Text 1919, 88 rader
Skriven 2006-06-07 13:41:00 av Robert E Starr JR (2365.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
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* * * This message was from Josh Hill to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * * *
         * * * and has been forwarded to you by Lord Time * * *         
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On Mon, 5 Jun 2006 18:31:12 +0000 (UTC), Charlie Edmondson
<edmondson@ieee.org> wrote:

>Josh Hill wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> We know enough to know it's a serious man-made problem.
>
>Do WE?  Actually, most of the estimates I have read have said MAYBE 10%, 
>if you juggle the models enough.
>
>This is definitely a political, not a scientific issue.  The science is 
>pure statistical manipulation supported by slanted computer models. 
>Look into what they have to do to get the temperature differential 
>measurements.  There are more correction factors, SWAG adjustments and 
>good old county guesses in there to make a physicist laugh is a$$ off!
>
>And then, you take this overmanipulated data, and use that to draw your 
>conclusions...

But, at essence, we're dealing with a very simple physical process:
add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and you're going to heat things
up. There's nothing controversial about that: it's born out by
observations of ancient temperatures and atmospheric conditions, by
laboratory experiments, by observations of other planets. And
everything has to be seen in that light, as a refinement of the basic
concept. Indeed, from a scientific perspective, the challenge would be
to show why adding greenhouse gases /doesn't/ contribute to global
warming. It would take a very strange mechanism to do that.

So the models then focus on the myriad details -- the albedo of snow,
soot, the rate of plant growth, ocean currents, what have you -- that
determine the degree of warming. And it seems that the current
computer models have excellent predictive utility, whereas alternative
explanations do not:

'The present trend of warmer sea temperatures, which have risen by an
average of half a degree Celsius (0.9F) over the past 40 years, can be
explained only if greenhouse gas emissions are responsible, new
research has revealed.

'The results are so compelling that they should end controversy about
the causes of climate change, one of the scientists who led the study
said yesterday.

' "The debate about whether there is a global warming signal now is
over, at least for rational people," said Tim Barnett, of the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. "The models got
it right. If a politician stands up and says the uncertainty is too
great to believe these models, that is no longer tenable."

'In the study, Dr Barnett’s team examined more than seven million
observations of temperature, salinity and other variables in the
world’s oceans, collected by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, and compared the patterns with those that are
predicted by computer models of various potential causes of climate
change.

'It found that natural variation in the Earth’s climate, or changes in
solar activity or volcanic eruptions, which have been suggested as
alternative explanations for rising temperatures, could not explain
the data collected in the real world. Models based on man-made
emissions of greenhouse gases, however, matched the observations
almost precisely.'

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/06/05/warming.trends.ap/index.html

About the only contrary evidence I've seen lately is new evidence
about the historical temperature of the arctic that suggests that
they've overlooked a mechanism which at some point in the process
causes warming to proceed /more rapidly/ than predicted.

-- 
Josh

"I'm not going to play like I've been a person who's spent hours involved with
foreign policy.
I am who I am." - George W. Bush
                                                                               
          
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