Quote:Yeah. It could go up or down by as much as a degree.
The data *is* there for something going on in the global system that could *change* the system.
Try doing some research on the Medieval Warm Period. The temperature then was about that much warmer, for about five hundred years. Was the result anything like the catastrophe that's predicted?
No.
There are, for example, no records of coastal villages or cities being flooded out. London was already established at that time, for one classic example, and business continued as usual.
There was sufficient clearance of the Arctic ice to allow Viking explorers free passage through most of the Norwegian coast, a viable wine industry in Britain, and so forth. It's generally considered to be tied to a cycle of solar activity.
It was followed by what's known as the Little Ice Age, with temperatures slightly lower than normal, that ended... coincidentally enough... in the early 1800's. Temperature has been slowly rising ever since.
I note that both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age were about 5-6 centuries in length. This appears to be a regular, ongoing cycle of solar activity affecting Earth's climate in a generally nondestructive fashion.
As for the inflation of the effect by man-made emissions, I compare them to the amount put into the atmosphere by volcanic eruptions... and I find man coming out the worse for it. Mount St. Helens, from the 1980 main eruption to the present, has continued to give off gases of the same sorts that can contribute to "global warming"... in quantities that far outweigh the entire human industrial contribution for the entire 20th century.--
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