Y2k bug in NASA GISS data (global warming)

[rushmc 23]

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>In any event, the point is not anything more specific than to piont out
>one more scarey story used to move forward the GWing alarmists agenda.

Ah, OK. I agree there are a lot of scary stories out there. The Day after Tomorrow was one such story (fictional) as was the novel "State of Fear" (also fiction.) The possibility that pollution could kill thousands of people is also scary. That one came true. The possibility that Antarctica could lose entire ice shelves, that glaciers will recede and disappear, and that species will be threatened by the change in climate are also scary, and have come true as well.

However, predictions that the North Atlantic current will stall have not come true yet, and I doubt they will. Likewise, I doubt we will see superstorms that wipe out entire states. We will simply see more of what we're seeing now - rising average temperatures, changes in rain patterns, melting glaciers, stronger storms and rising sea levels. How much they will rise, how high the temperature will get etc are being debated now. The results of that may be scary and may not be. But whether you fear them or not, they will still happen - so we best prepare for them and leave the fearmongering for the extremists on both sides of the debate.

(BTW one of my favorite fearmongering tactics lately is the one that claims that the environmentalist movement is an evil plot to destroy the economy of the US! I think that was in Crichton's book as well - but some people find it hard to distinguish fact from fiction.)

BTW2 - do you agree with the author that "One of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas"?

No, not anymore. At least not to your opinion (which you stated more as fact) of (and the part you left out) being caused by man

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[NCclimber 0]

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(BTW one of my favorite fearmongering tactics lately is the one that claims that the environmentalist movement is an evil plot to destroy the economy of the US! I think that was in Crichton's book as well - but some people find it hard to distinguish fact from fiction.)

Wow. You really have to paying attention to the fringe groups to hear this kind of stuff. Sounds like Westboro Baptist versio of GW sceptics.

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BTW2 - do you agree with the author that "One of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas"?

Not completely.

Do you agree with his claim "that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated"?

That the climate models "do not begin to describe the real world that we live in"?

[billvon 3,132]

>You really have to paying attention to the fringe groups to hear this kind of stuff.

Or just read Speaker's Corner. At least one person here has advanced such a theory.

>Do you agree with his claim "that all the fuss about global warming is
>grossly exaggerated"?

Some do indeed exaggerate the danger. Some do not. You would probably agree that the predictions that we could lose the Larsen ice shelf were not exaggerated - thus not all are hyperbole.

>That the climate models "do not begin to describe the real world that we
>live in"?

As some climate models HAVE described what has actually happened, that's not a supportable statement.

[NCclimber 0]

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>You really have to paying attention to the fringe groups to hear this kind of stuff.

Or just read Speaker's Corner. At least one person here has advanced such a theory.

Wow. It's been brought up out of the 287,000 posts in SC. Yeah, it's obviously going mainstream.

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>Do you agree with his claim "that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated"?

Some do indeed exaggerate the danger. Some do not. You would probably agree that the predictions that we could lose the Larsen ice shelf were not exaggerated - thus not all are hyperbole.

Maybe I read it wrong, but it certainly seemed like he was making a general statement, which would typically have exceptions.

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>That the climate models "do not begin to describe the real world that we live in"?

As some climate models HAVE described what has actually happened, that's not a supportable statement.

So climate models do a good job of "describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests",... and factoring these variables into their conclusions?

[billvon 3,132]

>Yeah, it's obviously going mainstream.

Never claimed it was.

>but it certainly seemed like he was making a general statement, which
>would typically have exceptions.

If he had said "sometimes the fuss over global warming is greatly exaggerated" I would have agreed.

>So climate models do a good job of "describing the clouds, the dust, the
>chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests",... and factoring
>these variables into their conclusions?

In general - yes. Heck, weather forecasts wouldn't even be accurate if they ignored the biology of vegetation; transpiration is one of the primary sources of moisture that goes into weather models. Likewise, a model that does not take clouds into consideration would not even come close to predicting short or long term weather.

That's not to say that models are all equally accurate. Different models use different means to estimate effects, because no one has designed a computer/program that's large enough to simulate the climate in its entirety - and even if they did, we couldn't get the data to enter into it. Some work better than others, and there's been a lot of research into how to best estimate the chaotic system that is our climate.