2005 Will Probably be Warmest on Record

Nilmat writes "A Washington Post Article notes that 2005 will probably have the highest mean global temperature of any year since the advent of systematic temperature records. At the moment, the mean temperature is about 0.75 degrees C above the global mean from 1950 to 1990, approximately .04 degrees higher than 1998, the year of the previous record. Only something dramatic, such as a major volcanic eruption, could cause enough cooling to miss setting a new record."

Comments

Science is hard

[jfengel]

No, correlation is not causation. But when you have correlation and the most accurate models imply causation, you definitely have to think hard about what you're doing. The fact that global warming was predicted by the models before the data could be taken further suggest that it's not simply alarmist readings of the data.

Science is hard; in many fields it's impossible to prove causation completely. But when you have a theory, and the theory holds up to all the available data, you act as if the theory were true and make decisions based on that. You don't over-react as long as there are competing theories that imply otherwise, but this is one more piece of data to suggest that global warming is very real and quite possibly man-made.

The "quite possibly" means that we shouldn't over-react; as you say, the correlation need not imply causation. But as the burden of evidence falls on the side of man-made global warming, it becomes increasingly dangerous to rely on "Yeah, but are you really, utterly, totally, completely sure?" arguments against action.

Re:Science is hard

[jnaujok]

Those models do not "predict" global warming. They show a trend towards warming with an increase in atmospheric CO2. However to call these models "the most accurate" is quite a stretch. I ask you to look into the quality of these models and ask simple questions, such as, "do you accurately model the largest heat sink on the planet, or are your oceans just a thin slab of water that is basically a rigidly driven model that doesn't adjust to changes realistically." Ask if they solve their fluid model for all variables, or do they just solve for two of the three (pressure and temperature, but not volume). I can go on for hours about how completely inaccurate these models are.

But I don't have to. The models show that CO2 causes an increase because the modelers set up the model so that CO2 holds more heat in the model. Good golly, what a shock.

On the other hand, we have data that all of the inner planets are now heating up. The Twin MER rover teams were shocked at how warm the Martian winter was this year on Mars. They never expected their rovers to make it through the winter, yet both survived without a problem. In just the 30 years since the Viking missions, the temperature of Mars has increased substantially. In fact, it's done so by very nearly the exact same percentage as the temperatures seen on Earth. Similar remote measurements of Venus have shown the same increase.

Now, unless you want to claim that Dick Cheney is secretly driving his SUV's on Mars, that means the cause of the rise in temperature must be mainly external. And, oh look, here's a study that's found just that.

Science is hard, Climatology is very hard. We have no hard evidence to support anthropogenic global warming theories. We have computer models. The same people on this list who would scoff at the idea of a computer predicting the weather one week in advance, will accept, without the slightest hesitation, the prediction of a computer 100 years into the future. And, no, don't give me the "it's climate, the little changes disappear into climate" because that's bullshit. It's been disproven time and time again. The "best model" in 1995 mispredicted the temperature in 2000 by 300%. That's not a minor mistake, that's not within one standard deviation, that's a wild-ass guess that was totally wrong.

Trillions of dollars and Millions of lives will be lost if the "we should take action just in case" crowd wins. Some of the best estimates say that cutting CO2 by 50% will cost 1.5 BILLION LIVES by 2100. Are you so eager to pull the trigger?