When Did You Stop Beating Your Wife?

Paul, who only occasionally now posts at Wizbang!, did so yesterday on his current most favored topic, global warming.  His post, "New Study Proves Global Warming Models Worthless," makes the point that if the models that some scientists are using to make predictions about global warming are off by a factor of three, regardless of whether they over- or under-estimate the effects they are essentially meaningless.  You can't know trust projections based on such a model.  Such results require going back to the drawing board.  To try and draw conclusions, or worse, make policy based on such inaccuracy is foolish at best and dishonest at worst.

I was drawn, however, to a comment left by someone who clearly disagrees with the premise that humans may not be responsible for what global warming has occurred.  Here is the comment in its entirety.

Here's what I don't get:

- do you think the earth is getting warmer, or not?

- if you do, do you have any *evidence* that global warming is caused by something else *other than* human activities?

- do you have any *reasons why* human activities can't be causing this warming?

- do you have any reasons why global warming will just *stop*?

- do you think worldwide flooding will be awesome?

I mean, I honestly don't get it. Seriously. All arguments aside, can you just explain to me why you think this way?

Consider the first question, and perhaps some data might help those considerations.  The next comment points to, amazingly, the raw data, broken down by measuring station.

Next we have "prove the negative" questions designed so that the asker doesn't really have to consider the answer.  You see, it's up to those who don't believe man has been conclusively proven to be responsible for global warming to prove to the true believers that man is not, in fact, responsible.  The scientific method involves a hypothesis, experiments that test the hypothesis, and consideration of confounding variables.  The GW alarmists would stand this on its head and require those who question the hypothesis disprove it.

And, seriously, "do you have any reasons why human activities can't be causing this warming?" is such a laughable construct for serious inquiry that I don't know where to start.

In response to the fourth question, "do you have any reasons why global warming will just stop?" I would ask "do you have any evidence that climate should be, or even has been, completely stable through time?"

And let's not even talk about worldwide flooding until we've answered the other questions, because if warming is occurring, and if said warming is not due primarily to the activities of man, then we don't really have any control over whether it occurs, do we?  So perhaps we'd better answer that question definitively.

By the way, if you keep reading from those two comments on down, there are several serious responses to the questions.