Letter to the Editor
Hi there Mr. Revkin (regarding http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/07/science/earth/07climate.html):
I'm Parker Sellers, 25, with a degree in Physics. I live in Los Angeles. There is one very important point on global warming that I never hear in the public media. The point is this:
Our planet's weather is a chaotic system with "local stability". Local does not refer to physical locality, but the conditions and variables that affect the weather. For example, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and the amount of sunlight. When these variables change, the weather patterns change a little, but the system is still chaotic, and it still generally has the same patterns as usual. Thats the stability part.
So, when the input is fixed , the output is chaotic with stability within a range. Imagine a library of possible weather patterns that seem to be be picked randomly. When the input is changed slightly, that library of possibilities changes. When the input is changed dramatically, the system will lose stability. That could mean desertification or it could mean ice age. Our current conditions would be almost impossible to return to.
Here is a metaphor that will help visualize it. Imagine the earths gravitational pull to the moon were to decrease slightly. The moons orbit would get bigger, and it would look like that of a comet, not a perfect circle. However, if it was decreased enough, the moon would escape earth's pull entirely and be lost forever.
The risk of global warming is not only that everything warms and causes more flooding: its that the conditions change enough to cause devestation, such as another ice age.
Thanks for reading this, please do your best to enlighten the community about this point.
-Parker
I'm Parker Sellers, 25, with a degree in Physics. I live in Los Angeles. There is one very important point on global warming that I never hear in the public media. The point is this:
Our planet's weather is a chaotic system with "local stability". Local does not refer to physical locality, but the conditions and variables that affect the weather. For example, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and the amount of sunlight. When these variables change, the weather patterns change a little, but the system is still chaotic, and it still generally has the same patterns as usual. Thats the stability part.
So, when the input is fixed , the output is chaotic with stability within a range. Imagine a library of possible weather patterns that seem to be be picked randomly. When the input is changed slightly, that library of possibilities changes. When the input is changed dramatically, the system will lose stability. That could mean desertification or it could mean ice age. Our current conditions would be almost impossible to return to.
Here is a metaphor that will help visualize it. Imagine the earths gravitational pull to the moon were to decrease slightly. The moons orbit would get bigger, and it would look like that of a comet, not a perfect circle. However, if it was decreased enough, the moon would escape earth's pull entirely and be lost forever.
The risk of global warming is not only that everything warms and causes more flooding: its that the conditions change enough to cause devestation, such as another ice age.
Thanks for reading this, please do your best to enlighten the community about this point.
-Parker
posted by Parker
on 4/08/2007
