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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DavesM who wrote (187522)	5/26/2006 10:27:20 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

If you looked at the plot I linked, you would see much richer frequency content in the CO2 data than the temp data. If CO2 drives temp, then that plot suggests temp is a low pass filtered version of CO2, i.e. integral terms are present (perhaps multi ones), which makes sense. If temp drives CO2, then that graph suggests derivative terms would have to be present (even multi orders). I can't think of any such mechanism, but perhaps you can? The reason I pointed that out is you will find even scholar like papers in the blogsphere were Prof XX says, Gee, CO2 can't be driving temp, because over this decade or two, CO2 went down, and the temp didn't (or CO2 went up and the temp didn't). If you understand that the CO2 data is frequency rich while the temp data is low frequency, there is no mystery there. That should hop out at you just looking at that graph, even if you have no background in signal processing and know nothing about differential equations. But it helps if you do. Looking at that graph it should be obvious that we could enter a couple decade long period of decreasing temps with rising CO2, but still be on a long term uptrend. Yet all the anti-global warming crowd would be dancing with glee at this fabulous rebuttal of the clueless scientists, while themselves being clueless. Thats the problem science is up against here. The point is, we know very well that increased CO2 should result in increased warming. The remaining scientific debate centers around trying to make an accurate carbon cycle model consistent with all the data, but what I read from scientists is that the debate is largely over. The issue being that there is quite a bit of carbon exchange between plants, oceans, and atmosphere, while the total magnitude of the extra human input, while new and matching the time period correctly, seems relative small, but is pretty close to the correct amount needed for the new increase. What I read from economists says otherwise. Who would you believe on the subject? But more importantly, how will you decide when the debate is over? As I pointed out to another poster here, when I look at American's objections to the theory of Evolution (around 45% don't accept it) I'm painful reminded that lay people don't know much about science, they are guided by other means. BTW, I'd love to see if there is much correlation between the fraction of Americans who doubt Evolution and the fraction who doubt Global Warming. I bet there is a very strong link between those two. If so, one certainly needs to ask why.