Freeman Dyson accuses An Inconvenient duo of Lousy science.

Brilliant minds have the ability to view a complex set of problems,and reduce it to its obvious conclusion (its irreducible part)as far as we know.And it is an important part of science and especially mathematical physics of the part to where we cannot reduce the equation further.

In biological systems there is NO reducible algorithm ( The complexity described cannot be described more concisely then by writing down all the observed phenomena) eg Monod 1972 IE 10^27 DEGREES OF FREEDOM.

A standard weather forecast has around 10^12 DOF but excludes ocean coupling.

There is no mathematical theory of climate.Hence we cannot not reduce the climate to a set of mathematical qualities.Hence the conundrum with "climate models"This has been understood for a long time eg Kolgomorov 1956 Landau 1965

In an interesting article in the NYT there is an intersting perspective on Freeman Dyson

FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson has quietly resided in Prince­ton, N.J., on the wooded former farmland that is home to his employer, the Institute for Advanced Study, this country’s most rarefied community of scholars. Lately, however, since coming “out of the closet as far as global warming is concerned,” as Dyson sometimes puts it, there has been noise all around him. Chat rooms, Web threads, editors’ letter boxes and Dyson’s own e-mail queue resonate with a thermal current of invective in which Dyson has discovered himself variously described as “a pompous twit,” “a blowhard,” “a cesspool of misinformation,” “an old coot riding into the sunset” and, perhaps inevitably, “a mad scientist.” Dyson had proposed that whatever inflammations the climate was experiencing might be a good thing because carbon dioxide helps plants of all kinds grow.

IT WAS FOUR YEARS AGO that Dyson began publicly stating his doubts about climate change. Speaking at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University, Dyson announced that “all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated.” Since then he has only heated up his misgivings, declaring in a 2007 interview with Salon.com that “the fact that the climate is getting warmer doesn’t scare me at all” and writing in an essay for The New York Review of Books, the left-leaning publication that is to gravitas what the Beagle was to Darwin, that climate change has become an “obsession” — the primary article of faith for “a worldwide secular religion” known as environmentalism. Among those he considers true believers, Dyson has been particularly dismissive of Al Gore, whom Dyson calls climate change’s “chief propagandist,” and James Hansen, the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and an adviser to Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Dyson accuses them of relying too heavily on computer-generated climate models that foresee a Grand Guignol of imminent world devastation as icecaps melt, oceans rise and storms and plagues sweep the earth, and he blames the pair’s “lousy science” for “distracting public attention” from “more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet.”

We can predict that the pseudo intellectuals will have the "knitting needles out" as they bey for his head.

However like most brilliant men foresight is forearmed and the most complete "defensive strategy" and mitigation policy that was written some 33 years ago is still public record.Preceding the IPCC and Hansen so simple as often solutions to complex problems are.

CAN WE CONTROL THE CARBON DIOXIDE
IN THE ATMOSPHERE?

FREEMAN J. DYSON?
institute for Energy Analysis, Oak Ridge, TN 37830. U.S.A
(Received 26 July 1976)

Abstract-The carbon dioxide generated by burning fossil fuels can theoretically be controlled by growing trees. Quantitative estimates are made of the size and cost of a plant-growing program designed to halt the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/files/Dyson_Energy_1977.pdf

Are Green technologies a logical fallacy?

The no-mind not-thinks no-thoughts about no-things

The Buddha

The political solution for climate change mitigation and its policies are driven by the priori reasoning that an increased taxation regime (with cap and trade) carbon taxation etc . will make the "green technologies" financially viable,and economically available.

This is driven by the idealistic "target of 450 ppm co2 ceiling.This would require the OECD countries to have 0 emissions by 2030 AND developing countries to have 0 growth or to spend their next 20 years gdp growth on solely on Green energy technology.

DOE secretary Steven Chu has said we need Nobel caliber breakthroughs.I disagree common sense is a better attribute, solutions that are available although challenging require innovative thinking,and this will require a quantum step,that we uses to see in the 19th and early 20 th century,and is now sadly lacking.

First lets look at some numbers using some quoted in Newsweek.

That is also the view of energy chemist Nate Lewis of the California Institute of Technology. "It's not true that all the technologies are available and we just need the political will to deploy them," he says. "My concern, and that of most scientists working on energy, is that we are not anywhere close to where we need to be. We are too focused on cutting emissions 20 percent by 2020—but you can always shave 20 percent off" through, say, efficiency and conservation. By focusing on easy, near-term cuts, we may miss the boat on what's needed by 2050, when CO2 emissions will have to be 80 percent below today's to keep atmospheric levels no higher than 450 parts per million. (We're now at 386 ppm, compared with 280 before the Industrial Revolution.) That's 80 percent less emissions from much greater use of energy.

Lewis's numbers show the enormous challenge we face. The world used 14 trillion watts (14 terawatts) of power in 2006. Assuming minimal population growth (to 9 billion people), slow economic growth (1.6 percent a year, practically recession level) and—this is key—unprecedented energy efficiency (improvements of 500 percent relative to current U.S. levels, worldwide), it will use 28 terawatts in 2050. (In a business-as-usual scenario, we would need 45 terawatts.) Simple physics shows that in order to keep CO2 to 450 ppm, 26.5 of those terawatts must be zero-carbon. That's a lot of solar, wind, hydro, biofuels and nuclear, especially since renewables kicked in a measly 0.2 terawatts in 2006 and nuclear provided 0.9 terawatts. Are you a fan of nuclear? To get 10 terawatts, less than half of what we'll need in 2050, Lewis calculates, we'd have to build 10,000 reactors, or one every other day starting now. Do you like wind? If you use every single breeze that blows on land, you'll get 10 or 15 terawatts. Since it's impossible to capture all the wind, a more realistic number is 3 terawatts, or 1 million state-of-the art turbines, and even that requires storing the energy—something we don't know how to do—for when the wind doesn't blow. Solar? To get 10 terawatts by 2050, Lewis calculates, we'd need to cover 1 million roofs with panels every day from now until then. "It would take an army," he says. Obama promised green jobs, but still


Some large numbers here several global GDP'S infact if we back of the envelope calculate at around 500-1000 US$ PER KW.

Clearly incremental taxation regimes upon intensive capital expenditure are NOT sustainable.(Unless the raison d'etre is to reduce the OECD countries GDP to the economic values of the third world )

We will examine some "innovative" solutions and use some thinking that is of course outside of the cube.

As we previously discussed some time ago on prescient thinking.

This piece from the Scientific American september 8 1860 in response to the prize offer from Thadeous Hyatt for a flying machine ...

Of all the inventions of which it is possible to conceive in the future,there is none which so captivated the imagination as that of a flying machine.The power of rising up into the air,and rushing in any direction at the rate of a mile or more a minute,is a power fo which mankind would be willing to pay for liberally.What a luxurious mode of locomtion!To sweep along smoothly how perfectly it would eclipse other means of travel by sea and distance of land.

But the thing that is really wanted is machine driven by some natural power.so the flyer may ride at his ease.For this purpose,we must have a new gas,electric ,or chemical engine.What we require are two or more substances ,solid or liquid,which by bringing into contact ,would be converted into gas.Place these in the reaction or Avery engine,which by running at high velocity,would yield a large power in proportion to its weight,and it is possible-yes probable-that the machine would drive spiral fans with sufficient force to lift itself from the gorund.Would not the binoxoyd of hydrogen and charcoal fill these conditions.This engine would run with such velocity that the fans would have to be very small by proportion;and it is probable that a widening of the arms themselves giving spiral inclination -would be the true plan.There might be two generating vessels that supply the engine that when was was exhausted the other would fulfill its requirements.

We might add several other hints to inventors who desire to enter on this enticing field;but we will conclude with only one more.The newly -discovered metal aluminium,from its extraordinary combination of lightness and strength,is the proper material for flying machines.

UPDATE

Preliminary numbers are around 45 trillion dollars between now and 2030

Uncertainty a climate reality.

All traditional logic habitually assumes that precise symbols are being employed.It is therfore not applicable to this terrestrial life,nut only to the celestial one.The law of the excluded middle (A or not-A)is true when precise synbols are employed,but it is not true when aynbols are vague,as in fact all symbols are.

Bertrand Russell. 1923

In another recent paper where uncertainty,and sustainability are integrated,we see some interesting arguments.

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 13, 247–257, 2009

“Climate, hydrology, energy, water: recognizing uncertainty and
seeking sustainability”

D. Koutsoyiannis, C. Makropoulos A. Langousis, S. Baki, A. Efstratiadis, A. Christofides, G. Karavokiros, and N. Mamassis

Abstract. Since 1990 extensive funds have been spent on research in climate change. Although Earth Sciences, including climatology and hydrology, have benefited significantly, progress has proved incommensurate with the effort and funds, perhaps because these disciplines were perceived as “tools” subservient to the needs of the climate change enterprise rather than autonomous sciences. At the same time,research was misleadingly focused more on the “symptom”,i.e. the emission of greenhouse gases, than on the “illness”, i.e. the unsustainability of fossil fuel-based energy production. Unless energy saving and use of renewable resources
become the norm, there is a real risk of severe socioeconomic crisis in the not-too-distant future. A framework for drastic paradigm change is needed, in which water plays a central role, due to its unique link to all forms of renewable energy, from production (hydro and wave power) to storage (for time-varying wind and solar sources), to biofuel production (irrigation). The extended role of water should be considered in parallel to its other uses, domestic, agricultural and industrial. Hydrology, the science of water on Earth, must move towards this new paradigm by radically rethinking its fundamentals, which are unjustifiably trapped in the 19thcentury myths of deterministic theories and the zeal to eliminate uncertainty. Guidance is offered by modern statistical and quantum physics, which reveal the intrinsic character of uncertainty/entropy in nature, thus advancing towards a new understanding and modelling of physical processes, which is central to the effective use of renewable energy and water resources

This is a critical paper, that will set the “tongues wagging” eg

"According to data presented by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), the global temperature was stable in 2002-2005 and had a slight decreasing trend since then; i.e., the last years were cooler than about 10 years ago, and the highest global temperatures were recorded 11 years ago, in 1998 (Fig. 1). One should also keep in mind that according to IPCC AR4 (Randall et al., 2007) general circulation models (GCM) have better predictive capacity for temperature than for other climatic variables (e.g. precipitation) and their quantitative estimates of future climate are particularly credible at continental scales and above. Hence, the fact that the historical evolution of temperature at the global scale resists GCM predictions may also indicate that the predictive capacity of GCMs for other variables and scales is even poorer…

,,,Furthermore, the current “climate” in the environmental scientific community, which favours (almost fanatical) ideological views of scientific issues, is genuinely becoming an issue of concern. Scientists arguing against “orthodox” and established “beyond doubt” views on the climate are often mistreated (and examples unfortunately abound). This non-scientific “climate” is at odds with the basis of scientific inquiry and puts its credibility at risk. Scientific progress presupposes diversity, rather than dominance of a single group or idea. Falsification of current research trends is a likely possibility (cf. Miller, 2007) and history teaches that, sooner or later, myths collapse (cf. the “predecessor” myth of “global cooling”, which prevailed in the 1970s; Gwynne,
1975; Ponte, 1976).

Lifting a single sentence from the above paragraph we can see the importance of the paradigm.

“ Scientific progress presupposes diversity, rather than dominance of a single group or idea”

Exactly so Bertrand Russel in his book on skeptics ,tells us “the greatest controversies are those, of which there is no clear evidence one way or the other.”

That said his coauthor of Principia Mathmatica Whitehouse said also “that a clash of doctrines is not a reason for concern, it is an opportunity.

An as an example of the scientific method, we can falsify some of the conclusions of Koutsoyiannis 2009 by our previous post here

Global warming postponed time for a Tea break (lukewarm)

There seems to be an incessant rush,to implement grand schemes mostly excessive taxation regimes ( stealth taxes) at a time when there are limited technology substitutions due to the lag phase of implementation.

At a time when the worlds economic structure is far from equilibrium( ie it has not found its bottom or more correctly,its attractor.Non linear systems have preferred states called attractors in mathematics)

As we observed an exogenous forcing such as an additional taxation regime will enhance the instability,most probably for decades.

In an interesting paper Has the climate recently shifted?
Kyle L. Swanson Anastasios A. Tsonis 2009

We see the reality of the present.

This paper provides an update to an earlier work that showed specific changes in the aggregate time evolution of major Northern Hemispheric atmospheric and oceanic modes of variability serve as a harbinger of climate shifts. Specifically, when the major modes of Northern Hemisphere climate variability are synchronized, or resonate, and the coupling between those modes simultaneously increases, the climate system appears to be thrown into a new state, marked by a break in the global mean temperature trend and in the character of El Nin˜o/Southern Oscillation variability. Here, a new and improved means to quantify the coupling between climate modes confirms that another synchronization of these modes, followed by an increase in coupling occurred in 2001/02. This suggests that a break in the global mean temperature trend from the consistent warming over the 1976/77–2001/02 period may have occurred.

Insofar as the global mean temperature is controlled by the net top-of-the-atmosphere radiative budget [IPCC 2007], such breaks in temperature trends imply discontinuities in that budget. Such discontinuities are difficult to reconcile with the presumed smooth evolution of anthropogenic greenhouse gas and aerosol radiative forcing with respect to time [Hansen et al. 2005]. This suggests that an internal reorganization of the climate system may underlie such shifts [Zhang et al. 2007].

Tsonis et al. (2007) applied concepts of the theory of synchronized chaos to show that the extrema associated with the 70-yr GST cycle are special in a dynamical sense and are thus likely to be parts of internal, rather than forced variability

Ghil et al(2008) details the uncertainties

The last IPCC report has investigated climate change as a result of various scenarios of CO2 increase for a set of 18 distinct GCMs. The best estimate of the temperature increase at the end of the 21st century from AR4 is about 4.0 C forthe worst scenario of greenhouse-gas increase, namely A1F1, this scenario envisages, roughly speaking, a future world with a very rapid economic growth. The likely range of end-of century increase in global temperatures is of 2.4–6.4 C in this case, and comparably large ranges of uncertainties obtain for all the other scenarios as well]. The consequences of these scientific uncertainties for the ethical quandaries arising in the socio-economic and political decision-making process involved in adaptation to and mitigation of climate changes are discussed in An essential contributor to this range of uncertainty is natural climate variability of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system. As mentioned already in [10], most GCM simulations do not exhibit the observed interdecadal variability of the oceans’ buoyancy-driven, thermohaline circulation [11]. This circulation corresponds to a slow, pole-to-pole motion of the oceans’ main water masses, also referred to as the overturning circulation. Cold and denser waters sink in the subpolar North Atlantic and lighter waters rise over much wider areas of the lower and southern latitudes.

Indeed
Sensitivity to the initial conditions-the principle signature of deterministic chaos-is thus not an artifact arising from when lower order models are used but is, rather, deeply rooted in the physics of the atmosphere.

Nicolis and Nicolis Foundations of complex systems page 223

Climate Catastrophe averted unknown asteroid misses(just)

An asteroid of a similar size to a rock that exploded above Siberia in 1908 with the force of a thousand atomic bombs whizzed close past Earth on Monday, astronomers said on Tuesday.

2009 DD45, estimated to be between 21 and 47 meters across, raced by at 1344 GMT on Monday, the Planetary Society and astronomers' blogs reported.

The gap was just 72,000 kilometers, or a fifth of the distance between Earth and the Moon and only twice the height of satellites in geosynchronous orbit, the website space.com said.

The estimated size is similar to that of an asteroid or comet that exploded above Tunguska, Siberia, on June 30 1908, flattening 80 million trees in a swathe of more than 2,000 square kilometres.

Interesting enough this asteroid not identified to Saturday and hence an unknown quantity.

This has been recently discussed in Russian scientific literature eg Dorman 2008,and inthe Russian press.

MOSCOW. (Andrei Kislyakov for RIA Novosti) - Humankind has created a major problem: space debris, now threatening long-term space travel.

So much space junk has accumulated that the international community must take urgent action to prevent major accidents at high altitude and on Earth.

Space debris denote manmade objects in orbit around Earth that no longer serve any useful purpose but which endanger operational satellites, primarily manned spacecraft. In some cases, space junk may threaten Earth during reentry because some fragments do not burn up completely and can hit houses, industrial facilities and transport networks.

Right now, 40 million fragments of space debris weighing several thousand metric tons circle Earth. In mid-February, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) reaffirmed the importance of guiding principles to prevent the formation of space debris for all nations.

On December 17, 2007, the UN General Assembly passed its Resolution 62/101 stipulating recommendations on enhancing the practice of states and international intergovernmental organizations in registering space objects.

Concerted international efforts and the dangers of hypothetical space debris crashes will make it possible for humankind to cope with this problem in the long term. However, Earth is still threatened by asteroids and various comets.,,

It is common knowledge that a new comet annually enters the solar system. Judging by the average lifespan of comets, about 3,000 of them fly through the solar system each year. In reality, astronomers register only 25 comets.

Scientists seem to have solved this contradiction. This discrepancy between theoretical calculations and practical observations is explained by the fact that many comets cannot be detected by optical systems.

It appears that such objects are created when a celestial body's nucleus loses most of its water due to evaporation. This makes new comets too dark to be observed through optical telescopes and a potential threat to planet Earth.

The latest studies of terrestrial and lunar craters show that most of them were gouged by comets. This news is not very encouraging either.

Of further interest Nasa's chief climate catastrophe theorist was buried in snow at a global warming protest in Washington.

Fortunately with Nasa unavailable we have someone who understands the mathematics a little better.

A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected NASA's estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, a German newspaper reported Tuesday, after spotting the boffins had miscalculated.

Nico Marquardt used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam (AIP) to calculate that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth, the Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported.

NASA had previously estimated the chances at only 1 in 45,000 but told its sister organisation, the European Space Agency (ESA), that the young whizzkid had got it right.

The schoolboy took into consideration the risk of Apophis running into one or more of the 40,000 satellites orbiting Earth during its path close to the planet on April 13 2029.

Business cycles and chaos.


As we observe the global economy is in what is described by various commentators as in a catastrophic regime.Mathematically this is also correct as the inversion from global growth to global contraction is a velocity inversion ( ie a dissipative phenomena also known as dampening)
(V TO -V)=(T TO-T)

How far the contraction will go at present is not well understood.As we observed in the previous post as the global markets were approaching instability,the derivatives and hedge funds "fueled" the bifurcation by distorting the commodities markets.We can understand this in terms of the inversion of the gamblers paradox also known as the St Petersberg paradox.( for which there are never winners doubling up is financial suicide eg the Nick Leesing syndrome )

In the most recent central bank update I can find the Reserve Bank Governor of New Zealand call this the greatest destruction of wealth ever.

Credit related losses $2 trillion
Equity markets $30 trillion
Housing market $4 trillion
Lost productivity $3 trillion

There may be some distance to fall as some estimates of the derivitives market have been quoting liabilities of 600b us.The Housing prices in the US have fallen further in some areas with now the median price of houses in the US city of Detroit at around 7500 US$.This is around 10 % of the median price of a dwelling in Soweto,

It may be tough to get financing for a new car these days, but in Detroit you can buy a house with a credit card.

The median price of a home sold in Detroit in December was $7,500, according to Realcomp, a listing service.

Not $75,000. Remove a zero—it's seven thousand five hundred dollars, substantially less than the lowest-price car on the new-car market.

This brings us to the problem of ETS,carbon markets etc.As we observe the instability is chaotic and endogonous changes will exasperate that eg

Business Cycles, Bifurcations and Chaos in a Neo-Classical Model with Investment
Dynamics

Stephane Hallegatte, Michael Ghil Patrice Dumas Jean-Charles Hourcade

Abstract

This paper is motivated by the rising interest in assessing the effect of disruptions
in resources and environmental conditions on economic growth. Such an assessment
requires, ultimately, the use of truly integrated models of the climate and economic
systems. For these purposes, we have developed a Non-Equilibrium Dynamic Model
(NEDyM) by introducing investment dynamics and nonequilibrium effects into a
Solow growth model. NEDyM can reproduce various economic regimes, such as
manager- or shareholder-driven economies, and permits one to examine the effects
of disruptions on the economy, given either an assumption of steady-state growth
or an assumption of business cycles with transient disequilibrium. We have applied
NEDyM to an idealized economy that resembles in certain respects the 15-state
European Union in 2001.

The key parameter in NEDyM is investment flexibility. For certain values of this
parameter, the model reproduces classical business cycles with realistic characteristics; in particular, NEDyM captures the cycles' asymmetry, with a longer growth phase and more rapid contraction. The cyclical behavior is due to the investment{profit instability and is constrained by the increase in labor costs and the inertia of production capacity. For somewhat greater investment flexibility, the model exhibits chaotic behavior, because a new constraint intervenes, namely limited investment capacity. The preliminary results presented here show that complex behavior in the economic system may be due entirely, or at least largely, to deterministic, intrinsic factors, even if the economic long-term equilibrium is neo-classical in nature. In the chaotic regime, moreover, slight shocks { such as those due to natural or man-made catastrophes { may lead to significant changes in the economic system.

This paper introduces a modeling framework for macroeconomic growth dynamics
that is motivated by recent attempts to formulate and study \integrated models" of the coupling between natural and socio-economic phenomena. These attempts are driven, at least in part, by public debate about global issues, such as anthropogenic climate change. The challenge is to describe the interfaces between human activities and the functioning of the earth system over the very long term. In this context, economists have used primarily longterm growth models in the Solow tradition, relying on the idea that, over time scales of decades to centuries, the golden-age paradigm is an acceptable metaphor. This approach appears, however, to be increasingly at variance with the nature of the policy debates in the field. Advocates of stringent emission limits are concerned about the cost of damages caused by climate change, while their opponents worry about the cost of greenhouse gas abatement. But balanced growth models that incorporate many sources of flexibility tend to suggest that the damages caused by disruptions of the natural | i.e., physical and biological | planetary systems, as well as the mitigation policies proposed to prevent these disruptions, will entail only \a few percent" of losses in gross domestic product (GDP) over this century (IPCC, 2001). Both categories of activists tend thus to suspect that the figures suggested by current models underestimate either type of costs, since real economies rarely manifest a tendency to steady-state behavior

Hence a Priori to any legislative reactionary response to Climate Mitigation taxation regimes or cap and trade or whatever the dialectics "of the day is" the science of the mathematics must be robust and predictable,of which to date it has not eg Stern.ie it had no predictable qualities.

eg V. G. Gorshkov, A. M. Makarieva, B.-L. Li*

Comprehending environmental and economic sustainability: Comparative analysis
of stability principles in the biosphere and free market economy


Abstract
Using the formalism of Lyapunov potential function it is shown that the stability
principles for biomass in the ecosystem and for employment in economics are
mathematically similar. The ecosystem is found to have a stable and an unstable
stationary state with high (forest) and low (grasslands) biomass, respectively. In
economics, there is a stable stationary state with high employment, which
corresponds to mass production of conventional goods sold at low cost price, and an
unstable stationary state with lower employment, which corresponds to production
of novel goods appearing in the course of technological progress. An additional
stable stationary state is described for economics, the one corresponding to very low
employment in production of life essentials such as energy and raw materials. In this
state the civilization currently pays 10% of global GDP for energy produced by a
negligible minority of the working population (currently ~0.2%) and sold at prices
greatly exceeding the cost price by 40 times. It is shown that economic ownership
over energy sources is equivalent to equating measurable variables of different
dimensions (stores and fluxes), which leads to effective violation of the laws of
energy and matter conservation.


In other words if instability of the energy markets already exists (excessive pricing) and is instrumental in creating a global meltdown,how will an enhanced taxation regime not fail to extend the Economic inversion from years to decades