Quote Originally Posted by tarquinbeech View Post
Interesting......you are not disputing the 1.5 degree rise, or the average temperature of the earth at 15 degrees C?.....but that 1.5 degrees C is NOT 10% of 15....I had never heard that argument.

If my temperature here is 30 degrees C, and it is only 15 degrees in Nottingaham ......then I cannot use the term "it is twice as hot here"? and you cannot say "it's only half as warm"?

If water freezes at 0 degrees C and boils at 100 C.......can I use the term "30% of the way towards boiling"?......I'm guessing not, because I haven't started the scale at -273 degrees C, which is where all molecular activity ceases?
Yes you've got it. % can be used emotively - you know XXX company profits are up 100%, same statement applies if they've gone from 1p to 2p as if they'd gone from £1m to £2m. You can of course say 30% of the way from freezing to boiling (of water of course, not of some other substance). But otherwise stating % rise in temperature without more context is, if you think about it, a bit meaningless, might just as well state the actual rise. What do you do where the temperature went from -2C to 0C or +2C, how many % is that?

I'm not disagreeing with the temperature rise figure which I presume is a matter of fact though again I'd like to see figures over longer time spans.