Michael Crichton argues that long-range weather prediction is impossible because of the chaotic mathematics of weather systems. Most professional meterologists would agree with him, but he is quite wrong when he says that the same is true of climate prediction.
Future climates are much more predictable than is future weather. We know that there is no way to predict if it will, or will not, rain on 2 November 2010 in Berlin. But we can with near certainty say that it will be colder in January in that city than it was in the previous July. Climate change is amenable to prediction, and this is why so many scientists are tolerably sure that a rise of carbon dioxide to 500 ppm, which is now almost inevitable, will be accompanied by profound climate change. Their confidence comes from knowledge of the past history of the many glacial and interglacial events of the past two million years. The record drawn from the analysis of Antarctic ice cores clearly shows a strong correlation between global temperature, carbon dioxide[,] and methane abundance.
~From The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity by James Lovelock
2 comments:
ask people this: michael crichton created e.r., but would you want him handling your open heart surgery?
by the way, have you seen this?
it sounds completely insane, but lovelock is a booster of this guy's plan.
Climate is what you expect.
Weather is what you get.
Michael Crichton is a fair-to-middlin SF writer, not a climatologist. As W would say, "Who cares what he thinks?"
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