[Phys-L] Re: [Political Action] The nature of the lack of proof (climatewarming)

[dtmarx at ILSTU.EDU (David T. Marx)]

Do you find data like that shown at
        http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/exhibitgcc/historical05.jsp
convincing?

We see on the graph that temperatures in the 1940s were higher than now and that these were
followed by a large downward trend into the mid-1960s.  In addition, some of the general warming
trend is attributed to the "heat island" effect that is often present in urban temperature data.
Finally, how can one compare local temperature variations with that which is happening for the
whole Earth?

Even on these web pages, there are indications that the physical data shows most of the warming,
based on ground air temperature measurements, has occurred in the past 20 years.  From the
website...
"While the Earth's surface temperature has risen, data collected by satellites and balloon-borne
instruments since 1979 indicate little if any warming of the low-to mid- troposphere. The report
concurs with a previous Research Council report that said despite these differences, "the warming
trend in the global mean surface temperature observations during the past 20 years is undoubtedly
real and is substantially greater than the average rate of warming in the 20th century."

I pointed out that earlier that this time frame corresponds to a period where we had two natural
phenomena changes occurring which account for much of this observed warming: substantial decrease
in albedo and increased solar output.

In addition, while these climate models can be tweaked to reproduce historic temperature trends,
that doesn't guarantee predictability of the future.  I have seen numerous models that reproduce
the past data, but show widely varying results for the next 100 years.

I might point out that meteroligists attempt to predict the weather for the next five to seven days
using such models.  They are right about 20-25% of the time.



> Here's how the National Academy of Sciences discusses this issue for the
> public:
>
> <http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/exhibitgcc/historical03.jsp>
>
> <http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/exhibitgcc/historical06.jsp>
>
> <http://www4.nationalacademies.org/onpi/webextra.nsf/web/climate?OpenDocumen
> t>
>
> Larry Woolf
> General Atomics
> www.sci-ed-ga.org
> www.ga.com