The planet has a fever.... Does this tie make me look not so gay? Oh wait, it's a tie, not a wand...
Posted on 08/10/2007 11:44:05 AM PDT by snarks_when_bored
My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.
Ping, friends...it’s been a while...
Another Global Warming heretic!
< /sarc >
The planet has a fever.... Does this tie make me look not so gay? Oh wait, it's a tie, not a wand...
Bookmark. Radio Astronomer got purged although he may still come here to read some of the articles. He’s at Darwin Central now.
Bump for later.
I think Dyson’s scientific credentials are just slightly better than OwlGore’s.
That would be a bet you could win money on...
I like that closing sentence -- "future decision-making could be made based on scientific data and not on political expediency". I wouldn't count on it, but that would be great.Caves reveal clues to UK weatherAt Pooles Cavern in Derbyshire, it was discovered that the stalagmites grow faster in the winter months when it rains more. Alan Walker, who guides visitors through the caves, says the changes in rainfall are recorded in the stalactites and stalagmites like the growth rings in trees. Stalagmites from a number of caves have now been analysed by Dr Andy Baker at Newcastle University. After splitting and polishing the rock, he can measure its growth precisely and has built up a precipitation history going back thousands of years. His study suggests this autumn's rainfall is not at all unusual when looked at over such a timescale but is well within historic variations. He believes politicians find it expedient to blame a man-made change in our weather rather than addressing the complex scientific picture.
by Tom Heap
Bump for later reading!
The only cure is MORE COWBELL
To conclude this piece I come to my third and last heresy. My third heresy says that the United States has less than a century left of its turn as top nation.
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ok the sky is still falling
One of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas.
So before we all congratulate ourselves for having him on our side, we have to understand what he is saying. While he doesn't necessarily agree with most freepers (I happen to believe, more or less, in Anthropogenic Global Warming), he DOES believe, like I do and the rest of us, that its mostly a political sham. He has a very interesting take on the matter, saying its a LAND MANAGEMENT problem, and solution. Get this:
Greenhouse experiments show that many plants growing in an atmosphere enriched with carbon dioxide react by increasing their root-to-shoot ratio. This means that the plants put more of their growth into roots and less into stems and leaves. A change in this direction is to be expected, because the plants have to maintain a balance between the leaves collecting carbon from the air and the roots collecting mineral nutrients from the soil. The enriched atmosphere tilts the balance so that the plants need less leaf-area and more root-area. Now consider what happens to the roots and shoots when the growing season is over, when the leaves fall and the plants die. The new-grown biomass decays and is eaten by fungi or microbes. Some of it returns to the atmosphere and some of it is converted into topsoil. On the average, more of the above-ground growth will return to the atmosphere and more of the below-ground growth will become topsoil. So the plants with increased root-to-shoot ratio will cause an increased transfer of carbon from the atmosphere into topsoil.
I love this! More CO2, more roots; more roots, more carbon into topsoil, OUT of the atmosphere. Whats this? Mother Earth, REGULATING herself?! This is great!
It does seem that the deniers are mostly retired men who have nothing to lose. Either that or they are supplementing their pensions with checks from Exxon. /s
Dyson does end his piece by pointing out his poor record in predicting the future. So I cut him so slack on his third heresy...
‘some slack’, not ‘so slack’...
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