They myth that is man made global warming.

[Final-Fan]

donathos said:

Just talking out my ass here, so feel free to disregard this, but...

Your point about the buoys vs. the size of the ocean is well-taken.  Doesn't the complaint against many of these global warming doomsday projections often come down to much the same thing?  Meaning that, we collect data, but the data we collect is generally coming from some handful of reporting stations... or has only been collected over some limited number of years... and then we extrapolate that data out and try to decide what the world entire is going to look like fifty, a hundred years from now?  (Seems somewhat antithetical to the big points Ian Malcolm tried to make in Jurassic Park...)

That said, I don't think we should discount the data collected from any buoy, let alone 3,000... nor should we give it undue weight and decide that it overturns the seeming consensus on global warming.  But if our current theory holds that the ocean is warming, but our data comes back indicating that the ocean is actually cooling... well, if I were a scientist, I'd not feel comfortable till I'd cleared that up somehow.

Well, I think there are considerably more than 3000 data collection points being used in studying climate change, and a lot longer than 6 years (as in the case of the ocean buoys).  But it's true that 3000 buoys for 6 years is still a large sample, and if it appears to be contrary to what we would expect we must find out why.  A conscientiously inquisitive person would investigate the situation.  That is why my first question was "where are the buoys?"