<http://www.skepticalscience.com/2009-2nd-hottest-year-on-record-sun-coolest-in-a-century.html> 2009 - 2nd hottest year on record while sun is coolest in a century The skeptic argument "It's the sun" is both the most used skeptic argument and the most visited page on this website. So with NASA GISS updating the surface temperature record with completed 2009 data, I've updated the comparison between sun and temperature. While 2009 is the second hottest year on record (tied with 2007), solar activity has fallen to its lowest level in over a century.
Climate Change As we sit here freezing and dreaming of southern climes, it is hard to conceive of global warming. But it is happening and the long term effects will not be pleasant. How do I know that the climate is changing? Well, I remember that when I was back in high school, we used to start playing hockey on outdoor rinks in December and played at least up to the end of February. There was never any thought of a mid-winter thaw that might prevent us from playing. That just did not happen. Today, there are many days in winter when the thermometer climbs above zero. So what does this mean? Absolutely nothing. This is anecdotal evidence, which in the pursuit of science does not amount to a hill of beans. The reason I believe that we are experiencing a significant warming trend is because thatâs what the vast majority of scientists who are specialists in this area believe. And they believe it to be so because of the evidence that has been collected and published in thousands of peerreviewed papers. Furthermore, they believe that the warming is due to human activity. Do all scientists believe this? No. There are those who get hot under the collar when the notion of global warming due to human activity is brought up. But they are a small minority. Albeit a noisy one. They cherry-pick data to try to prove that global warming is overstated and that there is no crisis in the offing. And with the hacked emails at the University of East Anglia, they got a gift. They were quick to pounce and claim that these secret emails proved that climate change was a fabricated phenomenon. The emails did no such thing. To be sure they raised some questions about the ethics of some of the people involved and clearly reflected anger at the climate change deniers, but there was nothing in those emails that counters the observations made by hundreds of scientists around the world. The melting glaciers, the rise in sea water levels, the disappearing permafrost were all predicted by computer models but only when human activity was taken into account. These changes are not due some cyclical natural environmental trend. This shouldnât come as a surprise. Letâs just think about it at a primitive level. Billions of cars and trucks cruise the worldâs roads every hour of the day. Freighters and passenger ships criss-cross the worldâs oceans and airplanes take off some fifty thousand times a day. Most of the world burns coal to produce electricity. All these activities spew carbon dioxide into the air. And carbon dioxide levels have been steadily rising, and in fact have preceded the warming temperatures, indicating a cause and effect relationship. And it isnât only carbon dioxide. Nitrous oxide released from fertilizer and methane from the cattle we raise contribute significantly to the greenhouse effect. So it just isnât reasonable to think that human activity is not playing a role in global warming. On rare occassions it happens that maverick scientists who swim against the current are proven to be right. But climate change is not going to be one of those issues. It wonât be long before the deniers are swept away by the current. Climate change is real and it is time to do something about it. What? Thatâs a much tougher question to answer. Joe Schwarcz http://oss.mcgill.ca/biotech/climatechange.pdf http://oss.mcgill.ca/
No offense but that is exactly what I was referring to when I said the data does not reach far enough back in time. Whoever wrote this is using data that reaches back to the 1600's, WTF? That is simply not a relevant amount of time. He is also using two data sets that have an "overlapping correlation"... just wow. What does this prove exactly, that u can find two overlapping charts that appear to be correlated and draw conclusions from statistically insignificant data. Even if I am missing something (I prolly am), this still isn't proof humans are causing it. As another poster wrote in response to me, "the climate is a chaotic system, and we aren't going to write a few formulas and figure it out", or something along those lines. Yet you are championing this one statistically flawed chart as being scientific proof. C'mon dude...
Yes, it is a relevant amount of time. In science, we use sample sizes that are proportionate to the time periods to which we're trying to extrapolate. Actually, I'm not. There's no question that it is overwhelming evidence that solar activity is absolutely not the primary cause, despite global warming deniers' claims. I am championing the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence and weighing the claims based on that. On one side there's every single National Academy of Science, NASA, the NOAA, and the CRA. Plus the observational record. Plus proxy data. On the other side there's... quite literally nothing now.
Dave you are not a scientist. You do not even understand the scientific method. Please do not make the statement "In science, we use sample......." as if you are actually part of the scientific community.
James Hansen has completed discredited NASA's stance on global warming when he started substitutiong data from one month and using it in place of other months. We know that he threw out the data from October and inserted the data from September in Seberia. Its a known fact. Thats what he has been caught for. We don't know how many times he has done that he hasn't be caught. You bring up the CRU also. Are you serious? The CRU? If you ignore their history you might be able to cite them. Of course ignoring their history would not be very scientific, would it?