02 November 2023

That Pesky Exponent - part the third

Once again, into the maths. Here's a new paper which contends that climate change, aka global warming, is proceeding faster than previously predicted. Why should anyone be surprised? As Dr. McElhone often opined, "the world is not linear." No, it isn't.
The planet is on track to heat up at a much faster rate than scientists have previously predicted, meaning a key global warming threshold could be breached this decade, according to a new study co-authored by James Hansen — the US scientist widely credited with being the first to publicly sound the alarm on the climate crisis in the 1980s.
If you read the whole enchilada, you'll find some who disagree, but assuming that natural processes are linear is almost always a mistake. Just look at the world population graph. Ain't no straight line to be seen. Well, at least when it matters. That's the cruelty on non-linear processes: they look straight-line early-on, but eventually drop their Romulan cloak long after you're convinced that life goes on ever so incrementally, and to quote Ralph Kramden, "To the Moon Alice, to the Moon!" .

The Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts claim all this is woke nonsense and that Mother Earth is merely 6,000 years old and early man frolicked with Dino and cousins. And that God promised never to destroy mankind. Yeah, right.

No comments: