Saturday 8 July 2017


Prof. Linzen listed the following topics which are often exploited by the panic brigade to win our attention:-
  • ·         ‘the  97%’,
  • ·         ‘warmest years on record’,
  • ·         extreme weather ,
  • ·         sea level rise,
  • ·         Arctic sea ice,
  • ·         polar bears,
  • ·         ocean acidification,
  • ·         coral reefs,
  • ·         ‘global warming as the cause of everything’.
& says:-
‘The accumulation of false and/or misleading claims is often referred to as the ‘overwhelming evidence’ for forthcoming catastrophe. Without these claims, one might legitimately ask whether there is any evidence at all.'

He ends:-
I haven’t spent much time on the details of the science, but there is one thing that should spark skepticism in any intelligent reader. The system we are looking at consists in two turbulent fluids interacting with each other. They are on a rotating planet that is differentially heated by the sun. A vital constituent of the atmospheric component is water in the liquid, solid and vapor phases, and the changes in phase have vast energetic ramifications. The energy budget of this system involves the absorption and reemission of about 200 watts per square meter. Doubling CO2 involves a 2% perturbation to this budget. So do minor changes in clouds and other features, and such changes are common. In this complex multifactor system, what is the likelihood of the climate (which, itself, consists in many variables and not just globally averaged temperature anomaly) is controlled by this 2% perturbation in a single variable? Believing this is pretty close to believing in magic. Instead, you are told that it is believing in ‘science.’ Such a claim should be a tip-off that something is amiss. After all, science is a mode of inquiry rather than a belief structure.’





Saturday 11 February 2017

Current Overview

Well, there's not been much progress on tieing down the science of climate. Microbes in the atmosphere maybe seeding clouds.  They definitely make a difference.

The Atlantic is moving into a cold phase which will, over several years, cause UK's weather to get colder, akin to the 1960s.
However, it's likely that the additional carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere (much less than was predicted) will raise night temperatures slightly.  And of course, the heat our towns and cities spew out also raises average temperature. (which I understand is included in the calculations)

The only certainty is that the average temperature has been increasing very slowly, with lots of ups and downs along the way, for over 250 years at a fairly steady rate.
For the past 50 years or so, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been very slowly increasing. The night-time temperatures have also been increasing during this period.

We need to wait lots more years before having any certainty on how much, why and what the best policy response should be.

Basically, the universe is 'determined' in that each little step moves on in a determined way from the previous position.  Our physics is not yet sufficient to move from the little nano-steps to be able to predict the end result e.g. you can't take the properties of a water molecule and use them to predict how water flows downhill.
However, climate science does take carbon-dioxide molecular properties and make prediction of the Earth's future average temperature, thus ignoring the mathematics of complex systems.