What's Really Warming the World?
For a more rigorous, scientific and yet still thoroughly digestible talk I strongly recommend watching Dr. Richard Alley&#x27;s talk &quot;The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth&#x27;s Climate History&quot; [0]<p>As a Bayesian I particularly enjoy Alley&#x27;s running theme that: while there certainly <i>could</i> be alternative explanations for what is happening, we simply cannot find anything that explains the data better than CO2.<p>I see many skeptics pointing out tiny holes in the main AGW hypotheses, but the real Bayesian test is &quot;how much better does one hypothesis explain the observed data than then other?&quot;. When you put all the pieces of the atmospheric CO2 argument together it seem to explain what we&#x27;re observing dramatically better than a thousand &quot;...but what about?&quot; that don&#x27;t fit together into a coherent counter hypothesis.<p>As an example: Suppose I come home and see my front window broken, my door open and my laptop missing. I assume I have been robbed based on this evidence. You could say &quot;but couldn&#x27;t the window have been broken by some kid throwing rocks?&quot;, &quot;maybe you left the door unlocked and the wind blew it open&quot;, &quot;are you absolutely sure you didn&#x27;t leave your laptop at work?&quot;<p>While individually each of these counter hypotheses may explain a single event just as well, together they don&#x27;t work:<p>P(window broke, door open, laptop missing | robbed) x P(robbed) &gt;&gt; P(window broke, door open, laptop missing | neighbor threw rock, left door unlocked and left laptop at work) x P(neighbor threw rock &amp; left door unlocked &amp; left laptop at work).<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=RffPSrRpq_g" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=RffPSrRpq_g</a><p>edit: forgot to add my priors in that last section