Global Warming

[swestrup]

I've long been a skeptic of Global Warming. Not that I don't think that we're having an effect on the Earth's Climate, and not that I don't think there's evidence right now that the Earth is warming up. What I'm a skeptic of is the so-called science behind this. I know enough about computer modelling that when I read a paper on a climate model, I can see where the underlying assumptions are being coded in. That's no way to prove anything. By the same token, I've spent more than a few hours reading up on how the various measurements and such are being performed. Most of them are horribly flawed. So, my opinion is that we may, or may not, be having the effect on the climate that most folks say we are. The data is just too ambiguous and the paleoclimate records of Earth, such as we've been able to reconstruct, show that the planet has been both much hotter and much cooler than it is now, sometimes switching back and forth within a few decades, and we don't know any of the why or how it happens. Until we have a model for how the Earth's climate behaves in the long-term without human intervention we'll never have a hope of figuring out what changes we're making to it. Heck the Global Warming may be due to no more than the fact that we're just leaving an Ice Age, and the normal interglacial temperature of the planet is a lot hotter than it is now. I've even seen studies that if it weren't for the defoestation of Jerusalem and other areas in the Middle East in antiquity, we would right now be slipping back into an Ice Age. In short, we just don't know.

Anyway, here is one of the more balanced articles I've seen in some time that discusses the ongoing changes in the planet's glaciation.