User talk:Jhalpern

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(William M. Connolley 16:18, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)) Hello Josh. Is that you? (apologies if it isn't!). In fact, whether it is or not, welcome to wikipedia!

[edit] the previous language was "skeptics arbitrarily assume"

Can you defend the previous language? yes, my point is a bit repetitive to the lines above, but apparently the author of that language missed the fact that skeptics "reason". Perhaps some skeptics "arbitrarily assume", so I changed the previous language to that. The cosmic ray theory hits the climate models right where they are acknowledged to be the weakest, cloud and aerosol physics. The stronger solar correlation than can be explained by direct insolation is established. I think you language about the "among ..." is an acceptable proposal. What is not acceptable is the ad hominem dismissal of skeptics as "arbitrarily assuming". I don't know how current you are on the literature, but there have been some advances on the physics linking cosmic rays to aerosols in the parts of the atmosphere where clouds would contribute more to cooling than to warming[1]. I don't quite know how it would be incorporated into models yet, so that the statistics of cloud distributions is properly modeled and correlated (inversely) with solar activity, but it is certainly premature to be placing much emphasis on these models that predict large temperature increases from CO2 doubling. The referenced article is discussed on the [Attribution of recent climate change] page. I accept the "among ..." language, even though I think this is currently the leading theory to explain what is missing from the climate models that accounts for the discrepency between their predictions for the impact of CO2 versus what is seen in the paleo data, which suggests that doubling of CO2 will only result in 0.6 degrees C temperature increase (or was it 0.5?). Of course, there is the possibility that the paleo equilibriums are not reached on a century scale. This has the elegance of reconciling the data so that both are correct, however, there is not enough agreement in detail among the models to place much confidence in their predictions.--Silverback 04:04, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)