Quote:The differences between the Martian atmosphere (extremely thin, almost 100% carbon dioxide) and Earth's atmosphere (thick and mostly nitrogen) are so big that no model will provide a "useful check." Mars is Mars, Earth is Earth and trying to pretend they're identical when they're pretty clearly not is nonsensical.
No, Mars is nowhere near perfect model, but that doesn't mean it can't produce useful checks especially for something as noisy and inaccurate as a biosphere model.
Quote:Howard, stop right there. You just referenced the Piri Reis map in an attempt to refute anthropogenic climate change. Comrade, I hate to tell you this, but basic cartography disproves Piri Reis, no need to go to the computers. Your credibility in this argument, already not the highest, just went into negative numbers. Sorry.
There are some minor evidence that within the last 2000 to 4000 years that the south pole was clear enough of ice for the primitive ships to approach and get a fairly accurate map of it's coast line.
To answer your question, the computer models do not confirm that Antarctica was ice-free in the last four thousand years. Which is good, because the hard evidence collected there over the last few years pretty much conclusively says that Antarctica has been icebound for the last 15 million years. Which is a good thing, because if all that ice had melted we'd be looking at a 60m rise in sea level (as opposed to the more sedate 2-5m most climate models are predicting) and that would just suck for everybody.---
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