Do you agree that the short time that we have kept track of temperature records is not long enough to prove?

Question

Any trend. out of the time since the planet existed to now has been very long. We have only been keeping track of records for a very small time compared to that. It almost seems like you flip a coin 2 times and heads turned up both times. Then people argue that heads will always turn up and then they argue that the data says so.

Answer 1

According to NASA's records, 1937 was the world's hottest year on record. NASA didn't exist then of course, but they have the data as recorded at the time. No year since has been hotter.

Global warming is not happening in my opinion. What is happening is that the lefties are trying to score politcal points. And get peoples money. Fabricating an emergency is a good way to do this, right?

Climate change? Maybe, but it's not manmade. History of geography shows us it has been happening for as long as the world has existed...sometimes faster and more dramatically than anything we've seen.

Answer 2

As has already been stated by a few intelligent ans. ,we can determine past temps by many means. One that is very accurate is tree ring data. Ice core data also can include stuff like,pollen,and chemicals,that only can occur at certain temperature ranges. When looked at over the time span available,it's easy to see the so called 'normal' fluctuations that get tossed around on here as some kind of 'proof' of something. Actually,what the data show is that the 'normal' parameters are being exceeded at a rapid pace. That part is solid scientific fact! The other thing that is possible is that scientists can tell the difference between fossilized carbon from the burning of oil,and the CO2 from other sources .All the other carbon that you might think of,such as cow farts ,are just a 'closed loop' of carbon. Cycled over and over by plants and animals. The Joker in the deck is the CO2 that is released by volcanic activity. So why add to the problem! Nuff said!

Answer 3

No.

It is true that humans have only been keeping detailed records of temperatures for a relatively short period of time, but there are a number of clues that allow us to scientifically reconstruct the temperatures back thousands of years.
Sure the error in these measurements is much grater than current measurements, but these interpolations are still accurate enough to show that the current rate of change in average temperature is not normal.

To use your analogy of a coin toss. We've seen the last 10 coin tosses and all of them were heads. But it also turns out that the coin is being dipped in ink before its tossed, and when the coin hits the ground it leaves a smudge mark. We can look at the smudge marks and infer the history of the coin tosses. The fainter the smudge mark the longer its been sense a particular toss was made. When we look back in time we see that the tosses have been until recently 50/50. If we toss the coin a few more times and it still shows only heads, then we can begin to suspect that something has changed. Maybe someone switched the coin to a two headed quarter.

Answer 4

No I don't agree. The climate has never been stable; it gets warmer and cooler; making ice ages and warm periods. The temperature record is long enough to show a slight up trend recently. You can dispute the cause, but the temperature rise goes along with a recent increase in CO2 levels in the air, so there is probably a connection.

Answer 5

No, I don't.

Of course you can calculate a trend. You can do a 5 or 10 or 20 or 30 or 50 or 100 year trend based solely on the temperature record, not even including other data such as ice core measurements which go back hundreds of thousands of years - some even hundreds of millions of years (though the further you go back, the larger the uncertainty).

Just because you don't want the evidence to be convincing doesn't make it so. Sorry.

Answer 6

The data from the last 2000 years is quite enough to show that this is not a natural change.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison_png

And simple physics shows that the increased amount of CO2 in the air is sufficient to cause most of the observed warming.

Honestly, do you think thousands of scientists haven't considered carefully whether the data is sufficient to prove global warming?

"I wasn’t convinced by a person or any interest group—it was the data that got me. I was utterly convinced of this connection between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change. And I was convinced that if we didn’t do something about this, we would be in deep trouble.”

Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly, USN (Ret.)
Former NASA Administrator, Shuttle Astronaut and the first Commander of the Naval Space Command

This is a typical "skeptic" argument, it sounds vaguely logical but has no data to back it up. Which is why the word "quantitative" (numerical" is key in this quote.

"There's a better scientific consensus on this [climate change] than on any issue I know... Global warming is almost a no-brainer at this point. You really can't find intelligent, quantitative arguments to make it go away."

Dr. Jerry Mahlman, NOAA

Answer 7

I am under the impression that they can determine temperature levels by sampling Arctic ice. I can't say much about global warming. I do remember however, when I was a kid in the 70's they kept talking about the next Ice Age, now they are talking about global warming. As for determining the weather report, - they say sunny all day and then it rains...I don't think they really know anything.
I personally think it is all part of someone's political and financial agenda, to determine who controls the power supplies to the world. I try to conserve and got a hybrid but for my own reasons. I would rather that the US is not dependent on foreign oil. I think it leaves us open to all kinds of problems.

Answer 8

Probably- Have you read the most recent news?

"US satellite figures show temperatures having fallen since 1998, declining in 2007 to a 1983 level - not to mention the newly revised figures for US surface temperatures showing that the 1930s had four of the 10 warmest years of the past century, with the hottest year of all being not 1998, as was previously claimed, but 1934."

Those that think we're living in the hottest of times are going to have a hard time accepting that "global warming" is over.

Answer 9

Sure it has. We have around 150 years of instrumental temperature data, thirty years of satellite data, and thousands of years of data derived from proxies. I'd say we have more than enough data to establish a definite trend.

Answer 10

Absolutely. Weather records have only been kept for the last 200 years or so, and not very accurately until the advent of weather satellites.

Temperature readings, most of them inaccurate, for 200 years cannot begin to make possible predictions of warming and cooling cycles that last for 10s and 100s of thousands of years or more.

Just last week, the National Weather Service admitted that their predictions for Hurricanes in the last two years have been so far off as to be completely useless. And these are the people that are trying to predict global climate change cycles of the length previously described? Give me a break!