Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to this thread. It is turkey season and I have a limited amount of time for long responses.
You, yourself have cited two reports done in the 70's and now you are claiming one? Even if there were only one report done in the 70's (a point which I don't conceede) it would be clear evidence of the media's willingness to take partial information that proves nothing and run with it as if it were delivered by God on the mountain top. Exactly the same thing that is happening today.
Actually no, this is what I said:
Rasool and Schneider (1971) - Examined the possible effects of greenhouse gases and particulate pollution (such as from aerosols) on the climate. They found that greenhouse gases would result in warming the Earth and particulate pollution in cooling it, and guessed the latter to be more likely. They estimated that sustained effects of particulate polluntants could decrease the temperature of Earth by up to 3.5°C, and if this went on for long enough, it could cause Earth to drop into another ice age. Note that they didn't actually
predict this would happen, they just proposed it as a possible future scenario. Nowadays, most scientists are indeed
predicting that the Earth is going to warm up.
National Academy of Sciences Report (1975) - Often claimed to show fear of Global Cooling. In fact, all it said was that it's possible for the climate to change, they didn't know in which way it might, and so we should research it more. No big fears there.
And I have two degrees in the hard sciences, and don't require information be digested and fed to me in small bites via the internet.
That really doesn't impress me. Are you a climatologist?
Geez I wish people here would learn what constitutes a logical fallacy and when it is appropriate to suggest that one has been made. When I pointed out that the national academy was not infallable, and had, in the past, supported pseudoscience, it was in response to your "appeal to authority" in suggesting that the pseudoscience must be true because the scientists at the national academy said so. There was a logical fallacy in the exchange, but you are the one who made it.
Actually you are wrong here. You attempted to discredit everything the National Acadamie of Science sais because of something that happened over 60 years ago, it was a clear fallacy, whether you recognize it or not.
Furthermore, for your appeal to authority accusation to work, i would have to be basing an unproven assertion on just what they said. unfortunately for you, the proof and research confirming what the Acadamie is stating is well documented and constantly being debated. Furthermore, these are climatoligists, people that know what they are talking about, if I had said, "George Bush doesnt beileve in Global Warming, therefor its not happening", then yes you'd be correct.
Likewise.
Let me stop here and ask you a question. How much scientific value do you believe can be gained about a cyclical event when all of your research involves comparing one cycle to itself?
Weren't you the one who brought up the entire cycle argument? I showed you how this current cycle is different than the others.
That is what you are doing here, and if the scientists who made it were trying in any way to prove that the earth's exit from this ice age is unusual because of man's influence then they are no more than pseudoscientists.
Have you ever looked at the time scale on the bottom of your little chart? 400,000 years. Do you know why such charts as those never go back much further than 600,000 to a million years max? It is because if you go back any further, there was no ice...ANYWHERE. Your chart simply shows the fluctuations in temperature during the ice age that we are still coming out of. How valuable do you reallybelieve that information is if you are trying to prove that man is somehow responsible for altering the exit from this ice age if it is not compared to other exits from other ice ages?
Show me some evidence that suggests that the exits from the ice ages of the precambrian, or the silurian, or the permian ages proceeded any differently without man's influence. You are comparing one cycle of a cyclical event to itself and trying to prove that this cycle is different from the others because of us. You can only prove we are responsible for differences if your attempt at proof is in the context of cycles that happened before we came on the scene.
In order to prove that we are causing a change, you need to provide evidence that exits from previous ice ages did not involve wild temperature fluctuations as they (the ice ages) neared their ends. So far, I haven't seen any scientist who buys AGW theory even begin to try and provide such evidence. After all, how much grant money do you believe they would get if they said that the earth warms up till all the ice is gone, holds that temperature for a few million years and then enters another ice age?
Recent history is irrelavent unless it is compared to the same time frame from a previous ice age exit. You are comparing a thing to itself in an attempt to prove that it is different from other like things. That is not science.
I am actually glad you brought this up. One important thing to note, is that hundreds of millions of years ago, Co2 levels were incredibly high, which can give you a good idea of why it was so hot.
However onto your questions.
Its not really good science to compare the earth from hundreds of millions of years ago, to the Earth today, because quite frankly, it was drastically different back then. For one thing, it got less light, because the sun was dimmer. For another, the geography was different. Many of the continents were rammed together and situated partly over the south pole. By the time that the Permian came around, the motion of the Earth's crustal plates had brought much of the total land together, creating Pangea.
Now, I suppose If we could expect the continents to slam into each other in the next century, the climate hundreds of million years ago might give us some pause about whether the planet is going to warm. But the continents are just going to creep along, while the carbon dioxide is going to shoot up, perhaps doubling or even tripling.
I think we still have a lot to learn about the climate of the ancient world. The further back in time we go, it seems the worse the record of temperature and greenhouse gases becomes.
Drifting continents make the problem even more complex. But scientists are making headway, not by rejecting the role of greenhouse gases in the climate but by learning more about the other factors at play in the past.
However, the most revealing features of Earth's climate history come from the more recent past, the past few million years, for which scientists have found some excellent records in ice cores and other materials. The reason that the more recent past is helpful, is because the Earth was generally in the same state as it is today, especially the continents, which were in the same arrangement as they are today.
So no its not pseudoscience. And its disingenuous on your part to claim it is.
You are bringing the hockey stick here? That piece of drivel has been so thoroughly discredited that even the most rabit AGW'ers don't use it as evidence any more. Get some real evidence.
