Why should the residents be advised concerning something that is of no concern to them? Why should they be alerted to something that isn't going to happen that all the control and capability is inherent in the mechanism of the train itself? I am having a hard time following and making sense out of your comments. Otherwise, why aren't there daily mandatory evacuations for Seattle for each train heading that way?

Agreed.
Agreed.
Who says it removes the validity of known data? I'm objecting to using facts of known data to conjecture the unknown. Both, forward and backward.

What is so confusing of what you said is you even mention that the train may have had lots of mountains and valleys in the past which we don't know about. So why should we take a 3% "trend" (if you could even call it that) and wildly speculate what has happened during the past 97%? Why do you expect to know what's going to happen in the future if you know it has recovered in the past? How can you say the train is going to go at an extreme rate of speed upon reaching Seattle if you are ignorant of past knowledge, of internal mechanisms of control? Don't you think it is a little bit outrageous to evacuate Seattle, and when the train slowly rolls in to a stop, the engineer asks where did everyone go?

Ah...perhaps herein lies our misunderstanding. I'm doing no speculation about what has happened in the past. I'm only recognizing the trend toward the future.

What I was trying to say was that the unknown data (which just happens to be in the past in this case), has no bearing upon future trends and current known data. Admittedly, we would like to know the past data. But just because we do not have it does not mean we cannot use what we have.

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

Oh, and I agree.

And if life on earth was only 159 years, I would agree there should be concern. But, we do know life has been doing just fine for a very large percentage longer. So, I am saying, how can we use 3% of end data, to determine what is going to happen in the future? Have you considered the conclusions if we should stop the end point in the 1970s? What if we used a different starting point? What if instead of 159 years, we used the last 10 years? Do you see my question - why is 159 useful but not some other number and why are any of these arbitrary numbers useful when they make up less than 3% of life's history?

Why do you say the train coming down the mountain reflects what the speed will be when it reaches Seattle?

There is the trend towards higher temperatures. But it does not stand alone. We have many other worrying trends that follows it. For instance, our corral reefs are dying due to high water temperatures. If this had happened regularely in the past, the corral reefs would be able to withstand the very moderate increases on sea temperature, only 2-4 degrees. But they dont. Why is that if there is nothing extraordinary in the current temperature increase?
Land and sea ice is melting everywhere. Ice that has been stable for, well ages would depend on your general view on that but at least for a significant number of thousands of years. How can there be huge reservoars of anicent ice if it melts off on a regular basis? And if it does not melt of regularely, and yet melts off now, is this not an extraordinary time? There are certainly other examples but these are the ones I come to think of.

To try and look at the train example, we have one scientist who is calculating the steady increase in speed of this train taking down the hill. We have another one who studies the trains brake system and finds out that the break oil has been leaking out since the train began to climb the mountain at the other side and there isnt enough effect left to reduce train speed effectively. Then a third scientist studies the rails and finds that someone has painted the entire track all the way down to Seattle with lard. Then if that was not enough, yet unconfirmed indications suggest that someone has stored a couple of sea containers filled with nitroglycerine and TNT in the train cargo. None of these would in itself be reason to evacuate Seattle, but all of them taken together? If I lived anywhere near the Seattle train station I would think seriously about going on vaccation out of town until that trian was stopped...

Ice reached down to the middle of the states. It hasn't been there for 100s of years. Yes, global warming has been happening, but long before man started pumping oil.


Excepting none of those things have been observed.

Yes, the temperature has been moving up and down in history. When we use the phrase "global warming" now, we are refering to aditional warming that goes beyond that which would naturally occur. But you already knew this of course. Oh, but they have been observed. You just have not paid attention to them before.

And that is what I am questioning. How can we know the 3% goes beyond the 97% of which we do not know?

GC and I were coming from the premise that we did not know the past history of the train. You seem to intend otherwise. Perhaps you can inform me (of that which I have not paid attention?) of some facts. The only fact I know of is that the temperature of something (air, water, pavement?) has increased within the last 3% of life's history depending upon which start and end points are arbitrarily chosen.

I also am comming to your train metaphore with the assumption that nothing is known about its speed before the decent down the mountain side. I added that one thing was known from before that, namely that the break system had been leaking its break fluid. The leaking was observed in the present and knowing what level of fluid the breaks should have contained together with calculating the leakage speed give indication of how far back it has been dropping. Nothing extraordinary about that. The greased rails and highly explosive cargo is something which anyone can observe presently, no different from observing the increasing speed. Some examples of what these further observations to the train can stand for are given a couple of posts up.

Considering that the 3%/97% relates to known historical developments, these numbers need not be refered to at all for my statement which you quote. What it does refer to is that; if we have a greenhouse with a certain level of ventilation at the roof windows, and some of these windows are closed it is reasonable to conclude that this reduced ventilation is responcible for the increase in temperature inside of the greenhouse. If we have house with singleglas windows and change them to twoglas windows but still heat as much as before, there will be a higher temperature inside. Increasing the amount of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere equals reducing ventilation or added layers to a window. History comes in only at the level where we confirm that the levels are indeed higher today than yesteryear. This can for instance be done through air samples in glaciers.