So are they lying now, or were they lying then?

IS, in a word, no. They weren’t lying then, they aren’t lying now. They might be wrong, but I know some of these folks, and they’re quite sincere. Compare this to the “Bush lied” people: you’re making the same mistake.

My knowledge concerning per se climate change is very limited. But I do know this: you are listening to fool if they claim to be able to accurately predict temperatures in the distant future. Please note the difficulties of the weather professionals to predict the temperature for even the following week!

David, you’re making a very poor comparison here. Compare it to the stock market: nobody’s model can predict the exact value of the IDIX on the 30th June 2012; you can still predict with great confidence that the market will gain on average something over 10 percent per year over a span of 20 or 30 years. When someone uses a climate model to predict average temp gains, they’re predicting the long term smoothed trend of a complicated process, not the day to day details.

I work with relatively simple things – rockets, satellites, communications – and these follow pretty simply rules – thrust, flyouts, ballistic trajectories, gravity, atmosphere attenuation, etc. And even straightforward stuff like this is very hard to do accurately. Especially the weather related problems dealing with cloud cover, storms, plumes and the like.

I admire their efforts, but the M&S guys just aren’t there yet. Its a tough problem and I think weather prediction is just too hard to do right now. Anyone who has dealt with the short term forecast errors (even for a snowstorm) can understand this.

Whenever science gets politicized, we all lose. Politics is irrational, science is rational; when you have uninformed talking heads making laughably unscientific statements, all is lost.

Hey, I’m a Yalie, too!

;-(

Yo, Buddy!

Jamie Irons

I’m glad you mention Spencer’s book, which I am reading just now.

One of the most fascinating parts of the book early on is the graph he introduces which shows that the “greenhouse effect” even without the additional CO2 we have added since the onset of the fossil fuel age strives, as it were, to raise the air temperature near earth’s surface to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, and then he proceeds to show how the weather, which can be thought of as a kind of heat engine whose work is to move heat from where it is in excess to where it is relatively deficient, cools things off and carries the excess heat back into out space, ultimately by re-radiating it.

He then proceeds to show what a minuscule effect, in view of all this, the relatively tiny amount of carbon man has introduced into the atmosphere is likely to have.

Jamie Irons

It’s true! It’s true! The Democrats have made it clear.
The climate must be perfect all the year.

A law will be made in Congress that:
July and August cannot be too hot.
And there will be a legal limit to the snow here
With Democrats.
The winter is forbidden till December
And exits March the second on the dot.
By order, summer lingers through September
With Democrats.
Democrats! Democrats!
I know it sounds a bit bizarre,
But With Democrats, Democrats
That’s how conditions are.
The rain may never fall till after sundown.
By eight, the morning fog must disappear.
In short, there’s simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here
With Democrats.

Democrats! Democrats!
I know it gives a person pause,
But With Democrats, Democrats
Those will be the legal laws.
The snow may never slush upon the hillside.
By nine p.m. the moonlight must appear.
In short, there’s simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here
With Democrats.

But, I do know something about statistics and computer modeling. Given what I know I do not believe that the models being used for all these dire predictions hold any more water than a sieve.

Check out http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3048
to see some scientific discussion of the topic.

Until the warmenists can provide a model that accurately predicts today from the past data (heck predicts today from today’s data) they are just blowing smoke saying that they can accurately predict fractional degree changes 50 to a hundred years out.

Hey, what IS the perfect tempreture anyway?