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[GliderGuider]

27. Whose job is it to draw conclusions?

Last edited Tue Dec 18, 2012, 10:33 AM - Edit history (1)

Or more to the point, do we as lay readers of the science have the right to draw conclusions from it? And do we have the right to draw conclusions beyond the carefully scripted boundaries of the published data? And do we have the right to express those conclusions?

For instance, my conclusion is that humanity is going to stay wedded to the IPCC A1FI and RPC8.5 scenarios for the foreseeable future, with their outcomes of a 5.5C to 6C rise in temperatures "above the 1986-2005 average" by 2100. That will be catastrophic for civilization, in a large number of domains. In drawing this conclusion I don't set a foot outside the IPCC-defined playing field

I don't need the IPCC to validate my expectation that a +6C future will include widespread droughts and extreme weather events - that just kind of follows along naturally. Saying that they have low confidence based on current observations that current weather extremes are directly tied to rising temperatures is not the same as saying they have low confidence that rising temperatures can produce such events. The scenarios they endorse are pretty unequivocal in that regard.