What should the role of theory be in understanding climate physics?
March 31st, 2010 | 
Author: Skeptics have decried "book learning" and theory as being unsuitable for understanding climate physics. Instead, skeptics claim that small-scale laboratory experiments are a better way to approach the problem. If that is true, why are the science-based arguments proposed by professional skeptics for the most part based on theoretical arguments or thought experiments? Why, if experimentation is the way to go, are there no professional skeptics actually making measurements?
Posted in Green Q&A | 
Tags: climate physics, laboratory experiments, measurements, scale laboratory, science, skeptics, theoretical arguments, thought experiments
You can’t simulate a global climate on a small scale. It’s far too complex. The best way to do it is with computer simulations, which are based on physics.
Even ‘skeptical’ scientists use computer models. Roy Spencer used one to try and argue the PDO has had a significant impact on global warming. Scafetta and West’s study which attributed one-third of the recent warming to the Sun (and is very frequently cited by contrarians) was based heavily on models. In fact it was little more than a statistical argument. Lindzen’s iris theory – based on models.
What it boils down to is PFs will reject anything for any reason if it supports AGW, and blindly accept anything for any reason if it seems to undermine AGW. If models show the planet will continue to warm, they’ll say models are worthless. If another model says the Sun is causing warming, they’ll say that particular model is great. To PFs it’s not about science, it’s about finding reasons to reject AGW by any means necessary.
Because they are pushing their own agenda! Global warming is a JOKE! History is our biggest proof that it is FALSE, and only a tool to get ton’s of people money- OUR money, to support something that is totally false- and unproven. Sorry, i’m going off a little here.
I see some of the believers using physics like "a man with a hammer." (every problem looks like a nail.)
Using physics to solve global warming pretends that you know all of the individual factors of "global warming." Which can’t know, and clearly don’t know.
If we did know, and the physics you use worked, then your predictions would also be accurate.
Edit:
Yes, there IS phyisics involved in every physcal problem. The problem is that in order for it to work, we need to account for all of the variables, which we clearly aren’t capable of. Someday we might be able to use physics to effectively predict the climate… but right now we can’t. Making significant changes in our economy and the structure of our society based on our current knowledge of the climate would be roughly equivalent to putting 350 people on an airplane based on the Wright brothers’ first wind tunnel experiments.. theoretically it’s accurate!
Well, there is an amateur skeptic on YA that thinks he has disproved global warming by doing some experiment with a coke bottle.
There was actually a lecture last week at the institution that I am at on a very similar topic, it was "Science in The Age of Models: Is theory still relevant in climate research?" Certainly theory and experiment are both important, but many of the basic experiments were done a long time ago, and the biggest most important experiment is the one we’re running by dumping huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Since we can’t make a scale model of the atmosphere in the lab we rely on observation, theory and modelling.
If someone can design an experiment that will blow the field wide open, more power to them, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to involve coke bottles.
EDIT: Peter, everything looks like a physics problem to a physicist because basically everything is physics. Your attitude sounds to me like you want to throw your hands up in the air and say "It’s all too complicated, we’ll never understand anything." That attitude is a sure way not to make any progress on a problem.
Physical laboratory science with instrumentation to detect any contamination that is not equal in all samples.
hate to agree with dana but theoretical models are all we will ever have when it comes to climate science.
the atmosphere is just too large & chaotic a system to be accurately physically modeled on a small scale.
all we can do empirically is to continue to amass data & look for correlations between theoretical cause & observed effect.
there has been one comparatively large scale experiment that enclosed 720,000,000 cubic feet & cost $150,000,000 heres one popular press report on it.
http://www.doney.net/aroundaz/biosphere2.htm
this experiment was ridiculed as a failure but no experiment is a failure unless we ignore the data collected from it.
for example its speculated in this & other articles that high soil fertility caused the co2 content to soar past 3000 ppm within 6 months despite the co2 scrubbers that were operating.
if this is in fact true it could have serious implications about increasing the soil fertility of poor land to raise bio fuels.
we need to mine the data collected in biosphere 2 far beyond a few grad students writing their thesis on it.
keep in mind the atom bomb would probably have never been built by experimental lab scientists without the insight of the theoreticians & vice versa