Month: May 2016

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Is consensus about climate silly?

admin May 10, 2016 Leave a comment

According NASA: “97 percent of climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human 1_activities.” (1) The Guardian is even blunter: “It’s settled: 90–100% of climate experts agree on human-caused global warming” (2) It looks compelling, but not everyone agrees.  “..[t]he claim of “scientific consensus” on the causes and consequences of climate change is without merit”, object the authors Craig D. Idso et al., in a recent book publication by The Heartland Institute (3) Is one claim better than the other. No, because the problem is not “scientific consent”, but the facts used for consideration.

That applies to both sides, as both are too much fixed on atmospheric matters.  Idso et al., cite Prof Judith Curry (p.37) with the notion:  “None of the most consequential scientific uncertainties are going to be resolved any time soon”. What is not said in the first place, that water is the principle issue concerning climate. Only about 10 percent of the water evaporated from the oceans is 2_transported over land and falls as precipitation. Once evaporated, a water molecule spends about 10 days in the air. That means a replace of about 50 times per year. The volume of water in the atmosphere at any one time is about 12,900 cubic kilometers (km3), which is about 0.001 percent of the total Earth’s water volume (Volume of the Baltic Sea 21,700 km3).

The oceans are not only the supplier of aerial vapor, but the driver of evaporation as well. Only a tiny amount of warm water ‘swims’ on a huge water body with a mean temperature of about 4 °Celsius, and an average depth of nearly  3’700 meters. Science is so far away from understanding enough details about ocean processes, how they respond to human activities at sea, and how they are going to shape our future climate, that the discussion on ‘consensus’ looks silly.

Further reading:
___   Losing to radical environmentalism – Lesson for Skeptics
___  The oceans have stripes

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