"He has a bachelor's degree in Geology, and a Masters in electrical engineering. This is already a warning sign."
A warning sign?
A qualification in the field of Engineering is a perfect basis for being able to comment on this subject.
Because the essence of the field of engineering lies in dealing with large, open, chaotic, non-linear, multivariate, physical and chemical systems involving orders-of-magnitude complexity and time-duration, and in which the variables are interdependent functions of one another, possibly compounding and possibly moderating.
At its core, the pure scientific process when it comes dealing with large systems - which is what all engineers are taught - involves identifying all the influencing variables, measuring their causality on a statistically sound and consistent basis, establishing scientifically rigorous controls in the case of each deterministic variable, deriving the functional relationships that are empirically shown to exist between all those variables, and then solving all those functions simultaneously in order to arrive at the extent of the causality, if any, of each variable.
That constitutes scientific proof; not some bogus tweet or article from some or other partisan media source.
The Earth's atmosphere comprises is exactly that: indeterminate number of large, open, chaotic, non-linear, multivariate, physical and chemical systems involving orders-of-magnitude complexity and time-duration, and in which the variables are interdependent functions of one another, possibly compounding and possibly moderating.
How do we know all the factors that impact a planet's atmosphere?
And how do we measure all the factors that we think impact a planet's atmosphere?
And how do we back test all those measurements to establish historical controls?
Even if we had all the inputs, how big is the matrix that solves all the simultaneous equations that relate all the factors as functions of one another?
Forget about deriving the eigenvalues for the resulting matrix containing all the simultaneous equations that are solved to provide the answer about the extent that the sole impacting variable on Earth's climate is human activity, merely setting the problem up is an impossibility.
Objectively, anyone who says, "The science is settled" is claiming to:
1. have identified allthe factors that affect a planet's atmosphere,
2. have back-tested, over statistically significant time frames, how each factor has impacted the atmosphere,
3. have derived the mutual multi-modal inter-dependency functions of all of those factors,
4. thrown all of those functions into a hopper, out of the bottom of which a single variable, viz., human activity, emerges as the single, statistically meaningful determinant, ceteris paribus.
Clearly BoolSheet, in the context of true and rigorous scientific process.
As for Geology not being a valid platform for commenting on matters of atmospheric evolution, you don't think geological activity has any bearing?
Factors such as tectonism, conservation of tectonic energy, volcanism, organic entropy, geomorphology, geothermal gradients, dynamism of the outer core, mobility of magnetic dipoles, and then the multitude of Astro-geological factors such the weakening magnetopause, capacitance of the Allens belts, rotational and orbital angular momentum, solar and interplanetary tidal forces, axial tilt, orbital eccentricity… and then umpteen things I’ve omitted to mention or that we don’t even know about... has it been demonstrated that all of those factors are not having a bearing on Earth's atmosphere?
Why do you think that, of the four terrestrial planets in our Solar System, two have atmosphere and the other two don't? Why has Venus's experienced atmospheric runaway, when nary a human being has inhabited the planet?
Why does Jupiter's moon, Io, have an atmosphere?
Answer: Geological activity.
So, to muzzle opinion from geologists or engineers from the discussion about what impacts an atmosphere is akin to anti-Science heresy.
(And to head off another one of your straw men arguments at the pass, I'm debunking your inference about the validity of the fields of Engineering and Geology, in general, not being able to present valid contributions to the debate about atmospheric evolution, without making any reference to the views of any individual engineers or geologists.)
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