3 Comments so far

1. doug newton on February 27, 2007 3:44 am

   “There is some danger that actual science tempered with skepticism and cost benefit analysis will now break out.”
   Wouldn’t that be grand.
   Have you read anything about aerosols and global warming? Aerosols cool the planet with a forcing calculated at -1.2 W/m2 according to the IPCC summary (the CO2 warming forcing is calculated at +1.6 W/m2). Some aerosols are produced by burning fossil fuels. If we stopped burning fossil fuels the global temperature will actually increase in the short term due to the fact that aerosols are very short lived in the atmosphere while CO2 remains in place for many years.
   Aerosols are considered the biggest known unknown in the IPCC summary report.
   Do you have any information or opinions on this?

2. jay on February 27, 2007 4:32 am

   My general view is that there is a great deal of science left to do. Aerosols are one element, a second is the effects of cosmic rays on cloud formation, the third is cloud formation itself.

   More generally, the robustness of the models needs to be considered. A 90% certainty sounds great in a sound bite but it is a long way from the degree of certainty we would expect in hard science. An engineer would be pretty reckless to build a bridge when he had only a 90% certainty that it would stay up.

   I suspect that the real scientists know this. However, Kyoto and the IPCC-4 report is a political document. And for politics 90% certainty is more than “close enough”.

3. doug newton on March 18, 2007 8:47 am

   Hi Jay

   It’s taken me some time to catch up to your reply but I have read some more and better understand your assessment.
   Science to do - pursue cloud formation in general with aerosols and cosmic rays/solar variance as subsets.
   Good to read about NASA’s Glory mission in 2008
   I’m still vague on the modeling but assume they should get better as each year passes and new data is analyzed.
   I am on the verge of becoming a conspiracy theorist as far as UN involvement with the whole issue goes.

   If you were advising the Canadian government on this file what course of action would you recommend?