How could you "prove" man made global warming isn't happening?

[NotAllThere]

You can't prove that man-made global warming isn't happening, any more than you can prove that God doesn't exist. However, the onus is, apparently, on those who are making the claim to prove it, so evidence is required to show that agw is happening, not evidence that it isn't.

[DimPrawn]

You can't prove that man-made global warming isn't happening, any more than you can prove that God doesn't exist. However, the onus is, apparently, on those who are making the claim to prove it, so evidence is required to show that agw is happening, not evidence that it isn't.

Seems to me, a bunch of people sucking at the teet of the govt funding, have made it clear it is happening, non-believers are "deniers" and must prove them wrong...

[EternalOptimist]

You can't prove that man-made global warming isn't happening, any more than you can prove that God doesn't exist. However, the onus is, apparently, on those who are making the claim to prove it, so evidence is required to show that agw is happening, not evidence that it isn't.

good point, well made

however some of the claims can be tested. Some can be tested in the lab, we dont need a second earth.

Dr. Laurie Johnson of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) claims that your car will get hot on a sunny day because it has CO2 in it. It gets warmer these days, because there is more CO2 around.


that should be pretty easy to prove or disprove

[hyperD]

[Doggy Styles]

You can't prove that man-made global warming isn't happening, any more than you can prove that God doesn't exist. However, the onus is, apparently, on those who are making the claim to prove it, so evidence is required to show that agw is happening, not evidence that it isn't.

But that is not what was asked.

If CUK is good for anything, it is expert at pursuing unanswerable questions until, one by one, the clientelle are either awarded their Cretin badge or lose the will to live.

[Old Greg]

Seems to me, a bunch of people sucking at the teet of the govt funding, have made it clear it is happening, non-believers are "deniers" and must prove them wrong...

Have you run an experiment to prove that?

[EternalOptimist]

Have you run an experiment to prove that?

first of all you need two teats

.......

....two

sorry , what were we talking about

[sasguru]

. However, the onus is, apparently, on those who are making the claim to prove it, so evidence is required to show that agw is happening, not evidence that it isn't.

Evidence can provide support for a scientific theory, not proof.
Evidence can however disprove/falsify a scientific theory.
Did you study at a poly?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper

[Mich the Tester]

Evidence can provide support for a scientific theory, not proof.
Evidence can however disprove/falsify a scientific theory.
Did you study at a poly?

Erm, I did, and I know that.

[sasguru]

Erm, I did, and I know that.

Great.
Now it seems to me if you discount the nutters, the cretins, some journalists, the oil industry and most importantly several shadowy foundations like the Heartland Institute and Lord Lawson's GWPF (as an aside I just note that it is in Israel's interest that oil remains as a central plank of Western interests otherwise they may be abandoned to their fate in the Middle east), then there is certainly some evidence that man is affecting climate for the worse.
That is not to say that the theory of AGW has been "proved", as I've mentioned it can never be (there are cretins who claim this on the AGW side), but that the balance of evidence suggests that there is a correlation between CO2 and rising temperatures.
Now if some bright spark wants to win to the Nobel, they simply have to provide evidence that this linkage is not true/CO2 is a confounding variable/weather is getting colder globally* long term/there are no extreme climatic effects globally.
The latter 2 will be empirically verifiable in 10-20 years.

*I add this for the cretins who can't separate local effects from the global.