{"id":371492,"date":"2025-03-23T18:08:40","date_gmt":"2025-03-23T17:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=371492"},"modified":"2025-03-23T18:08:42","modified_gmt":"2025-03-23T17:08:42","slug":"why-can-you-provide-empirical-measured-proof-of-how-much-warming-is-caused-by-co2-is-a-really-stupid-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=371492","title":{"rendered":"Why \u201cCan you provide empirical measured proof of how much warming is caused by CO2?\u201d is a really stupid question"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Charles Rotter<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question\u2014 \u201cCan you provide empirical measured proof of how much warming is caused by CO2?\u201d<\/em>\u2014on its surface appears perfectly rational, even scientific. Yet, despite its appeal, it\u2019s not just unanswerable with current methods\u2014it also reflects a misunderstanding of how climate science works. And no matter one\u2019s position in the climate debate, including those deeply skeptical of climate alarmism, it\u2019s important to recognize why this question, as framed, is fundamentally flawed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. It Demands the Impossible: Controlled Experimentation on a Planetary Scale<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key issue is that it requests measured proof<\/em>\u2014in other words, direct empirical measurement of a variable in isolation. But Earth is not a laboratory. You can\u2019t take one Earth, run it with 300 ppm CO\u2082, and another with 420 ppm, hold everything else constant (solar irradiance, ocean currents, volcanic activity, cloud cover, etc.), and then observe the difference in temperature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate, by nature, is a complex, chaotic, coupled system. We can measure correlations<\/strong>, make inferences<\/strong>, and run models<\/strong>\u2014but there is no laboratory setting where you can isolate CO\u2082 and \u201cmeasure\u201d its exact contribution to global mean surface temperature in the real world. Demanding that kind of empirical isolation is akin to asking for direct proof that one puff of a cigarette causes cancer\u2014it\u2019s an unreasonable standard for complex systems with multiple interacting variables.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Confuses Forcing with Attribution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

CO\u2082 is a radiative forcing<\/strong>\u2014an input to the climate system, not a direct output. What we do have, via satellite spectroscopy, are measurements showing CO\u2082 absorbing and re-emitting infrared radiation. We measure the \u201cback radiation\u201d impinging on ground stations. That\u2019s measurable and uncontroversial. The effect size<\/em> of this forcing, however, is not directly measurable in isolation. It is inferred through modeling<\/strong> and statistical attribution studies<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These studies attempt to assign fractions of observed warming to different causes\u2014greenhouse gases, aerosols, solar variability, land use change, etc. They rely on climate models and statistical methods, not isolated laboratory measurements. So while you can ask how much warming is attributed<\/em> to CO\u2082 based on models and assumptions, you cannot measure it directly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those chafing at the word \u201cmodeling<\/strong>\u201c, it is through modeling that we convert satellite measurements of brightness into global temperatures. i.e. UAH 6.1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. It Plays Into the Hands of Alarmists by Oversimplifying the Debate<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ironically, asking for \u201cmeasured proof\u201d of CO\u2082-caused warming as a rhetorical trap often backfires. It allows climate activists to claim skeptics \u201cdon\u2019t understand science\u201d because, technically, the question is malformed. It allows them to redirect the conversation toward a debate about \u201csettled science\u201d at the molecular level (CO\u2082 absorbs infrared radiation), which is not where the real debate lies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The serious skeptical position doesn\u2019t hinge on denying radiative physics, but on questioning how much warming will result<\/strong>, how models perform<\/strong>, how feedbacks behave<\/strong>, how reliable the temperature record is<\/strong>, and most critically\u2014whether climate policies based on uncertain projections make any sense<\/strong>. That\u2019s where the fight should be, not on strawman arguments about measured proof.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4.<\/strong> It Obscures the Real Problem: Model Dependence and Feedback Assumptions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the IPCC doesn\u2019t claim that the warming due to CO\u2082 can be directly measured. Instead, they use \u201cattribution studies\u201d based on model simulations. For instance, they simulate Earth\u2019s climate with<\/em> anthropogenic CO\u2082 and without<\/em> it, and then compare the model runs to observed temperatures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result is a claim like \u201cmost of the observed warming since 1950 is very likely due to human activity\u201d\u2014but this is a model-based inference, not a measurement. The feedbacks assumed in these models (especially water vapor and clouds) are poorly understood, and small changes in those assumptions cause large swings in warming predictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A reasonable skeptic would focus here: not on denying that CO\u2082 is a greenhouse gas, but on highlighting the immense uncertainty in how much warming results from doubling CO\u2082 (climate sensitivity), which still ranges widely in the literature. That\u2019s the intelligent battlefront\u2014not a demand for something no one can provide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5<\/strong>. It Encourages a Binary Thinking Trap<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Skeptics often fall into a trap by arguing as if the entire climate narrative hinges on the CO\u2082 molecule being harmful. But even if CO\u2082 is warming the planet somewhat<\/em>, the real debate is over magnitude, timing, impacts, and cost-benefit tradeoffs of climate policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Demanding measured<\/em> proof of how much warming is caused by CO\u2082 invites a yes\/no answer, when in reality the issue is one of probability distributions, confidence intervals, and uncertainty. This plays right into the absolutist thinking that dominates mainstream climate rhetoric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ask Smarter Questions\u2014Because the Data Isn\u2019t That Smart<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Demanding measured proof<\/em> of how much warming is caused by CO\u2082 is a rhetorical dead end\u2014not because it\u2019s unreasonable to seek evidence, but because it betrays a misunderstanding of what\u2019s empirically measurable in a planetary climate system. The question collapses under its own demand for impossible precision in a noisy, chaotic, and multifactorial system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A far more productive\u2014and scientifically grounded\u2014skepticism targets the soft underbelly of the climate consensus: the assumptions, uncertainties, and measurement issues<\/strong> underpinning the entire narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Start with the temperature record itself. Long-term surface temperature series suffer from significant reliability issues. Stations have aged, moved, been surrounded by urban development, and upgraded with different instrumentation\u2014all of which can introduce inhomogeneities and artificial trends. Adjustments to the raw data are often opaque and poorly justified, raising questions about how much warming is real versus \u201ccorrected\u201d into existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there\u2019s the far greater uncertainty in estimating global variables like ocean heat content<\/strong>\u2014a metric central to claims of \u201cunprecedented warming.\u201d Before ARGO floats were deployed in the early 2000s, ocean temperatures were measured by a ragtag mix of ship intakes and bathythermographs, yielding sparse, uneven, and inconsistent data. Even now, ARGO floats only sample a small fraction of the ocean volume and don\u2019t reach deep enough to detect long-term thermal trends with high confidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On top of this shaky empirical foundation, climate modelers layer their assumptions about radiative forcing, feedbacks, and cloud behavior to produce projections decades into the future\u2014projections which have consistently overestimated warming in the short term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So rather than asking for something that can\u2019t be measured\u2014like isolated proof of CO\u2082\u2019s warming effect\u2014skeptics should keep the focus on what can be measured, and on how poorly. Ask:<\/p>\n\n\n\n