--- Joe Bauman <bau@desnews.com> wrote:
So there has been 1 C of warming in the last 200 years -- except that with their more recent research, that has dropped to 0.5 to 0.6 degrees. I repeat: How can such a tiny shift in 200 years result in all these supposedly catastrophic changes, even assuming humans are responsible?
To quote the recently issued Stern Report: "Climate change arguments do not rest on 'proving' that the warming trend is unprecedented over the past Millennium. Whether or not this debate is now settled, this is only one in a number of lines of evidence for human induced climate change. The key conclusion, that the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will lead to several degrees of warming, rests on the laws of physics and chemistry and a broad range of evidence beyond one particular graph." Stern Report (Full) at Box 1.1, p. 6. Stern also noted with respect to the hockey puck debate that: "Much discussion has focused on whether the current trend in rising global temperatures is unprecedented or within the range expected from natural variations. This is commonly referred to as the 'Hockey Stick' debate as it discusses the validity of figures that show sustained temperatures for around 1000 years and then a sharp increase since around 1800 (for example, Mann et al. 1999, shown as a purple line in the figure below). Some have interpreted the 'Hockey Stick' as definitive proof of the human influence on climate. However, others have suggested that the data and methodologies used to produce this type of figure are questionable (e.g. von Storch et al. 2004), because widespread, accurate temperature records are only available for the past 150 years. Much of the temperature record is recreated from a range of Âproxy sources such as tree rings, historical records, ice cores, lake sediments and corals." Stern Report (Full) at Box 1.1, p. 6. Regards, Kurt U.K. Stern Full Report http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_economics_cli... U.K. Stern Report - Index Page http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/Independent_Reviews/stern_review_economics_cli... ____________________________________________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta. http://new.mail.yahoo.com