@Alien
My professional experience is commercial, military, and academic - primarily with US, Japanese, Chinese, and US subsidiaries in the UK working mostly at Chief Engineer or C-level. From a management perspective - I've seen massive fraud, widespread professional plagiarism (copying other company's implementation documentation and trying to present it as original engineering work), pervasive and persistent contract fraud, design fraud, project fraud - the list is endless (aka what is WRONG with this world?). I ALWAYS have to prepare for staff meetings with subordinates in advance - as they've also engaged in fraud, criminal activity (embezzling, misuse of government resources), and just plain outright bold-faced lies. So I'm exceptionally pessimistic regarding processes that involve people. Trust is an exceedingly rare thing for me, professionally.

@Geezer
Certain physical phenomena occur within limited "bands" of conditions - example snow or rain will form within a limited spectrum of temperature, pressure (altitude), and humidity.

As an example - assume snow only forms between 0-10C - then expand your graph to include -10 to +20C. However you also limit your simulations or lab measurements to the 0-10C band.

Viola - you have random data within the 0-10C band, with occasional data points outside due to experimental errors, drift, etc et viola - your random data is now essentially banded - has an upper and lower limit, and you may now proceed with applying curve fitting algorithms to random data.

Statistics and accounting are commonly known "inside the profession" as "lying with numbers". The buzzword for this today is Decision-based data - cherry-picking data to support a biased, pre-disposed position.

Data-based decisions are not always correct and decision-based data is rather moot, but this is the illusion of the US MBA management philosophy and it's spread into government, academia, and is prolific in industry.

But - at the end of the day - it's still just my personal opinion, based on multiple severely polluted professional careers, within narrow spectrums of domestic and multinational corporations, government interactions (to include SOEs), etc.

Your milage may vary (YMMV).

@janjal
Since the data is banded - one simply scales the plot so the data appears to fall within a band et viola - one can now curve or trend fit a line to random data. Computers and plotting/charting software is a great tool for faux science.

On that note - I personally witnessed a corporate PhD scientist fitting a straight line (computer graphing software is great) to random data on a multi-billion dollar program.

His lab had an intrinsic problem, causing his data to go random (drift) - yet he was fitting trend lines to random data and presenting it to certain government officials as science (which doesn't say much for our government officials either). Corporate and government abuse in certain developed countries is rampant and as dangerous an issue facing us today, as climate change. Need I reiterate the 2008 Global Financial Meltdown.

So "science" is a heavily abused and suspected word, in today's world. Or maybe I'm just a grumpy old man.

Science, like professional accounting, can be data-driven decisions or theory or the reverse - decision-driven data - cooking data to support a decision.

(The) Big Bang Theory is just that - a theory that seems to fit certain collected data (we amazingly allegedly have some captured/measured data from energy emitted billions of years ago).

Is the universe continually expanding or is it in a cycle of expansion and contraction? How much data do we need to collect before we'll know definitively as opposed to extrapolating. Are we the proverbial frog in the well, staring at the sky (limited vision).

Climate change is allegedly based on a multitude of things, but the investigations allegedly span data collected from several millennia (geological core samples - roughly equivalent to the alleged science of reading tree rings).

Our goal - sensationalist panic inducing media aside - is the responsible management of global weather, which some nations will obviously attempt to weaponize - you can count on that.

Layered on top of that is the knowledge that an exceptional solar flare event can also utterly and completely extinguish if not vaporize all life on earth, within a few seconds.

Solar flares almost always interfere with radio-based telecommunications - to include our global and localized internet.

So is climate change a reality or merely pseudo-science with a political agenda - the containment of China and other emerging economies for continued exploitation and oppression by developed countries.

Climate change is suspiciously focused on China and the USA has a known and historical penchant for containing China. THAT is measurable.

Also - note that although President Bill Clinton signed the agreement (to his credit), the two-headed (faced) USA refuses to ratify (make it law) the Kyoto Accord because it contends (President Bush) that it would "cause serious harm to the US economy" and "it exempts 80% of the world". The US economy alluded to is the US oil and coal industries - strong supporters and lobbyists of the Bush administrations. The 80% of the world are developing nations who depend on fossil fueled energy and infrastructures (transportation) to develop economy and drag themselves out of poverty.

US refusal to join the world on this position without offering viable solutions to developing nations, as a global leader is both consistent and debatable, indicating obvious political bias on the alleged science and a continued callous and arrogant attitude toward developing nations (to include it's next door neighbor, Mexico).

Also note - Canada also recently withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, although that impact was superficial.

So - climate change - an evolving science heavily biased by politics and big-money lobbyists on both sides of the issue.

However the by-products of climate change are definitely invaluable - a greater global appreciation for our co-existence with our natural environment, a committed and measurable drive towards renewable energies by China et al, and renewed interest in responsible water management.

Even the USA (wealthiest nation in the world, bar none) had an incredibly irresponsible toxic municipal water supply issue (Flint, Michigan) under the usually oppressive auspices of the US EPA (US Government's Environmental Protection Agency) dominion - making the EPA look yet again like just another impotent bloated government agency than a vigilant protector of the people, who's taxes support this reeking stench of a bloated carcass. FYI, Flint Michigan is a city of poor, economically disadvantaged people, so they were left to waste away. Not much I can say about that.

Fortunately, sensationalist media coverage can also be used for socially and environmentally responsible issues - on very rare occasions.

So, global warming, climate change - eternally debatable (aka academic). However - renewable energy, water management, air pollution, soil pollution, responsible environmental management - these benefits of heightened awareness and responsibility at the global and the individual level are undeniable.

As I pen this monolog - the construction project next to me is wafting toxic fumes from glues, paints, and who knows what else...free and legal "high" I suppose. China - still a developing nation (well, Yunnan) with a long road ahead - but it's on a good track, for now.

I use PayPal...you can also sign up for PayPal in china. It's NOT inexpensive, but for small amounts (say, less than USD 10k), it's fast, effective, and reliable.