Talk:Humans may have contributed to 2003 European heatwave

(William M. Connolley 19:53, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC))) I've removed 119's:

The study's credibility suffers from the same drawback as all mathematical and statistical models: it will never be as reliable as experimental data. Errors can be made in choosing what to include in the model and what effects variables will have. The Director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware Newark explains the limitations of global climate models: "The world's best scientists have only an incomplete understanding of how the various atmospheric, land surface, oceanic and ice components interact."

Which just seems POV. Would we add to a story about economics forecasting any similar qualifiers? If not why not? Econ models are models too. Would we add a comment to an econ story saying "we have only an incomplete understanding of how the econmoy works"?

Whether we, or really what you're drawing on is the mainstream press, do the same for economics really doesn't concern me. The point here is that there are questions over the validity of climate models and because the article simply says 'the model predicts that...', it's important to qualify the accuracy of such models. If you also put in a source that calls this study a scholarly piece of work I think that'd be great. Right now the article isn't very informative. Anyway, please sign your comments (nevermind saw past hist, name at top isn't what I would expect). 119 21:23, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 09:33, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)) I think you should be concerned. There are questions over the accuracy of economic models, and yet (as you implicitly admit) a disquisition into the accuracy of economic models would look weird in a general economics article.

I figured it was a good thing to add a more general reference to an article about climate changes, so that people who don't know where the scientific community stands on it can see. The Naomi Oreskes article from Science Magazine (03 dec 2004) is what I added, as it's recent, published in a good source and it is about the study of 928 peer-reviewed papers on the subject. MikeCapone 21:07, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

More mods

(William M. Connolley 09:33, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)) I also modified:

The study is based upon climate activity during the last 50 years, which has been more easily duplicated with climate models which are oriented toward creating heat patterns which correlate with human economic growth. The study does not deal with similar heating which took place during the previous 50 years, before the widespread oil industry, nor the intervening cooling period.

...because (to me) it doesn't seem to make sense. The summer of 2003 was without precedent in the record, so "does not deal with similar heating..." is misleading at best (I'm not sure what it was intending to say). Describing climate models as "oriented toward creating heat patterns which correlate with..." is odd too.

Global warming

The article seems to make the assumption that "human influence" means "global warming". Can all of global warming really be attributed to "human influence"? --Timc 19:09, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In answer to Timc, yes the article starts off with some very poor, circular logic. I'm willing be believe that the source study did not suffer from the same errors, but clearly removing "global warming" from the model is not the same as removing "human influence" from the model. In fact, one of the most compelling studies in favor of anthropogenic global warming is one which carefully outlines a model for non-anthropogenic (natural) warming and demonstrates that that model closely predicts warming trends up to the early-to-mid-1960s, but then fails to predict later warming. Non-antropogenic warming is believed to be a result of two factors: variability of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere (as a result of fires, vulcansim, etc.) and more importantly variable solar activity. The real debate surrounds the question of whether there are other natural sources of warming or if the remaining unexplained warming is human-induced (presumably as a result of greenhouse emissions, though even there there are less accepted, alternative theories such as fire prevention strategies, marine pollution, etc.). Hope this helps. --Ajs 04:55, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)