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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (347113)	8/16/2007 6:08:39 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1574054

climateaudit.org norcalblogs.com and then for the record of past predictions of future climate farm2.static.flickr.com tigerhawk.blogspot.com extrememortman.com

To: TimF who wrote (347113)	8/16/2007 6:44:47 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1574054

"So for the moment stipulate .5 degrees F over a century as "established fact" even though it really isn't." Sigh. Yes it is. Has been for a while. When I got my Marine Science degree in the late 1970's, it was an accepted fact that sea level had risen about 15cm since 1900 mainly due to thermal expansion. At that time, most of the warming was seen by nightly temperatures, day temperatures showed no or even negative changes. By that time, it was being speculated that the reason was because of particulates in air pollution increasing the albedo of the planet and having its effect at low levels. And, guess what happened when emitted particulates started to fall precipitously during the 1980s? The fudge factors, as you term them, are methods used to normalize data. I haven't looked at their protocols, but such are usually documented and defensible. They aren't just plucked out of the air as you are trying to imply. There are plenty of reason to suspect that they are reflecting real trends. Not only is the rise in sea level part of it, but there are other clues. Like earlier blooming of plants, something that the Brits especially are/were meticulous about, shifting north and up mountain of the ecological niches of many creatures, changing oxygen isotope ratios in the oceans, etc. It is difficult to explain these widely observed phenomena if you discount the temperature data. "Its a long stretch to take those two facts, and say something like "global temperatures will go up X degrees over the next century, and X is high enough to cause severe problems"." You are correct. The exact degree of changes cannot be accurately modeled. But, the fact of the matter is that changes will occur. I find your stance that because we cannot predict with 100% accuracy then we are better off doing nothing really perverse. It is sort of like saying because you don't know precisely what will happen during the day, you are better off staying in bed. At the very least, even with zero temperature change, the rising CO2 level will have adverse effects on the chemistry of the oceans. The nature of the oceans is any change will have adverse effects because most of the organisms have evolved in what is the most stable ecology that ever existed. The point being is that, sooner or later, rising CO2 levels will cause problems. Whether or not global warming is real. And it is so easy to start to bring our CO2 emissions under control. Now true, to massively cut our emissions over a 5 year period would be horrendously expensive. But, there is every reason to believe that just cutting our rate of increase to allow the existing carbon cycle to catch up is probably all that is needed. To argue that we are better off doing nothing is about the only losing strategy.