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Re: [RC] [PNER] Fw: [AERCMembersForum] Fw: geology & climate change - Truman PrevattWhen Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines blew it stack in 1992, the ash caused an average one degree drop in global temps for two years. It took it two or three more years to climb back to "normal." There are some theories that ash from massive volcano eruptions was what brought on the ice age. Fourty years ago there was a warning about another "ice age." However, in 1965 we did not have the technology - either in space based sensors, large arrays of Doppler radar systems designed to track water vapor or the super computers required to support climatic models or the understanding brought on by the advent of these technologies to understand what we were seeing. When the first real super computer came on line - the Cray I in the early 80's, NCAR got the third one made. The first two went to the US Department of Defense. With these tools our understanding of atmospheric is much better and the data the crunch is fed by an impressive array of sensors, ground and spaced based. The one thing that is apparent about the physics associated with climatic change is it is basically "chaotic" - that is a) the evolution from the current state in the future is very sensitive to perturbations in the current conditions and b) there are large time constants involved - that is what happens today my not show it effect for many years. Mathematicans knew of the type of behavior which later became tagged chaotic since about the mid 40's. The first mathematical description of this behavior (the Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser theorem) was proposed by the Russian mathematician Kolomogorov in 1954 and later proved by Russian mathematician Arnold and Moser in 1962. However, it wasn't until about the early '70s that physicists understood that this type of behavior shows up all the time in "real" physical system, turbulent flow in fluids being one very good example. When the super computers came on line and the physics models for the atmosphere it became apparent that atmospheric physics was a prime example of a system that possessed chaotic behavior. See lay discussions of chaos. http://www.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/mathphys/subsection3_2_5.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory http://www.discover.com/issues/jul-05/departments/physics-of-waterslides/ http://www.physicscentral.com/action/action-04-08.html and how it relates to our understanding of weather http://www.physicscentral.com/lou/lou-00-4.html Global warming has become a two pronged monster. First there is the science which is plugging along the way it always does. Then there is the political component - which is like all political debates is full or anything from half truth, truths taken out of context and down and out lies to justify the biased world view of the proponent. What we do know is the CO2 levels are higher than they have been since we have any records (core samples of glacial ice packs in Greenland provide a very long record). They started to dramatically peak since the industrial revolution and the use of fossil fuel. What we also know is there are long geophysical cycles involved - small perturbations in eccentricity of the earths orbit related to gravitational effect of other bodies in space; variations of the output of the sun, volcanic activity, etc. We've really only had good sensor data for about 40 years so it is very difficult for some of these effects are difficult to accurately reflected in the model - which doesn't mean they are not in the model it just means the variance on their impact is larger than it should be. Clean air may factor in because dirty air blocks the sun. Clearly the better understanding the better able to make predictions with a higher confidence. But make no mistake about it if the current melting of the ice caps continues there will be significant impact on the world - The southern cost of South Florida will be somewhere North of where Lake Okeechobee and Hemmingways famed watering hole - Sloppy Joe's will be under several feet of water. How is it endurance related - it takes a lot of endurance to sit through all the half truths and hidden political agendas from both sides - be they the "it not really that bad, we don't know anything trust me" and the " Armageddon will be here next week, trust me." Mother nature will take care of it - she always does, however we may not like her solution ;-) . I'm going to go take an evening spin on my horse. Truman rides2far@xxxxxxxx wrote: no longer be scientific doubt that climate change is happening andit is -- "Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true." - Bertrand Russell =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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