Re: [Paddlewise] Winter in a time of Climate Change

On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 9:18 AM, Mike Euritt <sixteenfeet_at_sbcglobal.net>wrote:

>
> I've been suckered in the past with "science supported"
> doom and gloom, most recently Y2K, but remember clearly predictions of dead
> oceans in the 80's accompanied by catastrophic ocean rising, repeated in
> the
> 90's, global cooling of the 60's, Hole in the Ozone. Believe if you like,
> but
> the record of the doomsday prophets being correct is 0. I look at the
> weather
> map and see lots of cold everywhere, much of it erlier than normal and
> colder
> than normal. Which is, of course, absolute proof of GW...
>
>
For some strange reason many people think scientists are not very bright.
This actually flies in the face of the evidence, given that I'm typing on a
device invented by scientists and using a medium invented by scientists to
transmit it to you who will read it on.... well you get the idea. Maybe we
just tend to think that the things that are here are "proven" and the rest
of the stuff scientists prattle on about are only theories. I have a shock
for you, there is really very little "proof" about how anything works; it's
almost all theory. Yet we manage to figure out enough to make computers,
airplanes, and televisions sets.

Even the word "proof" itself is not used much in science. And when it is
used it's used in a very precisely controlled way. Scientists talk a lot
about "evidence" but about proof.... well, not so much.

So we can't "prove" that there are "holes" in a substrate of silicon that
"move" and that this facilitates the travel of "electrons" so that current
"flows" and your computer turns on. Those are all, believe it or not,
unproven. Just a theory. But the theory works so well... it's been refined
so often... that we can actually make things work using it.

Let's jump from one thing you can't see but can feel and experience
(electricity) to another thing you can't see but you can experience:
Weather. Today at my house the temperature was 26F when I got up and then it
warmed up to about 37F causing a lot of snow to melt and become slushy. This
is weather. The earth tends to be colder in winter and warmer in summer
where I live. Nothing much is going to change that. What will change is how
much colder or warmer it will get over a period of years.

That's "climate".

A few years back some scientists were examining ice cores in Greenland that
go back a long time. I'm pretty old but these were even older than me. These
were old enough to indicate several different climate changes. And they
discovered that when the climate changes it undergoes a series of abrupt
fluctuations between hotter and colder in very short time periods. They
called it "weather chatter"; like when your teeth chatter in the cold. It's
almost like the climate can't make up its mind whether to make things warmer
or colder so it does both in very short time bursts. One day it will be 24F
and the next day 64F.

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

When it gets very cold in Chicago on Thursday and then warm enough to throw
frisbies for the dog in the park on Saturday that is not the way things used
to work. That sounds to me very much like weather chatter.

Oh... one other thing those guys in Greenland learned. It gets a lot worse.
I mean a LOT worse. And a lot faster.

Scientists don't "believe" in climate change in the same way that someone
might "believe" in God. The belief is tempered by the understanding that
there could be some new bits of evidence that would change things. To
non-scientists, schooled in the way things ought to be, this is a weakness.
After all, how can you "believe" in something that can change tomorrow? But
to scientists it's a huge strength. In fact, this is the very underpinning
of science itself. To misunderstand this is to misunderstand the entire
thing.

So you don't have to "believe" in global warming if you think that a cold
winter "proves" that it's wrong. Science won't much care. Like someone said
here today, the climate doesn't give a fig newton whether we live or die...
but we better pay attention.


Craig Jungers
Moses Lake, WA
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