Global Warming and Climate Change

These posts are my take on issues related to the science of climate change and global warming.  I have M. S. and B. S. degrees in meteorology, worked as a meteorologist for over 40 years, was certified as a consulting meteorologist and worked on relevant projects that give me sufficient background to have credible arguments.  Note that these posts concentrate on the science of whether there is a problem.  Posts on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative are in a separate category.

Esteemed climate scientist Richard Lindzen concluded a presentation (here) with this description of the climate system:

I haven’t spent much time on the details of the science, but there is one thing that should spark skepticism in any intelligent reader. The system we are looking at consists in two turbulent fluids interacting with each other. They are on a rotating planet that is differentially heated by the sun. A vital constituent of the atmospheric component is water in the liquid, solid and vapor phases, and the changes in phase have vast energetic ramifications. The energy budget of this system involves the absorption and reemission of about 200 watts per square meter. Doubling CO2 involves a 2% perturbation to this budget. So do minor changes in clouds and other features, and such changes are common. In this complex multifactor system, what is the likelihood of the climate (which, itself, consists in many variables and not just globally averaged temperature anomaly) is controlled by this 2% perturbation in a single variable? Believing this is pretty close to believing in magic. Instead, you are told that it is believing in ‘science.’ Such a claim should be a tip-off that something is amiss. After all, science is a mode of inquiry rather than a belief structure.

Posts