fatslob-:O said:
KLAMarine said:
Are the two statements incompatible?
|
That depends on the implication ...
KLAMarine said:
Of course not but if all we have is a century's worth of data, what's wrong with using that to predict the trend in the coming century?
|
Our weather forecasts aren't even accurate when going beyond a month when we've had decades of past data to boot so how can one century's worth of data ever be enough to tell if there's a trend when Earth's climate is highly variable and erratic?
|
This may come as a surprise but predicting short term weather changes is more difficult than predicting longer term changes.
For example, I can't tell you with 100% accuracy that tomorrow will be warmer or colder than today but I am willing to bet big money that in the Northern hemisphere, summer 2018 will be warmer than winter 2017.
fatslob-:O said:
(you'd at least need 1000 years worth of data to even get a hint and geologists learned that the hard way when they discovered ice ages still persisted with CO2 concentrations that were 10x higher than it is today)
|
Ah yes, that familiar claim: that CO2 concentrations were 10x higher back then and yet we had ice ages. This is completely, positively, undeniably TRUE!...
...
BUT our sun was also much weaker then too! Understand that our CO2 levels alone does not determine average world temperatures, it's far more complicated than that and the sun certainly plays a role. Time does too and melting immense masses of snow takes time the same way bringing water to a boil takes time so it's not incompatible that there was a period when we had both a snowy Earth and high CO2 concentrations at the same time.
sc94597 said:
KLAMarine said:
"it is pretty unclear the extent to which warming increased their intensity"
But global warming does in fact amplify their intensity, yes?
"if you focus on local events to support global trends"
Luckily, I don't believe I did. I believe I pointed to a global trend to explain local events.
|
Sure, but if only increased it by .000001% per year, why would we care? Magnitude matters just as much as whether or not its happening, especially when we are making cost-benefit-risk assessments.
|
Where did you get the ".000001%" number from?
sc94597 said:
Luckily, I don't believe I did. I believe I pointed to a global trend to explain local events.
|
This is still a global claim though, because storms are not going to be more extreme everywhere in the world. So using global trends to explain any particular intense storm without empirical evidence of causation does harm, because when one sees a region with calmer weather they are going to say, "What are you talking about? The weather is calmer here." Since you can't verify causation, you can't make the claim you made.
|
To that statement I would counter that I never stated a warmer climate would cause extreme weather or bring to an end calm weather, all I claimed is warmer oceans would amplify extreme weather if said extreme weather were to manifest.