A Logical Approach to Global Warming, part I: The Wind-Up

I've been planning on doing this for a while, but it will take a lot of work so I put it off as long as I could.


What I have in mind is a simple, 4-part guide to the science behind the Global Warming debate. Here's the outline:

• 1. The Wind-Up. A description of the ground rules and structure of the guide.


• 2. The Outline. A structured outline of all issues pertinent to the subject of GW, to be addressed in part 3.


• 3. The Data. References and discussion of peer-reviewed data addressing each bullet from the Outline, linked to and thus indistinguishable after completion from the Outline.
  


• 4. The Synthesis. Drawing logical conclusions from the data.

Given that there is an infinite supply of any possible opinion on the matter online, you might wonder why I bother with this. The reason is simply because I have never run across a resource that goes about it the way I think it should be done: pure science mounted on a bullet-proof logical framework. I have a great faith in this logical framework [coming in Part II] because my observation is that a vast majority of the debate is essentially meaningless; it doesn't touch on any of the main pillars that support the theory. Without an explicit logical structure, I believe that any of the conclusions drawn from these debates are inherently flawed, in that any simple statement of "since X then GW is T/F" ignores the logical structure surrounding X which is required in its entirety to prove/disprove the theory.

As far as working rules for this guide, I only have two. You must believe these before you participate:

1. Data is the only thing that matters. A vast majority of the current debate seems to revolve around issues like Al Gore's hypocrisy or Jim Inhofe's conflicts of interest. These issues are completely irrelevant and I won't ever mention them again.


2. Nothing is simple. Anybody who claims to know for absolute surety one way or the other is claiming a mystical knowledge that science can't begin to reproduce. The issue is complex and each item has multiple potential causes.

I will run this in a semi-wiki fashion. I will post an initial draft and leave it on the site for a couple weeks. Any additions should be left in the comments and I will add those which are appropriate.

A note on my motivations for doing this: After spending an embarrassing portion of my life watching both sides [shouldn't there be more than two? As in: the neutral, objective view so dear to science?] of the debate, I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with the nature of the debate. Every resource which touches the general public is so steeped in rhetoric, slander, and fustian grandiloquence that the underlying science has no chance to escape. Even the few sources that try to present the science do so in a haphazard and illogical way, discarding contradicting evidence and making logical mistakes that shouldn't make it past the simplest jury. The audience is just as bad: we watch/read/hear and agree or disagree based on what we believe. Personal belief has nothing to do with GW, it just gets in the way. I fear that the public is getting manipulated by our lack of critical thinking and the absence of motivation to challenge previously held notions. Political predelictions are motivating people's acceptance or not of the thoery without reference to the science involved. This is a disasterously bad state of affairs. Even though the audience of this blog is about a dozen at best, I hope even a couple of you will find use for this guide.

[As a disclaimer, I believe in anthropogenic global warming. But I am extremely skeptical of the vast majority of the claims made in the popular media pertaining to it. I hope through this exercise to disprove the theory because I feel that its presence critically distracts from other extremely pressing environmental issues, like species conservation and habitat protection. So maybe I'm not entirely neutral, but you can be sure that I won't suppress any data or distort any findings to meet some agenda of mine, because any agendas I have are at war with eachother.]

Enjoy! And please contribute! Participation is the point of this exercize.