Weather Channel founder calls Global Warming "a scam."

Ah, the role out the ice age defence. Never mind that the guy who propossed the theory was one of the first people who proposed Global Warming because, gasp, as our science improved it showed the effect of atmospheric aerosols was less than thought and the effect of CO2 more. Damn him, and his good science.

Temperature in the past has been much higher than it is now, and higher than it is predicted to rise to in the next century.That's rather an irrelevant comparison though, it doesn't matter whether the Earth will survive just fine, it matters that we're going to inflict a massive human catastrophy on the people alive now.

We have.It isn't.Honestly, why do you assume climate scientists are idiots? The people telling you that humans are causing global warming are the same people who've spent the most time and effort determining how and why temperature has varied in the past.Ignore the trend evidence, just look at the CO₂. We know, for a fact, that humans are releasing around 7 thousand million tonnes of C in the form of CO₂ (~24 thousand million tonnes of CO₂) into the atmosphere each year and that total levels of CO₂ are rising by around 2 thousand million tonnes of CO₂ each year. We know, for a fact, that CO₂ absorbs infrared radiation because it transfers into vibrational energy in the bonds between the O atoms and the central C atom. We know that the earth's surface radiates 1.98 x 10¹⁷ W of energy as infrared energy each year and that the amount of that energy that escapes into space is a vital determining factor of surface temperature and we know that CO₂ is the second most important greenhouse gas (meaning a gas that absorbs IR radiation and thus traps heat energy in the atmosphere) in the atmosphere. The most important is H₂O but it's quantity is determined primarily by atmospheric temperature and thus follows the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere.Given these facts what possible way is there for human generated CO₂ not causing global warming? What do you think is happening to the additional trapped energy if we're not?

A complete aside, but actually weather is probably not a chaotic system just very complicated.

Chaotic does not mean very complicated!It means that tiny differences in the current state result in massive differences in eventual state. So that, in effect, the future is random because it cannot be accurately predicted from the present.It has long been assumed weather is chaotic but analysis of the trends in the accuracy of weather prediction shows that long term prediction is improving at a faster rate than short term prediction. If weather was truly random then improvements in short term prediction and measurement would not help long term prediction. This is not the case.

I hate to call rank, Taz, but I have a Masters of Mathematics from Warwick University, one of the two highest ranking universtities in the UK for Mathematics. One of the things I have studied was Chaos Theory.I am quite familiar with what, exactly, chaos means in the mathematical sense. No, it doesn't. Which is exactly why that isn't what I wrote. Read my last post again. This time don't start by assuming I don't know what I'm talking about. Exactly my point. This is what demonstrates it's a non-chaotic system. In chaotic systems knowing the initial conditions better makes little or no difference and that difference increases with time. This is not the case with weather prediction. As our ability to measure initial conditions has improved our ability to measure longer term conditions has improved in step. This shows that weather is not chaotic but "merely" complicated.

Wrong. Chaos Theory.With a chaotic system it doesn't matter how many variables you do or don't know; over time every tiny error will become significant. If you know every variable, but can only measure it within 3 decimal places you can't say with anything approaching certainty what it will do in the the future. You just get a narrowly wider window of accuracy; and the accuracy of your predictions falls off in a knowable way - which is not the way weather predictions fall off.This isn't a matter of knowing the variable or not. It's a question of being chaotic or not. In a non-chaotic system, similar initial conditions will have similar outcomes; in a chaotic system they won't - which means, if you don't have perfect information your future is indistinguishable from random despite being deterministic.

Thank you, I was trying to remember that.Edit Actually this is all off topic, so I'm going to drop it now. New thread, etc. if anyone wishes to pursue the matter?Edited by Mr Jack, : Off Topic.