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OT: Moorabal/Lal Lal wind farm 17-Jun-2009 At 10:56:11 AM jono_1

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On 17/06/2009 evanbb wrote:
>Also note in the ABC today that the White House have released a paper on
>the impacts in the US:
>http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/17/2600335.htm
>
>Maybe RJames and Tony should call them and tell them they're mistaken?
>
>
>
>Also heard today a fairly reasonable cause of the 'Global Cooling' since
>1998. Apparently aerosol/particulate emissions from India and China have
>been rising fast enough to mask the heat capturing effects of increased
>GHGases. This raises the problem that if they ever clean up their pollution
>(the Asian Brown Cloud) things could change pretty quickly. Some good rain
>might do some damage as well.

Also 1998 was a strong El Nino year. Some work has been done to estimate the effect El Ninos have on the average global temperature. The resulting estimations brings 1998 back into the pack and leads to a more or less plateau in global temperatures over the last 10 years. So the question remains why has global temperatures not risen in line with increased CO2 over the last 10 years. Well, Evan has presented a plausible explanation. I'm pretty sure the "Asian Brown Cloud" has been detected in the USA so it is of large enough magnitude to affect global average temperature.

Anyway a 10 year trend tells us nothing when we are dealing with climate. The next 10 years we might see a rapid increase or a decrease or not much at all.

And of course 1998 is going to be used as a reference point for climate sceptics as it makes for a global cooling trend over the next 10 years.

The fact is anything to do with climate predictions/modelling is a best guess. We still don't understand all the complexities and feedbacks on this planet, and never will. There is still a lot of work to be done on Co2-water vapour relationship and ocean acidity and its effects on coral reefs and more importantly deep-sea carbon storage, from carbonate secreting ocean creatures, which store a huge amount of carbon on the ocean floor. Climate models are continually being updated and are always works in progress. Some other the climate models have done a pretty good job at predicting climate change over the last 30-40 years, excluding the last 10.

So the question is do we wait 20 years or 50 years are continue business as usual and wait and see if the models are right or wrong. Personally, I don't think so.

Guess I should go back to work.