Posted on 08/30/2006 6:52:17 AM PDT by aculeus
... I sat in a roomful of journalists 10 years ago while Stanford climatologist Stephen Schneider lectured us on a big problem in our profession: soliciting opposing points of view. In the debate over climate change, Schneider said, there simply was no legitimate opposing view to the scientific consensus that man - made carbon emissions drive global warming. To suggest or report otherwise, he said, was irresponsible.
Indeed. I attended a week's worth of lectures on global warming at the Chautauqua Institution last month. Al Gore delivered the kickoff lecture, and, 10 years later, he reiterated Schneider's directive. There is no science on the other side, Gore inveighed, more than once. Again, the same message: If you hear tales of doubt, ignore them. They are simply untrue.
[snip]
Here's the kind of information the ``scientific consensus" types don't want you to read. MIT's Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology Richard Lindzen recently complained about the ``shrill alarmism" of Gore's movie ``An Inconvenient Truth." Lindzen acknowledges that global warming is real, and he acknowledges that increased carbon emissions might be causing the warming -- but they also might not.
``We do not understand the natural internal variability of climate change" is one of Lindzen's many heresies, along with such zingers as ``the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940," ``the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average," and ``Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century, and were advancing for several centuries before that. Since about 1970, many of the glaciers have stopped retreating and some are now advancing again. And, frankly, we don't know why."
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Refute this if you can:
Your theory is close, but the Actual cause of Global warming is the end of slavery.
With thousands of slave ships no longer throwing 200 million of slaves overboard, the ecology of the ocean was altered.
/Major Owens (D-NY)
There's something wrong with you numbers. I count forty Pirates in Pittsburgh ...
LOL!!
There are still at least 1000 pirates. Look at Indonesia or the east coast of Africa.
I've read it and it is well written. I gave it to a global warming nut and said it was an adventure novel and I never got it back! Censorship!
I've heard its a might bit cooler there though as well!
It's a different kind of prediction. This recent article at RealClimate addressed the exact question you asked.
Short and simple arguments for why climate can be predicted
Some of the comments are from one of my favorite FReeper climate change skeptics -- because he has a good grasp of the issue. Note that there are a LOT of comments.
Dr. Gray's arguments against global warming aren't very good (Lindzen's are more realistic).
Clearly only more pirates can save us.
The media frequently provides an exaggerated and inaccurate view of this issue emphasizing the worst-case "scary" scenarios, but it's not a hoax.
Actually, Lindzen doesn't get this criticism (other skeptics do). Lindzen is a tenured and accomplished atmospheric scientist and doesn't appear to have much trouble getting research grant funding. He writes the occasional op-ed on spec, but not as often as other skeptics.
TChris, that's still essentially a weather prediction, not a climate prediction. Take a look at the link I posted in #27. Given a liberal margin-of-error, I could easily predict the average temperature for any state one month in advance; I just look at what the average temperature IS for that state and that month. (That, in essence, is climate. Climate = average weather.)
If you want to try something interesting, go to CLIMVIS and plot temperatures for any given month using airport weather data. Try plotting data for April in a mid-latitude state, like Pennsylvania or Kentucky, over a lot of years. Comparing the graphs will show that there is usually a fairly strong transition from cold to warm in April, but the timing of this transition is considerably different year-to-year. March would work too; remember the "in like a lamb, out like a lion" (or vice versa) adage? The average temperature for a transitional month is going to be based on a combination of the cold part of the month and the warm part of the month. So while there's going to be considerable variability -- due to weather -- the average temperature is still going to be about (tossing out a number not based on anything) 52 degrees.
If you want to know the average annual temperature of a given area, find a cave in the area. The constant temperature of the cave is the average temperature of the area. This is also why borehole temperature logs, properly analyzed, can provide information about recent past climate-based temperature trends.
mega-dittoes!
Or not.
Michael Crichton's State of Confusion
Michael Crichton's State of Confusion II: Return of the Science
ping
I agree with the GW skeptics. The world has been warming since the last ice age but not because of anything man has done.
However, I do disagree with your prediction statement. It's impossible to know the which card will turn up next in Black Jack or what the next roll of the dice will be in Craps, but casinos make billion of dollars knowing what the long term results will be.
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