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CrabCake
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Posts: 19,289
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« Reply #1 on: January 26, 2017, 11:47:48 PM » |
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Scentifc theories primarily emerge as ways to explain observable natural or experimental phenomena. We can test these theories by making predictions based on how things should happen if the theory is true. Science is littered with older theories that seemed to explain some form of natural phenomona, but when were unable to cope with the results from further experimentation (or further observation) fell apart. Phlogiston. Spontaneous Generation. Group selection. Lamarckian inheritence. The plum pudding model. Aether. Orthogenesis. All of these were mechanisms to explain natural phenomena that ultimately were not able to explain enough, and so were discarded when more sophisticated models emerged.
Now the basic bones of greenhouse effect theory: that carbon dioxide absorbs IR radiation (like most gases that have polar attributes) and therefore raises the ambient temperature was explored (and fully mapped out in terms of mechanism) in labs (with IR spectrometry) a few decades before the global temperature rise was observed to be rising in the 80's. So it is, in fact, predictive. There is no remotely feasible explanation for the bulk of the observed changes seen in the last few decades rather than a greenhouse effect produced from gases of an anthropogenic origin. (and it's hilarious that you target the greenhouse effect which is probably the easiest part of the climate change hypothesis to defend - look at Venus, lol!)
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