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Talkin' about the weather

Joe Bastardi is the chief long range and hurricane forecaster for Accuweather. He has a wonderful article at the Carolina Journal Online regarding Global Warming:

Meteorologist: Put Global Warming in Context
Our knowledge of the past should serve as a foundation for actions in the present. While not dismissing those who are concerned about global warming, I am disturbed that they often base their conclusions on data that, in the context of time, are only a grain of sand on the beach. They cite temperature changes from the last 10, 50, or 100 years, ignoring the fact that climate history and cycles didn’t start 10 years or even 10 centuries ago.

Nothing that is happening today is new or different. I have yet to have a global warming "true believer" tell me why over the past hundreds and thousands of years, before any significant or even detectable human influence, there were periods where carbon dioxide and temperature levels were well above those of recent experience. There are also places in our northern plains that have been covered with glaciers at one time and tropical rain forest at others, all without man’s influence. There is no reason to think that this can’t happen again no matter what we do. Anyone with a true understanding of climate history knows that the relatively small changes experienced over the last 100 years could easily be "natural."

After ignoring the past, some analysts then use computer projections to predict temperatures for the next 100 years or more. It is astounding to see people put so much faith in these man-made computer models, yet ignore the actual facts of the past. As someone who has made a living at pointing out the folly of worshipping the false idol of atmospheric models, I find these projections to be a classic case of being blinded by the lure of the latest technological fad. Perhaps this is the most telling difference between those who are accepting of the "global warming hypothesis" and those of us who are skeptical. The former tend to base their conclusions on the guesses of computer models. We skeptics focus on actual climate history and conclude that nothing out of the ordinary is occurring.

He also cites the chart from this report (PDF) which shows the "global warming" issue for the fraud it is: Visit the article for the full-size image. Those people on the Global Warming bandwagon are ignoring the fact that the Earth's climate has warmed and cooled about every 400 years for the last 3,000. The idea that #1) - we have anything to do with the present trend and #2) - that we have the power to reverse it is pure hubris on our part. That is not to say that we should not move from Coal to Nuclear for power generation and I am not ignoring the fact that the petroleum feedstocks are running low. There are a host of other environmental issues that are serious and do need to be looked at. It is just that Global Warming is a rat-hole, bad science and is stealing resources and funding from issues that would have a real effect on the well-being of the planet. Posted by DaveH at May 23, 2006 10:29 PM