Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Outstanding overview of Global Warming for the layman

If you want to get a second opinion, then this is a very good starting point that will make you more knowledgeable than 95% of the people you will run across.  My opinion is that this is the most important thing you will see there:

The yellow band is the model predictions relied upon by the IPCC.  The black line is the observed temperatures as recorded by the RSS Satellite system.  Note that the observed temperatures have been outside the 5% - 95% confidence interval since the early 2000s.  At the same time, we see this:

Atmospheric carbon dioxide has been rising monatomically each year.  These two are what you whip out when some idiot sneers at you that everyone knows the Greenhouse Effect is settled science.  Personally, I find that sort of arrogance to be more than a little annoying.  A sweet reply of "Well then why do the satellite sensors report there's not been any warming for almost 20 years?  After all, the Greenhouse Effect is settled science."  The results of that are usually pretty gratifying, but then I'm a horrible denier-type person.


lelnet said...

Ironically, the Greenhouse Effect, per se, pretty much is settled science. The problem for CAGW enthusiasts is not so much a refutation of the greenhouse effect, as the fact that their models (as Chaos Theory predicts) necessarily leave out relevant variables, and that most of those same models also assume a bunch of positive feedback effects in the climate.

Positive feedback effects are rare, in nature. When they happen, they tend to go completely out of control very quickly. (The most obvious example is the detonation of an atomic bomb.) The alarmists have no explanation for why, despite their assumed positive feedbacks, the Earth is presently more habitable than Venus, despite having been considerably warmer than it is now, even within recorded history.

In a closed system, the Greenhouse Effect is a proven fact. In the Earth's climate, those of us who actually believe in scientific integrity have to settle for "it's way more complicated than that". But for those who'd rather ignore actual science, in favor of slapping a "Science!" label on their religion...well, "it's complicated" is never going to be a happy answer for them.

Old NFO said...

Lelnet is correct, however the models ARE NOT!

Chris said...

I have tried this on the hard-core warmists, and get a lot of "lalalalala can't hear you" in response.

As has been noted, here as in many other sites, it's a religion, and so not subject to reason and (dare I say it) science.