Gene's Footnotes

I have never been impressed by the messenger and always inspect the message, which I now understand is not the norm. People prefer to filter out discordant information. As such, I am frequently confronted with, "Where did you hear that...." Well, here you go. If you want an email version, send me an email.

January 21, 2016

What Climate Science?

While the world's finances and social cohesion collapses, liars run about in panic as their words make little sense and people realize it, and "religious" people kill little girls for Allah, the universe goes about its business of ignoring us. Permit me to quote an observation regarding "climate science.  As usual, it agress with me, so it very good.

The diagram is based upon solar input as the source of energy. What has been interesting is that "climate scientists" have been building models, at least during the Gore hysteira days, with no consideration of the sun, per se, as a variable.


Once Again El Nino Didn’t Do What Was Forecast. Why?



…This article will trigger the usual responses from people who present themselves as the authorities on one specific aspect of the vast complex system that is weather and climate. They are the so-called climate scientists. The idea that you can know and understand the role of any one portion of Figure 1 illustrates the complexity and the limitations of specialization within the Earth-atmosphere system. There is only one input, solar radiation, but that ignores other mechanisms that result in changes within the system. There is an obsession with radiation that ignores physical and other mechanisms of change. This parallels the problem of ignoring gravity in the global vertical temperature gradient and the wind as a major cause of change among others.

Understanding one piece requires knowledge of the much larger segment if not the entire system, as the arrows try to indicate. Systems Analysts recognize the challenge because it is a systems diagram. They developed their expertize to deal with real world problems of interrelationships and interconnectivity.
clip_image002
Figure 1: (Source Kellogg and Schneider, 1974).
In universities, the problem of specialization quickly challenged academics dealing with real world problems and resulted in the creation of inter-disciplinary studies. The real world is integrated, a fact no model or prediction can avoid.
The reason climatology was studied and taught in Geography Departments is because it is the original integrative discipline. Some referred to as Chorology defined as
the study of the causal relations between geographical phenomena occurring within a particular region.
Specialists deride it as a generalist discipline with the epithet of being jacks-of-all-trades, but masters of none. These specialists who saw an opportunity of funding in global warming believed that their piece of the puzzle was the answer. It wasn’t, but it did create the new category of climate scientists. In fact, they are people who study one small part of the complex weather and climate system. Failed predictions reflect their limitations….