I'm not Warming up to Global Warming

• The Earth has no temperature - saying the planet has a temperature makes as much sense as saying my singing is green. The adjective does not match the noun. What temperature? Measured where? On the surface? An average of the surface and atmosphere? How about the crust? How about the ocean surface? How about the depths of the oceans and the depths of the crust?

  It just doesn't make any sense to talk about a global temperature for the planet. "Average surface temperature over land?", okay I can go with that. But the planetary system is way too complex an animal for one number to mean much of anything, in my opinion. But even average land surface temperature should take into account moisture levels, right?



• A plethora of short-term readings is not statistically significant - My lecturer started off by explaining the difference between weather and climate. Weather, he said, is short term, while climate is long term. I understand that just fine, but just what does he mean by "short term"? Immediately after this, he begins telling me of all of the evidence collected over the last 150 years. I know I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but isn't 150 years fairly insignificant when we talk about the climate of the planet? I mean, to say something like the climate is changing, I would think you would speak in terms of tens of thousands of years, not decades. This is like trying to tell what Microsoft's stock is going to do for the next three years by watching it for a few hours on a Friday afternoon.

  It just doesn't make any sense at all to me. I'm supposed to believe that currently we're only able to predict the weather a couple of days out using the best measurements and supercomputers in the world, yet somehow using fewer data points and less computation we can find correlations at the month, year, or decade level? An argument might be that at larger scales it averages out, but if this were the case then some proof of this might be in order. Can we predict general weather patterns 3 months out? We try, but so far it hasn't worked so good. Maybe that's too short a time period. How about year-at-a-time? Nobody is trying that. Decades at a time? Again, nobody is trying that. So we're supposed to believe that 150 years of measurements mean something in terms of developing a theory when we're unable to predict future measurements based on that same data and those same theories?



• You can only stack assumptions so high before the pile falls over - I understand that when measuring past temperatures, you only have indirect evidence to go on. This means that you have to make a theory about how the measurements in one category match up with the measurements in another. For instance Isotope levels in core ice indicate temperature. I can understand that in a general sense, but wouldn't that only be temperature from where the core sample was taken? Wouldn't it only be atmospheric temperature? It seems we keep stringing these "what-ifs" farther and farther out. Am I to believe that historical atmospheric readings based on isotopes for only certain parts of the planet are indicative of general planetary trends over time? Why would that be the case? Yes, I think the general gist is correct. But there's a lot of little holes all over the place.


• Scientists should know what science is all about - Look, it's your field, you should know something about it. C.S. Peirce described how science works about a hundred years ago. Go read up. Any fourth-grader can tell you the generalities: it's about theory and observation. It's not about peer review, publishing, scientific consensus, or any of that -- that's science policy. Science is the creation of an ontology using the logical constructs of abduction, deduction, and induction verifiable by independent observation.

A famous astronomer once said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. To me, the claim that the planet is warming in some fashion as to require direct intervention is the most extraordinary claim I have heard in my entire life. I would put it beyond the claim that there is extraterrestrial life, the claim that Elvis flew a UFO, or that it is possible to transmute iron into gold. I'm not saying it's as plausible as any of those -- that's a different issue entirely. I'm saying the claim is completely extraordinary. It implies understanding of hundreds or thousands of different biological and physical systems, a comparison with other life-inhabiting planets which does not exist, and an ability to predict the future of this complex system called Earth that I do not see in evidence.

I'm probably wrong. I must be wrong. After all, there's scientific consensus! But still, this really bugs me. Something is rotten here somewhere. I'm not warming to Global Warming, but I keep trying.