Post
by Sua Sponte » Thu Dec 27, 2018 8:06 pm
Not interested in getting into this argument. Hell, I don't even know where you guys get the time to write all this.
Nonlinear fluid dynamics is not my area of expertise. I do have enough experience with it, I'm guessing more than anybody on here, and its modeling to have a good sense of its utility and limitations. I also personally know some of the folks involved in the highest levels of this work. Not a noteworthy resume but enough to make some general observations.
The equations are well known. The primary governing equations are Navier-Stokes. It's a nonlinear partial differential, making it very sensitive to initial and boundary conditions. The same equation is used for modeling fluid flow in seemingly such disparate areas as fluid (air) flow over an aircraft design or the dynamics in a chemical reactor. The important thing to note is all these areas of study are heavily supported by empirical work. You'd be a fool to climb into an airplane designed solely from a model without there being extensive wind tunnel work. It's because the nonlinear properties of the equations make exact solutions highly elusive. Further, the solutions are developed by brute force calculation, no closed form solution exists for all but trivial, pedantic problems.
Two points here. You need the empiricism to pin the model and even that pinned model can diverge . This observations can be in a laboratory experiment or, as is the case with the climate, direct observation of the object under study. Next, in spite of this inability of the model to predict the evolution of the system over all time, for all forcing functions and boundary conditions does not render its predictions useless or unhelpful. If you require a 100% predictive model then don't get on an airplane. There's no guarantee it will fly or stay up if it does.
That said, anybody who tries to tell you the models can predict the exact amount of ice melting, ocean temperatures or levels, especially 50 years from now, is blowing sunshine up your ass. BUT, the inclusion of anthropological CO2 sources sure does drive those models to better predictions. We can include other things, like variations in sun intensities, wherein there's evidence of temperature rise in other planetary systems, but they don't come near as close as those human-driven forcing functions. We don't need exactitude to gain insight from the model.
Given all that, good sense says effort should be expended in minimizing those CO2 sources. There are ways of so doing that don't turn economies on their collective ears and require research that has the possibility of yielding other dividends in technology as do most such large research efforts. The only exception to such thinking is if there are reasons to believe that the suggested methods of minimizing CO2 production could result in doing harm to the climate rather than good. I'm not aware of any.
..." To each his own. 
You too my Russo-Afro-Australasian fren!
