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Comment by gaius | Hacker News Reader

When the data shows a cooling trend since 1998, while we shouldn't be complacent, we should also celebrate that what we're doing is, to the extent that we influence the environment at all, working, and resolve to keep up the good work.

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Um.. what exactly have we done? Before the economy tanked the US was using more gas then ever. China hasn't slowed their opening of new coal power plants much, if any. So aside of thinking positive thoughts about climate, what exactly has changed that could have had any kind of effect?

You've hit the nail on the head -- our CO2 output has been going up all the while, which suggests that (dare I say it?) the increase in temperature isn't caused by man. CO2 output didn't decrease in the 50s, either, when we had our last decade-long period of cooling.

Many people think CO2 is actually a trailing indicator, not a leading indicator. In other words, when things get warmer, more CO2 is generated, not the other way around.

CO2 only absorbs energy in a certain spectrum. After that spectral "fingerprint" is removed, the remaining energy could care less how much C02 is present. I believe the math works out so that after ten meters, additional CO2 does little damage.

Here's an article I just googled. The author writes in a flame-bait-like manner, but he does make the CO2 absorbption case very well.

EDIT: Link -> http://nov55.com/ntyg.html

You forgot the link?

If I understand the counter-argument correctly, when the data shows a day's worth of weather, it's too small to mean anything. When it shows a month's weather, it's still to small to mean anything. When it shows a year, same deal.

Now I believe the wisdom is that when the data shows a decade of weather trends, it is also too small to draw conclusions. If the article is true and most of the last decade has canceled out the small increase over the last century, then perhaps the same "wisdom" is true at the century level as well -- 100 years of data for naught. To me this seems a little strange since we only have large-scale climate readings for the last 100 years or so. Past that it's sparse readings, interpolations and projections.

The next five years or so will be interesting. If it shows a continued cooling, and if global warming proponents continue to promote their case, I will be curious as to what we mean when we say "climate" -- because I must be missing something.

we only have large-scale climate readings for the last 100 years or so. Past that it's sparse readings, interpolations and projections.

...And these paintings: .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age#Depictions_of_wi... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrick_Avercamp

http://images.google.com/images?q=Hendrick+Avercamp

The real thing to be looking at is that if we continue to cool, or even stay steady for a couple of years, we fall off the 95% confidence intervals for the global warming predictions made a few years ago, which all uniformly took the form of lines going straight up (pretty much). That will mean that the models are wrong, and if the models are wrong, the model makers are not entitled to claim that despite the fact they couldn't predict anything, they can still use the broken models to make claims about mankinds contribution to the climate.

I can't emphasize the importance of the word "wrong" enough. A wrong model is not sort of correct, it is wrong, and should not be used to determine the fate of trillions of dollars of capital.

Further, if climate change can't be demonstrated to be the critical pressing crisis the alarmists claim, then there are other way more important problems facing the environment that need to be addressed, such as the Pacific dead zone and horrible overfishing. If AGW advocates are wrong about the scope of the problem, diverting funds into it anyhow is not a good idea; it is (and I mean this literally) one of the worst ideas ever put forth by mankind. If AGW advocates are wrong, they are not holy, they are the most dangerous threats to the environment in the world today.

Trillions of dollars of capital are very important, and if there is any reason to believe the science isn't "settled", it behooves us all to look at the problem with an open mind, not to insist that even though AGW predictions clearly said that the 95% confidence interval doesn't actually encompass what is happening in reality we should still just believe them, despite the scientific evidence that they are (and again I can't emphasize the importance of this word enough) wrong.

Making wrong predictions is a big deal in science; only a political mindset can wave that fact away like it's not really a problem.

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