Weather is not climate change

I lifted the title of this post directly from Roger Pielke Jr.s blog. I thought it was a good statement and his short post is even better. The sub-title … Correlation should make you curious not convinced. Again, lifted from a comment at his post.

Head over to read the full post, and the comments are pretty good too. Hat tip to Volokh Conspiracy. A small taste…

What happens in the weather this week or next tells us absolutely nothing about the role of humans in influencing the climate system. It is unjustifiable to claim that a cold snap or heavy snow disproves or even casts doubts predictions of long-term climate change. It is equally unjustifiable to say that a cold snap or heavy snow in any way offers empirical support for predictions of long-term climate change. This goes for all weather events. …

Knowledge of climate requires long-term records — on the time scale of a decade and longer.

The first comment at VC has a suggestion for the following sentence…

Knowledge of climate requires accurate long-term records — on the time scale of a decade and several centuries or longer.

Ahh, another good comment at VC.

If the other side can win people over with a picture of a polar bear on an ice floe or saying Katrina was caused by CO2 emissions, then our side can win them back by pointing out record snowfalls in DC. That’s only fair. Skeptics would be perfectly happy to disregard all evidence other than thermometer readings if the AGW crowd would do the same.

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Steve McGough

Steve's a part-time conservative blogger. Steve grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Washington, D.C. and the Bahamas. He resides in Connecticut, where he’s comfortable six months of the year.

4 Comments

  1. Dimsdale on February 11, 2010 at 5:00 pm

    "Knowledge of climate requires accurate long-term records — on the time scale of a decade and several centuries or longer."

     

    Actually, a time scale on the order of hundreds of thousands of years, maybe millions, would be required to form a hypothesis that was even remotely accurate.  The trouble is, when you do so (and the data is available, albeit perhaps arguable, but no more so than recent data given the warming fanatics penchant for "forgetting" data and skeptical scientists), you find that the overall picture is of a cooling earth and periodic glacial/interglacial periods.  We are at the tail end of an interglacial period now, the last being about 120,000 years ago.  That means we are heading into the next ice age.  Maybe they should consider that man's contribution to global warming is forestalling the next glacial period….

     

    Read "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton.  It is a fictionalized story about the reality of the tactics and fanaticism of the warmists.  Then check out Climatedepot.com.



  2. egore on February 12, 2010 at 8:41 am

    I hear nobody talking about the fact that we haven't seen any sunspot activity in a year.   The last time that happened was the Maunder minimum and the little ice age.  Solar insolation is off 6 peercent, not just the puny 1 percent that the global warming folks are worried about.  I believe the Maunder minimum was a 50 year event.  We will be skating across the sound if this keeps up.  But it is not a topic that will make AlGore any money so it is ignored.

    Go figure

     



  3. Plainvillian on February 13, 2010 at 7:58 am

    Climate is infinitely more complex than weather.  When the seven day forecasts are accurate, I'll begin to believe they might be able to forecast climate.  Until then, not so much.



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