Sorry for the late answer, but my internet was down for 4 days.
Anyway:
Jeb: “Yes it is. Again, it may be counterintuitive but it is far easier to predict long term averages over time than to predict transitory states at a particular place at a particular moment. The example of the drop of water in the Gulf Stream is illustrative of this.”
Boris: “Really? Okay, you predict the temperature at noon in Chicago on June 1st and I’ll predict the average temperature in Chicago for June. Think you can get closer than me?”
But who tries to predict the exact state of the atmosphere at a particular moment of time anyway? Weather prediction and climate prediction are concered about the same thing, that is the “(average) conditions of the atmosphere”. They only differ in the time interval.
As Waller just said: “But in the virtual world, they are forecasted the same way.”
If it is so much easier to make long term predictions, why are so many false or grossly inaccurate, and why are so many more short term forecast (1-3 days) right? Maybe Chaos Theory has some explanations for this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory, especially http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect). Butterfly effect: “Small variations of the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system.” With the relatively poor data that we have today it is quite hopeless to make acurate long term predictions.
Rational Animal: That humanity is able to severely harm itself is against the most basic laws of living nature: The Law of Self Preservation, and the Law of Preservation of the Species.”
Jeb: “What people do or do not do to preserve themselves greatly depends upon the quality of information they possess. History is littered with examples of people and other organisms (many no longer with us) with poor information acting a way that ensured their destruction. To assume that we will inherently act in a way that will best preserve us is religious thinking.”
Well, first, i did not appeal to any religion but to biology.
Second, it is true that history is littered with people that destroyed themselves, BUT there many more people (maybe by a factor of 1000 or 10000) that acted in such a way that preserved their existence. And maybe there are some organisms that destroyed themselves, but again there are many many more, which acted in such a way that ensured their existence. One might put forward the objection, that by now many species are extinct, to which the answer is, that most of them were not destroyed by their own actions but by outside influences.
Natural laws are only idealizations, most of them admit some exceptions, but exceptions only prove the rule. And these biological facts are much better established and have far more probability on their side, than the best self destruction by global warming arguments combined.
