Should the Global Warming crowd forecast the climate next year to show they know what they are talking about?

Question

Wouldn't the global warming people have a stronger argument if they predicted the climate temps 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 5 years and 10 years from now? Instead of just saying it's warming, trust us?

If they know the cause, if they know the quantity of co2, if they so trust the computer models, then prediction should be easy, and accurate.

I doubt any "global warming" believer would actually come out and make a prediction like this. I know they can't do it. There is no science that can predict the future, and they will look just as foolish as the people who have told us that global warming will cause more and more intense hurricanes.

Answer 1

THE GW crowd would be wise to keep their pieholes shut about near term weather trends, after first claiming that the **unpredicted** Hurricane Katrina was a result of GW, then predecting that summer 2006 would produce a bumper crop of hurricanes due to GW, then seeing that one go PFFFFFT like the homemade "giant firecracker" that fizzles on the 4th of July.

Answer 2

Most scientists agree the world is going through quite rapid climate change including warming in some areas. Just look at some of the climatic extremes experienced over the last few months: Extreme floods in Pakistan, Brazil and Queensland Australia; two earhquakes in the north of England; frost in the Phillipines; record low temperatures and unusual amounts of snow in England in December followed by record January high temperatures in south east England. Do you remember the tsuamis in Asia a few years ago and have you noticed the ferocity of the hurricane seasons in the U.S. and West Indies over the past few years. Are peoiple driving less? Flying Less? Being less materialistic? Eating genuine organic food? Of course not. Wake up World!!!

Answer 3

Yes, we should and have made forecasts for the future. That's what this crowd is all about. We don't just say trust us. Do some research for yourself. Google it. Go to noaa's website. World governments have been analyzing the data together, which is why there is now a concern about Global Warming. The mean global temperature has been rising steadily since the industrial revolution. I'll predict that in one year, the mean global temperature will have risen another 0.1 degrees.

Check the following if you want to educate yourself. If not, try to find some facts to back up your argument.

Answer 4

I think you're confusing weather with climate. It's the weather which tells us what conditions will be like in a specific place at a specific point in time, climate is concerned with national and international trends over long periods of time.

Next year may well be cooler than recent years, similarly it may be warmer, wetter, drier, stormier etc but this is of little consequence if it's just one year that goes against the trend.

When you look back at climate change predictions over the last 50 or so years you'll see that they are by and large accurate. If anything, the reality is worse than the predictions and the more recent predictions show a world warming faster than was previously expected, the ice caps melting faster than previously predicted etc.

Whilst it's neither possible nor sensible to predict what the weather will be like in 6 months, 1 year, 2, 5, 10 years etc it is possible to say with confidence that the global trend is one of increasing temperatures.

It's a worrying fact that historical climate change predictions have largely been accurate, it means that the scientists are correct and that things will continue to get worse. What's more worrying is the speed at which things are getting worse, this isn't based on predictions but on documented observations.

Answer 5

It deals in trends, not specific events such as the temperature in 3 months or when a storm will occur. And there are many models that shows predicted climate changes.

""Even though climate is chaotic, with weather states impossible to predict in detail more than a few days ahead, there is a predictable impact of anthropogenic forcing on the probability of occurrence of the naturally-occurring climatic regimes.

In our chaotic climate, it is impossible (indeed meaningless) to try to attribute a specific (eg severe) weather event to anthropogenic global warming. Hence, it is a false dichotomy to suppose that some recently-occurring drought or flood is either on the one hand caused by global warming, or on the other hand is merely due to natural climate variability.

Rather, the correct way to address such an issue is to ask instead whether anthropogenic climate change will increase or decrease the probability of occurrence of the type of drought or flood which we (or journalists pursuing some weather story provoked by a recent drought or flood) are interested. Such probabilities can be obtained, for example, from the JSC/CLIVAR Working Group on Climate Modelling's multi-model ensemble, made for the IPCC fourth assessment report.

In a chaotic climate, one cannot expect the time-series of global temperature to increase monotonically under the impact of anthropogenic climate change. Hence, for example, global mean temperatures were especially warm in 1998 because of the occurrence of a substantial El-Niño event. By the bullet above, it is meaningless to attribute the 1998 El-Niño event to global warming. Only by looking over long enough periods of time can one see the trend in global mean temperature due to anthropogenic climate change, above the "noise" of climatic variability."

This means that there is no predectibility for specific events, but the trends can be predicted

Answer 6

People have already pointed out your error in confusing climate with weather. Global warming is simply the average global temperature steadily increasing over the long-term. You can't predict the exact temperature for any given year because there are too many short-term fluxuations, but they average out over the long-term so long-term predictions are more accurate.

Secondly, climate models fit the global temperature data quite accurately over the past century:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

If they can fit over 100 years worth of data, there's no reason to expect they won't be able to predict future temperatures.

And finally, Dr. James Hansen essentially did what you're asking back in 1988. As you can see in the link below, he made 3 global temperature prediction scenarios based on different levels of emissions (depending on how they would change in the future), and his 'Scenario B' fits the data quite accurately.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/hansen_re-crichton.pdf

Now climatology is 20 years more mature!

Answer 7

Climate vs. weather.

Climate by definition is the longer term average conditions. In that light there is no "climate next year" just weather. The weather over the next few years is what is later called the climate of the period of time. The distinction is primarily due to the influence that short term fluctuations can have on conditions. To get a real picture of climate one should use the average conditions of ten to twenty year chunks of time. The longer times insure the removal of short term variability (largely ocean derived) that can throw the system one way or the other.

Answer 8

You're talking about weather (short term) instead of climate (long term).

Look at this graph. Individual years jump around a lot, but the 5 year rolling average shows the long term trend.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Temperature_Record_png

If the 5 year rolling average stops rising, you'll have a point. I (and most all scientists) will predict that it won't. I'd be happy to bet a whole lot of money on that, except I don't really want to win. I want us to do something to slow the trend down. Here's the plan:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,481085,00.html
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM040507.pdf

Answer 9

Well see as everybody is against you I'm sorry, but yeah with Global Warming Hurricanes are going to get worse over the next century sucks for everybody on the Gulf, well the way things may be going a climate change in ten years may not be that far off, but regardless there is little in my opion that man can do about, so I think you need to reword your message so they don't take such cheap shots :)..............

Answer 10

They already did that you anti-science homophobic racist bigoted planet-hating big greedy corporate fat cat white trailer park trash Repukkke!

Remember all those hurricanes we had last year?

Oh wait, you mean the 2006 hurricane season was a dud?

You mean they were WRONG!!!!!?????

Bubububububububububut.............

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!

Does Not Compute!!!! Does Not Compute!!!! We cannot have been wrong!!!! Aaaaaaaahhhh!!!!! Danger Will Robinson!!!!! Aaaaaaaah!!!!