El_Machinae said:
Masada, if you look at the short-term graphs, things actually look worse than they are. Though I wonder why you think we don't know what the climate was like over 200 years ago? There are numerous ways to figure that out.
... short term volatility? If I looked at my localities temperature for the last 8 months I could deduce that global warming was in effect, it was getting considerably warmer! Of course that might have more to do with entering the wet season with its accompanying rise in temperatures and humidity which is part of a natural cycle. The micro climate here goes through a full cycle every 300 or so years the total length of European settlement here is all of 140 years (I can't remember precisely when official records were first kept but ~1900 is about right). The whole of my territory is apparently double the size of Texas. We boast meteorological records for... maybe two stations total for the entirety of that area from ~1900 to ~1950. The rest of Australia is about as bad there is a heavy predominance of coastal stations near growing population centers which haven't ever been properly calibrated for urban heat sink except to run a bunch of pseudo-scientific statistical analysis which are based upon *shrugs*? The interior, that is the majority of the continent has next to no meteorological data to work with. Australia is the sixth largest country and a continent in its own result and we have reliable climate records which can go no further back than 1788 and are spatially confined to a narrow coastal strip outside of the occasional settlement in the inland. Satellites give us reliable data for the whole continent... for how long?
You end up with much the same result with Russia, Africa, Alaska and South America. The only reliable records we have for the entirety of an area are Europe and 'America' and I use that term broadly given how spotty the coverage is. Proxies can only fill in so many gaps, they can only be so useful, they can only be approximated to global climate so much or regional climate or what-have-you. I could get better results with my models for South-East Asian trade from ~400AD to ~1000AD using coins, official Chinese records, travelers accounts, hearsay, conjecture and whatever else I have open to me. I'm also willing to acknowledge mine is at best an educated stab in the dark dressed up in pseudo-scientific principles. I know the rules of the game, I know how people traded, what they pegged prices to, how they interacted, when they arrived, when they left etc. But I don't know the specifics, I don't know how many people left, how many arrived etc. Climate modeling and more precisely climate change science is stuck by this same data constraint. It cannot be any more accurate without having more data or understanding the system more. Even in the second case it can only be so much more accurate with a concurrent increase in data quality.
I'm not saying that the basic principles or advanced principles underlying the science are wrong. I won't take the liberty to say so. What I am not convinced of is the veracity of the modeling which they use to actually make accurate predictions.
El_Machinae said:
And the UN's IPCC is a necessary beast, because we're only going to get solutions to polluting the Commons through a global set of treaties. There's no other system or entity by which to enact these changes.
I like the IPCC report it is by far the most rigorous, comprehensive and robust work on the subject currently available. I use it a base for examining anything else that comes out. If someone says an average increase in global temperatures of 4 degrees in ten years I look at the IPCC report and wonder how big the margin of error in these things are. I'm not 95% confident, I'm not 90% confident, I'm probably only 50% confident in the findings (with a fairly significant error margin implied) in the results of the IPCC. That isn't to say that I don't think AGW isn't happening. I'm merely content to wonder by how much and by methodological basis are you arriving at these figures.
Formaldehyde said:
I think most 4th graders regurgitate whatever opinions their teachers and others they respect put into their tiny little heads, much like many adults.
Quite. Try and explain basic economic principles to 4th graders... *shudders*
Formaldehyde said:
Furthermore, I am not a denier. I am a skeptic largely because I was actually educated in the hard sciences. As far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on the actual dangers of anthro CO2, and probably more importantly, how much we can actually reduce it without bankrupting the world economy.
I'm of a similar position.
Formaldehyde said:
If your inclined to look at the stunning success of economics models... you'll understand my concerns about climate change modeling.
Murky said:
Can you refute the basic principles that I outlined?
Can you explain the role of cloud cover? Solar Radiation? Water Vapor?
Yeah, just like every year.
