climate
Current Chaos Manor mail: "There are some basic facts which always seem to be overlooked:

 Greenland was inhabited by the Vikings. Any climate discussion needs to take this into account. There are theories about ocean currents and such, but the fact remains that Greenland was inhabited, Vineland was inhabitable, and Europe was warmer and had better climate.

We have had much colder periods. Alexander Hamilton dragged the guns of Ticonderoga across the frozen Hudson River to General Washington on Manhattan Island in 1776. I don't have the exact date of the last year the Hudson was frozen that solid, but it was certainly before CO2 caused any great warming.

Any discussion that doesn't at least account for such data is advocacy not science.

As to who are the 'real scientists' the facts here haven't changed much. Everyone since Arrhenius has understood that increasing CO2 levels will cause some warming. Arrhenius did some calculations on the back of an old envelope, so to speak, and all our refined models don't seem to have done much better.

The situation remains: climate modelers see approaching doom. Physical scientists don't find the predicted trends in their measurements. The modelers say 'it's coming, just you wait.' And money better spent on getting better observation data goes to conferences, travel, hype, and 'remedies' when we don't really know what is going on.

There may be a genuine crisis coming. There may not be. We really don't know, and the advocacy style of the debate isn't helping a bit."
- posted by Sophont @ Sunday, January 09, 2005