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Greenhouse Gas Experiments
Valkun
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Registered User regular
In an attempt to research the effects of CO2's 'greenhouse' effect, I seem unable to find any experiments that prove this claim. Can anyone point me towards an academic paper with some research on concentrations of CO2 in a space and its effectiveness at retaining energy as light passes through it? There has to be something to that effect since there is a scientific consesus, as they say. However, with all the politics surrounding global warming, it's hard to sort through the endless sea of sensationalism to find objective research.
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I don't think there's anything controversial about the basic concept. But when it comes to the mechanics of the entire planet-wide system, there are millions of variables involved and that's where the controversy starts. You can't really perform an experiment that approximates the climate and CO2 cycle of an entire planet.
Well, it's not "basic" physics, but it's not horribly complicated, either. The trouble in applying this in real life, though, is that real life is horribly complicated. While it may be a significant factor in a simple physical model of an atmosphere, it may not work that way in the actual atmosphere. Which is a difference, sadly, lots of scientists seem to miss (you can occasionally find articles in journals like nature complaining about this, but not as often as you should see).
And the web is a perfectly legitimate thing to start research from. You just shouldn't be citing geocities pages or something. But there are tons of scholarly things you can come up with from a google search.
But the problem really is that we can't do experiments with this kind of thing. We can't go out and build planets with different atmospheres that are otherwise identical, and see what happens. And our computer simulations aren't nearly good enough to do this. However, we can do things like look at Earth's historical record (which is, unfortunately, far less accurate than we need, but better than nothing), or Venus' atmosphere for clues. These kind of things, combined with physical models and numerical simulations give us some idea of what's going on, but not by any means a good idea.
The real message to take out of this, though, is not that we can't draw any conclusions from this kind of data, but that we can only draw qualitative ones. That is, we can say "increasing CO2 tends to increase temperature" but not "increasing CO2 by x% will increase temperature by y%." In fact, these quantitative climate claims are notoriously wrong.
Which is why most of what you hear from the politicians, and from the scientists who either fail at science, or are paid by politicians, is crap (or is presented by other people, e.g., the media, in a way that ruins any science value). We can make qualitative claims "we should try not to pollute," and if you really want to push it, semi-quantitative ones, "we should try to limit emissions to no more than x amount." But any quantitative things you hear are crap. Statements like "the temperature will increase by x degrees and sea levels will rise by y inches in z years" are totally devoid of any scientific meaning (for dozens of reasons, many of which I haven't mentioned). We can't even make statements like "people are responsible for x% of observed temperature increases." Hell, it's enough trouble for us to quantify temperature differences, given the quality of data we have...
So, anyway, the point is, there are no "good" experiments that demonstrate this. There are only simple idealized ones, physical arguments, and some low-quality data.
Incidentally, I was amused as a physics undergrad to learn that making a model of a star, including spinning, energy production, magnetic fields, and pulsation is very very easy. You'd think that kind of thing would be much harder than modeling the atmosphere!
Yeah, that's right. And you have to include more than just the atmosphere, too. Rock, water, and life can absorb CO2 and other stuff in the atmosphere, so you really need to know exactly how much of these things you have and exactly how they absorb things. But part of the trouble is that how much they can absorb, and the rate at which they can absorb it, depends on things like how much they have already absorbed... We can go out and try to measure these things, but it's too difficult and there are too many possible things to include. So we have to make a guess as to what's most important. Unfortunately, that turns out to not be good enough, and it's all complicated enough (there are hundreds, even thousands of other different effects you'd like to account for) that it will be a long time before we get any good models.
Though I haven't looked at that website, I would be suspicious of anyone that claims to talk about "both sides" of a scientific debate... there is no side in good science. There is only what theory and models and evidence say. "Both sides" typically means two sets of people wrong, but wrong in different ways. But not having an opinion does not get headlines...
Though it disturbs me a lot to see scientists do this kind of thing. Somewhere along the line, people are told they get an opinion in science, and that's just retarded.
He links to articles regarding the opposing views of global warming. I fail to see how a site indicating the arguments both sides have is an unsettling thing. Did you actually look at any of the articles the website links to?
It's done by the head of Philosophy at Canterbury University, who also runs Arts and Letters Daily.
Edit: Yeah, commenting on the nature of something without viewing it is a profoundly stupid thing to do.
Because there are no sides in science. You don't get to have an opinion anymore than you get an opinion about what the solution to "2x+5=7" is; and if someone says you do, they're a moron. You have facts, you have margins of error, you have models and experiments and all of that stuff. That's all. You only get to say what they get to say. Science isn't philosophy, where you get to argue about what things mean and what you'd like them to mean, and what they can mean, all without ever defining anything.
I have a model. It says "x happens".
I do an experiment, it says "y happens."
I do statistics, it says "x is consistent with y" or "x is not consistent with y."
I make a computer model. It includes effects "a" "b" and "c". The model predicts "z happens."
I do statistics. "z is consistent/inconsistent with x/y."
Based on that, I see if "a" "b" and "c" are good things to include in my model, and if I should've included "d" "e" and "f".
There is no opinion in this process. There are no "sides" of this argument. You can use opinion/experience to decide how to make your model / do your experiment, but not to interpret results. The results are interpreted for you by science.
If I "interpreted" my results like some of the climate people do, I would be a joke, and would never be allowed to work in my field again. It's very disturbing if this is allowed to happen in any science.
Perhaps, but he's not actually making any arguments himself. He's just linking to arguments that seem valid, which is an activity rather appropriate for a philosopher to do.
Anyways, it's still only one source. Doing your own research (ideally of original academic papers as opposed to alarmist media reports) is still the best way to verse yourself in a science.
Er, comparing science to math isn't right. Science is only probable while math is provably true.
Anyways, I'm not well versed in climate change science, but seeing as there are scientists that have experiments that say it is human caused (lots of folks) and other scientists saying it isn't human caused (Richard Lindzen, for example), there are clearly opposing views on the issue until those two can be reconciled.
This doesn't make any sense. Science is math. The only difference is, in math, you define your system to have the properties you like. In science, you've got to guess until you get them right. Although, you can do a lot of this with math, too! Much of math research is as "experimental" as science is! (In fact, you can find many articles about math education advocating teaching more from this point of view, since it tends to make things more accessible.) Saying otherwise shows you understand neither science nor math!
The majority of the scientists working on this do not have an "opinion" like that. Most of them say the same things I say. But you don't hear from those people. The media will never report on what the good scientist has to say about science, because the media is only concerned in absolute, completely concrete, "easy," "yes/no" type answers. And those only can happen when you know everything, and we certainly don't!
I'll admit a flaw in my first reply - instead of saying the site represents the sides "completely human caused" and "not human caused," I should have instead described it as "humans have contributed significantly to global warming" and "humans have not contributed significantly to global warming." With that in mind, surely a site that strives to provide articles and studies in favour of both of those arguments would be a useful tool in attempting to objectively judge what the current state of both arguments is? This is, indirectly, what the OP seems to be after.
No, again, there are no "sides." You can either say "the data are consistent with people contributing more than x%" or "the data are inconsistent with people contributing more than x%." There isn't a side here, there's just what the data say. Right now the data aren't good enough to say either one with a reasonable degree of certainty. Having a large uncertainty doesn't let you have an opinion! It means you need to work harder!
But there's a big difference between this and what some of the climate people do. Biology is in a much better position, because its "interpretations" are based in careful experiments (which can't even in principle be done in climatology), applicable physical models in well-established fields like chemistry, etc (which are very difficult to implement in climatology).
In this context, discussion is healthy. It helps us think and understand, but we must have some understanding to do this to begin with, which climate research lacks. But ultimately, in fields like biology conclusions are still based soundly on facts and quantitative arguments. The "interpretation" is just a disguise for quantitative arguments when you don't need to be (or can't be) as careful.
Climate research is still far to immature to have a background like this. Maybe in 50 or 100 years we'll have enough of an understanding to do this, but now, this is a field that really doesn't have one single quantitative statement we can make about it!
It is true it's really hard to predict precisely what's going to happen - so the models usually provide for a range of assumptions and results. I'm no scientist, but off the top of my head the best empirical link for causation beyond elementary physics is the observable global cooling after a major volcanic eruption. On the other hand, it's clear anthropogenic emissions are going to have major effects on our climate.
Is it OK if you stay on topic and save the trolling for the Ron Paul threads you were in? I linked to the IPCC because i'm in an environmental law and policy class that had a guest scientist in last week, who linked me and explained some of the models and predictions. The IPCC examines what you say nobody does - the combined effect of anthropogenic emissions on climate change.
The IPCC is pretty objective, actually. They don't give out research grants, or any monetary compensation to the many scientists who compile the reports. At least one of the skeptics, Richard Lindtzen at MIT, was heavily involved in the process - it's that everyone disagrees with him.
I agree you that the politicization of science is a problem - but the scientific consensus is clear on this. The holdouts are getting traction because C02 emitters have a) lots of money, b) lots of media pull, and c) the lone-voice-in-the-wilderness scenario of a few holdouts makes really good copy. Cfgauss's point is that it shouldn't be politicized; the people playing politics with this are the few critics and the industrial lobbyists who tout their findings, not the scientific consensus.
Yeah, the two scientists telling you that you're wrong don't know what the fuck they're talking about about what scientists think. Clearly, the people you need to go to to tell you what scientists think are the media, politicians, and law classes. You know, not the scientists...
Hi, I'm an ecologist who's done an honours thesis on organic soil carbon, which has a huge freakin' amount to do with climate change, and I'm here to tell you you're full of shit. Do you have any idea how much research money is being thrown at trying to show that everything is basically okay or at least aimed at exploring ways to handle CC with minimal cost to the economy? A whole freakin' bunch! That's because people don't like spending money on going all eco-freaky. And that's perfectly okay.
Yes, models of carbon balance aren't that crash hot right now. That doesn't mean they're actually bad, or that they're not improving. You don't have to attach a thousand dollar meter to every stack, exhaust pipe and piehole on the planet to figure out what's going on. The CO2 cycle is currently in a state where one major stock (the atmosphere) is being fed by increased flows from the other major stocks (the soil and biota plus a little from the oceans). The methane cycle is in a similar state thanks to our taste for rice and cows. This will go on for some time, with easily chartable consequences for food production in particular. The causes aren't terribly relevant at this point. Finding ways to cope without spending too much cash/effort/fuss time most certainly is. So quit trashing the field in an effort to be Cynic of the Year. Try doing something useful instead.
Unless "honors thesis" is the new word for PhD, I don't think you're the expert here. And, if you go read the thread instead of getting all reactionary, no one's trashing the FIELD, we're trashing the media, politicians, and the sellout/moron scientists who horribly misrepresent things. Most scientists in this field do good work, and the field is definitely making progress, but it's NOT at a point where it can make ANY good quantitative predictions. And if you actually talk to those most-scientists, they'll tell you EXACTLY what I've told you! And, in fact, knowing the limitations of your field is an ABSOLUTELY DEADLY CRITICAL PART of being a good scientist! Like I said, most of them do, but no one's going to run to the media and say "hey, guess what, we still don't know anything!" So all we hear about is either the scientists who don't know what they're doing, or the media being illiterate.
In fact, I've seen papers published saying things like "this model is consistent with sea levels changing by .1 +/- 1 inch and temperatures changing by 1 +/- 3 degrees over the next 5 years" followed by "so clearly we need to work on our models." Then, I see ACTUAL GOD DAMNED SCIENTISTS in the media talking about an "alarming report" saying "sea levels could change by as much as 1.1 inches and temperatures could raise by 4 degrees! We need to do something to stop this!"
God forbid 90% confidence intervals are given, then you hear crap like "there's a 90% chance of a raise in temperatures by 7 degrees! We're all going to die!"
And models of emissions DO suck, because there are all kinds of biological sources that DO emit and absorb CO2, and lots of other stuff. Measuring OUR emissions is not the problem (unless our = 3rd world, then it is!) but knowing how much we emit compared to anything else IS a problem! Knowing how what we emit interacts with other things IS a problem. Knowing how other stuff reacts with it IS a problem. Knowing how distributions of material contribute IS a problem. Hell, even including clouds in climate models is a GIGANTIC problem that we can't properly solve!
And there are ABSOLUTELY NOT "easily chartable consequences" for anything in this field. That doesn't mean you can't make pretty graphs and come up with numbers--it just means if you do, they're WRONG. Don't believe me? Go back 10, 15, 20 years and look at the predictions made then. Are they right? Hell no. Are some of them right? Yes, but that's what you'd expect from high-school statistics when you have lots of publications (and the predictions right once are wrong when used for other things / used again, so they aren't good predictions).
This is the part where you say, "but models have improved since then!" Oh? How do you know? Because their predictions are right? No, because they're not. The ones that make "short term" predictions are DEAD wrong, and the ones that make long-term ones still have years to go. Models' predictions corresponding to data is the definition of being right in science!
The point being, until you have models that you KNOW are right within a very good margin of error, you can't say anything about them. Let alone try to make policy based off of them! Again, no one's saying we should pollute as much as we want, but trying to argue like they are for it is irresponsible science. This is the same kind of crap that ruins a science, and people just use as an excuse to justify what they want to do anyway. This is seriously one fucking step away from Social Darwinism levels of stupidity.
"Honors thesis" is also what undergrads write to get their BS, and what masters students write to get their MS degrees. Or, hell, any paper you write if you're an "honors undergrad" can be an "honors thesis"... Typically, when people claim "honors thesis" they mean the BS one
edit:
Also, if you want to see a fantastic example of dangerous science you can do with low-quality data, check out "An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics" by Carroll and Ostlie. It has a great graph of "hubble constant vs measurement time" which shows a very significant increase in the value of H over a few decades. Just looking at the data by itself, you'd say H is clearly changing. And, in fact, some people did! Most astronomers, however, did not. Because they knew statistics! But those who did drew lots of crazy conclusions from it because they were not careful, or did not understand how systematic error works.
Honours is an extra year of study over undergrad here. Not that that's at all relevant to my original points. Quit giving bad advice.
If you want to get fancy on me, I got three undergrad degrees in 4 years. And it is relevant, because it means you lack an in-depth understanding.
Again, presented in closed captions for the hearing impaired:
* No one is attacking the field. No one's saying what most of the scientists say is wrong. *
What we're saying is that what the MEDIA and A VERY FEW bad scientists who get a lot of publicity say, is wrong, bad, crazy, and irresponsible.
Most scientists in this field do not claim we can make good, quantitative predictions yet. That's all we're saying. All the stuff you hear in the media is wrong, or misleading, because it IS quantitative, either explicitly, or implicitly.
No one's telling anyone not to do research. And, in fact, I mentioned specifically what to look for in the research that does exist, viz., physical models, astronomy, numerical simulations, etc, in my very first post. We're just saying that what he specifically wanted doesn't exist--because it doesn't.
And, my fancy undergrad degrees number 1 in math and 2 in science, so, I think I know the differences pretty well. My research now is in science (string theory), and I know all about using numerical models, theory, and experiments, and how they all work together. Hell, want me to write it out for you using category theory? I could probably do that if I wanted, but I'm sure it's already been done somewhere.
ahahahhaha yeah right, unless you're Hermione Granger you got one of those programs where all the unnits crosscredit against each other so your diploma looks good. I have two degrees, and I got them the long way, and fuck you for screwing up this thread with dicksizing over pieces of paper. I'm damn good at what I do, and you're wrong, and you're shitting up the thread with your ill-informed rantings. There are constructive ways to criticise climate science. None of them are in this thread.
edit: ahahahaha string theory. weeping jebus.
Trust me, I'm an outer-space pornographer, so I know what I'm talking about.
Hey?
Yeah.
To the OP, I would suggest grabbing the IPCC data and looking through their charts for something along the lines of what you want (two boxes filled with air with differing amounts of CO2 while the same amount of light is shined through them and the temperature is measured, right? I'm pretty sure this specifically IS in there or at least referenced so you could find it). But there are a million charts and graphs so you might have to do some digging.
edit: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/technical-papers/paper-II-en.pdf
I'd start there