Friday, January 6, 2017

Climate Change

I usually consider myself a liberal. 

I'm not entirely liberal about climate change.

When I look at historical temperature curves and look at these ice age cycles, the timelines are really compressed.  That has to do with the huge amounts of time covered and also the mixing of sediments in the core samples that they take, samples which help them look at historical climate indicators.

Core samples are cylindrical samples of dirt that are taken through the surface of the earth and show sediment layers. The sediment layers are studied for evidence of past chemical reactions that signal vegetation activity, which can be tied to temperature.

Measuring these layers is not like measuring areas above ground.  These layers have been accumulating for millions of years, and mixing as they accumulate.  They're a mess. They're dirt. 

When you look at a meteorological systems, you usually see hysteresis -- delays in reactions.  For instance, the coldest months of winter are January and February -- after the solstice; and the hottest months of summer are July and August -- again after the solstice.

It seems to me very likely that the shapes of the curves that are derived from studying sediment samples would not show hysteresis in the systems -- because they just aren't that precise.

That's always been my suspicion.

Then I see this article

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/scientists-might-seriously-underestimating-risk-225654967.html

hinting at how an ice age could come out of warming.  That just tends to confirm my suspicions.

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I also wonder why we're so convinced that warming is a bad thing.  We're well into where we should have been on the downward temperature curve towards an ice age.  Would we really rather be in an ice age?  Is that really good for people?  Wouldn't it be better simply to move climate refugees to higher ground if the ocean is rising?

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