I've come to the conclusion that I don't understand global warming studies at all.
I know it's utterly idiotic to look at the local weather the way some people tend to do (ie: It's hotter this year than last year! GLOBAL WARMING! Or This winter is colder than last winter! TAKE THAT GLOBAL WARMING!), so I try to look at a long period of time.

So, I looked at the last 100 years, which really in the grand scheme of things isn?t nearly old enough to see an actual trend. No 100 year estimate I've ever seen actually promises that the temperature readings they've taken are representative of a GLOBAL temperature change, because that's vital to good data on global rather than regional warming. I didn't have high hopes for that, considering 100 years ago I somehow doubt there were satellites in space taking readings.

Not to take away from your article, apparently Greenland is melting at a pretty good clip; at the very least Greenland looks like it?s getting warmer, now and in very recent history. It?s a bit amusing that they have an estimate on how high the ocean would get if ?the trend continues?, which I can only assume they meant all the ice melts away and Greenland becomes a tropical paradise with pretty birds and palm trees, when if that happened I would expect Canada, Russia and the poles would have melted by then as well, making that little number from Greenland pretty inconsequential. I understand it?s simply to dramatize the finding, hit the emotions of the reader and make it stick in people?s brains. I just find it funny to think about it to its logical conclusion.

So. I don't understand it at all. I don't understand the confidence with which the arguments are presented when everyone acknowledges the fact that we only started looking a few years ago. It seems strange that so many things on this planet take a ridiculously long time to happen, and yet we expect the last 30 years of research to tell us conclusively that we're ruining everything.

There's quite a powerful political influence on the topic as well. There are those who will simply NOT ACCEPT any argument presented, period, on both sides of the issue and those are the ones who have the public eye. I think that political influence is making it harder to see real science vs junk science in the issue.


Here's a nifty chart: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/images/anomalies.gif
Just nifty, although it doesn't say how the temperature readings match up to an actual "global temperature."

Thanks for reading.