# Controversies in Science/Are humans causing global warming/A critique of THE THUNDERSTORM THERMOSTAT HYPOTHESIS: HOW CLOUDS AND THUNDERSTORMS CONTROL THE EARTH’S TEMPERATURE

(Review Paper) Cited in Controversies in Science/Are humans causing global warming/A critique of THE THUNDERSTORM THERMOSTAT HYPOTHESIS: HOW CLOUDS AND THUNDERSTORMS CONTROL THE EARTH’S TEMPERATURE

### Not so Simple!!!

The argument made by scientists are that global warming is not as simple as the formula where an increase in carbon dioxide leads to an increase in greenhouse effect which leads to an increase in temperature. The problem with this formula is that the concept of global warming is in fact not this simple but instead is a complex system made of 5 subsystems (atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere,cryosphere, and lithosphere). Which have their different temperatures as well as multiple factors that compose their own individual climates.

### Methods

The method that was used was to take a six foot long block of wood and emerge one end into hot water while a thermometer was attached to the other end, what happened was that the temperature on the other end of the block began to rise. This method was used with other items as well such as a block of glass, aluminum, and copper.
This study is guilty of the logical fallacy of concluding that global warming isn't caused by humans because it is a complex phenomenon. The articles claims that there is not a 1-1 relationship of causality between carbon dioxide increase and temperature increase. There are very little occurrences in the world that are a 1-1 causal relationship. However, this doesn't mean that the two are not correlated or that factor A is not partially causing effect A. For example, in health studies this found in the idea of specific etiology. Exposure to small children itself doesn't cause catching a cold, but the two are correlated. Another example is that driving while drunk isn't the only cause of a crash. The driver could be sleepy, the car could have bad breaks etc. However, drinking is certainly a large aspect of the cause. Alaxative 03:09, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
One of the methods used was the examining of the suns increasing temperature over the past billions of years. They discovered that the sun has increased its temperature by 10%, whereas the earth's temperature has only increased by +/-3%. Scientists tried to proved that the decreases in carbon dioxide gases has decreased in the exact same rate as the sun has increased. Which is very unlikely. It is also known that the amount of carbon dioxide has decreases significatantly over the past billion years. To analyses the temperatures of the earth it just doesn't make sense that if the sun's temperature has increased that the earths temperatures has remained relatively constant. It is also hard to say that the minor fluactuation of temperature was from humans because there has been many major events over the past billion years that would have increased carbon dioxide levels more then humans.

### Results

The experiment conducted by Willis Eschenbach was to to disprove the simple physics paradigm of where once you heat one end of an object the other end of it will eventually heat up is too simple of a paradigm. He disproved this theory by putting his feet into hot water and waited till the top of his head heated up, which of course it did not. So he theorized that the simple physics formula of an increase in carbon dioxide is equal to an increase in greenhouse effect which = increase in temperature cannot be true because such simple physics formula cannot be applied to complex objects such as the earth or a person.
    I would tend to agree with the findings of the experiment. Of course there are simple objects upon the earth that we can use to experiment on but the earth itself is a broader spectrum of all these things working together not separately in an experiment. To me the simple physics paradigm is too simple and doesn’t take into account that the earth is far more complicated than we can understand. Plus physics isn’t simple, if it was everyone would do it.Tlouc287 20:56, 23 February 2012 (UTC)