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Study Rules Out Global Warming Being a Natural Fluctuation With 99% Certainty

An anonymous reader writes "A study out of McGill University sought to examine historical temperature data going back 500 years in order to determine the likelihood that global warming was caused by natural fluctuations in the earth's climate. The study concluded there was less than a 1% chance the warming could be attributed to simple fluctuations. 'The climate reconstructions take into account a variety of gauges found in nature, such as tree rings, ice cores, and lake sediments. And the fluctuation-analysis techniques make it possible to understand the temperature variations over wide ranges of time scales. For the industrial era, Lovejoy's analysis uses carbon-dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels as a proxy for all man-made climate influences – a simplification justified by the tight relationship between global economic activity and the emission of greenhouse gases and particulate pollution, he says. ... His study [also] predicts, with 95% confidence, that a doubling of carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere would cause the climate to warm by between 2.5 and 4.2 degrees Celsius. That range is more precise than – but in line with — the IPCC's prediction that temperatures would rise by 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius if CO2 concentrations double.'"

3 of 869 comments (clear)

  1. Re:...a doubling of carbon-dioxide levels in the a by Stumbles · · Score: 1, Troll

    Yep. Garbage in, garbage out. Models are like maps, they are not the territory. Since these "scientists" want me to ignore their 4.5 billion years of climate change and accept their area of focus that would not even qualify as a sliver of that time frame. They are just promoting pseudo-science. I to can smell a scam.

    --
    My karma is not a Chameleon.
  2. Re:more pseudo science by MatthiasF · · Score: 1, Troll

    It's not science. The Scientific method requires that observations can be independently reproduced and that a hypothesis is falsifiable.

    Unless you have a time machine, the proxies can not be independently verified and the only change in their outcome can come from altering the observers preferences (changing methods).

    The hypothesis itself cannot be falsified because no human has any data or knowledge of the Earth prior to humans being here. Any reconstructed data is second-hand, the equivalent of hearsay in law.

  3. Re:Buy a Prius as your next car... by AK+Marc · · Score: 1, Troll

    Then figure out how you're going to generate all that while remaining carbon free. Try wind, but you probably won't have a bird left alive in the whole country.

    Wind doesn't kill that many birds. I've been to multiple wind farms in multiple countries and have not seen piles of dead birds at the foot of the turbines. It just doesn't happen. It may have happened for some wind farm placed in a migration path, but it doesn't happen in the manner currently asserted by the green-haters.

    Solar? How long will it take to ramp that up, and at what cost?

    The longer we wait, the longer it will take. So we should start sooner rather than later. Distributed PV is the best solution, with night storage via hydro, kinetic, thermal or chemical batteries (probably in that order).

    keep researching geothermal...

    Ah, the guy that wants his pet theory to be the only one. It's been researched. It's only viable for areas with active surface thermal (Iceland, and areas with hot springs). It will *never* be viable in arbitrary areas. That's why there isn't that much research into it. You want to see your $300 electric bill got to $3000 and still have rolling blackouts? Try geothermal.