“The observation of a coincidence is not PROOF of causation. It is a suggestion of one.”

1. I did not argue that there has been no climate change recently. That is well-documented. My post specifically dealt with the flaws in Santer’s supposed crushing of a myth. The argument was flawed, and to dismiss that “myth” somebody should start over.

To elaborate on my point, the statistics of the noise in the stock market, Santer’s model, are best dealt with using Mandelbrodt’s fractal theory, which states that the stock market can NOT be predicted from past data. The apparently well-behaved trends that Santer sees in his smoothing would just be noise, but on a larger scale.

My other point was that the association of the observed warming trend with human activity is a problem separate from the observation of a warming trend. From a scientific perspective, it is inadequate to observe a coincidence with CO2 trends. You need to put forward a quantitative theory that links them, and that has not gone as well as some pretend. CO2 does NOT, by itself, explain the warming, contrary to common (and Mr. Laden’s) beliefs.

There are many indicators of temperature trends from the past. Prof. Mann has used tree rings, but is forced to make all kinds of adjustments to explain contradictions. There is data from the Sargasso Sea and from peat bogs around the world that contradict Mann’s data. It is my understanding that ice core data provides information about past CO2 levels. However, that data shows CO2 to increase AFTER warming trends, not during or before.

The climate computer models do predict increase in weather anomalies as temperature levels go up, and anecdotal evidence has been cited as a demonstration of the validity of the model (but not of the human contribution, Bruce). However, a massive review of weather data over the past 100 years, carried out by NOAA, directly contradicts the anecdotes you refer to. There have been NO statistically significant changes in incidence of extreme weather events over that period. The authors, a list of Who’s Who in climate science, conclude that their climate models are flawed. Does their conclusion shake your confidence at all? It should.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/gilbert.p.compo/20CRv2_Compoetal2010.pdf

So this post is primarily to tweak the intellectual honesty of the Harvard grad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq8_l6s89uY

Climate change – isn’t it natural’ by Potholer54 – part of an excellent series by him looking at the HIRGO issue.

Dr. Santer makes a commonly used leap of faith when he argues, at the end of talk, that the evidence of global warming is proof of man-made global warming. Almost everyone agrees that these are two separate issues.

Sorry, but actually I think you’ll find that’s dead wrong. Most people – more importantly most climatologists who are the experts on the climate in the same way medical doctors are about human health and illness agree the Human Induced Rapid Global Overheating as I call it, really is, well, human induced.

See :

http://www.skepticalscience.com/its-not-us-intermediate.htm

Or this short Youtube clip :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9ob9WdbXx0

featuring Sir David Attenborough (The Truth About Climate Change) which dramatically illustrates why we know we are indeed the cause.

Also the increase in natural disasters such as cyclones/tornadoes, cold snaps etc agree with the expected high variations due to chaos theory (messing with the set point). A cold snap or a cold winter does not mean global cooling, its the average temp over the earth compared with the long term past, and the acceleration of the heating caused by green house gases, predominantly caused by an increasing population burning fuels. Whats not to get?