WeatherRusty

What do you personally have to gain?

Deniers of anthropogenic global warming and climate change often state that natural cycles account for the observed long term trends and more recent variability in the climate record. They rarely cite what these cycles may be other than solar variability which we know accounts for much of the of the more recent variability up until about 1970, at which point the causal relationship breaks down. The amount and rate of warming observed since 1970 can not be associated with solar variability alone, the Sun has actually cooled slightly as magnetic activity has decreased.

So, other than acknowledged solar variability what causal factors and "natural cycles" are being referred to by skeptics and deniers. Be specific. No phantom causes such as galactic cosmic rays please.

Weather forecasting is an initial conditions problem. Climate forecasting is a boundary condition problem.

Initial condition that define the current state of the atmosphere are updated with every iteration of a forecast model. Beyond the first set, the initial conditions for each successive iteration are based on the output of the model and could be in error. These errors accumulate with each future iteration and the weather forecast skill deteriorates with time.

Measured initial conditions are therefore useless to climate prediction models, which are weather forecast models adapted for assessing climate change.

Rather than initial conditions, boundary conditions are described:

"Climate forecasts are produced in a different fashion, as here the problem is fundamentally a boundary value one. The circulation of atmosphere and ocean in such a climate model is not dependent on the initial state of the model but rather on the boundary conditions like the input of solar energy and the chemical composition of the Earth’s atmosphere (e.g. greenhouse gases). You cannot predict the weather for individual days with a climate forecast (for example, the question of the temperature in Hamburg on the 23.12.2005 is meaningless), but you can say something about the average conditions for an area (e.g. the average January temperature between 2010 and 2020), as well as the probability and magnitudes of deviations from this average."

In other words, the little unknowable details are less valuable in a predictive sense than are large scale parameters confined to within a range of likely variability when assessing climate change.

Any comment?

http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/en/presse/faqs/wie-kann-m...

Is the climate a chaotic or complex system? Is there a difference? Can a system be complex and yet only partially chaotic.

Does the atmosphere contain structure? It that structure repeatable?

Do the atmospheric and climate systems adhere to the laws of physics such as the laws of thermodynamics and fluid dynamics?

Can a slight change in starting conditions change large scale (synoptic) atmospheric features? Small scale? Will that 30% chance of thunderstorms materialize over my area?

Will a climate forcing such as increasing CO2 adhere to well defined laws of physics (conservation of energy & entropy) or will the results be random?

Would you rather be termed a skeptic rather than a denier? NO OFFENSE INTENDED!

As a major source of funding to climate researchers is the NSF guilty of promoting research that supports a preconceived conclusion for the purpose of deluding government policy makers and the general public?

Here is a NSF report on the impacts of climate change that their funded research has revealed. Is this nothing but a bunch of propaganda in support of a hoax?

http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/climate/pd...

A questioner recently took issue with what he or she perceived as my "appeal to authority" argument by stating "You are 100% wrong. A consensus does not a scientific fact make." I agree consensus does not establish scientific fact. But:

Why does science use the peer-review process and is there any value to the weight of scientific consensus amongst active, publishing climatologists that mankind's activities are increasingly contributing to climate change?

By interpreting the available evidence differently than the mainstream scientific community, do skeptics present arguments intentionally or not based on false premises.

The Earth has not warmed since 1998

The warmest year globally was 1934

Arctic sea ice extent is recovering during the winter.

To little CO2 in the atmosphere to make a difference

etc.