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kcom says:

December 28, 2010 at 6:27 am

“So whether you consider the science very certain or very uncertain, there’s no basis to argue that the ongoing CO2 rise is safe. To know it was safe we’d need the science to be very certain that a doubling of CO2 had little effect on the Earth. We can’t conclude that though if we argue that the science isn’t settled and is all very uncertain.”

We can conclude, though, that claims to know the temperature of the earth in 50 or 100 years are pure hokum. And any plan instituted to address a specific scenario runs the risk of addressing a problem that doesn’t exist or, worse, exacerbating a problem that is underappreciated. To wit, the idea in the 1970s to accelerate the melting of the polar ice caps to combat the incipient scourge of global cooling.

If we don’t understand things, we don’t understand them. It’s as simple as that. It may be uncomfortable, but it doesn’t change the reality. Scientists are tempted all the time to pretend to understand their field of study better than they do (or could possibly, based on current knowledge). But the truth is the science of global warming/climate change is simply not settled and never has been. It will be many years in the future before we know enough to go anywhere near that claim. In the meantime, the best we can do is muddle through and continue to gather data and thrash out various theories, based on their scientific merit, not their political merit.

Welcome back from the high country. As I get a headache reading some of the stuff at the linked sites... and squirm around in my chair as the pains set in from hoofing tons of snow off my property and side walk from yesterday's storm...time for some Advil... I get images of how bitter cold and snow bound most of the northern hemisphere has been getting so early in winter and the later fall period for the second year in the row... and get images of the snow that fell just north of Melbourne in their first week of Summer for the second year in a row.
There must be a way we can figure out how to increase the actual global temperatures so that plants can grow well, produce more food for the world's population, by providing longer growing seasons contrary to what we are seeing for the past few years in the opposite direction.
Since CO2 is such a minute percentage of our total air volume we have to find some better gas to try to warm the earth up a bit so that the good folks and critters in the rivers and swamps of South America don't freeze their asses off for another year once they go back into winter mode.
Not of course leaving out the increasing poor souls in the northern hemisphere in mostly Europe and Asia that had froze to death for the past few years as the winter temps plummet well below the averages.
Maybe we could make a collective call to big Al Gore as to what gas might be considered. He has known all the answers to our earthly problems for so long. What a guy. Maybe he should run against Hillary and the Kenyan this next time around.
It could make for a great amount of comic relieve. Big Al could save the world, along with Holdren, Maurice Strong, Hansen and say Goldman Sachs.

We can conclude, though, that claims to know the temperature of the earth in 50 or 100 years are pure hokum.

We are perhaps 100 years away from being able to accurately devise a total heat content metric for the planets light based biosphere. We would need to know the heat content of all the worlds oceans across depth and of course the atmospheric heat content across altitude. And we would need high resolution and high accuracy in the real time data points. Then of course we will have to come up with a solar energetic input metric that incorporates all the newly discovered and yet to be discovered energetic pathways between the Sun and Earth. Once we accurately know the energetic solar input to the Earth, and have a way to accurately monitor the Earths Biospheric Heat Content, we could actually start doing some science. But since this is the Planet of the Apes, I would not recommend holding your breath. We are more likely to cart one another off to concentration camps and gas chambers again.