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Wow...
Posted on 02/28/2007 8:25:29 AM PST by Tolik
Global Warming ping
Excellent article.
As a scientist, we have a name for this. It's called a WAG.
That's a wild-a$$ guess, for those of your in Rio Linda.
Nope, this is scientific so it is a SWAG.
And yet this WAG is making daily headlines in papers across the world in an attempt to create a global tax and a powerful world government bureaucracy.
Just don't build too close to the coast and dress appropriately for the weather. That should get a person by.
Yup. My electronics engineering training has been virtually no help in my career in semiconductor processing.
WAG the dog?
(Someone had to say it)...
I can never remember which is more accurate. Is a WAG more accurate than a ROM? I think a ROM would be considerably more accurate than a WAG.
Computational sciences have given new life to countless careers that would otherwise have been converted to used car sales.
Thomas Sowell's first job as an economist after graduating from Harvard was working for AT&T making economic predictions, using mathematical models. His boss showed him were the previous models (stacks of punch cards) where kept, so he could use them as a starting point. Young Thomas says "Oh, great, then we can see how well we've done!" His boss's reaction made it clear that he was *never* to bring up that idea again.
Actually, regression analysis allows one to place reliable bounds on the accuracy of a model, like when astronomers say that there is a 1 in 45,000 chance of a certain asteriod striking earth in 2036 (or whatever).
The IPCC seems to be paying homage to notion of error bounds by saying that there is a 90% chance of some {poorly defined unfavorable} event. What the author of this piece is talking about is what is known as validation. Historical data is perfectly good for validating a model, provided you can establish *all* the relevant input parameters and their associated uncertainties. I am personally unimpressed by anything I've read or seen about global warming to date. The alarmist scenarios are just too convenient for the politcal Left.
Ping to read when I'm having trouble sleeping.....
ping
Counterpoint: "We don't have time to wait, we must act now."
Read this small piece from today's Tennessean by Beverly Keel the celebrity columnist for Gore's views yesterday:
http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070228/NEWS01/702280434
bookmarked
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
It would seem to me that chaos theory would suggest that it is impossible to predict with any degree of certainty any claims of future global warming specificially due to man. Too many variables, too many assumptions or simplifications/etc. in variables.
As a scientist who has often used modeling in research, I concur that models have to be regarded with great suspicion -- unless there is LOTS of broad empirical data to back it up. It reminds me of the old saying about Magnetohydrodynamics calculations:
"It takes a genius to get computational results from these equations -- and a fool to believe them."
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