riverat says: Jun 28, 2011 @ 10:35 AM (PDT)
cosserat, we've gone over this before. Your graph is simply a numerical model and your extrapolation has no basis in the physical reality unlike climate models that are based on actual physics. What will you say when temperatures continue to rise over the next 25 years rather fall as you predict?
riverat, not for the first time, your philosophical stance is dead wrong. A climate model simply reflects a scientific hypothesis . It must be checked against real data. If the two dont agree, the hypothesis is thereby falsifed.
So in hypothesis making, you have no right to claim the moral high ground over me, nor I over you. Only time will tell which if us is right. In the meanwhile, other readers can make up their own minds which hypothesis looks the most plausible to them.
I am skeptical about the IPCC climate models developed before 2000 because they have lamentably failed to predict the flat-lining of the temperature curve in the last decade to 2010. Just take a look at:
http://www.thetruthaboutclimatechange.org/IPCCScenarios.htmlThe blue, green and red lines represent increasingly pessimistic IPCC assumptions made prior to 2000 about future carbon emissions from 2000 to 2100. The blue, green and red plots show increasingly alarming temperature levels at 2100.
The black plot to 2000 is the actual historical temperature record. Since 2000 to 2010 the actual temperature plot has been HORIZONTAL! I suggest that any reasonably balanced intelligent person looking at this data would have to conclude that, as a minimum, the IPCC climate models failed to predict that particular outcome.
Of course you may be of the view that this is just a short term downward swing - a natural climate "blip". Whereas I propose that this looks suspiciously like the beginning of the downward half of the ~67 year up-and-down historic natural cycle.
Neither of us knows for sure. But we will all know the answer in 10 to 15 years time.
