Jul 10, 2009
A "Climate Change" Time Line
The earth’s overall temperature in the last several years has either remained steady or slightly decreased — depending on which side of the issue is interpreting the data. No one is maintaining that the world is getting warmer and warmer every single year, which was the initial prediction.[i]
Nevertheless, the current administration is risking America’s economic future on “green” energy in an effort to solve an unproven crisis. The cap and trade legislation is moving ahead in spite of the fact that the United States is already one of the leading nations in curtailing CO2 output.
from American Thinker
June 24, 2009
After Global Warming
by Larrey Anderson
see whole article here.
I completely agree, global warming is political NOT scientific. However, that said many today have come to worship at the alter of science. In many ways it has become the new god for some. There is a case to be made for global warming and a case to be made for the onset of another ice age. But I see little evidence that man is causing either. Some things are simply not possible for science to understand, and the question of global warming easily falls into this catagory. One could gather 1000 of the greatest scientific minds and have them observe a mighty oak for ten year and then ask them one autumn day which acorn would fall next from the tree and after comparing notes and data the thousand could not agree, although some would claim to know the answer. Amazingly one could be right. Global warming or cooling is that tree multipled by tens of thousands waiting for the single acorn to drop. No one knows, and yet as you say, politicals will stake the fate of a nation on what no one knows and no one will ever know. These same leaders, these same men cannot predict the course of tomorrows stock market and yet they ask us to believe in them and the truth they accept from some scientist. Pure folly!!
Found your site via twitter–following. Like your views and your site. Visit me at Totus and drop me a link and I will add you to blogroll there. Mine is a young site, but I've worked it hard and have it up to a PR4 ranking. Would be happy to exchange links with you.
interesting analogy. We do get so bogged down on the scientific details and the emotions of the argument that we lose site of the scale of the question and how unknowable this is. We would rather attempt the impossible than to solve simple problems that can deliver real results like clean water and disease control.
I prefer getting my knowledge of science from primary sources, such as peer-reviewed scientific journals, rather than from daily newspapers & weekly popular magazines.
Nihilism, prideful ignorance, mathematical illiteracy (e.g. incapable of discerning averages from single events) does not cause what we do know to disappear.
There was no 1970s “global cooling scare” in the scientific literature. Time and Newsweek, and all popular weeklies & dailies, are not reliable sources of scientific knowledge.
http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists’ thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth’s climate on human time scales. More importantly than showing the falsehood of the myth, this review shows the important way scientists of the time built the foundation on which the cohesive enterprise of modern climate science now rests.
…
The survey identified only seven articles indicating cooling compared to 42 indicating warming.
Using the 30 year mean, the hottest 28 years of the record are the past 28 in exact sequential order. In terms of the single years, the hottest 23 have been in the past 28 & the hottest 12 have been the past 12. A period of 30 years was chosen because that is the definition of climate and is the span of the reference period that HadCRU (1961-1990) is based on. The HadCRUT3v temperature record covers 1850 – current. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/climon/data/themi/g17.htm http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/outreach/glossary.shtml#C
The cooling of 2007 & 2008 is expected as it was caused by the Southern Oscillation, i.e. La Nina & El Nino. 1997-8 was the strongest El Nino of record. 2008 was the hottest La Nina-influenced year with no El Nino ever recorded. This is why pointing solely to the temperature difference between 1998 and 2008 is not relevant to a discussion of the long-term trend. http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7z.html http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
you may be right- but academic and scientific credentialism is not immune to the sway of psychological and political bias- given the scale of both the problem and the solution we are all still subject to the hubris of certainty in a very uncertain world