We watched An Inconvenient Truth for the first time about a month ago. I thought it was a really good movie. I've always admired Al Gore (and I voted for him in 2000, I'm not ashamed to say).
I can't imagine how much it must have hurt to have won the popular vote but lost the election. But I was really glad to see that Al Gore has bounced back, and found his calling in spreading the word about global warming. It's something he's obviously passionate about and that he loves to share. It warmed my sentimental heart to see him doing something so wonderful. (My inner mom wants to give him a hug and kiss the top of his head, and tell him how proud I am. Something tells me that the Secret Service wouldn't let me close enough to do the deed, though.)
If you haven't yet seen An Inconvenient Truth, I'd encourage you to do so. Global climate change is an incontrovertible fact. I know a lot of folks who work in the climate modeling area, and their only agenda is to find out the truth. Nobody wants climate change, but the evidence and the models are a smoking gun. The people who model the climate use the same sorts of numerical methods that are used to model cars, airplane wings, and even our nuclear stockpile. Anyone who flies on a plane or drives a car should put as much faith in climate models as they do in finite element models of cars and airplanes.
One interesting aspect of these climate models is that they're modeling a dynamical system, meaning that a lot of effects are not linear. In other words, small perturbations can result in large changes in the system. So they start the climate models with slightly different sets of initial conditions, and run them and come up with a range of possible outcomes. That's why the predictions give a range instead of an exact value at the end.
Climate modeling takes up lots and lots of time on the supercomputers. They regularly run on thousands of processors for days at a time. As the supercomputers have gotten more powerful, they have refined the scale and added more elements to their models. It's really fascinating work, although it's not something I've ever been involved in. But the climate models could always use some load balancing, I'm sure, so maybe I could help them with that at some point!
New Science magazine has an interesting feature on climate change available online. If my meandering stream-of-consciousness discussion of Al Gore and the strange maternal pride I feel for him, climate change, and computer modeling hasn't convinced you (and why would it?), then I encourage you to check their article out.
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It seems like there is always a lot of argument as to whether humans are responsible for the warming trend or not. Can somebody explain to me why that should matter? The warming will eventually cause catastrophic damages to the global ecosystem, resulting in the death of untold numbers of people. Will it make the dead feel better that we say it wasn't our fault? The other potential culprits won't be able to care less. The sunspots will go on flaring quite happily after we're gone. The Earth herself will probably be better off without us. The only force that can protect humanity is ourselves. Anything we can do, no matter how small will help stem the tide, and it is absolutely irresponsible to wait until we are certain who or what is to blame.
Did you see the article yesterday about how the rate of CO2 increase since 2000 is actually higher than even that predicted in the UN's worst-case scenarios? (Followed by "US Tries to Prevent G8 Climate Plan" or some such headline.) My husband and I had a nice little discussion about Why I Am Suffering From Existential Despair after that one.
The Canadian gov't is mad a Al Gore for calling their emissions-reduction plan a farce, but he's totally right. It's funny (or maybe it isn't) Canadians as a whole seem to favor green policies, but our current batch of elected leaders don't (and the previous government was just as bad).
Hopefully that can change at the next elections. But maybe my impression of how "green" your average Canadian is is skewed by living out here where all the hippies are...
We saw An Inconvenient Truth some time ago, which I enjoyed very much. I think he (AG) does a good job of making the case. Though I follow and teach about climate change to non-science majors, my husband is a social scientist, so he does not. He was deeply affected by the movie. He was depressed for days. His father, in turn, was similarly disheartened. Some cousins of ours bought a hybrid the very next week, citing the movie as the reason. My Aunt even felt guilty about driving her SUV - at least for a while. I'm pleased it is so persuasive. Unfortunately, I am not hopeful society will get serious about climate change until it is too late.
I think the non-human caused warming folks just want to claim "natural variability" - thus concluding we don't need to do anything and everything will just cycle back on its own. It is often the case that these same people, it seems, don't trust any scientific models......
Since you are an applied mathematician with an interest in climate change, I thought you might enjoy a recent article on how climate models are made. Unfortunately, it seems as though I'm not allowed to post links here (I know, there's lots of blog spam with links). Google MathTrek and climate model, and it'll come up.
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