anti-state * anti-war * pro-market
By: L.K. Samuels
Date: 1 August 2014
Almost
every day claims are made by political pundits and so-called experts
that mankind is the prime cause behind changes in our climate. The
problem with such claims is that they have no basis in science,
especially within the new sciences of chaos theory and complexity
science. To treat climate change as almost entirely anthropogenic is bad
science. And chaos theory and complexity have already debunked this
myth long ago.
Chaos theory arose from climate and
weather prediction models, along with the non-repeatable and chaotic behaviour found in the three-body problem. And what chaologists have
concluded is that highly complex systems are highly unpredictable. This
means that it is unlikely that human activity is the prime driver of
climate change because there are far too many overlapping and erratic
factors. Mankind is simply one of an almost infinite number of possible causes of changing climate.
Chaos theory emerged from efforts to
predict both climate and weather through computer modelling. The father
of chaos theory, Edward Lorenz, soon became disappointed by what he
discovered when he accidentally left out a few seemingly insignificant
digits in his computer calculations. He was astonished to find that his
climate predictions had radically changed over very tiny adjustments.
Lorenz eventually saw climate as “a
complex, non-linear, chaotic object” that defies long-term prediction.
In 1963 Lorenz wrote “Prediction of the sufficiently distant future is
impossible by any method, unless the present conditions are known
exactly.” British physicist Stephen Hawking echoed the same conclusion
in his book “A Brief History of Time. He wrote: “One certainly cannot
predict future events exactly if one cannot even measure the present
state of the universe precisely.” And herein lies a great scientific
problem. We don’t have the means to precisely measure the physical world
and probably never will.
The
problem of complexity is at the heart of mankind’s inability to predict
future events with any accuracy. Complexity science has demonstrated
that the more factors found within a complex system, the more chances of
unpredictable behaviour. And without predictability, any meaningful
control is nearly impossible. Obviously, this means that you cannot
control what you cannot predict. The ability ever to predict long-term
events is a pipe-dream. Mankind has little to do with changing climate;
complexity does.
Consider
the vast numbers of climatic determinants other than mankind: ocean
currents, cosmic rays, magnetic fields, sun spot activity, solar
radiation, axial tilt, earth’s wobble, vegetation coverage, solar winds,
humidity, cloud cover, water vapours, ocean memory, hothouse emissions,
aerosol particles, dust storms, evaporation, convection, volcanoes, and
unknown unknowns to name just a few. There are so many interlocking and
overlapping systems
and subsystems that a computer model would be hard-pressed to pinpoint
any one overwhelming factor for global increases or decreases in
temperature.
For
instance, meteorologists had predicted a very active year for the 2013
hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean. But they were way off base.
There were only two minor category 1 hurricanes. Computer models often
fail to make accurate predictions in chaotic systems crammed with
mind-numbing complexity. And that is because of the butterfly effect and
its “sensitive dependency on initial conditions,” where tiny and almost
invisible changes can result in big impacts that nobody saw coming.
Here
is another fact to consider. According to Frank Keppler, an
environmental engineer at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics
in Heidelberg, Germany, his research team discovered that living
vegetation releases methane into the atmosphere. So, the effort to plant trees to soak up C02 might actually cause far more potent greenhouse gases to be released.
Of
course, mankind’s industrialization of the world must have some effect
on climate. But according to complexity science, where so many variables
are in a constant state of flux, the probability that one factor has
primary responsibility for a particular reaction is remote. Mankind has
little effect on weather or climate since there are simply too many
factors and unknowns caught in a perpetual and evolving chaotic state
that borders on infinity.
Sure, the climate of the earth has warmed—we are in an interglacial warming period—but
nothing out of the ordinary. The prominent physicist Freeman Dyson came
to the same conclusion, saying that the rate of earth’s warming is
normal. He, like many chaologists, understands that when it comes to
climatology there is too much uncertainty to permit any accurate
prediction.
But
for some who are engaged in the old ploy of myth-making and political
shenanigans, anthropogenic climate change has become their means to a
political end. That may suite their fancy, but it has nothing to do with
the real science behind climatology.
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