Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Was Alberta’s Flood the Result of Climate Change?

Also available at mises.ca

Was the Alberta flood a result of climate change? Of course it was. Once in a while a region like southern Alberta will experience a “100-year flood,” precisely because climate is never stationary. Earth’s climate is a complex energy pattern that is an objective expression of individual parts. Each part reacts to its environment influencing the outcome of the broader structure. For example, we may understand the chemical composition of water and the unique nature of neutrinos – but we are currently ignorant as to how or if these two elements react together. While the physics and chemistry inherent in weather-related phenomena are more-or-less understood – the complex structure of climate involves weather patterns, sun activity, cosmic radiation and other countless variables that are currently outside the scope of human knowledge. In other words – we know why Alberta flooded, but we can’t know all the factors involved that brought a month’s worth of rain in a single day.



 
No amount of computer models will change this. Computers are calculators, revealing the answer you ask of them. Climate change computer models use an arithmetic that has about the same validity as the ones used in economic models. They represent a snap-shot in an ever-changing reality and the concepts scientists try to draw from them are unsound. Take John Pomeroy, a climate scientist that holds a research chair in water resources and climate change at the University of Saskatchewan and works at a field research station in Canmore. In response to the recent floods, John was quoted saying, “the rain themselves could not have been prevented, though I suspect they’re a manifestation of our changing climate.” John pins the blame on human activity, adding that in the last century there has been an “immeasurable change” in rainfall.
 
Immeasurable indeed. Earth’s climate is the result of a variety of chemical reactions. This intricate web of energy is not stationary and encompasses factors far outside the grasp of our current methods of empirical testing. Perhaps one day technology will map all the variables in Earth’s climate and be able to accurately predict future weather patterns. But until then scientists must admit their ignorance and look for more satisfactory methods in investigating the phenomena of a changing climate.
 
Currently, “climate scientists” work from the assumption that climate change is self-correcting until human beings come along. Why human beings must exist outside the natural order is never addressed, even when it is evident that humans are apart of the natural world. Their errors are compounded when C02 is introduced and blamed for every negative change in the weather. C02 is a chemical compound that exists elsewhere in the universe; negating all other factors to this sole substance is intellectual dishonesty.

No comments:

Post a Comment