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A Little Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing

by Dave
4/18/2007 07:06:00 AM

Reuters reports today that a scientific study concludes "Global warming may spur wind shear, sap hurricanes."   What's wrong with our understanding of "global warming" is we don't have any.   At this point, we don't have any real idea if the globe is actually warming up because we don't have sufficient measuring devices nor a mathematically sound method for determining an "average."   If we are sure the globe is warming, we have no idea what might be the cause because it is a system which is far too complex for our puny methods to determine.   Heck, we do not have a real understanding of the object which accounts for all the planet's heat, the Sun.   Some say we have an understanding but it is mostly the understanding of an infant.   If we are convinced the Earth is warming and the Sun is not a factor, we have no real understanding of what the cause is because not only do we not have our arms around the effects of other factors, we don't even know what all the factors are.   If we did know all the factors, we still couldn't say with any level of confidence because our computer models are far too simple to account for the complexity of a chaotic system.   We've never yet been able to model a single chaotic system to sufficient degree to make valid predictions about its behavior.   If we could predict future behavior, we still would be mostly in the dark because we cannot even identify all the possible effects of a change to a chaotic system.   That's why we label them chaotic systems!   Last year, the "scientific consensus," at least the one reported by the media and the one promoted by Al Gore, suggested that one of the ways in which we would suffer from global warming was via intense hurricanes.   This year, at least today, we're pretty much convinced that global warming will reduce the intensity and frequency of hurricanes.   My question to anyone and everyone is, why would we act upon so little real knowledge about a phenomenon we don't have a pre-schooler's understanding of?   What ever happened to the wisdom that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing?

If you think we really do know a thing or two about carbon in the atmosphere, read this little piece: "Carbon cycle modelling and the residence time of natural and anthropogenic atmospheric CO2: on the construction of the 'Greenhouse Effect Global Warming' dogma."

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4 Comments:

  • Dave, I work for NOAA now and we are all abuzz about this new study on wind sheer! Especially down here on the Gulf Coast where these hurricanes tend to major concern for us!!

    I came to your site this morning to drop you a tip on this study - which appeared in the Times Picayune today down here. However, as usual - you're on top of things and already had it blogged! Kudos!

    But yes, this is very interesting news and you are spot-on with your observations. In answer to your question ... "Whatever happened to the wisdom that a little knowledge was a dangerous thing?" - Well, I guess that went away when folks became convinced that Al Gore had the 2000 election "stolen" from him.

    Honestly ... does anything have to make sense these days? This whole human-induced global warming science is junk-science from the get-go.

    By Blogger Vercingetorix, at 11:58 AM, April 18, 2007  

  • I think that the authenticity of Gore on Global Warming is not important. The genuineness of global warming is not proven but we cannot deny that the climate change in some parts of the world is causing major problems to farmers in developing countries. Finding solutions to this problem is much more important than proving or disproving global warming.

    By Blogger merjoem32, at 3:06 PM, April 18, 2007  

  • merjoem32,

    You're completely off base here. Your way of thinking is the problem. Of course places on Earth are having trouble caused by weather. That has happened since organisms first crawled upon the planet. But you can't do anything about the weather, at least not with our ptimitive science and technology.

    You are drawing a conclusion that somehow the Earth is warming, that the problem is something we humans are doing, we have to do something to reverse the "damage" we have done, and we had better start immediately. Nothing could be further from the truth.

    Of course Gore's "authenticity" is irrelevant. But that has nothing to do with the debate. You want us to act and yet you cannot say definitively that there is a reason to act at all, let alone a specific act we should take to achieve a specific result. You couldn't because no human nor group of humans knows.

    This is about acting on inferior knowledge, something that is always inadvisable, unwise, foolish, idiotic!

    By Blogger Dave, at 3:59 PM, April 18, 2007  

  • Yes, if the climate is changing in developing countries and having a negative impact on farming in those countries ... what on earth could we possibly do about it? We have no "weather machines" and Burt Lancaster (The Rainmaker) - is no longer up to the task! :P

    But seriously - there are two issues here. One is ... "is the earth warming?" The second is ... "are human activities significantly contributing to it?"

    I think the answer to the first question might be a big "maybe". And if there is a "consensus" in the scientific community - it's on this question. Most scientists do believe the earth is probably warming.

    But the second question - there is no consensus on. In fact, most scientists I've spoken with believe that no conclusive evidence exists yet to indicate that human activity is significantly exacerbating global warming in any fashion.

    So when Gore and his allies say there is "consensus" - they're misleading people. There is NO consensus whatsoever in the scientific community that human activity is responsible for, or greatly contributes to Global Warming.

    We aren't responsible for the Global Warming that is taking place right now on Mars - it's completely plausible we aren't responsible for here either.

    By Blogger Vercingetorix, at 7:00 AM, April 19, 2007  

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