Posted on 06/27/2002 3:36:55 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Underlying the political fallout over President Bush's reported shift in opinion on climate change is the inaccurate assumption that scientists now have the tools to predict the consequences of rising temperatures for specific parts of the United States.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has triggered several days of intensive news coverage by issuing a report envisioning drowning barrier islands, dried up alpine meadows in the Rockies, droughts in some parts of the country and floods in others.
But in fact, it is not now possible to make the kinds of precise forecasts that have dominated coverage of the report sent by EPA to the United Nations as required by the Framework Convention on Climate Change. That is because these conclusions are based, to a large degree, on computer models that are limited and sometimes contradictory, which makes their resulting predictions largely unreliable as a basis for U.S. policies on climate change.
For example, one of the two computer models cited in the EPA report, and widely reported in the press, projected that depths of the Great Lakes might drop by five feet. The second model, however, forecasts that water levels in the Great Lakes might rise by a foot.
Scientists also know that computer-based climate models cannot simulate the processes that drive the weather; they can determine only broad probabilities for future climates that differ significantly from what we experience today.
Indeed, the research arm of the United Nations has concluded, "Science cannot predict the climate and its impacts in Milwaukee, Mumbai or Moscow half a century ahead very accurately, and it may never be able to do so."
Computer models, however, are a vital component to understanding the Earth's climate and its variability. They play a key role in the intensive research now under way by scientists searching for the causes and likely consequences of climate change.
But at their best, computer models are only as good as our knowledge about the climate system, itself. And we have yet to discover many of the secrets about the interaction between the atmosphere, oceans, biosphere, snow and ice. And while we know a lot more than we did a decade ago, our information is still extremely limited. There are just too many complicated and unknown components to make accurate forecasts 50 or 100 years out.
At best, computer models are capable of only a broad-brush analysis. Their finest resolution is limited to only approximately 10,000 square miles -- an area far too coarse and broad for real accuracy. Within one 10,000-square-mile grid, there might be a big city, a temperate coastal environment and an arid mountain plateau.
As a result, all these complications make it exceedingly difficult to simulate current air temperatures, precipitation, cloudiness, atmospheric circulation, atmospheric humidity, winds, ocean currents and the presence of snow or ice, let alone provide forecasts of changes in these conditions over the next 100 years.
We can be certain, however, that extreme weather events -- floods, droughts and severe weather -- will be with us throughout the next century. Regardless of any climate change, these events will take the most lives and cause the most economic damage of any climate-related impact. It makes better sense, therefore, to plan for these events -- by mitigation, education, preparation and adaptation -- rather than spend money tilting at climatic windmills.
Thus, our best approach with respect to climate change should be to proceed with caution, but to remember that predictions of rising temperatures with disastrous consequences are likely to be erroneous. Despite assertions by EPA and other administration officials, scientists have not yet proven that human activity is leading us toward a global climate calamity.
David R. Legates is an associate professor and director of the Center for Climate Research at the University of Delaware in Newark, Del.
Doesn't make a whit of difference.
The controllers among us are not about to let facts get in the way of their agenda.
The combination of neuroses, megalomania and a tendency to wield power over others is pretty much irresistible.
Like the Muslim Mass Murderers, there is only one language they understand.
Who then gets to decide what's "normal"?
Certainly not any controlling messianic twit who probably doesn't own a pair of shoes with shoelaces...
IOW, they are incapable of producing germane results. But that doesn't mean we can't use them to psyc people out . . .
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