On the Global Warming Debate

As most people are aware of the fact that there is ongoing heated debate among those who support gloabal warming and those who oppose it.  There is quite another group of scientists that belongs to neither category, simply because they believe there is not enough corroborating evidence to back up the theories in one way or another.  I am one of those scientists that are skeptical about our current abilities to understand the complex and coupled earth system adequately.  In this context, I strongly recommend we undertake focused and substantial research efforts.  As the scope of this issue is global and the implications and potential benefits are for all nations of the world, participation from all countries is vital.

Numerical models used to project future climate scenarios are no doubt evolving but are inadequate, at this time, for the purposes of capturing all energy related processes globally.  The observations, from temperature sensors, proxy records (e.g., ice cores), etc., used to support any argument are limited, laden with potential data quality issues, and often representative of only local to regional scale variability.  In other words, this approach often requires a quantum leap of  faith in order to be able to tie local variability to global climate states.

I fully support the debate, though, as it can potentially bring forth concensus among the participants and I sincerely hope that that concensus would point to the much needed research into the highly complex (solar-) earth system. 

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