[Taltarzac725]

We have seen that argument before-- Scientific theories aren't mere conjecture – to survive they must work

Originally Posted by ThirdOfFive

Yeah. That is what happens when a "science" becomes dogma. The True Believers are not interested in information, but VALIDATION.

The point is that real "data" reflecting global climate change over thousands of years just doesn't exist in any definitive form. Sure, there are bits and pieces picked up here and there based on geological observations of this-or-that, but actual INFORMATION goes back only to the advent of writing, maybe 5,000 years ago, and even that is sketchy in the extreme. It got better as time went on, of course, but vast swathes of the planet were complete mysteries, weather-wise, until maybe the last 200 years or so, simply because there was no way to report trends, temps, etc. Siberia, for example. Australia. Antarctica. The islands of the Canadian arctic. Probably many other places as well. Even hurricane predicting and reporting, as we have it today, just didn't exist before the advent of satellite imagery. Most Atlantic hurricanes, for example, don't hit America but fizzle out over the ocean, and other than occasional haphazard reporting by sailing ships there would be no accurate record of the number of such storms year by year, such as we have now.

It is my opinion that far too much long-term "data" is too circumstantial and vague for it to be the basis of any real "science". Conjecture? Yes. But not science.