[Terrapreta] Focus ON TOPIC: what can TP do against GW/GCC

[Peter Read]

There has been some suggestion that climate change concerns are not based on good science.

I think that Jim Hansen is a highly respected analyst and also a very courageous one having stood up to extreme pressure from the Bush gang to desist from publishing his results.

His latest work (in what I understand is the version that went for peer review) is at http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf .  Try getting your head round it.

He makes it clear that the modelling results are unreliable since they leave out the unknown - you can't model if you haven't got a theory to quantify.  So he relies instead a lot on paleo-climatic history - which definitionally includes within the boundaries of historic experience, what we know and what we don't know, including what we don't know we dont know.

In 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland, my parents didn't know whether his plans included bombing our street but they built a bomb shelter - which is just as well since that turned out to be what Hitler did.  Mark you, they did know what they didn't know and that knowledge of their ignorance was not seen as a reason to delay action (to paraphrase Article 3.3 of the Climate Convention).

Back in the 70's, NASA scientists controlling the ozone monitoring programme didn't know that ice cryatals formed at high altitudes in the extreme cold of antarctic winter would have a catalytic effect on the capacity of CFC's to destroy ozone.  Moreover they didn't know they didn't know it, and refused to believe the evidence in front of their eyes. That took the form of messages from British scientists in Antarctica "hey, we've got an ozone hole down here" - "Damn Limeys again - don't know how to use their instruments"  So we got another decade of unnecessary ozone hole enlargement before the theory (the model) was developed to explain what had happened.

Now we have before us evidence of the disappearance of Arctic sea-ice cover, break up of Greenland and Antarctice ice sheets, methane escapes from thawing tundra, etc, etc.  Yes, and the Gulf stream slowing up, resulting in colder climate locally for some North Atlantic regions and flower growers,  and maybe even a chance of reversal of some of the most threatening processes.  Sometimes I think that nature gave us a gentle warning with the ozone hole: whether she will be so kind if we repeat NASA's CFC folly with greenhouse gas folly, just because we don't know we don't know some of the things that she knows, remains to be seen. 

So yes, I think Sean has his priorities right even though I don't agree with every word he says

Cheer
Peter

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