I think we can agree on that the scientific prognoses on this topic are unsure. Politics is one factor. The lack of data is another.
The question is, can we afford to wait? Tim Mostly harmless (just plain Norwegian) -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Adam Maas Sent: 24. desember 2006 21:39 To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List Subject: Re: Subject: Re: Doomsday is coming upon us? Steve Farnham wrote: > >>> Apparently man can't adversely affect the > environment. Didn't you know >>> the recent rises in global temperature are all > natural phenomenon? >>> > >> There is something to be said for this theory as > well. >> Both sides of the debate have political motivations, >> I don't trust either >> side to be honest. > >> William Robb > > > Non-scientists have opinions all over the map, and > many of them are politically motivated. > > Climatologists, that is scientists who have spent > years learning the underlying science and more years > studying the climate by actually going out and > measuring things, and in general are not political, > pretty much agree that mankind has contributed to > global climactic change and that the change may become > irreversable in the near future. What disagreement > exists amoung climatologists is more to do with timing > than anything else. > > So, people who don't know what they're talking about > claim that the people who do know what they're talking > about are mostly wrong. What does that tell you? > > Steve Farnham > > Actually, there's a reasonable amount of dispute among the experts as well. And it's a fairly politically-influenced area of study. Until someone comes up with a very fine-grained model of the climate which regresses properly, this will be in dispute. The current models have distinct issues (Either regression, or cell sizes significantly larger than certain improtant microclimates like Panama [which has three seperate climatic regions within an area smaller than the typical cell size for a computer climate model). There's a fair bit of data to suggest human influence. There's also a fair bit which suggests it's minimal. And nobody has a good solar radiation model (We've only got around 30 years of good data for that, far too small a sample for good predictions given what we know of solar output cycles). That issue may take hundreds of years to resolve, as we know there are certain solar output cycles that are in the several hundred year range (like the Maunder Minimum). -Adam -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
