Evolution Facts

[popeyespappy]

the scientific community has earned that trust, where the religious one has not.

Says you. Creationists would point to scientific predictions 40 years ago that we were entering another ice age versus scientific warnings now about global warning. Were they lying then, or are they lying now? You would answer that those very reversals prove that science is open and religion is closed. He would laugh. I on the other hand, would simply advise care in being absolutely certain of anything...

Then those creationists should be shown (not that it would do any good) what the scientific community was really saying in the 70s about climate change as opposed to what was being reported in the media. There were 68 papers dealing with climate change published in peer reviewed journals from 1965 through 1979. Seven of them predicted cooling. Another 19 were neutral on the future of the climate. 42 predicted the climate would warm. Most of the latter attributed anthropogenic CO2 as the main driving factor.



Another question your creationists should ask themselves about the papers predicting cooling before dismissing the scientific community at large because a few scientists got it wrong is were the conclusions reached in those papers valid based on the data they contained? The answer to that question is probably yes. The conclusions were valid based on the data examined. They just didn't consider mitigating factors such as increases in greenhouse gasses.

The physics of climate change are really pretty straight forward. It is all about energy balance. Our planet receives energy from the sun and radiates energy back into space. When the Earth radiates more energy into space than it receives the climate cools. When it radiates less energy than it receives the climate warms.

Increasing the level of energy absorbing greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere results in less energy being radiated into space. This will cause the temperature to increase unless some mitigating factor elsewhere that increases the energy being radiated back into space. Currently the available evidence indicates there are no mitigating factors that can account for the energy absorbed by the additional greenhouse gases therefore the climate will continue to warm.