Quote:
Originally Posted by onewhippedpuppy
how can it be proven that the climactic changes observed would not have happened anyway, in the absence of man? Not the individual measurable changes to atmospheric elements such as CO2 (which are but one piece of the puzzle), but the actual shifts to the climate?
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Broadly speaking, it is the same with any system on which we have a mechanistic understanding. Recall tho that we had a good understanding of thermodynamics long before the rise of statistical mechanics (but I digress). We know many of the factors, maybe all, that can cause global temperatures to rise. We know some of them have not changed, or have not changed enough to cause the observed rise in temperatures. We also know that certain inputs have changed, and we know these are forcing factors (similar to everyone's favorite example the forced harmonic oscillator and its drag queen friend, the damped harmonic oscillator) should result in the observed phenomena.