- Mar 7, 2014
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I'm asking you to consider your sources in the same way you consider other sources.
Believe it or not, I do. You're asking me to reconsider my sources without giving me sufficient reason to. When a source like the IPCC consistently gets its predictions wrong, and when it bastardizes the field of science, I am not going to trust them. For example this:
World's top climate scientists confess: Global warming is just QUARTER
A prediction is a prediction. You know what you're getting with a prediction. So it might be wrong. Why might it be wrong? There are plenty of reasons, for example, not taking into account other things that might be difficult or impossible to measure.
Your example, from the Daily Mail, hardly a great source to be trusted in itself, has one guy making a claim. Why do you suddenly believe a guy who you didn't believe before? Could it be that what he says now confirms what you want to believe.
Second, it's only a quarter what they said in 2007, does this mean it's not a problem any more? Or are you agreeing that there is a problem, even if it's only a quarter what they said in 2007?
Now, my view on climate change is that the Earth is in a natural cooling period. Man made global warming isn't happening in a stable environment with which you can make simple comparisons. Now, scientists may get this wrong because it's impossible to tell where the Earth's climate should be. They can't formulate statistics and charts to show this.
So, warming isn't as high as they expected, does this mean they're wrong? Not necessarily (doesn't mean they're right either), but it could just mean that other factors are at play that they hadn't considered.
Does this mean there isn't a problem? No it doesn't.
Predictions were made on a "the Earth's done this, and so if it continues at the same rate we'll have this", it's a prediction, chances of being right with a prediction of something so complex is very small.
But then the other side of the debate merely say "you're predictions were wrong, therefore man made global warming isn't happening", which is far worse a statement that making a prediction and getting it wrong.
Here's the chart they use. Computers making predictions. How many of these predictions have seen something worse? There's a yellow and blue line below this. Most of the lines appear to start ABOVE THE BLACK LINE in the first place. Er... what? Why would you predict in 1980 that the temperatures in the time you can see are higher than they actually are?
"Head of climate science at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, said the leaked summary showed that 'the science is clearly not settled, and is in a state of flux'"
Here's a quote which sums it up. We don't know everything, and no one is claiming to know everything. The science isn't settled, no one has definitive statistics to prove this and that. Does that mean there isn't a problem? No it does not.