Saturday, August 02, 2008
Post-modern climate science
A climate scientist explains feedback loops (which are the least substantiated and most crucial aspect of the argument that anthropogenic global warming will lead to catastrophe):
Our world is full of positive feedback cycles, and so is our society. Popular children's books like “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” by Laura Numeroff are excellent examples. In Numeroff's tale, a mouse asks for a cookie, leading it to ask for a glass of milk, and so on, till finally it asks for another cookie.
Next up, chaos theory as reaveled in "The Cat in the Hat."
5 Comments:
By 
Unknown, at
Sat Aug 02, 11:17:00 AM:
One of my main problems with AGW is that only talk about positive feedback loops. They have a model which does not show any way tempeature can go down.
There have always been spikes in CO2 level. If we only had positive feedback, and our climate system was as delicately balanced as they claim, it would already have spun out of control. There are always stresses on the environment from volcanic eruptions to ocean current to solar flares etc. The earth would look like Venus. Yet everytime, in the past, the temperature has stabilized itself within a rather narrow range. This indicates to me that there must be some negative feedbacks going on.
By the way, you do not need childrens stories to explain positive feedback. We have all heard the squawks on PA systems. That is positive feedback.
By 
, at
Sat Aug 02, 09:06:00 PM:
Wow, so this actually shows that the parody of Laura Numeroff's story shown on Robot Chicken is actually close to the truth, at least in terms of the reasoning of the alarmists. Except in this case, the punchline is the environmentalists explaining why they had to condemn billions to eternal poverty.
By , at
Sat Aug 02, 10:01:00 PM:
jschuler,
Very funny.
There is more than a touch of paranoia and sociopathic death-wish to the end-of-the-world alarmists.
Similar to the paranoia of the Cold War, always urging us to "make peace" with the Soviets rather than risk "nuclear annihilation!" "Better Red than dead!" Or, with respect to Barry Goldwater, "In your guts, you know he's nuts!"
And frankly, it shows how little faith these sorts of people have in the judgement and freedom of the individual. I recall "Dr. Strangelove" being shown during the fall of the 1968 presidential campaign, and right after the movie, a five or ten minute political commercial by....Hubert Humphrey! Imagine. A coincidence?
And the Earth would never look like Venus, regardless of any sort of greenhouse effect, unless the solar output increased by a substantial amount. The mean distance of the Sun to Venus is 68 million miles, Sun to Earth is 93 million miles. By the difference in the mean distance, we receive a proportional lower amount of solar radiation, based on the inverse square of the distance.
-David
By , at
Sun Aug 03, 10:54:00 AM:
TH:
"chaos theory as reaveled"
While I prefer IE for normal browsing, it's true that Firefox offers three big improvements when it comes to online editing:
- The 'IEspell' spell-checker for IE works great -- if you remember to use it. Firefox has a real-time spell-checker that, while really lame because you can't add words to the custom dictionary, will at least yell at you when you mixspell a word as you're typing it.
- It has a real-time 'Find' feature that works much better than IE's when searching through text.
- This wouldn't affect you since you're using cable, but for those of us using something like Verizon Wireless, which can occasionally cut out for a sec, Firefox is a godsend. When IE can't find a site, it just gives up and hitting the 'Back' button refreshes the editor's page and you've lost your work. Firefox has a 'Retry' feature so you don't lose a thing.
Have a fun Sunday,
Doc
By jj mollo, at
Mon Aug 04, 12:46:00 AM:
The cookie/milk link is technically not a positive feedback loop because the fuel is limited and the processing time is clearly constrained.
The heating of the Canadian tundra, however, causing it to release increasing quantities of methane, which in turn heat the atmosphere, which in turn increase the release of methane, might be characterized as a positive feedback loop. There are probably limiting characteristics on that system, but who knows for sure? There's also a lot of methane lying at the bottom of the ocean, undisturbed for ages.
The thing that scientists have in mind when they talk about this is more like the Sorcerer's Apprentice in Fantasia. Hopefully the Sorcerer will come home quickly to straighten things out.
