Greenhouse Gases and Global Warming: Correlation, Causation or Merely Spurious reasoning?
After reviewing these exemplars of evidence and assessment on GHG emissions, rising temperatures, and melting polar regions and glaciers, create an initial response post that addresses the questions below. You must draw on and cite evidence from the readings in your initial post, particularly those findings and analyses in official governmental publications. You should use numeric and/or graphic evidence from these sources to draw your inferences about what is occurring and what may be causally related. You should be explicit when you draw logical inferences from the data presented in the readings, and you should take care to weigh the evidence you present in your own assessment.In your review of the official governmental reports from the IPCC, International Energy Agency, and the US National Climate Assessment you assimilated many specific facts and graphs depicting trend lines on greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and rising temperatures. In addition to these, you read the views of Bradshaw, Mann, Silverberg, Lemonick, and the World Meteorological Association preliminary assessment of 2017, while also viewing the Stephen Schneider abridged talk on the scientific method and relative certainty about climate change and its causes (Links to an external site.). In the “debate” between the skeptics of human-caused climate change and the other scientists, Schneider finds “utter distortion,” a “cacophonous fraudulent debate.” After reviewing for yourself where the balance of credibility and evidence lies, you are to assess what may seem a clear causal relationship but could in fact be correlation or mere spurious reasoning. For example, rising greenhouse gas emissions and concentrations seem to cause rising temperatures and melting ice formations, but the addition of snowfall in the eastern Antarctic complicates a global judgment (Links to an external site.) that the correlation of warming and melt leads to a conclusion that one is causing the other and is not merely associated or correlated with its incidence.
Please respond to the following questions:
- In your considered opinion, is global warming taking place?
- Are temperature warming trends and ice melting trends merely correlated with increased GHG emissions and concentrations, or are they caused by the latter?
