Steve 41oo wrote:Anthropogenic global warming is not an idea a cult or a religious belief. Its real. Tangible. We can measure it. We know what causes it.
So far, so good. However the real part is the possibility that AGW has materially contributed - among other potentially more significant variables - to a small degree oif warming in the last century. Whether this will or will not dominate observable natural cycles or will be significantly damped by natural processes remains unknown. Certainly the doomsday forecasts that have become associated with AGW have no basis in science -- they are speculations, not forecasts.
Steve 41oo wrote:Its as real as the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs, though no doubt there were some dino-sceptics around at the time who said it was all hysteriacal nonsense... or alternatively if it was real it would probably miss.
This is the fantasy, the cult. The meteorite impacts that caused previous extinctions are geological facts. They happened. The speculations of future AGW calamities, based on utterly meaningless numerical integrations of the state and momentum equations for the earth's oceans and atmosphere, based on assumed initial conditions, - integrations for which there is a sound fundamental mathematical basis on which to conclude that the results of such numerical integrations are utterly meaningless -- are hardly of the same rank as observable facts. One who confounds the two cannot protect himself from serious critical analysis with the mantle of science.
In addition it is also an observable fact that - even absent the effects associated with AGW - the climate of the earth has never been stable. There have been repeated cycles of warming and cooling noted in the geological record and even in recorded human history. It takes a degree of transcendent belief to assume that the scanty evidence of AGW wil somehow dominate all this -- the hallmark of a cult.