Re:The Science and Pseudoscience of Global Warming
by emmett on Monday June 01, 2009 @02:07PM
(#636476)
That's not true. You could have an arbitrary number of years that were colder in a row, with rising CO2 levels, and still have a world where CO2 causes a temperature rise. It would simply require a countervailing force that's stronger.
The noise level is irrelevant; I'm not sure why you would bring it up. If there are naturally forces that fluctuate up and down in a random walk, and CO2 is a much smaller but consistently up force, inevitably we'll wind up with increasing temperatures over time. You could argue there are larger climatic signals (not noise) that we should be concerned about, but what you actually said is simply wrong.
It's important not to let global warming hysteria color your view of the science. There's a radical difference between "mankind is the dominant force of global climate change and mankind is causing catastrophic global warming that we must avoid at all costs" and "mankind is adding a small delta below the noise level of natural climate", and the range of things in between. If it does turn out that the sun is getting dimmer and that turns out to have a major effect on climate (and I have seen climate scientists flat-out deny this is true), then it bounds the effect man can be having and moves us closer to the second statement.
Every year that is colder instead of warmer bounds the warming effect we can be having. Frankly it's already pretty small.