[Mike Hashimoto]: It doesn't. But by that logic, does the "success" of another part of the world meeting climate model projections prove global warming? My point is that an average global temperature is measurable. We can agree that, on average, the entire world is a degree or so warmer than it was at name-your-point-in-the-past. So if that equates to 'global warming,' you win.”
Then, Rod wins. Maybe now Mike and other global warming skeptics will quit presenting every day of colder or wetter or milder weather as disproof of global warming.
The fact is weather is variable. Individual hurricanes, individual heat waves, individual droughts or blizzards or drenching rains don't prove a thing. But, study the aggregate data and the trend is convincing. In aggregate, the trends point to global warming.
Climate varies, too, over long time scales. The northern hemisphere has been in the grip of Ice Ages every 20,000 or so years. Scientists debate whether we are still coming out of the last Ice Age or perhaps primed to enter a new one (barring human-induced climate change).
When global warming has happened in the past, the impact on the environment and species living at the time was severe. Current data suggests that global warming this time is happening faster than in natural cycles in the past and is human-induced. Why would modern humans want to bring that on deliberately? Personally, I'd prefer that humans 1000 years from now, 20,000 years from now, or 1 million years from now figure out how to deal with natural, cyclical climate change. I don't want it all to happen in the next few decades, thank you.
Mike Hashimoto asks important questions about the relative concentrations of various greenhouse gasses, the relationship between CO2 and global warming, the leverage that various actions would have, like increasing CAFE standards, etc., etc. Scientists don't consider these settled issues. Scientists are busy trying to learn more about global warming so that society can make informed decisions about how to proceed. Mike Hashimoto ought to quit denying global warming, quit denying humans' role in it, and start exploring the pros and cons of various measures designed to deal with the fact of human-induced global warming. Maybe then he just might win his next debate with Rod.
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