Originally Posted by
furloughfuntime
This a common false parallel that ignorant climate deniers like to point to. There is a distinction between "weather" and "climate" as a concept that makes your entire point moot. You're right in that weather is exceedingly hard to predict, but the climate is much easier to model and is an entirely different can of worms.
A good parallel would be the stock market. On any given day, no one can know which stock will provide the best returns for that day. But if you look at the stock market over the course of the year or even decades, you can draw conclusions that after X years on the market you will have approximately Y% returns. It's a lot harder to predict whether ABC stock is going to double today than it is to say that the market will average 7% returns for a given year based on historical performance.
So yes, predictions are difficult, but the kind of modeling and statistical analysis of the decades and centuries of weather data shows that there is a definite correlation between human behavior with respect to carbon-based fuels and increasing global temperatures. Comparing your local weatherman's often futile efforts to tell you whether it will be sunny this weekend to the thousands of scientists who are dealing with huge data sets that span centuries is really not an intelligent comparison. There is nearly universal consensus that human caused climate change is a real phenomenon, and what's your response?
"Hurr durr, they have dem fancy charts and dem fancy diplomas, so we can't trust em cuz I'm too stupid to understand it myself!"
TLDR; Climate and weather are two separate things when it comes to predictability, so conflating the two is either because you're a fool or a partisan shill. It's also very sad that people choose to revel in their ignorance when expressing suspicion of "fancy charts" and "lots of degrees." As if the 15 minutes you spend reading sketchy news articles on facebook makes you as qualified as the scholars who spend years studying these issues in all their complexity.
Do you really think education is a bad thing? That's what it sounds like you're saying. I remember a time when people used to view individuals who worked hard and studied to become experts in a field with respect, but now people are too emotional and rely on their feelings over objective reality, expert analysis, and even-headed decision making.
Truly sad that you share the same mindset as flat-earthers and chem trail conspiracists who reject objective evidence and the expert opinions in favor of their own delusions.
Ok the weather man can be wrong but climate change proponents have even a worse track record of being right. However we are now supposed to believe they are right this time?Here are, in our opinion, the top 10 biggest climate alarmist predictions gone spectacularly wrong:
- Biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted in the 1970s that: “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” and that “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
- In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
- In January 2006 Al Gore predicted that we had ten years left before the planet turned into a “total frying pan.” We made it.
- In 2008, a segment aired on ABC News predicted that NYC would be under water by June 2015.
- In 1970, ecologist Kenneth E.F. Watt predicted that “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder by the year 2000, This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.”
- In 2008, Al Gore predicted that there is a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap would be completely melted within 5-7 years. He at least hedged that prediction by giving himself “75%” certainty.
- On May 13th 2014 France’s foreign minister said that we only have 500 days to stop “climate chaos.” The recent Paris climate summit met 565 days after his remark.
- In 2009, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center head James Wassen warned that Obama only had four years left to save the earth.
- On the first Earth Day its sponsor warned that “in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
- And another Earth Day prediction from Kenneth Watt: “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”