Out of all mental abilities this type of intelligence is said to have the highest correlation with the general intelligence factor, g. This is primarily because pattern recognition is the ability to see order in a chaotic environment; the primary condition for life. Patterns can be found in ideas, words, symbols and images and pattern recognition is unlearned and untrainable. Pattern recognition is a key determinant of your potential in logical, verbal, numerical and spatial abilities. It is essential for reasoning because your capacity to think logically is based on your perception of the logic around you. Your pattern recognition skills are expressed verbally through your long term exposure to language and your mathematical and spatial abilities are based on your perception of numerical data and 3D objects.
Regards,
Sun
You are correct stating that pattern recognition is, undisputably, a vital component of life. And I also understand when you state that we have to work with what data we have available. Altough, the point, I think, you fail to consider is that too small of a sample can bring one to draw flawed conclusion. Even among the scientific community there is no consensus about the warming trend we seem to be experiencing and it's effect on weather. When one say that the climate is changing, the underlying assumption is that it is changing in regard with some data sample. The only reliable (and somewhat comlete) record we have available date back from 1800-1850. Saying that climate is changing in regard to these records is true. But that leads us to assume that the climate was always like that and was very stable, an assumption proven wrong by scientific research and earlier incomplete or indirect record. There was a period spanning between the 16th century up to the 19th century, dubbed the 'little ice age' where temperature were much cooler than today's . We have records in the form of some painting dating from the 17th century, that shows the Thames in London to be completely frozen over. Something not seen for a very long time now. And before that there was the 'medieval warm period' spanning roughly from 950 AD to 1250 AD.
And speaking about patern :
This is a graphical depiction of the measurment taken from the Vostok ice core in Antartica. It span for about 450k years. Today being on the left most. The trend I see in this is a very cyclic and unstable temperature patern with a frenquency of nearly 100 000 years. One could assume that this is the pattern that repeat itself over and over, and yet we must not fall into this trap, as if one could see the temperature curve over the last 4 billions of years, that another, larger in scall, patern emerge (tough I must admit that's a complete assumption on my part here but given the pattern...). Of course this alone gives us no idea of what were the effect of the temperature change on the weather system, but it is thought that warmer temperature at the equator makes for stronger weather system as the heat seek to distribute itself evenly around the globe.
I'll conced one point to you. It is quite possible that, in the longer term, climate change does cause the end of the
human world. That does not, in any way, imply that the earth will be devoid of life. In the mean time, we have to learn to cope with the increasing effect weather have on human activity. That does not mean the weather is getting harsher. It means that there are more people and activity that are affected by it. Back 100 years who would have cared for a solar flare as there was no big scale network to be knocked down by it. Back 400 years, the native-american were probably not crazy enough to build their home right in the middle of the tornadoes alley. And they probably moved away when the Mississipi menaced of flooding the surrounding land. These are a few, probably bad and refutable, example I found.
