Stitch on 22/1/2010 at 15:31
Breaking news: Fragony's case is still that there is no consensus despite people claiming there is.
SD on 22/1/2010 at 16:03
What would they know - they're all in cahoots, every last one of them
heywood on 22/1/2010 at 21:54
He does indeed make his point clearly. But he kinda comes across as trusting NASA just because they're NASA, because they can send probes to Saturn and stuff.
Personally, I long for the day where climatologists leave ground station data to the meteorologists and make their case based on higher quality data sets that don't need to be "fixed up". Aggregating the ground station data into something we can draw global conclusions from is a process that requires way too many judgment calls.
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Also, I just had to respond about the meteorologists vs. climatologists thing.
Climatologists are to meteorologists as cosmologists are to astrophysicists. Just a different specialization within the same general field of science.
Probably the reason why there is more skepticism among meteorologists is that meteorologists are inherently distrustful of their models. The ones I worked with tend not to believe anything a new model predicts until there's been lots of validation. Even then, there's a learning process to go through where you learn the model's strengths, weaknesses, and biases before you start to incorporate its data into your forecasts. Commercial meteorology is also a competitive business and people's livelihoods depend on the accuracy of their forecasts.
Because of the long time scale, there's comparatively limited historical data to use for validation of climate models. It also takes at least a decade before we can begin to judge the accuracy of their predictions, and by then everybody is focused on what the newest models are predicting and aren't as motivated to look back and see what they might have got wrong in their model from ten or twenty years ago.
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Oh, and CCCToad, if you're such an avid skier, why do you live in Georgia?
CCCToad on 22/1/2010 at 23:35
Quote:
Oh, and CCCToad, if you're such an avid skier, why do you live in Georgia?
Very Bad luck, but that will change soon. I've already signed a contract to be posted in Colorado.
I'm going of a tangent, but It should be an interesting change from Georgia, though I will miss how polite and helpful the people in this town are. For example, this is is the only town I've ever been in where the service at McDonald's AND Taco Bell is excellent. What I won't miss are the crazies and fundies, both of which are in abundance here.
SubJeff on 23/1/2010 at 00:49
Come on guys who cares? Global warming will be awesome anyway, just like in The Drowned World.
Starrfall on 23/1/2010 at 02:12
Fragony do you hate the forum upgrade as much as I do?
Fragony on 23/1/2010 at 02:14
Looks slick but it isn't very comfy
Starrfall on 23/1/2010 at 02:19
Well that's still closer to agreeing than we've gotten in this thread so far! Go us!