Heaven and Earth is an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence. Read more here.
Opinion
Climate Models Confuse Physics of Cause and Effect: A Note from Christopher Game
CENTRAL to discussion of climate change models is the concept of “forcing” and “feedback”. So, reference is made to global warming from radiative “forcing” from elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide in the troposphere and then “positive feedback from water vapour”, adding to global warming.
Everyone talks in these terms, and it is politically correct to do so. But there are two problems.
According to the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) formalism, their “forcing” can include any amount of internal state variable contribution, as well as external driving function contributions. And according to this IPCC formalism, there is only one dynamically distinct internal state variable, the climate temperature, that functionally determines the apparently distinct but really merely functionally dependent “feedbacks” of their formalism.
In physics, an external driving function qualifies unequivocally as a cause. But internal state functions must always be counted as effects that are themselves caused by external drivers interacting with internal state functions acting as internal causes.
This important cause-effect structure is erased in the “forcing” concept of the IPCC formalism. It follows that cause and effect will be muddled in work that uses the IPCC formalism for simplified models. The simplified models are made of ordinary differential equations as in the qualitative theory of dynamical systems including deterministic chaos originated by Henri Poincaré in the 1880s. Poincaré used the method of phase portraits, which make explicit the presence of several dynamically distinct internal state variables.
The IPCC limitation to only one dynamically distinct internal state variable makes the IPCC concept of “feedbacks” verge on nonsense.
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Marc Morano Profiled by NYT
Marc Morano does not think global warming is anything to worry about, and he brags about his confrontations with those who do… Supporters see Mr. Morano as a crucial organizing force who has taken diffuse pieces of scientific research and fused them into a political battering ram. Read more here.
Six Tons of ‘Geoengineered’ Iron: Just another Drop in the Ocean
THERE were concerns that a plan by the German government to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by dumping iron in the southern ocean would have all sorts of perverse outcomes.
Earlier in the year a spokesperson for the World Wildlife Fund suggested the plan may violate international agreements on marine protection because the algae growth from the iron pollution would result in eutrophication, defined as a proliferation of plant life that reduces oxygen content in water and eliminates other sea life. Some no doubt had images of Blue whales turning belly-up from such a misguided intervention.
The plan was described as the biggest trial ever of iron fertilization, a technology which could stop global warming at very little cost.
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Easter Musings on Life and Environmentalism
MANY in Australia and around the English-speaking world will celebrate Easter this long weekend. I usually go to Church on Easter Sunday. I’m a Christian by culture while an Atheist by choice. I am inspired by the natural world, its beauty and natural order, so perhaps I am also an environmentalist.
Easter can be a time for reflection including about the world around us and how we choose to live our lives.
Practicing Protestant and climate change sceptic, Graham Young, reflects on the meanings of being a modern Christian today at e-journal Online Opinion. He writes:
“Christianity is not even a broad church, but often a seething mass of denominational theological debate. While one cannot condemn science on the basis of ‘eugenics, nuclear warheads and pollution’ no defence of science would be complete that did not deal with these things either.
“Likewise a defence of Christianity that refuses not only to deal with religious extremism but the sort of evangelical Christianity that dominates outside of Europe, Canada, Australia and the north-east and the west coast of the USA, is flawed. All Christians are not creationists, but many are. This cannot be ignored.”
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Australian Farmers Finally Benefit from GM Canola
MONSANTO Australia Ltd has released the final results from a survey of its 2008 Roundup Ready canola growers – that is those farmers who choose to grow genetically modified canola this last season.
Canola is an important crop in Australia, particularly as part of a wheat rotation. While North American farmers have been growing GM canola for some years, because of bans in Australia following a successful anti-GM campaign spearheaded by Greenpeace, 2008-2009 was the first season for GM canola in Australia.
The results taken from 92 of the 100 growers that delivered GM canola grain, indicate that Roundup Ready canola outperformed alternative herbicide tolerant canola varieties when it came to yield and overall benefits. 100 percent of growers surveyed said they will plant Roundup Ready canola again.
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Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
