Since Willis wrote it, it is obviously worth reading. Also, it goes with my recent comments on perspective. 33 years is a long time in our world, in our lives. It is amazing to think how far computers have advanced in my life time. It is discouraging that software stays ahead of the computing power. (My poor eight year old machine can hardly load typical web pages anymore.) So, I post a bit of perspective with regard to human understanding of the atmosphere of our planet. The bottom line is we may not even have started thinking about it properly yet. I do think we under estimate the effects associated with living organisms. Yet our pride makes us over estimate the effects we humans have, and we tend to grossly over estimate how much effect we can determine to have.

Watts Up With That?

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

Under the radar, and un-noticed by many climate scientists, there was a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), commissioned by the US Government, regarding climate change. Here is the remit under which they were supposed to operate:

Specifically, our charge was

1. To identify the principal premises on which our current understanding of the question [of the climate effects of CO2] is based,

2. To assess quantitatively the adequacy and uncertainty of our knowledge of these factors and processes, and

3. To summarize in concise and objective terms our best present understanding of the carbon dioxide/climate issue for the benefit of policymakers.

Now, that all sounds quite reasonable. In fact, if we knew the answers to those questions, we’d be a long ways ahead of where we are now.

Figure 1. The new Cray supercomputer called “Gaea”, which was recently installed at…

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