Correlation, Causation, and Climate Change

[Forogil]

That provides part of the evidence for my first stated belief. However, we also must show evidence that the changes are negative to the promotion of life on earth, and that we have the ability and responsibility to reverse the changes.

Whether changes are negative or positive for the promotion of life on earth depend on your outlook; science can only predict what will happen - we will get a bit more extreme weather, more CO2 in the atmosphere, a few degrees increased temperature overall, and a slight increase in sea-levels.

But positive and negative depend on what you value.

Most deem the extreme weather a clear negative, but if you are were tree you might grow slightly faster due to the increased CO2 - which could be a positive. If you are in the temperate regions you might like the increased temperature, but not that you get more tropical diseases. If you are in the tropical regions it is hard to find anything positive.

[Tyrianth]

First thing's first,

• I believe that the activity of humans have influenced the earth's climate.
• I believe that is a bad thing.
• I believe that we have the ability and obligation to do what we can to reverse this influence.

With that out of the way, I've struggled to find evidence of anthropomorphic climate change that isn't based on assumptions generated from the correlation of statistics. Are you aware of specific research that provides direct evidence of causation which might help convince the sceptical?

In layman's terms, evidence of causation would be data gathered from observations made with strict controls on causal factors that are external to human impacts.

"Correlation does not imply causation" is the biggest logical fallacy there is.

Correlation is evidence of causation, most scientific evidence is correlation.

[Calfredd]

• I believe that we have the ability and obligation to do what we can to reverse this influence.

This is a misconception. Climate change is an ongoing process alternating between extreme heat and extreme cold over millions of years and it cannot be stopped. We can only speed the process up or mitigate how much we contribute to climate change.

[Aitch]

There is no "promoting the theory". We're talking about reality. The "skeptics" have access to the evidence, they just refuse to give it proper consideration, and those promoting this "skepticism" are often directly paid by the fossil fuel industry to push that false message.

And yes, it's fair to require "skeptics" to pay for initiatives alongside everyone else, the same way it's fair to require pacifists to pay taxes that contribute to military action, or conservatives to pay for liberal programs that were passed into law, or what have you. They don't get an "out" because they're willfully ignorant (a label that applies to the climate change skeptics, not the other examples provided).

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To kibitz the point, "history" is often used to describe recorded history, specifically. Anything prior to that is "pre-history", hence "prehistoric" and so forth.

We've got millions of years worth of climate data, though, yes.

I think those are perfectly fair statements for us who are 100% confident in our beliefs. However, and this is purely anecdotal, I feel like the vast majority of the human population is not THAT staunch or committed to their beliefs on this topic.

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This is a misconception. Climate change is an ongoing process alternating between extreme heat and extreme cold over millions of years and it cannot be stopped. We can only speed the process up or mitigate how much we contribute to climate change.

I said nothing of stopping climate change. I said reversing our influence on it.

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"Correlation does not imply causation" is the biggest logical fallacy there is.

Correlation is evidence of causation, most scientific evidence is correlation.

I never suggested correlation is not causation. I think the last statement in my OP clearly stated my intent in this matter.

[Endus]

I think those are perfectly fair statements for us who are 100% confident in our beliefs. However, and this is purely anecdotal, I feel like the vast majority of the human population is not THAT staunch or committed to their beliefs on this topic.

We're talking about science, not movie reviews or something. It isn't about "beliefs", it's about reality, facts.

[Osmeric]

Isn't EVERY observation/effect connection a correlation? What do you want, God to come down and say "yep, that's what did it"?

[Tyrianth]

I think those are perfectly fair statements for us who are 100% confident in our beliefs. However, and this is purely anecdotal, I feel like the vast majority of the human population is not THAT staunch or committed to their beliefs on this topic.

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I said nothing of stopping climate change. I said reversing our influence on it.

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I never suggested correlation is not causation. I think the last statement in my OP clearly stated my intent in this matter.

But your asking for evidence that isn't based off of correlation. A large chunk of scientific evidence is based off of correlation. Why is it no longer applicable when discussing climate change.

Here's a good copy and paste of the evidence we have for climate change. Most of it correlation though.

In the last 650k years, Earth has gone through 7 periods of glacial advance and retreat. The last was 7k years ago, marking the end of the Ice Age.

CO2 was demonstrated to trap heat in the mid 19th century. In the course of the last 650k years, Earth atmospheric CO2 levels has never been above 300ppm, and we know that through mineral deposits, fossils, and arctic ice leaving telltale predictable signs of how much CO2 must have been in the air at the time. Today, CO2 is over 400ppm. Not only have we kept fantastic records pre-industrial revolution, especially the Swedes for centuries, but arctic ice has acted as a more recent history of the last several dozen centuries. CO2 levels has been growing at unprecedented rates and achieving levels higher than we've ever known to occur that wasn't in the wake of planetary disaster and mass extinction. It follows that if CO2 traps heat, and there's more CO2 in the atmosphere than ever before, it's going to trap more heat than ever before.

Sea levels are rising. 17cm over the last century. The last decade alone has seen twice the rise of the previous century. So not only are the oceans rising, but the rate of rise is increasing exponentially.

The Earth's average temperature has increased since 1880, most of that has been in the last 35 years. 15 of the 16 hottest years have been since 2001. We're in a period of solar decline, where the output of the sun cycles every 11 or so years. Despite the sun putting out less energy, the average continues to rise and in 2015 the Earth's average was 1C hotter on average than in 1890. That doesn't sound like much, but if we go some 0.7C hotter, we'll match the age of the dinosaurs when the whole planet was a tropical jungle. That's not a good thing.

The ice caps are losing mass. While we've seen cycles of recession and growth, you have to consider ice is more than area, it's also thickness and density. Yes, we've seen big sheets of ice form, but A) they didn't stay, and B) how thick were they? Greenland has lost 60 cubic miles of ice and Antarctica has lost at least 30 cubic miles, both in the last decade. Greenland is not denying global warming, they're feverishly building ports to poise themselves as one of the most valuable ocean trading hubs in the world as the northern pass is opening, and it's projected you'll be able to sail across the north pole, a place you can currently stand, year-round.

Glacier ice is retreating all over the world, in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska and Africa.

The number of unprecedented intense weather events has been increasing since 1950 in the US. The number of record highs has been increasing, and record lows decreasing.

The ocean absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere. CO2 and water makes carbonic acid, - seltzer water! The oceans are 30% more acidic since the industrial revolution. 93% of The Great Barrier Reef has been bleeched and 22% and rising is dead as a consequence. The ocean currently absorbs 9.3 billion tons of CO2 a year and is currently absorbing an additional 2 billion tons annually. Not because the ocean is suddenly getting better at it, but because there's more saturation in the atmosphere.

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IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Summary for Policymakers, p. 5

B.D. Santer et.al., “A search for human influences on the thermal structure of the atmosphere,” Nature vol 382, 4 July 1996, 39-46

Gabriele C. Hegerl, “Detecting Greenhouse-Gas-Induced Climate Change with an Optimal Fingerprint Method,” Journal of Climate, v. 9, October 1996, 2281-2306

V. Ramaswamy et.al., “Anthropogenic and Natural Influences in the Evolution of Lower Stratospheric Cooling,” Science 311 (24 February 2006), 1138-1141

B.D. Santer et.al., “Contributions of Anthropogenic and Natural Forcing to Recent Tropopause Height Changes,” Science vol. 301 (25 July 2003), 479-483.

In the 1860s, physicist John Tyndall recognized the Earth's natural greenhouse effect and suggested that slight changes in the atmospheric composition could bring about climatic variations. In 1896, a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first predicted that changes in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect.

National Research Council (NRC), 2006. Surface Temperature Reconstructions For the Last 2,000 Years. National Academy Press, Washington, DC.

Church, J. A. and N.J. White (2006), A 20th century acceleration in global sea level rise, Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L01602, doi:10.1029/2005GL024826.

The global sea level estimate described in this work can be downloaded from the CSIRO website.

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/indicators/

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20160120/
T.C. Peterson et.al., "State of the Climate in 2008," Special Supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, v. 90, no. 8, August 2009, pp. S17-S18.

I. Allison et.al., The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Updating the World on the Latest Climate Science, UNSW Climate Change Research Center, Sydney, Australia, 2009, p. 11

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100121/

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/ 01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm

Levitus, et al, "Global ocean heat content 1955–2008 in light of recently revealed instrumentation problems," Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L07608 (2009).

L. Polyak, et.al., “History of Sea Ice in the Arctic,” in Past Climate Variability and Change in the Arctic and at High Latitudes, U.S. Geological Survey, Climate Change Science Program Synthesis and Assessment Product 1.2, January 2009, chapter 7

R. Kwok and D. A. Rothrock, “Decline in Arctic sea ice thickness from submarine and ICESAT records: 1958-2008,” Geophysical Research Letters, v. 36, paper no. L15501, 2009

http://nsidc.org/sotc/sea_ice.html

National Snow and Ice Data Center

World Glacier Monitoring Service

http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/cei.html

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/W...idification%3F

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean+Acidification

C. L. Sabine et.al., “The Oceanic Sink for Anthropogenic CO2,” Science vol. 305 (16 July 2004), 367-371

Copenhagen Diagnosis, p. 36.

National Snow and Ice Data Center

C. Derksen and R. Brown, "Spring snow cover extent reductions in the 2008-2012 period exceeding climate model projections," GRL, 39:L19504

http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/snow_extent.html

Rutgers University Global Snow Lab, Data History Accessed August 29, 2011.

[Calfredd]

I said nothing of stopping climate change. I said reversing our influence on it.

Again you can't stop it. The damage is done; we can either speed the process up or mitigate our effects.

[Puremallace]

If there were direct evidence of causation (i.e.: I put N=4000 tonnes of CO2 into X area and observed that temperature in Y area increased by Z amount over D time; I repeated this experiment X times to achieve a power of 80% and report a HR of CO2 increased temperature of 1.23 with 95% CI of 1.12-1.33), there would be no skeptics. What you're asking for doesn't exist.

1. There is direct evidence and any google search can lead you to an obscene amount of evidence

2. There are companies and people invested in making sure humans consume more fossil fuels

3. This fucking debate will keep up until we are all dead because money will blind people to the consequences of their actions

[Aitch]

But your asking for evidence that isn't based off of correlation. A large chunk of scientific evidence is based off of correlation. Why is it no longer applicable when discussing climate change.

Here's a good copy and paste of the evidence we have for climate change. Most of it correlation though.

You can stop beating the dead horse of correlation vs causation logical fallacy. I'm 100% on board with you. What my OP stated was that I'm looking for evidence where external causation has been controlled to the Nth degree. Whether that evidence comes from statistical correlation or other means is irrelevant.

[Chrysia]

Correlation does not always imply causation, but it does if you can a) demonstrate the proposed cause can have the effect you claim, b) have ruled out other causes.

We know CO2 traps energy wavelengths that are reflected back into space after solar energy strikes the Earth.

We know that other driving factors we know of do not account for the current warming trend.

We know that humans have introduced carbon into the atmosphere that otherwise would still be trapped in the earth.

We know that the normal balancing mechanisms aren't absorbing all of this excess carbon.

The correlation is strong evidence of causation when all relevant facts are taken into account.

[Tyrianth]

You can stop beating the dead horse of correlation vs causation logical fallacy. I'm 100% on board with you. What my OP stated was that I'm looking for evidence where external causation has been controlled to the Nth degree. Whether that evidence comes from statistical correlation or other means is irrelevant.

And I gave you a very good summary of the current climate change evidence.

[Aitch]

Again you can't stop it. The damage is done; we can either speed the process up or mitigate our effects.

Well that's just another way of saying the same thing so I guess we'll leave it at that.

[Puremallace]

You can stop beating the dead horse of correlation vs causation logical fallacy. I'm 100% on board with you. What my OP stated was that I'm looking for evidence where external causation has been controlled to the Nth degree. Whether that evidence comes from statistical correlation or other means is irrelevant.

Here

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/china-issue...cities-1596824

You pump a bunch of shit into the air and cannot go outside without a mask. You do not need 100 years or flooding to examine this shit.

[SirBeef]

Human is the cause of Climate change.

You feel bad now? Yes? Good, now you want mind the tax your government will take from you to give to their """"""""green""""""" friends.

I'd rather it go there than to the multi-billion dollar oil companies in forms of subsidies and tax credits and returns. Isn't it awesome to know that a company such as Exxon has all the money in the world but wont gor exploring for oil without government subsidies.

[Elegiac]

Isn't EVERY observation/effect connection a correlation? What do you want, God to come down and say "yep, that's what did it"?

Yep.

Followed by an apology for creating the universe since it's widely regarded to have been a bad move.

[Aitch]

Here

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/china-issue...cities-1596824

You pump a bunch of shit into the air and cannot go outside without a mask. You do not need 100 years or flooding to examine this shit.

I don't think many people would not denounce the negative impacts of urban smog. However, smog has little to do with anthropomorphic global climate change.

[Glorious Leader]

Is that really so silly? Considering the amount of resources that have been spent already, would it be so uneconomical to create some small scale simulation of the earths climate somehow? Maybe computer based..?

Yes its incredible silly. Actually climate scientists do this all the time. Its called models. Its apparently what youre objecting to. To suggest it should be done as a real world simulation is whats incredible silly. Climate modelling is hard. Their are millions of variables to take into account.

[alexw]

If there were direct evidence of causation (i.e.: I put N=4000 tonnes of CO2 into X area and observed that temperature in Y area increased by Z amount over D time; I repeated this experiment X times to achieve a power of 80% and report a HR of CO2 increased temperature of 1.23 with 95% CI of 1.12-1.33), there would be no skeptics. What you're asking for doesn't exist.

Lol. Of course their would still be reality deniers. The reality deniers don't want evidence. They simply want to deny reality based on their preconceived ideology.

[Aitch]

Yes its incredible silly. Actually climate scientists do this all the time. Its called models. Its apparently what youre objecting to. To suggest it should be done as a real world simulation is whats incredible silly. Climate modelling is hard. Their are millions of variables to take into account.

I'm not really sure how you got that I'm objecting to it when, on the contrary, I am clearly promoting the idea. We are asking developing nations to curb their development, which will impact the quality of life for millions. I don't think "it's too hard" is really a good excuse for not doing science.