Saturday, June 28, 2008

Bananas and Coffee: Why do record setting cold days not contradict Global Warming?

You may use this content (better still, argue with me!), but please cite my ideas as © 2007, Dr. Bruce Klopfenstein. Find any typos? Please let me know.


Cap Cod Today quotes Times of India in a story published December 26, 2005. It's the same argument that if it's really cold today, there must not be any Global Warming. For those who area trying to understand it, let me try it this way:

If you took the earth's temperature in any one region on the earth on any given day, you will find records and (nothing new here) anomalies from which you can not extrapolate (or extend) to the rest of the earth.

If your child's temperature is 102.3 and anyone told you it's a trend in body temperatures all over the globe, you might reach for your phone and call 911. At any point in time there will be temperature anomalies around the world. When examples like this one happen, it's called citing "anecdotal evidence." If you had cancer and found out that someone survived cancer on a diet of bananas and coffee, it has little relevance for you or anyone else, unless other cancer patients are put on the banana/coffee diet and it is proven effective.

If you were an astronomy buff and the Hubble Telescope found a supernova, that would not suggest that other stars are about to explode. There is no relationship between an exploding star and its neighbors.

Sadly, global warming research suggests extremes in all directions, drought versus flooding, record cold and record heat. So while is is interesting to note phenomena as they occur, you wouldn't spent the rest of your life walking down sidewalks because you happened on a one dollar bill on a sidewalk.

Please comment as to whether or not this makes sense, not as to whether or not it supports your "global warming myth" dogma (see Dissidents Against Dogma).

No comments: