Has Climate Change Science Reached the Complexity Where No One Understands?

Hi Robert,

Glad to have you back, I trust that all is well.

Climate change science is a wide-ranging discipline and, as with most subjects, there are some simple and straightforward aspects and there are some exceptionally complex ones. There are some things we know for certain, other we can only guess at and some that we have no idea about and can’t explain. And undoubtedly, a whole lot more that hasn’t yet been discovered.

The basics of climate change are relatively straightforward and are rooted in the physics side of things. A basic comprehension of quantum mechanics provides the simple scientific explanation for why global warming occurs, once you start digging deeper into the realms of spectroscopy and the like, then it begins to get more complicated.

There is no definitive explanation for climate change and all it’s many facets. Indeed, it would be possible to fill numerous volumes in attempting to do so. That said, we are far beyond the stage of understanding and explaining the basic mechanisms of climate change, but it will be a long, long time before we are anywhere near a full comprehension of all the processes that are involved.

Climate change is a rapidly developing subject, in the last 20 or 30 years we’ve probably expanded our knowledge ten-fold and it’s still expanding rapidly. The more we know the more complicated it becomes, as such there are now numerous specialist areas within the field of climate change, not so long back the subject would have been a discipline in it’s own right.

Not everyone has to understand it, and given that the average IQ is 100 it follows that not everyone CAN understand it. Some people have never studied science to the degree that they've studied art or history or religion. It stands to reason that in that case these people have to assume that the 'experts' know what they're talking about...particularly when thousands of experts form hundreds of university and dozens of countries all say pretty much the same thing. Climate change is real and happening as we speak. In our complex society we hold certain people as 'guarantors'...that is we trust them when they say something is so. Christian religious leaders are a good example: People are told that a man died, rose from the dead, ascended bodily into 'heaven' after promising to return at some point in history and take believers to paradise. Millions of people believe this is 'gospel truth' and live their lives accordingly. Doctors are another a good example. If a doctor, or better yet several doctors tell you that you require a cancer operation, 99 out of a 100 times most people will take the advice seriously. Oddly, when it comes to climate change, because of economic and political considerations a fair number of people are not so inclined. Their reasoning is: Such a thing can't be because...and then they come up with any number of reasons based on faulty science, no science or the word of right wing radio talk show hosts...who aren't scientists and don't even claim to be scientists. The basics of this situation aren't simple, but assuming that the established laws of heat and atmospheric physics are correct, there can be no doubt that man created CO2 has altered our paper thin atmosphere to the point where we're retaining more than enough heat to alter the climate of this planet. Believe it or not....I suggest you believe it!

it's as simple as evolution.

The fundamental principles are clearly established and well spelt out in the references you have been given. That is why Fourier, Tyndall, and Svante Arrhenius were able to see this coming way back in the 19th century.

It is (almost) as complicated as evolution. In the case of evolution, no one can get their mind round all the interactions in the world's ecosystems, and we cannot make global scale predictions. In the case of global warming, no one can get their mind round all the interlocking climate cycles.

We can, with the help of massive computing power, make predictions about global warming, but these come with built-in uncertainties. This is NOT good news; things may be a bit less bad than the most probable predicted outcome, or they may be a lot lot worse.

You can deny anything you like without knowing a crap of what you are talking about (like Republicans do), or you can leave the actual commenting to people who know what they are talking about because the spent 20 years in college specializing in climatology.

You have to learn to read real scientific articles such as those from Nature or Pnas. I said 'learn' because it does take some efforts sometimes. Also check the peer-reviews, if there are plenty it's a properly reviewed and quoted article unlike the conspiracy theorists' so called 'scientific articles' they get from globalwarminghoax.com or something.

With new findings the complexity increases. No one actually understands everything, no one has all the answers. But science and technology has made tremendous progress and can answer many of our questions related to the climate change.

With new findings the complexity increases. No one actually understands everything, no one has all the answers. But science and technology has made tremendous progress and can answer many of our questions related to the climate change.

14 minutes ago

This should read: But science and technology has made tremendous progress and can answer many of our questions related to who has put up the most money for the research.

Also remember: GW WAS INVENTED BY THE SAME PERSON THAT INVENTED THE INTERNET. - AL GORE

Now for real, The Climat changes over time [ a long ] time. It is proven that Alaska was once tropical. Showing that climate changes over time. So is the earth getting warmer - YES!!! What can we do about it??? NOTHING!!! Let Mother Nature do her thing. She knows more than we ever will. We should use our time and resorces to find away to work with it, NOT CHANGE IT..

Not at all. Climate science is empirically-driven, consisting predominantly of the observation, measurement, and comparison of our planet's most common and well-understood elements and physical properties.

For example, we know the planet is warming because we can measure temperature - and we know that it is not because of the sun or other natural causes or "cycles" because we can also measure their influence.

When we add up every possible cause we can think of and compare it with our measurements of global temperature, we come up short. If we include the human-caused influence on global warming, everything adds up.

Nah. While it gets complicated when you get into the details like how climate models work, how climate sensitivity is estimated, etc., the basics aren't really that complicated.

Yeah, I'm just stoopit.