Comments RealityExplorer has made
how can you ignore the long term climate pattern??
"But it only takes a ten degree rise by 2050 to have serious consequences, so how is ai's rebuttal relevant?"
Its just like the scientists in the 70s claiming an ice age was about to happen.. they weren't aware that they didn't have enough information to make that prediction. New information caused them to throw out those predictions and instead predict global warming.
The question is whether the past natural variation which the current period seems to match with is more information out there that is still not understood which makes any claims of certainty of current predictions just as irrational as the claims of certainty re: a coming ice age were before.
Until the factors underlying the past variability are understood.. and modeled well.. the human element can't be isolated out with any rational certainty.
The long term temperature graph seems to show that recent temperature trends might be caused by the same factors which caused past climate variability and that the hypothesis that "temperature changes could only be due to human intervention...there is no chance its due to factors we don't understand yet which swamp human factors..." doesn't seem very credible until all the factors involved are understood. It could be a complete coincidence that natural warming is occurring at the same time humans having been emitting larger amounts of gas into the environment. Or it could be that we've only made slight changes to the timescale of warming that was going to happen anyway. If its going to happen anyway.. then humans need to adjust to the warmer temperatures and stop wasting time worrying about stopping them.. (or focus on potential ways to counter effects such as sequestering carbon dioxide even beyond the human level of emissions... and the technology to do that is likely easier to develop and fund than is lowering emissions anyway).
If the assumption is "humans dumped X into the atmosphere, there must be some warming effect.." the issue is whether with a lack of understanding of all the effects involved.. if there is any likelihood that current climate models are able to separate out the natural climate change factors from the human factors in a logical fashion (vs. assuming a worst case, "no, there can't be any damping mechanisms, or natural warming, it must be all due to intervention of evil humans")
If there are huge factors not understood the models may be completely out of touch with future reality even if eg arbitrary tweaking of 300 tweakable parameters to the models let them match the current data.. It may be its matching for the wrong reasons if a huge natural factor is being ignored.. and that if the data matches without that factor being included that may indicate that the models are really flawed if they are fudged to work without that factor.
for all we know the warming could stop.. or it could plunge into an ice age unless we keep up carbon emissions and increase them.. or it could warm much faster than expected..
The issue is whether the current climate models are based on sound science when ignoring natural climate variability due to factors not currently understood as potential factor in the current warming. If the models are ignoring natural climate change factors which simply aren't yet understood... then the results of those models claiming X degree temperature rise may be out of touch with reality and not something to rely on (and I don't think any are claiming 10 degrees by 2050 anymore). On 'One hundred years is not enough'--Yes it is posted 2 years, 5 months ago 18 Responses