You are getting warmer.

Wolfgang, commenting over at Scott Aaronson's Shtetl Optimized, disses global warming: [stop the presses: HE DENIES ALL]
I like to focus on *what* Lubos has to say and not *how* he says it. And I think he makes some important points:
e.g. the hockey stick debacle and the way the 'global warming' community handled it.
Or the fact that critical exponents of temperature variation observed in the real world does not match with the computer simulations. In other words CGMs overstate trends.


Hockey stick debacle? The critics barely layed a glove on it. At most they showed that the tree ring data was not particularly conclusive about temperatures 800-1000 years ago, which to me, is pretty peripheral in any case. I agree that the way the GW community handled it was not particularly impressive. I don't understand the critical exponents argument well enough to have an opinion.

I would also like to point out that the connection CO2 and 'global temperature' is not as direct as one would expect. CO2 increased in an almost straight line from 1900 to 2000 (except for seasonality), but temperatures increased strongly from 1900 to 1940, remained flat from 1940 to 1980 and then began to increase again.
By the way, from 1998 to 2006 temperatures have been essentially flat.

Could you change that to not as direct as the most naive possible observer might expect? All climate scientists know that climate has lots of variability. The only question is whether there is a credible CO2 signal superimposed on what is in effect noise. Note that even skeptics like Lindzen (and Lubos) want huge odds for a bet against future warming.

I am no expert on climate change, all I am saying is that you will have to convince the sceptics who are (or at least control) the majority in the US with good arguments.


Polls show that 85% of Americans believe global warming is real.

So far I have seen at least two climate researchers make a fool of themselves when debating with Lubos. It was not difficult for him to expose their ignorance of some basic facts.

Really? Who and where? I hope you aren't counting William's short-lived factor of 1000 error on melting rates. Anybody can make that kind of error in a blog comment - but leave it to Lumo to make an international incident of it. Lumo's got an error or two of that type in his own closet.

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