A helpful reference for our debaters in the Comments:
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Here’s an excerpt from the transcript from the presentation by Gavin Schmidt, which can be explored in full here:
…Models are not right or wrong; they’re always wrong. They’re always approximations. The question you have to ask is whether a model tells you more information than you would have had otherwise. If it does, it’s skillful….
…We know what happened over the 20th century. Right? We know that it’s gotten warmer. We know where it’s gotten warmer. And if you ask the models why did that happen, and you say, okay, well, yes, basically it’s because of the carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere. We have a very good match up until the present day.
But there’s one key reason why we look at models, and that’s because … if we had observations of the future, we obviously would trust them more than models, But unfortunately, observations of the future are not available at this time.
So when we go out into the future, there’s a difference. The future is unknown, the future is uncertain, and there are choices. Here are the choices that we have. We can do some work to mitigate the emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That’s the top one. We can do more work to really bring it down so that by the end of the century, it’s not much more than there is now. Or we can just leave it to fate and continue on with a business-as-usual type of attitude. The differences between these choices can’t be answered by looking at models.
There’s a great phrase that Sherwood Rowland, who won the Nobel Prize for the chemistry that led to ozone depletion, when he was accepting his Nobel Prize, he asked this question: “What is the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?”
The models are skillful, but what we do with the information from those models is totally up to you….
Wasn’t it warmer 5000 years ago than 10,000 years ago ? Isn’t much of the warming natural ?
Or did it get progressively warmer only after Al Gore invented CO2 ? I thought man made global warming was already shown to be controversial, a hoax even ? Or is it all the 8B humans?
More here: http://www.wnho.net/global_warming.htm or here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_conspiracy_theory
Less CO2 means cooler temperatures ? Is it really that simple ? No more oil and coal use and the planet will heal ? Who are the winners of global warming ? Who loses ? Are 100,000,000 ears better than 100,000,000 fuel efficient cars ?
Your wiki link to conspiracy theories answers your own questions. Good one.
E-cars, not ears. Those damn spell checkers/changers.
10,000,000 ears are better than 100,000,000 fuel efficient cars if only people would listen.
good one ..
listen to what ? the alarmist rhetoric ? or the fact that with 100,000,000 e-cars the electric grid would collapse ? or that the creation of 100,000,000 large battery stacks for 100,000,000 e-cars create lots of pollution and CO2, with unknown health and disposal issues, too ?
or that with rising oil and gas prices the market will automagically produce better, potentially cleaner energy solutions without any government intervention whatsoever ?
check this infomercial here, for example http://www.solarroadways.com/intro.shtml on solar roadways. Certainly a great way to generate energy on every roof, sidewalk, driveway, parking lot or road in the nation .. ditto with solar panels in every window of every office tower or house http://www.newenergytechnologiesinc.com/technology/solarwindow … eventually when oil is $500 or $1000 a barrel .. so solutions are there, it is just that they cost a lot .. hence I am not at all worried about the future of this planet as humans are an inventive lot and will figure things out as they go along .. cars will get smaller and more fuel efficient first .. then electric or likely hybrid .. many solutions exist today that will be cost effective and large scale tomorrow !