Let me preface this by saying that I am not a global warming/climate change denier. However, the flow chart says that not a single peer-reviewed abstract from the years 1993-2003 questioned that humans are responsible for global warming. This might sound like strong support to some, but as a former scientist, this just makes me think that politics is getting in the way of any dissenting opinion being published. In physics, we're still seeing papers published (not many) that question special relativity and even the inverse square law of gravity, and those are on a much firmer footing than climate change (because we can actually make falsifiable predictions and perform experiments).
Agreed. 200 or 300 years (of meteorology) out of 4.5 billion years...yep - that sample size is small, New Yorker.
Theory is much much harder to prove out than a statistical model. Special Relativity isn't based on statistics, it's based on equations and observations.
A penny can be flipped trillions of times. But you only need to flip it a few hundred times to predict the result of those trillion flips with very high accuracy. Of course, I wouldnt expect someone of your ilk to understand that.
I strongly disagree with your use of the word "prove." Neither a theory nor a model like those used in climate science can be proven. A key difference in support of a theory like special relativity is that it can be used to make falsifiable predictions going forward. The type of statistical model you're referring to is entirely backward looking, and for a number of reasons, it is nearly impossible to project these forward with any reliability. The idea that humans are causing global warming is also a theory. It is derived from observations and basic physics (greenhouse effect). However, we're only inferring a causal relationship from a statistical correlation. As I stated previously, we cannot perform experiments, other than the numerical/computational kind (we don't have a toy Earth atmosphere to play with in the lab). As a result, it is not nearly as well supported as special relativity, which is actually a key component of the greatest scientific accomplishment (in terms of explaining observed phenomena and making extremely precise predictions for numerical constants in nature) in human history: quantum field theory.
Well let's not get into semantics. You know what I mean by prove. In science, the holy grail of "proof" for a hypothesis is when you can predict observations based on the model you have developed. So far, the climate changing models have been spot-on here. They predicted increases in night time temperature and that the heating would occur at certain altitudes. They were right. And that's the smoking gun. natural warming would increase day-time temps as well. And while past data isn't always great for predicting the future - this isn't meteorology. We can look back 20 million years at ice core samples to see how CO2 levels changed. Modern day CO2 levels have not been this high since 15 million years ago. That's shocking. And at that time, there were no ice caps and the temperature was 5-7 degrees higher. The evidence is overwhelming. Sure, you can always say there is a one in a 10,000 chance they are wrong. Nothing is iron-clad with statistical models. But it's pretty darn accurate and it's very foolish to ignore the science and predictive statistics which thus far have matched out pretty well. Hey, you never know where that monster hurricane is going to go, but when they say they are 95% sure it's coming your way, you better evacuate.
LOL. I have an MBA from the University of Chicago. I am not saying I am the world's no. 1 expert in statistics, but it doesn't take much to see that your example has zero to do with what we are talking about here. Once again, you are embarrassing yourself. I was already amused by your idiotic response to DonkeyMagic. It's always funnier when someone acts like they are really knowledgable, just to expose themselves as...not knowledgable at all. You are an expert at that.
There's plenty of stupid people with MBA's. I mean if you don't understand elementary stat what can I do. I hope you are done feeling your oats by lavishing 8 year old insults - way to represent the University of Chicago there buddy (if you are even telling the truth).
If you don't understand that flipping a coin 4.5 billion times is not comparable to looking at climate change statistics over 4.5 billion years - then it is painfully obvious that you do not understand elementary stat. Like - at all.
I don't know where you're getting this idea that the predictions from climate science have been spot on, but you're absolutely wrong. Climate modeling has actually been quite bad in a quantitative sense, and going back to the early 1990's, you could have made a better prediction of global average temperatures 20 years later by fitting a straight line to the last several decades than by using any of the various climate codes. See Nate Silver's book for more about this topic and other areas of statistical modeling, including the vast improvements to hurricane forecasting to which you allude. Also note that these codes are all basically offshoots of the same code anyway, and the vast majority of users treat them as a black box.
Climate models are limited by computing power and limitations in our understanding of meteorological variables. I'm not talking about the prediction of how much air temps are going to rise, I'm talking about predicted impacts of man-made increased CO2. As I have said before - the key evidence is that natural warming and variability doesn't not result in a the trophosphere in the tropics warming faster than the surface - that's a result of human emissions that would cause that, and indeed, weather balloon data confirmed this was the case. It has also correctly predicted changes in weather patterns. So that's pretty strong evidence right there. Further, there is no model to date that has explained the rate of warming we are seeing through any natural phenomenon (solar activity, volcanoes, etc) and the conclusion is that there is a greater than 95% probability that the warming spike we are seeing is a result of external forcing - in other words, human activity. People get hung up on old models or one model disagreeing with the rate of increase, but overall, when you look at all models not being able to explain the temp rise WITHOUT some sort of external forcing, that's pretty strong data. It's the reason that man-made climate change is now widely accepted in the scientific community. Nate Silver may make the point that these models are not precise - but that isn't the point. If 11 polls predict Obama to win the election by different margins - you could say they are all inaccurate. Or you could say that Obama is winning. We don't know how much the temperature is rising because of man made activity exactly, but we know it's being shaped significantly by mankind.
Why don't y'all motofingers do the google: http://climate.nasa.gov/uncertainties A statistical model can have a well defined probability, and everyone and their mom can agree that it is what it is, but it can still be based on a high degree of uncertainty. I mean, I think the sun and cloud cover are fairly obvious points: Forcing: Clouda: Having very high faith in these statistical models is like saying "we feel very good about our statistical model that has some huge holes in it, but never mind that". I think those were the same famous last words of Lehman Brothers mortgage-backed securities division. Besides all that ish, why do people act like climate change is bad (is change inherently bad, Obama?); like I said, the Al Gores of the world would like you to believe, with their washed over and revised junk-science, that global climate was in a state stasis prior to the burning of coal and change is bad.
This is clearly just a vast conspiracy of poor liberal scientists trying to limit the power of the great and glorious John Galts from the blessed liberty-giving free market graced by God and Jesus in these heavenly United States.
Don't fall for the troll, Nook. Look, as for the OP, I don't know if we are seeing a long term rise in global temperatures, or some sort of short term increase that will pass with time (I lean towards a new trend of higher temperatures brought on by human activity, yet can't provide "absolute truth"), but when rimrocker says "the world of my grandchildren will not be anything close to my world," I know for a fact that he's right. The world my own children are experiencing is in many ways far removed from the world I grew up in, and the primary differences are a product, in one fashion or another, of human activity. I spent summers barefoot the vast majority of the time, the soles of my feet like leather. My kids couldn't do that. Why? Because fire ants made it impossible, fire ants all pervasive in Texas, mounds in their tens of thousands, fire ants introduced here by ship to the Gulf Coast from South America. That's just one example, and the impact of fire ants changed far more than whether it's safe to walk barefoot in the grass. Aquatic plants clog many of our lakes and streams, plants introduced accidentally by a hobby I enjoy myself (or did until we had kids), plants imported to pet stores for use in aquariums. I'm sure many of you can think of other examples of how human behavior is changing the world we live in. Overpopulation. Widespread use of antibiotics and other medicines leading to infections and diseases more vicious and more difficult to treat, despite remarkable advances in medicine. I could go on. One of the most foolish things we as a species can do is ignore our huge impact on this rolling ball circling our small sun, a tiny speck in a huge galaxy surrounded by countless other galaxies. You can all laugh if you like, but we are busy radically changing our planet, and we aren't making it better for ourselves and for our children, much less our grandchildren and their descendants.
