Posted On: Wednesday - December 14th 2016 2:43PM MST
In Topics: Global Climate Stupidity
(Continuation of Post 1.)
at the end of this post I wrote "... to be explained today or tomorrow." By "tomorrow", I meant "next week" - sorry for the confusing terms :-}
Anyhow:
Without being a scientist in the field, but just from some reading and a mind geared toward science/engineering, one can name many factors that would have to be part of a mathematical model of the earth's climate. This is purely descriptive, with no claim to which is more important and which ones possibly interrelate enough to not be separate at all. Something major may be completely overlooked, but these:
a) Incoming solar radiation
b) Internal energy of the earth's core
c) Internal energy, kinetic energy (currents), and composition of the oceans
d) Internal energy ("sensible heat" and "latent heat") of the atmosphere
e) Composition of the atmosphere (where the specific "greenhouse effect" fits in) including reflectivity of clouds.
f) Land cover of the earth (solar absorption, radiation emmitance, conduction through the surface material)
are probably just a good start.
OK, now (a) varies predictably over a year but in a not-so-predictable manner over the years. (b) is something one never reads about regarding the earth's energy balance, but it's got to be some factor. It's not directly measureable. (c) varies over the huge 3/4 or whatever of the earth's surface area and long-term with time. (d) varies over time and 3-dimensional space. (e) varies with time and has varied drastically in the past versus today's "normal" values. (f) is known fairly well and also varies over the medium term (in particular the snow cover does).
Just to know the values, in 2 and 3 dimensions over the entire world, at one instance of time, of all these inputs to any mathematical climate model is not a task currently possible. To take current values, and know accurate enough information about the interactions of these quantities with each other (all of the physical processes involved) to make a mathematical model that will truly predict the climate in 10, 25, and 100 years, even with a low, continent-sized resolution is not currently feasible.
There will have to be a Part 3 on this. I will need to explain my ideas of the above paragraph another way.
Mind you, this is not a rant against science or scientists (though I will discuss the political part in a later post). Climate science is as good a field to study, or work on, as many others. It is not a practical field, such as meteorology, the study of weather, but advancement of the state of human knowledge is always a good thing, currently practical or not.
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