Climate Change: is it? Part 1.

Despite the huge amount of funds, science and political/social movements, there are still so called 'climate deniers' around; probably the most famous of whom is Jeremy Clarkson. There skepticism was pushed under the carpet by many, until last years 'climategate scandal' when University of East Anglia emails were hacked and leaked on the internet. Not so bad, until it was found these emails showed that data used in papers that predict some aspects of climate change and in turn used to push government and organistaional policy and spending were of poor standard, used questionable methods and were stored in an unorganised way. This scandal has got climate scientists quaking in their boots as organisations, mostly US, employ people to meticulously look through climate research and try to unroot and disprove it.

Standards of climate research through data collections, simulations and interepatations has obviously had to increase and many of those working in the area have had to be more careful in what they both say and write to avoid being put in a compromising position or being taken the wrong way.

Climate is defined as the average weather conditions for a region over a reasonable time period. Hardly a robust at all. But it is easy to see that skeptics with logical arguements are not argueing that climate does not change- because invariablly it does;  it doesn't take a human lifetime to see one winter is different to the next.  Rather they are more concerned with the qualitative and quantitive results about future climate predictions - especially with the well known unreliability of weather predictions (though they are usually fairly accurate most of the time!) and whether human life and its activities are a big enough force to change the course of nature itself.

So what makes this area so controversial? Two major reasons I think:

1. Price - To revert anthropogenic climate change as models predict will require a lot of money and policy change and is time, money, effort best spent in this area?

"oh hard times,
for the prize, yes the prize,
i thought i knew
oh it's the price we gotta pay
and all the games we gotta play
makes me wonder if it's worth it to carry on" The Price by Twisted Sister.

"There are no solutions...there are only tradeoffs" Thomas Sowell, Economist.

2. Complexity - Earth Systems Science isn't easy, especially when it's spatio-temporal bounds are large (variations over time and space differ widely).

To put it simply:

"You never really know what you can't really see" Relief by Cold War Kids.

Or the more complex version:

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know." Donald Rumsfeld, previous US Defense Secretary.