This post is for those interested in scientific methodology. If you are hard over and not willing to change your mind due to evidence then this post will be meaningless to you. Jrad6515 responded to a post of mine by throwing all need for proof on AGW. He threw out the term null hypothesis. However, throwing out a nice sounding term doesn't make its use correct. Let's start with the basics. In the debate there are several points needing evidence.
1) Are global temperatures rising? Data says they are. If someone disagrees then they need to refute the data and show data to the contrary. There is no null hypothesis here. Either temperatures are rising or they aren't. Note that I am not discussing cause at this point.
2) What is the cause of temperature rise? Again, there is no null hypothesis. The question is about the cause or causes. If it is due to solar radiation then one needs, at the least, to correlate received radiation with the temperature change. The same goes for orbital mechanics and for the release of CO2 form fossil fuels. The only correlation I have seen is from the release of CO2. I am open to other correlations. BTW, scientists took orbital mechanics very seriously. There are definite correlations to temperature changes in the past. However, orbital mechanics does not correlate to the present rapid changes.
The denier argument is along the lines of "I don't like your argument. Couldn't it be something else?" This isn't new. Einstein didn't like quantum mechanics and its "spooky action at a distance." He spent a large portion of his life trying to disprove it. The difference is that Einstein didn't say "But can you PROVE it?" He knew that, so far, predictions had been experimentally verified and that it was incumbent on him to produce a solid, verifiable theory that at some point disagreed with quantum mechanics in a way that could be tested. This is what the denier community fails to do. This is why tobacco companies couldn't release solid studies showing cigarettes were safe. All they could do was sow doubt. Back to quantum mechanics; many scientists in the field are a bit uncomfortable with quantum mechanics. They would love to find a better theory that is cleaner in a philosophical sense but they haven't been able to. To some extent the same is true of the need for renormalization in field theory. However, in all cases, they know they have to come up with an alternative, verifiable, theory.
Now for some personal comments/impressions.
Ggies07 provided solid evidence that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and is affecting global temperatures. When confronted with a direct, solid answer to his challenge, jrad6515 just denied it. He did nothing to show those experiments were incorrect. He deflected by saying ggies07 was deflecting when he wasn't.
Another subtle trick is to appeal to common sense and to thereby circumvent the scientific method. Jrad6515 does this when he appeals to the idea that trees love CO2. Here I want to caution the AGW community about how they frame their arguments. Many like to say the earth will be destroyed. I see no evidence of that. Earth will do just fine. While there will be a major extinction event, we have data showing the earth has recovered in the past. Trees may well survive although they will need to evolve more rapidly than in the past so I'm not certain of that. My problem is with the fate of mankind. The CO2 that trees love (according to jrad6515) is rising higher than at any time during man's existence. At some point I worry that we won't evolve fast enough. We know there have been past extinction events. The dinosaurs dominated much longer than man has and succumbed to rapid climate change brought on by a meteorite. Again, the earth will survive and there will probably be life on the planet. However, mankind might have passed.
