In the face of surface, marine, and orbital data it is happening. We know the mechanics of heat and light transfer well enough to explain the observed data. Changing the albedo of a planet can't have any other result. If you want to deny the facts, that's on you. The less valid your preconceptions, the more hazardous your life is likely to be. You want infallibility. You are never going to get it.

What to do about the problem is an entirely different discussion. My personal opinion is that we are 50 years and 5 billion people late to find a solution. I remember discussions in the early '70s about AGW. At the time, the prediction was that if you pump more energy into the atmosphere, you will increase the frequency and intensity of severe weather events. Evidence for that is statistical only, but "if this goes on," some currently inhabited areas will become uninhabitable, leading to mass migration of human populations. My grandparents and parents were climate refugees from the Dust Bowl in the '30s. We have been seeing it again at our southern border, caused by the drought and famine in Central America. When the choice is starve or leave, you start walking.

I think it is far too late to convert our civilization to a form that will fit inside the planetary carbon cycle. We are going to keep right on digging up and burning the Carboniferous for the foreseeable future. The goal to hold global warming to 2.5 degrees centigrade is likely doomed. Our planning should include measures to deal with geographic regions that will no longer support historic populations. Some of those are in the US. We are all thankful that the monsoons have arrived, but some day the desert SW will have to be at least partially evacuated. Other areas of the planet have fewer resources and more human demand. Currently only about 20 million people a year starve to death. If mother nature rolls snake eyes on world food production for 3 years in a row, that could balloon to 200 million people a year, and a billion people will be trying to move somewhere there is food. No national border can endure an influx like that. What we have been seeing in the USA is an early rehearsal for the main show.

The famine will be exacerbated by the increased carbonic acid in the oceans. The calcium carbonate shells of sea critters are dissolving because of rising CO2 in the water. Will that cause fisheries to collapse? Hard to tell, since they are already collapsing. The oceans provide 1/6 of the world's protein. Malthus was way off on his timeline because he didn't know about Fritz Haber and Norbert Weiner. New techniques for increasing the efficiency of photosynthesis by genetic manipulation may bail the human race out again, but eventually it's going to catch up with us. Unstable crop yields will be a handful of jokers in the deck. We have already skated close in the last couple decades.

Gravity is well understood and predictable. The atmosphere, not so much. It is a chaotic system subject to large variation from forcing influences. It's likely an extended drought was a major cause of the collapse of civilization in 1177 bce, and it's a cinch that a massive volcanic eruption caused the worst weather year in history, 529 ce. However, the underlying energy balance of the atmosphere is well understood thanks to the sophisticated new satellite instrumentation. Any local disturbances like volcanoes will pass. The guarantee is that things will change rapidly. The last time the planet warmed up like this it was on the scale of millions of years. This time the scale is decades.
 
 
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