Title says it all:
Go for it people!
And for those who dont understand what I'm saying, read Hot, Flat, and Crowded by THomas Friedman.
Yet more misinformation. Warm periods increase rainfall, cold ones decrease it. The wrong idea of deserts being hot has lead to such idiocy, one of the reasons no one should listen to that idiot Al Gore.
Desertification happens more frequently at the hottest points on the planet, but the rate of desertification is inverse to the temperature, not direct. Deserts are also not primarily hot. Everyone likes to think of the Sahara or the Gobi desert, but no one mentions small spots on the map like say... Antarctica.
It's too hot to rain often in the Sahara because cold systems have to be massive to move over it and cool the air off enough for rain. It's too cold to snow often in either arctic circles because almost all moisture is stripped from the air before it gets that far north.
The dust bowl itself was caused by niether. The dust bowl is the natural occurance when you do row cropping in a place with inconsistent weather. Row cropping is best done in areas with light, frequent rain fall. Torrential downpours followed by months of drought are the exact opposite. Under such conditions, row cropping means you've got dry top soil, tilled to perfection, just waiting to be washed into the nearest river when the ten incher hits. Accordingly, most of the dustbowl areas are now one of two things, well irrigated, or doing something else. Cattle grazing is an excellent use of such terrain.
You should become a tobacco lobbyist, too. You've got a real gift.
And I'm supposed to take your word that Antarctica isn't shrinking, over the statements of dozens of people who are actually qualified and knowledgeable about it? I looked online for a little and I found nothing at all besides random people posting in forums claiming that Antarctica is not shrinking. If you can find me a major continental ice shelf that's risen up in the span of a few years, pray tell. Because I can find you one that's vanished in that same timespan.
Ok, add two years to that range (1998) and you get this. I played with the years and discovered that I can make the data on this website say anything at all I want it to say, as long as I don't care about doing actual analysis of the data and consider looking at pretty pictures to be sufficient to make a conclusion.
First of all, comparing 2008 to 2005 gives you horseshit and you know it. You need far more than 2 data points to get any sort of meaningful trend. In fact unless there were a staggeringly huge change, it really wouldn't tell you anything at all. And if there were a staggeringly huge change, it would probably be the result of a major event and not necessarily indicative of a long-term trend.
Anyways I looked up "the oceans are cooling" in google. I didn't go passed the first page because I'm pressed for time right now. There are a bunch of news articles on the front page, though - most of which concede that the ocean is cooling, but also present various reasons as to why. One contribution (but not big enough to account for all the cooling) is that as ice melts the overall temperature of the oceans cool. And we all know that ice is melting. (Fun fact: sea levels rise and fall with temperature; considering the ocean temperature has fallen but seal level has risen, the one reasonable conclusion is that there is more water than there used to be) And yes, we know that the sun's activity has a direct effect on the Earth's climate; and if it is true that we are leaving a particularly active period it would result in a cooling effect. What we have to look at is the total picture. Lower sun activity might lead to some cooling, and our enormous levels of air pollution might lead to warming. The question is, to what degree? Based on the evidence I've seen, global warming still remains a threat. Does that mean I know that it's happening, or that I know what the consequences will be? No. It just means I'm not willing to take the risk to find out.
I just love how you use temperature data in order to 'prove global warming wrong' and then turn around and say how that same data is worthlessly erroneous. You have to choose one or the other, you can't have both. If you truly believe that the data is crap, then don't base arguments off of it. It might work to convince the mentally challenged, but anyone with half a brain will just see a hypocrite.
Writing off one conclusion due to false data, then turning around and making a different conclusion based on the same data would lose you your job in the world of science research.
I am very worried about all of those problems. And just like I, as an individual, can only make very small contributions to solve the problem of climate change, I try to do the same with all the problems you just mentioned. If everyone just wallowed in misery and dejection, doing nothing about any of the major problems facing us because there are so many of them, none of them would/will ever be resolved.
And I hold nothing but contempt for people who blame everything on the US. I am American, and proud of it (like every country we have our flaws and make mistakes. But take the US out of the picture and you'd have a much more grim world). - and to be honest even though our country is currently the leading contributor of greenhouse gas emissions, we are quickly being overtaken by India and China. Reducing ou own emissions is all well and good, but in the grand scheme of things it won't amount to all that much if nothing is done about those two behemoths' imminent emissions rates.
Not to mention creatio... erm... I mean intelligent design in school propenent (since creationism has been deemed unconstitutional to teach in school).
"Warm periods increase rainfall,"
Warm periods increase extreme weather patterns. Drought, floods, ect. But not necesarily overall rainfall.
Anyway, citing false surface stations readings does nothing to further your argument. It might if there was one or two surface stations which solely made up the theory of global warming, but the theory is based on evidence gathered from all of them. It reminds me of an experiment done way back in the enlightenment period. A man tried to prove democracy would never work, since peasants did not have enough knowledge to make an accurate decision. The experiment was done as follow: The man got a cow, and offered a prize to the person who could accurately guess it's weight. At the end, none of the peasants had correctly guessed the weight of the cow. However, the average of all their guesses was within about 1 pound of the cow's actual weight. The point is, unless every single surface station on earth is inaccurate in the exact same way (a chance which is much lower than that of them all being perfectly correct) the average of the data will come out to be a correct or at least semi-correct reading.
Don't get sucked into it. The crux of each argument has been about 10 or 30 year cycles. The issue isn't about such vanishingly small periods. It's about longer term cycles where the Earth loses the ability to find it's equilibrium.
How long do you stand in front of the loaded pistol before you act on the threat? It's too late once the trigger is pulled, and I think folks that actually study the warming trending are trying to tell us that the finger is already squeezing the trigger.
Oh no. Listen, if you want to be taken seriously you'd better read what data means. Take a look the source & parameters: HR2SST_1200km_Trnd12_2000_2008
Where do you see 1951-1980?
This should have been a first hint that you did something wrong. The reason it is absent is explained in the description of the fields:
So, what you did wasn't checking 2000-2008 against 1951-1980, you did just compare December 2000 with December 2008! Pigeonpigeon did it correct. He compared the average temperature in the month December of 1951-1980 with the average temperature in the month December of 2000-2008.
Now the question is: Are you capable of interpreting scientific data at all? If you are not you'd better start trusting the people who are capable of doing so. Unfortunately, there are not many of those agreeing with your position.
You all have severe brain damage.
That the temperature is dropping is conveniently ignored simply because it's warmer now than it was in 1951. That the records are known to be innaccurately high in recent years is conveniently ignored because even the eroneous data says it's cooling right now.
Alway, you would have a point except you're a retard that doesn't click links. I already linked to the applicable site in regards to monitoring stations. The GISS stations are all supposed to be set up in the same way. They are covered in a uniform surface, ventilated, and in a specific setting as to terrain and vegetation for a minimal impact from abnormal radiant heating and artificial sources. They are indeed almost all too hot. It's very simple, when you stop painting the white box, it gets hotter as the paint flakes off. When you don't keep the grass cut down, it gets hotter as the air flow is reduced. When you put black top around it and set up air conditioning exhaust units next to it, well... Educate yourself just a little and you'll see why our thirty year knowledge of ice mass and sixty year partial record of world wide temperatures is irrelevant.
As for Antarctica, it contributed -.4mm to the rise in sea levels last year. Yes, I typed that out right. Go ahead, look for all those studies on it. They all stop at 2006. Kinda like no one has heard that the arctic ice sheet is up this year. If the center of Antarctica starts melting, we're all fucked, but it's never even come near zero. Warming the place up a little will just make snowfall higher.
I'm done, arguing with retards is amusing, but none of you pay attention to anything besides the national news.
Nah, that is not how I view it. You can say whatever you want, the community here has been checking your links and reading them, often doing the work that you failed to do: checking the reliability of the source. I'm perfectly open to reading articles, so have other people here been. Alas, everthing you came up with was garbage or even argumentation in favour of global warming.
You have failed to back up your claims, have concluded you are not in any way capable of providing even the start of a back up of your claims, and now you quit the game using some words below the belt that people have brain damage...
Wow so many stupid people in the world. This whole global warming debate is giving me a de ja vue. As if I had read something that occourred during my lifetime that parrelled this. OH YEAH I HAVE: CFC and the Ozone Layer. No shit. Even as the CFCs ravaged the Ozone layer, the valliant US industries continued to fight to keep using them. How brave of them, standing up to the science with the support of uneducated gullible masses. People so stupid they can be tricked to dismiss the impact of humans using CFCs on the ozone layer as nonsense.
I'm glad that despite these fuckin morons something was done. And that today I can go outside without SPF 1000 and not get skin cancer. But it will be 50 more years before the damage is fully reveresed.
The problem is, all his arguments match my admittedly amateur knowledge of weather patterns. Higher temperatures WILL result in more rain total because it will increase the rate of evaporation. Same water cycle, just a higher rate of turnover. That doesn't say anything about WHERE that rain will fall, but there will be more of it.
Yes, almost all of both arctic areas are desert, and it is due to the temperature.
Yes, many of the weather reporting stations are systematically flawed. Not randomly flawed, where they may report higher or lower than actual temp, but systematically skewed to read higher, and this increases with urban sprawl. Call this the thumb-on-the-scales factor.
Research funding and media coverage are both inclined to support global warming. No one gets grant money to disprove global warming, and any data released to show otherwise gets conveniently buried or goes totally unreported. Frankly, too many people are now making too much money on the "sky is falling" scheme for anything but time to prove they're wrong.
Mind, I believe reducing consumption and waste while preserving resources is a good thing, but that's simply on principle. Global warming has nothing to do with that.
Shorter WIllythemailboy: Global Warming is a a conspiracy of climate scientists to get more grant money.Or: Climate =/= Weather, I don't know the difference.Or: Weather stations are systematically flawed (probably by the global warming conspiracy cabal which has manipulated them all I guess) and they just agree with the measurements of satellites (holy cow, they now have artificial satellites in space that can measure temperature, what will those wacky scientists think of next?) because those satellites are manipulated as well.
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Anyway, what I always wonder about is, what kind of worldview do you need to have to think it possible that those climate scientists are all so evil and corrupt that they would lie just to get more money?
Climate change is an observable fact - lots of evidence to confirm it has occurred and will continue to occur.
The theory of anthropogenic global warming is purely speculative garbage, based on the garbage-in-garbage-out principle.
Should we ignore climate change simply because AGW is garbage? Of course not. But to pretend that a market in carbon credits or some international treaties are going to make diddly squat difference is comical at best, simply delusional at worst. The hubris in the notion that we know what we're doing when we try to influence climate change is simply breathtaking, not to mention frightening. Some have adopted AGW as dogma and ridicule all who choose not to drink the kool-aid. Association is not causation. Certitude is not evidence.
Higher temperatures do indeed mean more total rainfall worldwide. However, rainfall won't increase equally everywhere - in fact, in general it will just push local climates farther to the extremes. Places that are currently rather dry (like Africa, central USA, etc) will experience less rainfall, while places that are already lush and wet will experience significantly more rainfall. Both of these situations are problematic - dry places becoming dry is obviously a disaster; but wet places becoming even wetter can result in frequent, large flooding and mudslides.
Regarding flawed measurement stations - they are definitely a problem. People have applied corrections to them, but obviously there is plenty of dissent as to whether those corrections were sufficient. But one thing I find interesting is I've never seen or heard of an alternative correction. All I ever hear from people who say that the corrections weren't enough is that truly correcting the measurements proves global warming to be a farce... But what 'corrected' data are they using? I've looked, but I haven't found anything.
Quite honestly, though, to me one of the more convincing factors for me that climate change is a reality are the opinions of local people who live off of and work with the land in poor, isolated places. I even recently had the opportunity to speak with many such people in person a year ago (I was in south-eastern asia). These are people who have been working the land in the same way for decades, except they've noticed that they've had to start adapting to climate changes. In southwestern china, for example, farmers near the base of the mountain ranges have noticed that the icecaps have been melting earlier and faster - resulting in torrents of floodwaters that ruin their crops. This is just one of the many anecdotes I heard; not to mention the plethora of accounts by similar peoples all across the globe.
[quote who="WIllythemailboy" reply="10" id="2045215"]Research funding and media coverage are both inclined to support global warming. No one gets grant money to disprove global warming, and any data released to show otherwise gets conveniently buried or goes totally unreported. Frankly, too many people are now making too much money on the "sky is falling" scheme for anything but time to prove they're wrong.
Yes, plenty of people are indeed profiting off of it. But the bit about grant money, while sort of true, sort of isn't. An objective researcher doesn't set out to prove their theory; they set out to test it. Granted, most researchers aren't as objective as I'd like, but there are still plenty who are. A huge number of grants and funding is given to groups whose proposals are more or less "I want to see what the effects on ______ are of rising CO2 levels." Obviously, because it's a grant, they'll mention some things they expect to see - but from my experience (not in this specific field) the most interesting results of research are the unexpected ones. Most scientists in my experience are as happy to write a paper about research that didn't go at all they way the planned as they are when everything they predicted is validated. In physics, at least, that's where most groundbreaking ideas actually stem from.
To give an example - most particle physicists are hoping that the LHC doesn't validate all of our predictions - because ultimately that would just tell us, "yes, you're right!" and nothing more. If it doesn't produce data that we can't explain with current theories, then it doesn't give us any leads about where to go from here. We are going to be looking for the Higgs boson, but if we don't find it nobody (at least, no one who values their job) will fake its existence. They'll look in the unlikeliest places and the smallest bumps to find it, but the most they're not going to say "i've found it!" if they haven't found very convincing evidence. Likewise, if a half-decent scientist with no conflicts of interest does research on the effects of CO2 on the climate, they aren't going to say "Hey look, the temperature goes up!" even if it clearly goes down.
Well, we do know that temperatures have been rising at unprecedented rates, starting not long after the industrial resolution began, and that CO2 emissions have gone up by some 40% in that same period of time (which is definitely our fault - look at a plot of CO2 levels over the past several hundred thousand years and you'll see a vertical line right at the end, and nothing similar anytime else). So there's an obvious correlation there - anyone can see that; the problem then is to figure out if there is also causation there (and if so, which way does it go? or is it a non-linear, bidirectional effect).
Your opinion seems to be that it isn't even worth trying to figure that out. Quite frankly, I don't see the hubris in finding this correlation provocative. We've increased the concentration of a greenhouse gas by 40% in a century, and in the same time period we've seen an unprecendented temperature hike. The reason people are looking for causation is because the correlation is between two factors that are believed to be interrelated; you don't see people trying to prove that extinctions in the past century are causing temperatures to rise - and yet that is also a very valid correlation. The reason scientists aren't doing that is because they see no way in which a few extinctions would raise the earth's temperature; and so far climate changes so far have been relatively minor, small enough so that it couldn't drastically affect population levels except in the most fragile ecosystems, if that.
To the narrow-minded, the reasonable seems like hubris I guess...
That said, we are definitely not all-knowing (not even remotely so) when it comes to climate change. There are tons of unknowns. But the general concensus among people whose opinions count (read: scientists in the field) is that there is a good chance that we are heading for disaster unless we take action. So we can either do the best we know to do (which is to reduce CO2 levels, basically), or just keep on going and possibly dig ourselves deeper into the problem. I wrote a post about this a few pages back - In my opinion, I'd rather play it safe than sorry. I'd rather invest into mitigating the problem and fail than ignore it completely. I'd like to say that we at least tried to be responsible for once in human history. Obviously, I'd prefer that we invest into mitigating the problem and succeed, but we'll never succeed if we don't try.
The problem with global warming 'research' is that theories cannot be 'real-world' tested. The entire discipline lives within theoretical computer models which are surrogate 'estimates' at best and nothing more than a machine's wild ass guess at worst. There is no escaping that with computer modeling, the 'results' depend entirely on the assumptions made to create various models. The assumptions themselves concern many things that can't be real-world tested or are based on observations, the accuracy of which is always open to debate. Even the most basic climate assumptions & observations have a range of error by definition. When multiple layers of assumptions and observations are modeled to interact in a constrained (defined) & finite way, the range of error grows exponentially. The fact that observed climate change has been so profoundly different than the AGW proponents' models have predicted over the past 10 years is testimony to the near infinite complexity of our global climate, as well as external factors which may affect it, and should give us pause in contemplating sweeping political & economic changes which are as likely to be based on a chimera as on reasonable probability (whatever that is - another assumption to be made).
Yes, that is obvious. It's largely the same problem encountered in astrophysics and cosmology (moreso in cosmology). There is, afterall, only one universe and no chance of making another to play with. Nonetheless, using computer models and observations, we have made significant strides. There will always be doubt, that is the nature of science; that's why we invented statistics - a way of quantifying how much we should trust theoretical predictions. Cosmology is living proof that even research in topics that can't be explicitly 'real-world' tested can still be fruitful and tell us something meaingful.
All assumptions and all knowledge, whether 'scientific' or not, are based on observations. And the accuracy of all observations are always open to debate. All scientific observations have a range of error by definition, and almost all science is based on multiple layers of assumptions and observations. So according to you, science is a worthless lost cause, and it is hubris for us to even attempt to study anything at all. Good job.
Also, it is blatantly false that the confidence interval grows exponentially with the layers of assumptions and observations. It as actually possible for the error to decrease in such situations; but more often the error increases roughly as a square root, which is a very, very far cry from an exponential increase.
So you're trying to tell me that even though we have succesfully made models and simulations that give us useful information about the universe, we are completely helpless in modeling the planet's climate? I am going to basically repeat an earlier post of mine here - about taking predictions out of context. Every single simulation about climate change (that I'm aware of, anyway) is focused on long-term effects. These simulations (and the processes they are simulating) are statistical creatures, which means that their validity depends on many factors - in this specific case elapsed time is one of the more major things to take into account. Taking the results of a model or simulation that is intended to make long-term predictions, and then saying, "Look! This simulation's prediction for next year isn't right, what a piece of shit!" is nothing short of ignorant. It is especially ignorant when the simulation itself shows significant variations on short time-scales.
And, I remember someone posting earlier a comparison of recent (last century or something?) historical data campred to 2 models: one that includes human contributions and one that doesn't. The one you'd call AGW matched much better than the one that didn't take into account human contributions.
Now, in order to take the predictions of a simulation seriously we need to have one of two things (preferably both): 1) we need to be extremely confident that our initial conditions are correct, and that all important factors have been accounted for correctly, and/or 2) we need to compare the simulation with relevant historical data. We can run simulations for long time periods, with relevant initial conditions, and see if the results are at all similar to the actual historical data. At this point in time I'd say that many scientists believe that we've taken into account many of the important factors, but consider the possibility that they're missing some big ones, or many small ones that add up. That said I'm aware of at least one climate simulation that has successfully done option #2 - and I'd presume there are many more (not that they reproduced earth's climate history, but they reproduced the same trends and correlations).
I find it kind of disturbing that you're picking sooo hard to make predictions seem much more uncertain and random than they really are, and then use that uncertainty as a reason to be apathetic about combating or even understanding climate change. I'm going to give you an analogous hypothetical example now, I'd like to hear what your actions would be:
You and another person are in a sealed room, with no idea of how or why you got there. The only other things in the room are a small, black box against the far wall, and a computer near you. Your companion walks towards the box but staggers and eventually collapses, dead from a heart attack. Then you notice that the box is slowly moving towards you. You noticed that as your companion walked towards the box he became progressively less stable before finally collapsing; ie, there is a correlation between your companion's proximity to the black box and his health. What do you do? Do you go try to check out the box yourself, hoping that proximity to the box was not the cause of death? Do you wait where you are, hoping nothing bad will happen? Or do you sit down at the computer and try to figure out what the hell is going on, and thus maybe a way to prevent it? Or some other option that I haven't thought of?
Pick up the computer and throw it at the box.
(I have no idea what that would equate to in terms of the global warming argument it was used to analogize, but it was an option you didn't mention, and would probably have a fairly decent comparative rate of success.)
First, I want to make sure it is known that I believe that global warming has been occuring, and that greenhouse gases affect global warming. However, I have yet to have anything refute the theory that sunspots cause more of global temperatures than greenhouse gases, and it seems more believable to me. First, the Sun is more likely to determine Earth's temperature than we are, for obvious reasons. I will not believe anything from someone who says otherwise. Secondly, the best counter I have heard to the sunspot theory is that greenhouse gases are proven to affect global warming. This proves nothing except that greenhouse gases affect global warming.
To show that I am not some random person who is just posting what some guy on tv said to post, here is a <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10783">link</a> with a site I saw earlier.
I'm not sure if I was supposed to put the html right on the page, so if not, here is the address without the code:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10783
That's all I have now.
The political world needs to weigh the scientific opinion about the need of measures against the social and economic consequences. Failing models of will course decrease the weight that is given to them, but as PigeonPigeon explains it is rather early to make conclusions. The scientific consencus is that politics need to act urgently and that concensus is given a lot of weight. That's one thing that being considered in politics, but at the same time, politics has to combine thus with the need to make energy decisions for international political reasons (i.e. Vladimir Putin closing gas supply in heart of winter). I do not see any political case at all for a continued "Hakuna Matata", the case for political measures is almost perfect.
Thanks for clarifying the obvious and then misquoting me. I didn't say we shouldn't 'attempt to study anything at all.' The hubris comes in when we decide that we know 'enough' and that we know what to do about it, both of which assume that some sort of intervention is 'necessary.' I remain unconvinced of the latter, irrespective of the obvious benefits of a 'greener' approach to living here in terms a healthier environment. Smog reduction is a good thing, waterway management is a good thing, lots of things are 'good things' - they have intrinsic short-term benefits that make them worthwhile, whether they contribute to 'solving' global climate change or not.
Alright: 'magnifies'... feel better now?
Nope. Again, better brush up on your reading skills. Tried to tell you no such thing. What I suggested was that we not bet the farm on them.
No doubt, the longer the time scale the more likely the models are to be 'reasonably predictive'. Problem is, the AGW proponents aren't talking about 'long-term' solutions (I happen to believe there is only one 'long-term' solution, if any) - the Goracle says we're doomed within a decade without drastic intervention. I'm not willing to bet the long-term farm by rolling the dice on drastic short-term interventions that are politically motivated, the risks & benefits of which we haven't exactly worked out yet (& may never), especially when they're almost certainly pissin' in the long-term ocean anyway, at great cost.
Another misread and misdirection play. I'm all for understanding as much about about the universe and our place in it as possible, but we need to understand the limits of our ability to understand (not to mention the limits of our ability to safely intervene). It's the 'combating' part where things get dicey, especially when that becomes a political/economic argument used by non-scientists to advance political agendas.
Or, as pointed out by psychoak, the weather stations being monitered are no longer in compliance with the environmental factor standards they are suppoded to meet. Due to people building shit around them, not due to some mass conspiracy. Apparently you can't follow links.
To add to that, those satellite readings are callibrated against ground readings. Those same ground readings that are so comically flawed are used to tell us what the satellite readings mean. So yeah, garbage in, garbage out.
I work at a research institution. That's really all the explination you need. If you believe all - or even a majority of - scientists working in this or any other politically sensitive field are perfectly neutral, ethical, and unbiased, you need to grow up and possibly have your head examined.
You're looking at the grant recipients, but the organizations giving the grants are often a larger problem. Add in the probability of a grant getting cut if the resulting research undermines the funder's position on an issue, and any scientist who published a paper ripping apart a global warming theory would likely never see funding again. What you said is generally true about pure abstract research, but global warming hasn't qualified as pure research for quite some time.
No, but they are extremely likely to not publish that research at all. Or apply for more funding to "find the flaws in the current model".
This. People are so quick to point out political affiliations of those not hopping on the global warming bandwagon, but they trust that those screaming "The sky is falling!" are honest independant observers.
Yes, you're right, you said it's hubris to claim that "we know enough" to do something about climate change. I apologize for misreading your original post. That said, I wholeheartedly disagree with you. It is not hubris to claim that "we know enough" if we actually believe we know enough. Either you and I are aware of very different levels of understanding of planetary climate among the scientific community, or our standards of what is "enough" are different.
Scientists believe that humanity is contributing to significant global climate changes due to our emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Pretty much all their models and predictions tell us that if we do nothing, we face potential catastrophe in the near future. Worst case scenarios are literally worldwide catastrophe within the next 30 or 40 years, but much more probable consequences are that by the end of the century our planet will be unable to support nearly today's population levels or standard of living. Climates all across the globe will become more extreme. This isn't fringe thinking, it's the consensus of scientists, and one that they are pretty confident of it. The Earth and its life will survive, but humanity will be forced to undergo major changes and these changes will in all likelihood include significant violence and suffering (let's face it, that's what'll happen). Scientists are also confident that merely curbing our emissions within the next decade or two to more reasonable (and definitely achievable) levels would be enough to avoid that fate.
Yes, there is a possibility that our scientists are wrong; that global warming won't lead to any sort of human tragedy. And even if they're right about that, they could still be wrong, and reducing our emissions might to accomplish anything. That said, the risk of inaction, in my opinion, is not worth shrugging off our responsibility to future generations. If we do nothing, everything might turn out just fine, but the reigning science today says that it probably won't.
To sum this up: I believe that we know enough that ignoring the risk would be among the most irresponsible cases of inaction in human history - and that is no small claim, we have plenty examples of gruesome consequences of inaction.
Yes, I do feel better. But I want to clarify further - the fact that multiple layers of observations and assumptions usually magnifies the confidence interval doesn't mean that theories built up off of many such layers are inferior. The only thing that determines that is the final level of confidence of the results, and its agreement with appropriate real-world scenarios or experiments. I recently did an experiment about thermal lensing with pretty crappy equipment; more than 10 uncertainties, including those of the crappy equipment, went into calculating the uncertainty of the final results - and the resulting confidence interval was still very small. Looking at the number of factors, and even the uncertainties of those factors individually, tells you nothing about the uncertainty of your final prediction; you really have to do the math to figure that out, and you'd be surprised at how large uncertainties can go in, and small ones can come out.
"the longer the time scale the more likely the models are to be 'reasonably predictive.'" Wow. No, you clearly don't understand the concept of computer models of complex systems. You see, in order to accurately predict what the climate will be like next year, extraordinarily precise initial conditions would have to be input into these simulations. So precise that it's not going to happen, not in the near future anyway. When dealing with such complex and chaotic systems, you don't try to make pinpoint predictions at all. You don't say, "in 34 years, the average global temperature will have increased by 2.3 celsius, 4 years later it'll have gone back down by 0.1 degrees, and another 4 years later it'll go up again by another 0.6 degrees" that would be amazingly dishonest. Instead, you look for trends and broad long-term effects. The types of conclusions that can be made are things like, "Over the time-span of about 50 years, temperature will increase by an average of 0.1 celsius, with a standard deviation of 0.1 celsius," (meaning that ~2 out of 3 years, the temperature will change by 0 to +0.2 celcius). Also, they don't just put in a set of initial conditions, press start and record the results. They run the simulations numerous times, sometimes varying initial conditions, sometimes not.
On the other hand if someone designed a simulation that is meant to accurately predict short-term effects, then using that model to make long-term predictions would be similarly dishonest. Simulations and models are designed for very specific purposes, and taking their results out of context renders them meaningless; unfortunately, the media doesn't understand this concept and reports the musings of curious scientists as well-founded scientific predictions.
Also, I find it telling that you completely ignored my hypothetical scenario. I have a feeling you didn't answer it because your answer would either undermine your argument or make you look silly. Feel free to prove me wrong.
We don't even know wether U.S. surface station data has been used in the most recent climate models at all!
As I see it, the surface stations project will allow construction of better datasets than we have now. That's all. The surface challenge project does not aim to challenge the current scientific concensus, nor does their work at this time give reason to rethink the scientific concensus.
Should any research papers get published based on findings from the surface stations project, I would be interrested to read them.
Who said that?
Well to be honest I have trouble to believe that the scientific concensus is formed by a group of liars. Doesn't mean every scientist, regardless of his position, can be trusted.
I know, I'm still done. Just posting links for the uninformed masses, no arguing from uneducated me.
Is this the vaunted satellite data you guys are talking about? Click the data access links on this page if you're not too in love with your views.
Edit: Dmantione, the GISS information is the ground stations... They aren't all in the US either, they're what passes for a worldwide network.
The only thing that I want to point out is your choice of sources is highly suspect. Since you're so interested in following links why don't you read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Watts about Wattsupwiththat.com founder Anthony Watts. There is no information that he posts that I would ever bother wasting my time reading.
To put this in terms you may understand this is just about as effective as me posting an article from the Daily KOS, the Huffington Post or the Smirking Chimp in a political thread and suggesting that the average "Joe User" check out the link. In other words precisely zero.
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