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Wednesday 11 April 2012

Met Office starts a new shift?

from clickgreen.org.uk

A paradigm shift that is.

The Met Office has a new study out purporting to link industrial pollution with natural disasters such as drought, flooding and hurricane activity. Climate activists still claim these are linked to CO2-induced climate change, but this piece from ClickGreen says:-

Met Office research suggests industrial air pollution is largely responsible for changes in the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean which are linked to drought, flooding and hurricane activity.

The study is the first to clearly link aerosol 'dirty pollution' and, to a lesser extent, volcanic eruptions to observed 20th century temperature variations in the Atlantic Ocean.


The study seems to be based on a computer model :-

A state-of-the-art Met Office climate model, which simulates the physical processes of the Earth's atmosphere, has reproduced the variations for the first time. It shows a clear link between Atlantic variations and the peaks and troughs in industrial pollution from countries around the Atlantic. Volcanoes also play a smaller role.

The Met Office has form in this area, so such a study is of not necessarily of any scientific interest, but it does suggest a covert policy shift may be occurring within its walls.  

Not that the claim is improbable or anything - volcanoes and atmospheric particulates should have some effect on the climate. It's just that we shouldn't trust the Met Office to work out what. 

5 comments:

James Higham said...

So, from a computer model, with the desired parameters factored in, a prediction is made and a new science is born.

A K Haart said...

James - yes. Computer models have severe limitations which just aren't being acknowledged.

Of course they are so easily tuned towards policy objectives so it's no surprise. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be an over-cynical view.

Yvonne said...

Think computer modelling for climate 'science' is scary: what about medicine? The New Biology: this youtube video is 42mins long, it is seemed to me to be trying to put across a positive message, so why do I find it so disturbing? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjTQD6E3lH4

Woodsy42 said...

The global warming/Co2 scare can be allowed to quietly die now. All the basic mechanisms for background/stealth carbon taxes are in place, it's done its job.

A K Haart said...

Yvonne - I think computer models are a problem, not so much because of what they can do, but what people claim they can do - what their output means. They tell us what our assumptions are.

Woodsy - you may be right, I don't know, but all the more reason to plug away at it.