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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (342526)	1/11/2010 5:44:06 PM
From: ManyMoose	7 Recommendations Respond to of 793618

These models are valuable research tools. I think they are interesting, but unless the researcher can explain the plethora of variables and the risks of ignoring them, they should not be releasing this stuff to politicians like Al Gore who have NO COMPREHENSION of what they are talking about. Suppose there is actually some butterfly effect. That is, if a butterfly in China flutters around and disturbs a few air molecules, and those molecules disturb others and become augmented by others and so forth ad infinitum, they could well cause a hurricane in Cuba. So, do you factor in butterflies? No. But you might want to factor in volcanic action, ambient air temperature on land and over water, the temperature and heat content of masses of land and water of different densities, the earth's magnetic field, sunspots, lack of sun spots, the tilt of the earth's axis and variations thereof, the gravitational attraction of raindrops to each other, reflectance characteristics of the earth's surface, the shade of mountains, and so forth. I mean, I could go on and on and name thousands of variables that could and probably do affect climate. The only way of processing them into a model is to reduce the number of variables to a select few. If the wrong few are chosen the wrong conclusions could be reached. If the right few are chosen but measured improperly or inferred from preposterous assumptions like the growth of trees thousands of years ago, the wrong conclusions could be reached. I'm not saying models are bad. I'm saying they aren't real. Anybody who doesn't recognize their limitations, like Al Gore, has no business interpreting them.