Be nice!
> A complex adaptive system - by definition - is subject to too many fundamental uncertainties to make far-out prediction possible.
I largely agree with most of what you say, although I would profer a caveat on the above --
"By currently understood techniques".
One of the basic principles behind the study of Chaos Theory IS that, in at least some way, parts of it can be known and understood -- we may be able to grasp The Mind Of God -- in some aspects even if never In Full.
Certainly the last 30+ years now of study since the dawn of the basic concepts as serious subjects has revealed that, in fact, we can make longer term predictions about chaotic systems than a pure "it's to complex for newtonian analysis" approach suggests -- because we ARE capable of far more complex reasoning and understanding than mere deductive logical reasoning.
Nonetheless, in your basic expression, I agree: the ecotwits are all a twitter, and it means little.
Great piece, thanks! I've forwarded to a few people who were all "the sky is falling" because of the global dimming report.
I think you need to be careful with these sorts of generalizations. One could make the same argument about the behaviour of liquids - you have 6 times the number of variables as you have atoms, the interactions are very complex, there is no known solution to the multibody problem etc. But we know quite a bit about the behaviour of bulk liquids from both observation and theory. Still, we don't "understand" the behaviour in a Newtonian sense.
Now the climate is a whole lot more complicated than a liquid, and much less ammenable to testing. But just because there are such a huge number of independent variables doesn't mean that we necessarily need to know them all - we don't need to know the velocity of every molecule in a liquid to understand the behaviour of the liquid.
Now, the guys who came up with thermodynamic theory didn't have access to much computing power and simply didn't have the option of adding more observations to microscopic models to get better predictions. But the microscopic approach is every bit as unsolveable in the case of the multibody problem as it is in the case of the climate.
I make no claims as to whether the problem will indeed be solved. Certainly, I agree that the 'microscopic' approaches currently used cannot give a definitive answer. (Although I think it is possible to use them to rule out some extreme cases of dominant forcing variables). And of course I think this 911 study is interesting but of little predictive power. But I don't think it's fair to say that it's impossible to make predictions about the global climate, just that it's impossible with incremental progress.
As an aside, we ALREADY know that the effect of increasing atmospheric CO2 by 20-30% has, at most, a marginally detectable effect on temperatures. So as a forcing mechanism we can already roughly constrain the size of the effect.
nitty, your observation breaks down because you oversimplify the problem, as was the solution before there were computers -- We understood the rules for laminar flow, they were sensible, predictable, and comprehensible.
The problems came when a system went chaotic -- when the spring and weight began to break out of the simplistic patern, when the flow became turbulent. "Oh, those are special cases, we don't need to worry about them."
No, they are the norm. The cases we could explain with simple rules are the special cases.
> As an aside, we ALREADY know that the effect of increasing atmospheric CO2 by 20-30% has, at most, a marginally detectable effect on temperatures. So as a forcing mechanism we can already roughly constrain the size of the effect.
So, we can ignore the fact that CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is affected by its solubility in ocean water, and the release of fresh water (which can absorb a tremendous amount of CO2) by so-called "global warming" from the ice caps won't have a balancing effect to reduce the CO2 content of the atmosphere back to where it was?
We can ignore the fact that volcanic actions around the planet spew vast amounts of CO2 (as well as methane and sulpher dioxide, both much more powerful in their "greenhousy" effect) -- far more in the course of any single year than human activity produces in the same year?
We can ignore the significance of sunspot formation, which ties to solar output, which, currently at the lowest level in recent history (see Maunder Minimum, determinable by proxies through the effect it has on the earth's magnetic field -- such Maunder Minimums are tied to Earth's historic Ice Ages, not its Warm Periods -- this isn't an important variable?
We don't have the slightest clue how much of an affect the CO2 concentration has because we don't know what mechanisms are driving it up or down for certain, or what things can be done to move it up or down with substantial effect. We don't know what other mechanisms would be relevant (particular ANY longterm baseline on solar output in direct, concrete terms which is far and away the major variable) and so any effort to control said system is doomed from the start.
We can't even manipulate a simple system like the animal variations in Yellowstone Park effectively, and there are idiots who think we dare fiddle with the CO2 balance of our own atmosphere?
One word: HA!
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