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Yes because you could simulate a small-scale atmosphere, and notice how changing the composition of the "atmosphere" affects average temperature or other features. John Von Neumann actually predicted climate change from first principles and described it as potentially more debilitating than nuclear weapons.

--Great essay.

https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~kite/doc/von_Neumann_1955.pdf

1 comments

Well that's more evidence for it, not an attempt to falsify.

If we want to falsify, we should ask questions like: Was there a time in the past when the atmosphere contained even more CO2 than it did now? What was the temp and did life survive?

What evidence or experiment would convince you the theory is false? Or is that impossible?

>If we want to falsify, we should ask questions like: Was there a time in the past when the atmosphere contained even more CO2 than it did now? What was the temp and did life survive?

Do you believe that question isn't already asked and answered? Just going off the top of my head, I understand historical considerations to be a routine observation as part of your typical course or even presentation on the history of climate change. If you believe this counts, then your answer to your own question about the falsifiability of climate change is yes.

I also don't think that's the only kind of example - I think the routine things talked about on a day to day basis, including year by year and decade by decade temperature predictions would qualify, and these data are quite frequently discussed and quite visible.

I also also don't think the distinction between "evidence in favor" and "attempts to falsify" makes a whole lot of sense. These are two different sides of the same coin, and evidence in favor of something is the same as surviving a test of falsifiability.

I think most people do believe we are at a historically unprecedented level of CO2. Especially due to graphs like this:

https://climate.nasa.gov/internal_resources/2679/CO2_graph.j...

It's pretty disingenuous to cut the graph at the beginning of the ice age cycles. This tricks people into believing that the current level of CO2 has never been seen before.

In contrast, this is a much more contextually accurate graph: https://today.tamu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/66millionY... ref: https://today.tamu.edu/2021/06/14/ancient-deepsea-shells-rev...

So I'd ask what parts of climate change are falsifiable?

- Is the climate changing? Of course, but it has also been changing for all of earth's history.

- Are humans and other organisms contributing? Yes but organisms have contributed to climate change for all of earth's history. Blue-green algae put oxygen into the atmosphere, plants sequestered huge amounts of carbon.

- Are we at a historically unprecedented level of carbon? No, the earth was previous at something like 200x the atmospheric CO2.

- Will 2x the atmospheric CO2 cause mass death? Probably not, we know life thrived in the past on a much warmer and more CO2 rich globe. Many more humans die of cold rather than heat.

Climate change is not a fundamental theory. It is derived from thermodynamics, the Navier Stokes equation, quantum mechanics and probably quite a few assumptions on what is negligible. Falsify any of those and you falsify climate change.