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2006-10-21 International-UN-NGOs

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Posted by lotp 2006-10-21 15:39|| || Front Page|| [11128 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Uh huh. When you idiots can accurately tell me what the weather will be like four days from now I'll start listening.

Posted by Parabellum 2006-10-21 16:05|| 2006-10-21 16:05|| Front Page Top

#2 not a chance Parabellum - nobody gets Federal grants by doing accurate weather forecasts. The money's in Societal Change Crises.

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2006-10-21 16:37|| 2006-10-21 16:37|| Front Page Top

#3 Daily prediction is actually a much harder problem than looking at long term trends.

I subscribe for $12 a year to the Accu-weather premium site. Their hourly forecasts are pretty accurate for the day, and their daily forecasts for a couple days in advance, enough so that I decide whether to wear a coat or take an umbrella based on them. The TV people, and weather.com, are a lot worse. Guy I know who left grad school just short of a PhD in weather modeling -- to make money programming, btw -- says Acuweather has by far the best prediction models for shortterm forecasting.

Posted by lotp 2006-10-21 16:37|| 2006-10-21 16:37|| Front Page Top

#4 looking at trends and determining the causation is the issue with Global Warming advocates. They can't prove their science and accusations that our human activities cause them. Ask them to explain the medieval "warm period" when grapes (and wine) were produced in Britain.....the agenda drives the theory, rather than cause-effect facts

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2006-10-21 16:42|| 2006-10-21 16:42|| Front Page Top

#5 Cause is a separate issue. That's up for debate.

Trends are simply what the data show. And while it's possible to cherrypick the data to artificially show trends, I've seen some numbers from ice cores through CO2 measurements of the last few decades that show a consistent secular trend in both CO2 and mean temperatures in the last 150 years compared to relatively stable overall means for 35,000 years, with a sharp spike in the last few decades.

Note I said "relatively stable". There ARE periodic changes. But the overall mean stayed roughly the same for a long time.

Now, what CAUSED this rise is open to debate. But that it is happening and has effects on agriculture and possibly public health in some places seems to me, at least, to have some good basis in fact.

What pisses me off is that the tendentious anti-industry agendas of some have made it impossible to discuss this objectively.

Posted by lotp 2006-10-21 16:58|| 2006-10-21 16:58|| Front Page Top

#6 Reading this reminded me of the "forecast " from the old Soupy Sales Show.

Posted by .com 2006-10-21 17:23|| 2006-10-21 17:23|| Front Page Top

#7 lotp, I am not sure what data for the last 35kya are you looking at, but it was anything but stable, bare the climatic optimum at about 7500BCE to 5000BCE whence the temperatures were about 2 deg C above the current average. It is harder to extrapolate the temperatures futher in the past you go, but there is a sort of reasonable amount of data from about 10kyaBCE. One minus spike happened cca 4200BCE, then it levelled on the current average, with ocassional oscillations. Another drop cca 1500BCE, with a 15 years showing almost no growth in tree rings. Then follow large oscillations between 900BCE and 680BCE roughly corresponding to 12 year periods, then between 400CE-800CE, another instability with a dip to colder temps and severe droughts in some regions towards the end of the period. Followed by warmer period when Greenland's coast was truly green. Then again it got colder, again warmer between 1500s and 1600s, then we have the "little ice age". Since then we are getting closer to the "climatic optimum"... not only we, but Mars seem wanting not to be left behind (can't say about Venus, she has been insanely hot always as far as anyone recalls).

Posted by twobyfour 2006-10-21 17:35|| 2006-10-21 17:35|| Front Page Top

#8 An "computer modeling" of the enviroment is not reliable or accurate and should not be used as a basis for any decisions. It's just not something you can do with our current data set and hardware.

Posted by Sock Puppet of Doom 2006-10-21 17:39|| www.sockpuppetofdoom.com]">[www.sockpuppetofdoom.com] 2006-10-21 17:39|| Front Page Top

#9 "Global warming will cause temperatures in Summer hot enough to melt snow! And winter cold may actually cause it to snow in some places!"

Posted by Anonymoose 2006-10-21 18:02|| 2006-10-21 18:02|| Front Page Top

#10 2x4, the Vostok ice cores which are sampled back to 41,000 years ago and the Mauna Loa samples for CO2 from 1958-2004.

Primarily I was doing a simple trend analysis on the CO2 levels. I forget where the temp estimates came from ... I have to go back and look that up at work.

The Mauna Loa samples show a rise from annual average of about 315 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere in 1958 to about 375 ppm in 2004.

The Vostok ice samples show mostly a steady state of ~~ 310-315 ppm over millenia.

Posted by lotp 2006-10-21 18:21|| 2006-10-21 18:21|| Front Page Top

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