Posted on 04/08/2006 11:15:03 AM PDT by calcowgirl
Let me back up a bit here. Humans do have an influence on the climate but if you calculate how much of an influence which has been done by NASA it is a very small fraction of a degree C.
This is broken down into direct influence on the earth and indirect influences on the earth. Direct heat means heat from our bodies, cars and industry. Indirect heat is what is in dispute.
If you want to get into some really nice details on this read one of my favorite posters on FR JasonC posts on this thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3acb8ec745a7.htm
he gets into a lot of detail if you have any questions please feel free to ask.
Well, he (Jason C) could have written the thread a bit more clearly.
But assuming that his intention is to communicate rather than confuse the issue, I guess I'd ask why, that if he knows something that all of the climate modelers don't (that all of them forgot the Stefan-Boltzman law, which states that the radiation given off by a black body is proportional to the fourth power of its temperature in degrees Kelvin), why he doesn't publish this in a journal? Imagine it! He'd be the most famous man in science - acclaimed for saving us from the mistakes of so many other scientists. Every single one of the modelers forgot this and he points it out to the world. It would be incredible!
I guess my point is that you don't have to completely understand how everything works to make intelligent evaluations. I understand the basic concepts of climate change but would be the first to admit that I don't know how to build a working climate model. But if faced to choose between a near consensus of climate scientists around the world and a guy who says they ALL forgot a basic law of physics, then I'm going to choose the former, especially since temperatures are rising, ice caps are melting, etc. I mean what kind of evidence does one need before you start taking preventive measures?
And, for the NASA study, it makes a big difference what the proportion of a degree celsius is, as that has been about the amount of 20th century warming we've seen. Last I heard from NASA is that one of their higher-ups resigned because of being censored after he publicly said that we really, really should be worried about climate change based on the evidence that they were finding.
He doesnt need to. The eco environmental team leader has already dropped out of the project and stated that the figures are wrong. JasonC has shown in great detail what those mistakes where before he dropped out of the project.
I have no idea who the "eco environmental team leader" is or what he dropped out of (?)
Those "mistakes in math" involve one graph, often cited called the "hockey stick". But they don't discredit all the other indicators that temperatures are increasing significantly. And the analysis of the hockey stick methods has it's own problems, according to a NASA representative:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4349133.stm
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