Luke_A_Somers comments on You're Entitled to Arguments, But Not (That Particular) Proof - Less Wrong

57 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 February 2010 07:58AM

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Comment author: brazil84 15 February 2010 09:11:02PM 2 points [-]

What kinds of possible evidence would you expect to see if such positive feedbacks can happen?

I'm not sure what you mean by "can happen," since in some sense lots of things "can happen."

Anyway, it's not a full answer to your question, but the gold standard for substantiating the water vapor feedback hypothesis would be if the proponents of that hypothesis made specific interesting and accurate predictions about future events.

To paraphrase Eliezer, ceteris paribus and without anything unknown at work, water vapor is a greenhouse gas and ought to make the Earth hotter. Also, ceteris paribus and without anything unknown at work, a hotter Earth ought to lead to more water vapor in the air.

I disagree, and perhaps an anlogy would help: All things being equal, cooler weather can be expected to lead to more snow cover. And all things being equal, more snow cover can be expected to result in cooler surface temperatures because of effects on the Earth's albedo. So should we worry that the next big volcano will trigger an ice age?

The answer is "no," and I think the mistake here is two-fold. First, rough reasoning gets exponentially rougher as you travel along a chain of deduction. Second, we can't ignore the fact that the Earth's climate is a complicated system which has been around for a long time. The normal assumption should be that if you push on such a system, then it will probably push back at you.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 10 December 2011 06:44:13PM 0 points [-]

A system can have a balance between positive and negative feeback. If it has a mix of both, there's amplification, not necessarily a runaway. (The balance between solar input and radiation to space, among other things provides negative feedback)

Moreover, it isn't even just a multiplication problem. There are different styles of feedback - proportional, integral, differential - and those latter two can come with different time scales

It's obvious that pushing the same direction for a hundred years can be much bigger a deal than pushing a hundred times as hard in the same direction for a day, but it's also true of a hundred-times-as-strong push lasting for, say, two years. Or, depending on the different feedbacks, the hundred times as hard for a day could have a bigger effect.

And all of that is without going nonlinear!

Comment author: brazil84 11 December 2011 03:08:33AM 0 points [-]

A system can have a balance between positive and negative feeback. If it has a mix of both, there's amplification, not necessarily a runaway.

I'm not sure of that. If negative feedback dominates and overwhelms any positive feedback, then how would you get amplification?

Anyway, the burden is on the proponents of CAGW to demonstrate amplification. So far they have not done so.