What is global warming

Article/Argument

Secondly, through the copious use of station weather data, a number of single station records with long term cooling trends are shown. In particular, the characters visit Punta Arenas (at the tip of South America), where (very pleasingly to my host institution) they have the GISTEMP station record posted on the wall which shows a long-term cooling trend (although slight warming since the 1970’s). “There’s your global warming” one of the good guys declares. I have to disagree. Global warming is defined by the global mean surface temperature. It does not imply that the whole globe is warming uniformly (which of course it isn’t). (But that doesn’t stop one character later on (p381) declaring that “..it’s effect is presumably the same everywhere in the world. That’s why it’s called global warming”). Had the characters visited the nearby station of Santa Barbara Cruz Aeropuerto, the poster on the wall would have shown a positive trend. Would that have been proof of global warming? No. Only by amalgamating all of the records we have (after correcting for known problems, such as discussed below) can we have an idea what the regional, hemispheric or global means are doing. That is what is meant by global warming.

To argue either side of global warming i think it is a good idea to decide what global warming is. If it is only happening in some spots around the globe is it still considered global warning? Or does it have to be uniform around basically the entire world. If you choose to argue one way vs the other your facts and arguments are going to be totally different. There even seems to be a little bit of confusion to this in State Of Fear. I feel that no matter what the argument is people are going to look at it different ways and its going to be interpreted much different. Thats pretty much why this issue hasn't been solved. One scientist will look at data and interpret it one way, another will take the same data and interpret it opposite. Crichton does a good job of this. He takes data that has been used to prove global warming and he uses it to disprove global warming.