Here is a short explanation: the total area of the Greenland Ice Sheet is 1.700.000 square kms. The total decrease of the net accumulation area in the last 9 years is only 900 square kilometers. The size of this changing area is 0,05 percent compared to the total area of the ice sheet (0,0005 out 1).

[JR: Fortunately or unfortunately, what stuff "sounds like" to you ain't science.]

Those of us who got our educations earlier were exposed to formal theory construction. One takes the know facts (the data) and combines them into the most plausible story that ties them all together.

Then the theory is tested against newly acquired data. (Hypotheses are formed based on the theory and tested.) If/when the theory fails to explain/predict that new data the theory is revised/discarded to get a better fitting story.

Now with computers our theories, our models, can be more complex, we can include more data, and we can much more quickly test new versions.

With models, just like theories, we have to predict with the data we have. Not with the data we wish we had. Nor with the data that we should have but don’t know enough to wish for….

There never was any question that the models would not succeed in predicting what would happen. I’m starting from a perspective in 1988. They were called “dim crystal balls” then by the best modellers that there were, and the best of the modellers know somewhere in their heart that that’s what they are now. Nevertheless, the theory of climate change was solid enough to act decisively in 1988, and it is far more solid now. Models became prominent in the debate because society generally didn’t understand the limitations of computers, or even what they were. Models played a decisive role in the collapse of Wall Street: Moody’s model didn’t have a way to input the possibility that house prices could ever decline.

The fact that solid evidence of climate change is upon us far sooner than the models predicted is in line with the history of changes in the atmosphere, i.e. ozone depletion. The computer models for ozone all showed, pre 1987, that ozone depletion was about a generation away. The models predicted there should be no observable effects so far, and that was about what was observed. A lot of observations existed that didn’t fit into what the models predicted, but these were dismissed as anomalies.

Enter the discovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica. NASA had actually had a satellite observing the ozone hole for years, but no one had realized it, because the models had convinced everyone that an ozone loss that great could not occur, so although the data was archived, the analysis computer was programmed to reject observations that low as impossible. A ground observer knew the hole was there, but he hesitated to publish and risk his career in case he was mistaken, for years, because of his faith in NASA. Well then he published. NASA dug up the archive and reprogrammed their analysis computer. Suddenly the observations that didn’t fit into the models seemed obvious.

The models were all missing one tiny detail. No one had considered that there might be ice crystals in the stratosphere. If there is ice in the stratosphere, as over Antarctica, given the ozone depleting substances known to have accumulated in the atmosphere, the ozone disappears. If there is no ice, the ozone stays right where it is. Early explorers of Antarctica had noticed very high clouds seen nowhere else on Earth. These would have tipped off the modellers, but they weren’t exploring Antarctica.

The point is that any model can only amplify and illustrate what is known. The history of every science is continual discovery of new facts. Therefore, duh, it seems impossible for a model to accurately predict the future given that no experiment has been conducted on so much as one other planet along the lines of the giant experiment with this one that is underway.

There is a great danger in using models. They lulled everyone to sleep over ozone depletion. We were lucky we didn’t wake up one day and find out the mistake was that a global depletion was staring us in the face instead of the mere continental sized, one half thickness of ozone that occurred over Antarctica. Before the ozone layer evolved, life on Earth was restricted to living some feet below the surface of the sea, as the radiation that ozone protects life from is 100 times stronger than reaches the surface of an Earth protected by ozone. The tiny bit that gets in is what eats up everything exposed to sunlight, like your roof. Most people understand the power of the Sun in terms of how fast you can get sunburn. Imagine a power 100 times as strong as that.

I’m glad the Arctic melting is happening. At last there is something incontrovertible (except by Revkin at the NY Times) that can be attributed to global warming, and at last, something is scaring the sh*t out of everyone. I was horrified by the prospect of climate change in 1988. Maybe something can be salvaged yet. There’s no harm giving solutions a try.

And suppose we give coal plants the option to either pay the tax or invest that amount of money into renewables. Wouldn’t they almost all choose to shift their business interests to clean energy?

(I’m assuming that at some point clean energy would be a higher profit enterprise than dirty energy plus a carbon tax. The market for coal produced electricity would drop to a point where they would be better off selling the real estate, salvaging the plant materials and plowing that money into more renewables.)

And if that wasn’t enough we could add some sort of a dollar matching incentive. I’d rather pay them to work with us than have them fight us.

We let the ice in Greenland fall to the sea without extracting its potential energy because we don’t have a method to do so.

As was suggested before, why don’t you spend some time and work out a solution?

If you’re short of time you might save some by not posting this same question over and over on the web….

Yes it would.

If a coal company said they would stop putting capital expenditures in coal and switching to investing in wind, solar, or efficiency, I would vote to support that.

“We’ll know we’re on track when we hear a coal or oil CEO saying, “I was wrong. Now what can I do to ease myself out of business (and into clean energy)?”

Would we make progress faster if we figured out a way to help these guys move their capital to clean energy production?

Speed is worth something to us. Might it be in our best interest to pay to speed things up?

Sometimes it all gets overwhelming, particularly with all the bad climate news this week, compounded with even the DJ’s on the local classic rock station joking about snow in Vegas and “where’s Al Gore now?”

I apologize for the excess despair, and I hope the optimists are right and my gut is wrong. We have to play the hand we are dealt, and I will keep trying to do my part to reduce carbon emissions both in my home and in my community. My Anishinaabe and Norse ancestors would keep fighting in the face of daunting odds, and in that spirit I must keep fighting on.