"It's the sample size, stupid. Two hundred years out of 450,000 years don't cut it as 'evidence' of anything." --Me.
My doubts about global warming started when I saw several graphs of various earth parameters relating to temperature plainly showing very regular, if very "noisy" cycles, of about 80,000 years over 450,000 years of data --and even some "sub-cycles" of about 11,000 years more or less.
While these temperatures were derived by various proxy methods and were "inaccurate" in terms of being able to point to a real thermometer, the sheer regularity of these cycles told a story, and they looked very much as if we were peaking in a warm period right now, with temperatures ready to drop again.
Yet when this global warming "thing" started to build up steam <ahem, koff-koff>, they were basing everything on only 200 years or so of accurate readings from real actual thermometers.
What was painfully obvious was that their 200-year sample was too small, and that it was only a tiny snippet from an inherently noisy long-term cyclic phenomenon.
Hence my attitude was, "It's the sample size, stupid!" when confronted by what was then known as the "Hockey Stick" model of global warming.
So I decided most of the Global Warming theories were based on data from the "Sales Department," rather than from the "Engineering Department" and would frequently wisecrack that "I'm not so sure about global warming. Ask me again in 80,000 years."
All in all, I tend to agree with others that there are underlying political reasons for the "hype."
It's the sample size, stupid. Ask me again in 80,000 years.
Terry
Note: without developing my usual list of "REFs," a starting point would be a search on "vostok ice cores" in ixquick.com, not Google.
The Vostok ice core measurements were what got me started on
the ridiculously small sample of the last 200 years as compared to almost half a million years of regular temperature variations.
