Re: Kyoto, Driving our car

From: Wayne Hayes (wayne@cs.toronto.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 09 1997 - 09:29:45 MST


mark@unicorn.com writes:
>So there you have it; the temperature of the atmosphere is decreasing by
>0.04 degrees per decade. This isn't a guess, it's an actual measurement,
>and matches measurements taken in situ by balloon. As a programmer and
>physicist measurements give me a warm fuzzy feeling that computer-aided
>guesses just can't match.

I agree. It's very interesting, I had not heard of this measurement
before.

>Now this is not to say that there aren't other effects (e.g. oceans,
>high-level atmosphere) which the atmosphere measurements are missing,
>or that the temperature hasn't risen in the past (though it's odd that
>most of the supposed greenhouse-gas increase occured before most of
>the greenhouse gases were released). But it seems like good evidence
>that we are heading for an ice age, not greenhouse warming.

It certainly does not! 0.04 degrees "per decade" measured over a lousy
2 decades??? That's statistical fluctuation if I ever saw it. It is
*very* good that we are starting to measure temperature fluctuations
rather than use computer-aided guessing, but at this point there is
nowhere *near* enough evidence to make any sort of long-term predictions
whatsoever.



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