Robert, you sure are a funny guy. There's nothing in your reply about
my specific comment regarding your previous post. And, while we are
at it, climate as defined by the people who study climate is the
statistics of weather, not just the average. The average temperature
is usually considered over a period of about 30 years, which makes any
one year's variation (chaotic or otherwise) much less important. The
IPCC isn't the source of this definition, as it has been in use for
decades.
Those of us who may have read your rants before recognize your
obsession with the work of Tsonis, et al. Funny thing, it's been a
rather warm year in many locations around the world and this year is
already close to being a record warm one. Where did that cooling
trend go, you know, the one the denialist claim started in 1998?
Only 2 1/2 more months and the data will be in for 2010 and the sea-
ice extent is near the previous record low set in 2007. Of course,
you refuse to discuss any other explanations for the recent
variations, such as changes in the THC, a known factor in the climate
of the North Atlantic and the driver of much of the global overturning
circulation...
E. S.
-----------------------------------------
Robert I Ellison wrote:
> I think there are actually 2 sciences of climate – the science of
> global warming and the science of abrupt climate change - and the 2
> are mutually incompatible. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
> Changes (IPCC) defines weather as chaotic. Chaos theory is one of the
> 3 great ideas, along with relativity and quantum mechanics, of 20th
> Century physics. The ideas are all counter intuitive but are based on
> observation. In the case of chaos theory – Edward Lorenz in the
> 1960’s noticed that an odd thing happened when he changed the input of
> his computer convection model slightly - the result of the calculation
> changed by a lot. This led to identification of the butterfly effect
> – poetically expressed as a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil
> causing a tornado in Texas – small initial changes causing dramatic
> and abrupt shifts in complex and dynamic systems such as weather. It
> is the reason why weather can’t be predicted beyond about a week.
> Climate, on the other hand, is defined by the IPCC as the ‘average of
> weather’. On average, if a little carbon is added to the atmosphere
> the world will be a little warmer regardless of what the weather is
> doing at any one time – global warming. Independently of the reality
> or otherwise of an average climate - it should be noted that modern
> climate models use the same partial differential equations of fluid
> motion used by Lorenz. Climate models are themselves complex and
> dynamic systems – small changes (well within the limits of
> plausibility) in inputs produce radically different answers. What was
> that result again?
>
> The US National Academy of Sciences published a report called “Abrupt
> Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises”. It is based both on
> paleoclimatic proxy data and modern climate records and identifies
> mechanisms and examples of abrupt climate change from ancient times to
> the modern era. The definition of abrupt climate change is that small
> initial changes in conditions result in large and sudden changes in
> climate. Climate both past and present is chaotic based on
> reconstructed and observed data. A numeric approach by Anastasios
> Tsonis and colleagues used sea surface temperature and atmospheric
> pressure records to identify abrupt climate changes in 1909, the mid
> 1940’s, the late 1970’s and 1998/2001. The 2007 study is called ‘A
> new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts’. The 2009 study,
> “Has the climate recently shifted?’ was reported on realclimate
> (‘climate science by real climate scientists’) in a blog entitled
> ‘Much ado about natural variation’. If climate is chaotic we are
> likely to see another 10 years at least of more frequent La Niña,
> resulting in flooding in Australia, and no increase in global surface
> temperature. I might be wrong – but 20 plus years of no global
> warming from 1998 is a big deal and will result in most people falling
> into the sceptic camp by default. I think that 2010 is very unlikely
> to be the warmest year on record given the big La Niña currently in
> the central Pacific. Of course, climate may not be a complex and
> dynamic system subject to the rules and mathematics of chaos theory –
> and pig’s might fly.
>
--
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