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'Whatever happened to global warming?'

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Dick Whitman, Oct 16, 2011.

  1. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    What reading on this that I've done suggests that there's very little consensus on this facet of the issue (which is a pretty damn big facet with respect to policy discussions).
     
  2. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    You and I must be doing different reading then. The models are designed to replicate greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at various concentrations.

    I think there is an absolute consensus that climate change is a man-driven phenomenon. Where the consensus breaks down is what the result will ultimately be. They can pretty much only estimate a range. As complex as the models are and as good as we are at modeling, there are things that climate scientists have a difficult time modeling. A big one is clouds, for example. Another one is the effects of melting permafrost that releases pent-up CO2.
     
  3. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    Or saying that he definitely should because you watched him strike out one batter.
     
  4. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    The "It was cold in Ohio yesterday" argument is so absurd that it makes me begin to suspect that Carlton is actually just pushing our buttons with all his conservative stuff. Trolling even.
     
  5. CarltonBanks

    CarltonBanks New Member

    I didn't make that argument. Sometimes I think you act ignorant on purpose to push buttons. Or trolling even.
     
  6. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    "Yesterday in Ohio the high temp. was 64. The record, set in 1946, was 83."
     
  7. Herbert Anchovy

    Herbert Anchovy Active Member

    Arctic sea ice is at record thin levels. That isn't alarmism. It's documented fact.

    And the problem isn't going to just go away as so many pinheads wish all of our problems would.
     
  8. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    Let me clarify, without (hopefully) getting too bogged down in details. The reading I've done suggests there's a consensus on man's causing most of the warming that's gone on since the mid-1900s, but that's not all the warming that's possible. There's been plenty of warming that's gone on well in the past (absent humans' effects) and there likely will be warming -- and cooling -- in the future even if not another ton of CO2 is released into the air by humans. So the question is, if humans keep it up, where's it going to go? And there's lots of legitimate, scientifically informed, disagreement regarding the answer to that question.

    The global warming question plays out at several levels, from "what is going on" to "who/what is at fault" to "what should we do?" As we move up the chain, as I understand it, scientific consensus dissipates.

    You're right about the models. Those are real bears to do correctly. I don't know if you ever read James Gleick's "Chaos," but he writes about modelers trying to develop global climate approximations. One thing they found is that, in the models, lots of times the climate flips from a relatively warm climate (like what we have) to an enduring ice age. Such a development is simply the joint occurrence of relatively rare (but not impossible) events. Once the climate flips that way, then you have to wait around for another freaky coincidence of different factors.
     
  9. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    Al Gore weeps.
     
  10. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    "What should we do?" is as much an economic question as a scientific one, at least in the particulars.
     
  11. bydesign77

    bydesign77 Active Member

    He was saying the that the record high for yesterday was 83, set in 1946. Yesterday, the high was 64, in 2011. So, 65 years ago, it was 19 degrees warmer in Ohio.

    Just a point that this stuff flucuates naturally.
     
  12. TheSportsPredictor

    TheSportsPredictor Well-Known Member

    Right, because the only thing it is about is the temperature on a certain day.
     
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