INJECTING CHAOS--PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL

I was mentally preparing to walk into my school after our three-day Mardi Gras holiday and announce to anyone who would listen that I had been exposed to some legitimate research that shows that CO2 has no influence on global climate change.

After all, some have concluded that this is what the scientists found whose study is summarized in ScienceDaily (linked below). I went to the linked article. It says nothing about CO2. I then sought out Anastasios Tsonis, the lead investigator, by going to his Webpage and looking at his articles there. He is a mathematical climate scientist who studies climate cycles statistics and chaos (and refers to global warming as a fact). There is nothing there about CO2 not being a factor. He mentions nothing about external inputs to the system, except to conclude in one of his articles--quote: "Global warming has resulted in an increase in randomness in the system"--that as the climate warms, there is greater random, instead of synchronized, chaos in the system. This is hardly a denunciation of anthropogenic global climate change.

If you click on this link http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070801175711.htm,
it takes you to the ScienceDaily Webpage which summarizes the Tsonis et al. article. Notice that in the left margin, under "References," there is a link titled, "Consensus of scientists regarding global warming." This might be interesting to you, as it shows there is a consensus.

Again, in order to understand our current situation and not inject any personal bias into my teaching, I have sought out research that supposedly debunks current views about global climate change. The Tsonis et al. article is legitimate research by lgitimate researchers. It does not do what some claim it does. They have made a conclusion that the researchers themselves have not done.

I'll return to school in a few days and again feel justified in siding with what nearly all climate scientists say: Human-caused inputs to the system are wreaking havoc (increasing randomness) to the system. It's going to become interesting in the coming years. I'll keep an eye on science to see what it says.

I'm forming a social theory which says that as the Planet's normal physical cycles become more disrupted from outside inputs (read anthropogenicity), there will occur concomitant social disruption, including to civic culture, part of which includes valuing the only experts we have on climate--real climate scientists. In the meantime, we will have to expect and contend with those who externally inject random chaos into the public's views on global climate change.