greenLED said:
...So the gist of the story is: climate does change, it has done so in the past (we can track these changes based on proxies when we don't have met. records)
While I agree that we may make
inferences from those proxies (which in and of themselves are very subjuct to interpretation) they do not invalidate the points I brought up in my first post. Even more importantly, there is no way to use that proxy data to beef up the OPs very specific, initial claims about the coldest, warmest, least, most, etc., -- to make them stretch back beyond a couple hundred years, and in most places,
not even that. It's all way too fuzzy and disconnected to even be considered scientific.
The claims about the proxies
certainly have their place in this discussion but no one may interpret them in such a way that they could say, 'ABC news reported tonight that the snowfall in New York City is the largest
in the last 350,000 years.' A claim like that would actually do more than preach to the choir. But there is no there, there.
Usually claims like those in the original post
do not mention that their conclusions are drawn from an incredibly small data sample. That was the point I was trying to make. Without ever addressing the
valid issues these arguments make Global Warming a much harder sell by
decreasing the signal to noise ratio and alienating many in the modern world who are already awash in far more information than they may assimilate.
Do you see what I'm trying to get at here? Assuming that all of you're conclusions about proxy data are correct, it still can't pump any
depth into the claims made in the initial post. Their addition to this thread is be like saying, 'Yeah, we knew that claiming that the rain forest was shrinking by 10% per year was obviously false after thirty years -- but it's for a good cause -- here, look at this.'
The truth is that all of the time I was growing up our brilliant scientific community raved on and on for decades that we were experiencing
Global Cooling. Their understanding of these complex issues was anything but complete. This lack of understanding
will continue into the foreseeable future.
On the positive side, at least Man didn't overreact
to what the scientists were all saying 40 years ago by destroying our economy and the tattered remnants of our remaining freedoms by implementing draconian policies that totally contradict what our learned men of science
are so sure about today. There is an appropriate Yogi Berra line that is applicable...
There's no way around it, the scientists were wrong 40 years ago.
The Scientists. Since humans haven't changed much since then I'd say that there is a very good chance that the emotional claims of today should be toned down quite a bit so that the issues may be looked at -- looked at
beyond the last 200 years.
That's what this thread is
actually about -- the last 200 years. While the OP didn't state that for reasons I've already covered,
that is the data set that all of his claims were based on. The reality is that the last 200 years of weather really doesn't mean very much in the context of Global Warming.