Let me state this from the get go : I do not believe we understand enough about atmospheric climate patterns and behavior to make any definitive long-term predictions or assumptions on how the future of the biosphere will turn out. Let me repeat that : we do not understand enough about the earth's atmosphere to make any good predictions about what it will be like in a few years. Hell, meteorologist can't even accurately predict the weather for next week, let alone next decade.
I say we don't understand enough, simply because that is the damn truth. For instance, what is the worst green house gas of them all? Methane? Worse than methane... It is WATER VAPOR. That's right, humidity! (Just think it over a bit). Humidity is so ubiquitous and ever in flux that it is hard for meteorologist to model it's behavior, hence why humidity predictions are usually highly erroneous or absent entirely. Modeling humidity in atmospheric science can be done, but the effects of it's presence and fluctuations is a bit like trying to model the results of psychic activity, i.e. consciousness, in political revolutions. Consciousness is present, it can be modeled and followed individually and collectively, but the results of consciousness's presence in political revolutions is a bit hard to predict (particularly when we are just watching conscious activity).
Now, I'm no meteorologist, but if I know a few things about thermodynamics, then there shouldn't be much flaw to my argument here. Five years ago the mean global temperature was on the rise since that volcano in the 1980's erupted and cooled down the earth from over 50 years of warming. Everyone was all worried about the ice caps melting and where the polar bears would live. What happens when ice melts into water? The water cools down. Ice caps were melting, and lo and behold we receive one hell of a winter this year. Am I on to something or am I not doing this right?
Numerous Bostonians have been telling me that this by far the worst winter they have experienced yet (just like my mother says this year's summer in SC is the worst yet (every year)). We have had something like three times more snow this year than the average for the past decade. Really? I'm from South Carolina and I am getting along just fine. Aside from more snow than last year, this year doesn't seem as bad as last year to me. Grow a set of balls. Boston is next to the Atlantic Ocean. As the sun moves from east to west it takes longer for the land next to ocean to warm up because of the oceanic thermal mass. This is why California is much warmer than we are.
But wait! Isn't this a good thing? It's cooling down. It was suppose to be getting hotter and hotter and hotter. Why are we complaining? Now, as for the ice caps coming back from their melted state, that seems to be something I don't have an answer for (because I'm not a meteorologist). My guess is that with cooler ocean temperatures they will come back. And since no one has been talking about ice caps melting for the past two years, I assume they are getting along fine.
Let me give a bit of recent history on the earth's climate. Anyone remember the weather five years ago? Of course you don't, memory doesn't hold on to discomforts. But remember all those hurricanes? They kept getting worse and worse, and then Katrina hit and everyone thought the end was near (literally). Just like the predictions for massive, unrelenting, anarchic crime waves in the 1980s, we were predicting hurricanes to be absolutely outrageous and monstrous terrors. Then 2007 rolled around and what happened? NOT ONE HURRICANE. Well, there was one, a Cat 2 and it hit Texas from the Pacific. And the next two years were pretty pathetic with hurricanes as well.
Just because it snowed more this year doesn't make it a pattern. In fact, just because it gets colder each year for four years in a row doesn't make it a pattern. Climate change is a long-term event, remember? Now, if it kept getting colder (or warmer) each year for 50 years running, then there is something different all together. We are jumping the gun when we call these events "climate change".
That's not climate change, that's weather, and it has anomalies, fluctuations and changes as well. I'm not saying that it isn't happening, nor are we to blame. I am simply saying we don't have the slightest clue how the atmosphere works. Hell, it took us 6,000 years to figure out that the earth was spinning and that's what made the sun, moon and stars (appear) to move. It also took us about 13,000 years to put wheels on our luggage. We've been studying the atmosphere for maybe about a century.
One thing's for sure, no one is worried about Santa Claus.
No comments:
Post a Comment