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by jbay808
2328 days ago
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I think when the GP is asking about alternate hypotheses, they are wondering what other sources of temperature and climate gradation you might be considering here. Changes in the sun for example? You can't say "the data does not support Newton's laws" unless you have another hypothesis like relativity that can provide a better fit to the data. Then you can say that the data favours relativity over Newton, and by how much. You can also ignore the data and use theoretical arguments to say that relativity is a more plausible law to govern the universe than Newton's, but you need a really good theoretical foundation for that. So if you think theory X is wrong, you must have at least a set of theories Y that you are willing to entertain as being more correct than X. That's why GP and I are curious about what alternative hypotheses you are evaluating that you seem to think might better explain what's going on than CO2 does. CO2 has a lot going for it as a hypothesis. It's a simple mechanism, easy to understand, proven to work on Venus, and it's rapidly changing along the same timescale that temperature is changing. It does also have an unfortunate political implication because its atmospheric concentration correlates with the use of particular energy sources. But setting politics aside and just thinking scientifically, I'm interested to hear what has you convinced that CO2 is not an adequate explanation for what we're observing. |
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One nit: observing that Newtonian physics don’t hold up perfectly at all times would not necessitate having to immediately provide an alternative explanation but would motivate the search for one in the absence of such.