I've been preparing this blog for some time and have got a lot of ideas coming about Climate Change. I've decided to publish, before I'm ready, by the hullabaloo in the UK news over an email leak raising a lot of questions concerning how climatologists have come to their conclusions.
It seems someone has leaked University of East Anglia Climate Scientists' emails which may suggest that they have angled their presentations to fit a "politically acceptable" view. The official enquiry into this will not report until after the Copenhagen Climate Change conference and the controversy is bound to have an affect on those proceedings and give great support to Climate Change deniers.
This blog is not going to give any comfort to deniers, but for some time many people have had misgivings about the prediction of the International Committee for Climate Change {IPCC}. This states that if we continue to emit carbon into the atmosphere, but at a slightly reduced rate, the average Global temperature will rise by 2 deg C and then stabilise.
I've travelled widely and to every continent except Antarctica. From all I have seen and read and heard and walked over, I can see that carbon is both a cause and an effect of Climate Change. Atmospheric Carbon traps heat and trapped heat melts ice and melted ice releases atmospheric carbon. This is a "vicious circle" or, mathematically, "positive feedback" which is a highly unstable situation. The degree of instability is indicated by the "time constant" of change, which is rapidly shortening. Expect more in future blogs.
How does an individual challenge such an august body as the IPCC? In particular, how do I question their consensus opinion?
I had a scientific education and have been taught the "Scientific Method" first stated by Sir Isaac Newton no less. Science can rarely prove anything beyond any doubt and when it does, that proof is still open to question. Thus Einstein was able to pop his head over the parapet and say that Isaac Newton, no less, was wrong, or at least inaccurate. Newton's Laws of Motion work well on a terrestrial scale, but on a astronomical scale they need to be modified according to Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
Newton first described gravity and was able to state equations to measure it, but he had no clue as to what it was or what caused it. Einstein had some groundbreaking ideas involving relative time and space, but science is still arguing.
The other recent boost I've had to conquering my temerity in questioning the IPCC conclusions is from reading James Lovelock's book 'The Vanishing Face of Gaia'. Now I'm no rocket scientist, but James Lovelock was, and he was, and still is, one of of my generation's foremost thinkers. Everybody ignore him at your peril. Don't be put off by his championing the Gaia Theory. He asks if I would be reading this book if it was called "The Vanishing Face of Earth System Science" Lovelock's genius is in making difficult science very readable. Read it.
What's wrong with the IPCC? Not their science or their expertise. But remember that they are self-selected as being prepared to narrow down an extremely complex mix of various sciences to a formula which a politician can understand. Hence the idea of "Two degrees to save the Planet".
Not only do climate scientists know that this simplistic formula, based on the IPCC Third Report in 2001, is deeply flawed. The Fourth Report in 2007 corrects this and the changes that have come to be worse than predicted in the intervening years, but they can't change their tune at this stage. Their Chairman, the very eminent scientist Dr Rajendrs Patchauri was on the BBC World Service last night being optimistic in the face of overwhelming odds against a solution to "Save the Planet".
I sympathise with the good Doctor - how can he, a week before the Copenhagen Conference cast doubts on its effectiveness which would effectively wreck it before it begins? The Conference is already wrecked by America and Australia, and that's just the start of the alphabet.
Here's an easy prediction: Copenhagen will issue a conclusion that will save everyone's faces, and pretend that a solution is in hand when the precise opposite is true. There is no way that anyone who depends on votes for his or her livelihood will introduce the drastic cuts in fossil energy use or cuts in living standard that would be needed to slow Climate Change.
I'll repeat that: "Slow Climate Change". That's what we are being asked to do. Nobody in their right minds can believe that we can or would agree to reversing Climate Change.
We have accelerated a 110,000 year climate cycle and now simply do not have the means to stop this happening. Forget the fatuous argument whether this is man-made or natural - it is both. I'm going to write about the "time constant" of change which is accelerating. I'm also going to write about the nature of an exponential expansion which, from Moore's Law of computers to our population explosion, simply cannot continue for ever.
It's all about Carbon, isn't it? Yes, that's what many people believe, but "believe" is a religious word and the Carbon Religion seems to have taken hold. Science measures, calculates, predicts, but while individual scientists have their own beliefs, science itself doesn't.
What does the Great God Carbon offer to its faithful? I would suggest something like Noah and his flood. If I was sitting on a cloud watching humans making such a mess of life below and committing megadeaths on each other, I'd be inclined to start over.
Gaia is not a god, but a remarkable biological system which made continued life possible, not as smooth progression but by leaps and troughs. When a type of life, such as the dinosaurs ,expanded exponentially till they reached their sustainable limit, they disappeared. Can you think of a life form which is currently expanding exponentially beyond the Earth's capacity to sustain it?
