Vladimir_Nesov comments on Global warming is a better test of irrationality that theism - Less Wrong

-2 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 16 March 2012 05:10PM

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Comment author: drnickbone 28 April 2012 11:57:25AM *  -1 points [-]

Could you explain the down-vote please? (My apologies if it wasn't you).

At the risk of another downvote, it seems your mental model of AGW is rather "AGW predicts that for each year y, the temperature T(y) in year y must exceed the temperature T(y-10) in year y-10; since we have observed a counter-example, AGW is falsified".

Is that correct? If so, could you cite a paper or presentation by climate scientists (or summary by IPCC etc) which makes such a prediction?

Here's a hypothesis to think about: Suppose the AGW trend (imposed on the climate noise) is +0.02 degrees per year, whereas the year to year fluctuation of temperature from natural causes (solar cycle, La Nina/El NiƱo, others) has a standard deviation of order 0.5 degrees. Then there will be a large number of individual years y which are cooler than year y-10. Do you agree or disagree?

In response to your own question, each of La Nina and a weak solar cyle would be easily big enough to overshadow a decade of AGW (sensitivity of 3 degrees to CO2 doubling implies about 0.2 degrees warming per decade at present).