Saturday, August 08, 2009

"World will warm faster than predicted in next five years"

Warmer! Cooler! Cooler! Warmer! Let's call the whole decadal prediction thing off!

No, I don't really think people should stop trying to make these sorts of predictions - they are a great way to actually demonstrate and test the scientific principles that underly their creation - but I do think that plenty of scepticism is warranted in their claims. As for myself, I'm sticking with "about the same as before" for my prediction of the future trend - with some as-yet unspecified uncertainty bounds :-)

3 comments:

Michael Tobis said...

Shouldn't the discussion be about "warmerer" vs "less warmer"? The language is not well suited for second derivatives.

James Annan said...

i agree it's important to not obscure the fact that all these predictions are for temporary deviations from the long-term CO2-forced warming trend. However Keenlyside did actually predict cooling in absolute terms (not that anyone believes them).

EliRabett said...

About the same as yesterday is the safest weather forecast also