Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to re: Nonetheless...

difference between weather and climate
pwokenyaw — (archived)

Weather predictions ask if the temperature in Chicago this Saturday will be warmer or colder than the following Saturday.

Climate predictions ask if in the decade of the 2050s, Chicago's average temperature in July will be warmer or colder than the average temperature in January.

One of those questions is easier to answer than the other, and is much less vulnerable to chaotic influences.

Pumping CO2 in the atmosphere, with resulting water vapor feedback amplification, is a climate question. Models aren't perfect and noone ever claimed otherwise, but they've done a good job in the last 10 years, and increasingly powerful models are validating the earlier ones. No models, none, validate the denialist position, even when fossil fuel corporations were in full denialist mode and could easily afford constructing them on their own.

And models are only one of the main lines of evidence for AGW, along with the instrumental record, the GHG theory itself (independent of modeling), proxy records (ice cores, sediment, cave records, and tree rings), and (I would argue) Arctic temperatures as a validation of theoretical predictions.

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