Slashdot Mirror
Human Activity to Blame For 2003 Heatwave
Dirak writes "The temperatures of the summer of 2003 were almost undoubtedly the highest in Europe for over 500 years. New research shows how human influence, mainly fossil fuel burning, can be blamed for increasing the risk of such a heatwave and by the middle of this century every other summer could be even hotter than 2003."
Flawed doesn't begin to describe it. From the article:
"by using sophisticated climate models and new statistical techniques, this study has been able to separate the human factors from natural ones."
THERE ARE NO SOPHISTICATED CLIMATE MODELS. The climate is far too complicated for such simple generalizations. Real climatologists understand this.
The ability to "separate the human factors from natural ones" does not exist. "New statistical techniques" don't just appear like new flavors of Pop-Tarts.
The ability to suck in journalists seeking scary headlines, though, has been perfected.
Of course, nowhere in the article does it mention any thermodynamic principle by which this is supposed to have occured, another red flag for scientific inquiry. As a matter of fact, if you surf around the web and try to find the thermodynamic principle by which man is supposedly warming the planet, you won't find it. You'll see some "scientists" compare it to a blanket, others who say it has to do with refraction and reflection, others say it has something to do with transparency to UV vs infrared light. One thing you won't find is a consistent thermodynamic theory about what supposedly causes global warming. But you'll see a lot of statistical studies, all of which seem to use the "baseline year" trick to skew the results.
Funny that conservatives don't really care when people die - they just care when embryos die.
Yep. This whole "its a natural fluctuation!" thing just seems so friggin' ridiculous. Doesn't it seem like an unusual coincidence that a massive, drastic climactic shift correllates with the expansion of human civilization? Good god, and I thought Slashdotters were educated. "Gee, we may or may not be killing ourselves, but just in case, lets keep killing ourselves anyways".
Keep swallowing your cool-aid. When Rove tells you to be scared, you're scared. When Exxon tells you everything is fine, everything is fine.