Re: [Phys-l] Climate skeptic convinced by data. Was: Re: Mike Mann _The hockey stick and the climate wars_

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

On 02/18/2012 10:00 AM, Hugh Haskell wrote a whole bunch of stuff
that I agree with.

I'm sorry to pick out one sentence that I don't entirely agree
with, but here goes:

>  it is probable that at least much of the 
> change can be mitigated by increasing the earth's albedo, which is a 
> bit of geoengineering that we can do and probably can control.

The "control" part is still open to question.

As Mike Mann and others have pointed out, when it comes to
geoengineering "the law of unintended consequences reigns 
supreme".

In particular, we ought not frame the problem in terms of
"the earth" and "the earth's albedo" ... because there are
lots of ways in which geoengineering could make one /region/
better while making another /region/ worse.  To say the same
thing another way, an intervention that makes the earth's
_mean_ temperature excursion smaller could well make the
earth's _RMS_ temperature excursion larger, by increasing
region-to-region variations.

This is where the rubber meets the as-yet-unfinished road.
The existing climate models don't explain regional variations
particularly well.

Maybe we can figure this out in time ... or maybe not.