ChemE Stewart <cheme...@gmail.com> wrote: Bullsh&t >
The comparison between weather forecasting and long term climate change is not bullshit at all. It has been made by many experts. There are many other scientific fields with similar limitations, and also fields such as history, psychology, social science research, some areas of engineering and physics, and much else in which similar statistical proof is available but it does not work in a more granular analyses, or on a shorter timescale. This is common knowledge. You can learn about it in detail. You should not call this concept "bullshit" if you have not studied it. Frankly, you are out of line in this forum publishing such an ignorant dismissal. To be a little more specific, do you have the notion that an insurance company can tell you the year and month when you will die? That would be magic. Unless you happen to have a serious, terminal disease, no one can tell you that. But any insurance company can sell you a policy, and they can be sure that in the aggregate, their policies will make money, barring some major disaster such as 1918 avian influenza. I would also point out that short term weather forecasts are incredibly accurate these days, and the error ranges are well understood by forecasters. Everyone knows you can predict the weather in Georgia, but not in southern Pennsylvania. (Or, for Pennsylvania, you can say: "there will be rain, sunshine, clouds and bright sun repeated at random times during the day," which is a sort of forecast, after all.) - Jed
