[geeks] More on global warming

[Phil Stracchino]

Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
> On Dec 21, 2007, at 3:52 PM, Dr Robert Pasken wrote:
> 
>> spend more time learning about the science and less time reading  
>> "reports"
>> paid for by lobbiest for the oil/gas industry. T
> 
> Actually the best way is to look at it mathematically and ask:
> 
> "is it possible with our current level of knowledge about the various  
> physical systems that make up climate, and the computing power  
> available, to end up with an accurate climate model" ?
> 
> A moment or two's reflection on the difficulty of modeling only the  
> Gulf Stream that flows from the Gulf of Mexico to Newfoundland,  will  
> show that all climate change models must be inherently flawed.

No model or simulation is perfect, practically by definition.  So that
rationale allows dismissal of anything based on any model.

However, I venture to posit that merely the fact that TeVeS is unproven,
leaving room for our model of gravity to be flawed, does not mean one
can blithely step off a cliff and not expect to hit the bottom.

If I'm in a car careening towards a wall, and someone sitting in the
passenger seat says "My model indicates we're going to hit that wall if
you don't brake within the next thirty seconds, but I'm not taking road
debris or aerodynamic drag into account", I'm not going to keep my foot
on the gas merely because the model is flawed.  And if a very large
number of climatologists say "Yes, our models are incomplete, but they
appear to be saying we're really going to be in a world of hurt if we
don't do something about our greenhouse gas emissions in the next ten
years", it seems reckless to say "Well, heck, the models could be wrong,
let's keep going just the way we have been."

In general, when a model predicts a probable risk, it's far better to
take precautions and develop a plan to deal with it, only to find it was
a false alarm, than to dismiss the problem as an artifact of the model,
and then ten years later be told "Hey, guess what, we've now confirmed
our projections, but it's too late to do anything now."


-- 
  Phil Stracchino, CDK#2         ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
  Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
  alaric at caerllewys.net            alaric at metrocast.net
          It's not the years, it's the mileage.