Full Thread: 'Global warming'
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Old November 22nd, 2009 #55
Sándor Petőfi
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Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: In your head
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Quote:
Originally Posted by George Witzgall View Post
it's not unusual for the global average temperature, even time-averaged over five years, to plateau or even fall
on the available evidence.
I don't care, because your "global average temperature" is a physically meaningless number. Do I really need to explain why?

If you want to talk about melting ice in the Arctic, or shorter winters in Italy, or warmer Summers in California, or crop failure in Ethiopia, or flooding in Bangladesh, and how whatever consequences of these actual happenings might be averted, then you can do so without recourse to some mathematical hocus pocus of rhetoric. However, if you want to preach a religion of sin, apocalypse, miracle and redemption to make a fast buck from your converts, you can't.

Quote:
based on the evidence, would you say global warming or global cooling is more likely over the next century?
What's a probability, George? It's the fraction of similarly prepared systems allowed to evolve under similar conditions being found in a similar state. That's its physical meaning.

So, to answer your question, there is no basis upon which to define a probability here.