Global Warming, etc

[Dave Chesmore]

Neil mentioned the overwhelming scientific concensus for global 
warming.  There is an increasing body of scientists who consider this 
is not the case.

My personal view is that the earth system is too poorly understood to 
be able to make good predictions and models.  The existing 
mathematical models on which global temperatures are predicted are 
very crude and have only recently taken into account little things like 
the effects of clouds.  As an engineer, I know it is very difficult to 
provide a complete model of something as simple as a robot arm with 
1 non-linearity.  We don't even know many of the processes so how 
can we say with any confidence at all that the models used are 
remotely similar to reality.  Also, the driving variables (e.g. 
grennhouse gas emissions, not just CO2 but methane, etc) are not 
known and are estimated with very large standard deviations.

Also, I heard recently that the El Nino water current has returned and 
will produce droughts in some areas - how can changes like this be 
modelled?

Anyway, enough of my thoughts - back to entomology!

====================================================
Dr David Chesmore, FRES
Control & Intelligent Systems Engineering Research Group
Dept. of Electronic Engineering
University of Hull, Hull, HU6 7RX
Tel: +482 465062;  Fax: +482 466664
Email:  E.D.Chesmore at E-Eng.Hull.AC.UK
Web page: http://www.hull.ac.uk/php/eepmds/home.htm