Friday, 31 October 2008

The freezing/frozen Thames...and climate change...

...finally we must return to basic science. Climate is the most complex, coupled, non-linear, semi-chaotic system known. The claim by UK MPs that they can manage climate predictably is the ultimate folie de grandeur. In such a system, both doing something (i.e., emitting gases) and not doing something (i.e., not emitting gases) at the margins are equally unpredictable as to outcomes.
Interestingly, the world average surface temperature has now exhibited no ‘global warming’ since at least 2001, a trend that could possibly be extended through a phenomenon called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), and by the lateness of ‘Solar Cycle 24’, leading to an absence of sunspot activity.
I fear that the Climate Change Bill will end in political tears, when the targets are missed stratospherically, when the the lights go out in the UK, when our economic competitiveness is undermined, and when the climate fails to behave as predicted by our politicians.
If and when these outcomes occur, the electorate should not be generous. They must hold the sheep to account as lambs to the slaughter.
For, on ‘global warming’, they have fleeced us too often.
“Baaaaa humbug!” “Brrrrrrrr!” More, here...

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