The Corean Chronicles
The Non-Extrapolated Future
In today's world, everyone predicts the future. We don't think of it in that way, of course, but we do. If you go grocery shopping for special pasta to entertain friends on the coming weekend, you're essentially predicting the future -- that you and they will be there and healthy and will enjoy a pasta dinner. Businesses that plan next year's product line are making predictions about the future. Making contributions to a retirement plan is another form of prediction. In a way, so even is voting for a political candidate. Science fiction writers try to make a living by predicting the future in a fashion that is, hopefully, both intriguing and enjoyable. Economists make their living by trying to predict economic trends.
Most of this kind of prediction is based on extrapolation, on taking existing knowledge and trends and merely extending these trends into the future. Such past-based extrapolation can at times be not only inaccurate, but extremely dangerous, as has been the case with the business and economic types who predicted that good economic times, ever-rising housing and stock prices, and enormous personal deficit financing could continue indefinitely.
Extrapolation can be very effective, if used cautiously, because technology and semi-basic human social patterns normally do not change that quickly, and it's usually years, if not decades, before "new" technology is fully deployed and adopted throughout society. In addition, most changes are either incremental or cosmetic. For example, most western men wear trousers of some sort most of the time, and it's been almost two centuries since trousers replaced breaches and stockings. In industrialized nations, the internal combustion engine powers most surface ground transport and has for almost a century. And in most of the world, women remain largely subject to male control and oversight, and in the rest of it, most men -- and some women -- are resisting further changes in the balance of power between the genders. For all the claims about human adventurism, on balance, we're a conservative species, and that makes biological sense... until or unless or environment changes radically.
The problem with this mental conservatism is that, when the future cannot be accurately predicted on the basis of extrapolation from past experience, most people, including experts, tend to get it wrong. Conservatism and experience have combined in most people so that for years, the majority tended to be skeptical of global warming and the possible speed of climate change. Many still are, even though the latest measurements of arctic ice and glacier melting in Greenland and Antarctica indicate that the "radical" estimates of the effects on the oceans were far too conservative. The same thing happened with last year's financial melt-down. But attempts to predict massive and radical change can be equally wrong. Forty years ago, most "experts" were convinced that space travel would be commonplace -- and yet, it's been something like 37 years since any human being even stood on the Moon. And for all the predictions of an "information singularity" or "spike," it still hasn't occurred.
As both a writer and as an economist, I'd love to be able to predict accurately beyond the extrapolated future, and so would many, many others, but few ever have, successfully, and perhaps, in some ways, that's for the best. Cassandra could prophesy beyond the expected, according to Greek myth and the playwright Aeschylus, but her curse was that no one ever believed her, especially when she warned the Trojans against bringing the wooden horse into Troy.
Most of this kind of prediction is based on extrapolation, on taking existing knowledge and trends and merely extending these trends into the future. Such past-based extrapolation can at times be not only inaccurate, but extremely dangerous, as has been the case with the business and economic types who predicted that good economic times, ever-rising housing and stock prices, and enormous personal deficit financing could continue indefinitely.
Extrapolation can be very effective, if used cautiously, because technology and semi-basic human social patterns normally do not change that quickly, and it's usually years, if not decades, before "new" technology is fully deployed and adopted throughout society. In addition, most changes are either incremental or cosmetic. For example, most western men wear trousers of some sort most of the time, and it's been almost two centuries since trousers replaced breaches and stockings. In industrialized nations, the internal combustion engine powers most surface ground transport and has for almost a century. And in most of the world, women remain largely subject to male control and oversight, and in the rest of it, most men -- and some women -- are resisting further changes in the balance of power between the genders. For all the claims about human adventurism, on balance, we're a conservative species, and that makes biological sense... until or unless or environment changes radically.
The problem with this mental conservatism is that, when the future cannot be accurately predicted on the basis of extrapolation from past experience, most people, including experts, tend to get it wrong. Conservatism and experience have combined in most people so that for years, the majority tended to be skeptical of global warming and the possible speed of climate change. Many still are, even though the latest measurements of arctic ice and glacier melting in Greenland and Antarctica indicate that the "radical" estimates of the effects on the oceans were far too conservative. The same thing happened with last year's financial melt-down. But attempts to predict massive and radical change can be equally wrong. Forty years ago, most "experts" were convinced that space travel would be commonplace -- and yet, it's been something like 37 years since any human being even stood on the Moon. And for all the predictions of an "information singularity" or "spike," it still hasn't occurred.
As both a writer and as an economist, I'd love to be able to predict accurately beyond the extrapolated future, and so would many, many others, but few ever have, successfully, and perhaps, in some ways, that's for the best. Cassandra could prophesy beyond the expected, according to Greek myth and the playwright Aeschylus, but her curse was that no one ever believed her, especially when she warned the Trojans against bringing the wooden horse into Troy.
—L.E. Modesitt,
Jr.: 4/30/2009 02:59:00 PM
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"Conservatism and experience have combined in most people so that for years, the majority tended to be skeptical of global warming and the possible speed of climate change. Many still are, even though the latest measurements of arctic ice and glacier melting in Greenland and Antarctica indicate that the "radical" estimates of the effects on the oceans were far too conservative."
You obviously have been reading the propaganda promulgated by the IPCC and most media, and you have missed the reports stating that Antarctica ice has been increasing steadily for the past 30 years except on the west edge of the continent (which is naturally the area that the pro-warming believers focus upon). You also missed the stories about how much northern ice fluctuates, and that after the winter of 2007-2008, overall ice coverage was greater than average. Everyone seems to forget that the Canadian region known as the Northwest Passage got its name because it had a good chance of being open in the summer. Now, we consider its opening to be evidence of recent, anthropogenic global warming. If it fails to open next summer, does that mean we're in an ice age?
The predictions of global warming and ice cap melting are based on an IPCC "meta-model" that combined two dozen models of global climate (none of which worked) into a model that used climate temperature data from 1970-1989 to predict temperatures from 1990-1999. This meta-model was accurate about mean annual temperatures within two degrees centrigrade for 95% of the model's zones. What the IPCC mentioned as briefly as possible, was that the 5% of poorly predicted zones included the polar regions. In fact, the IPCC meta-model predictions for polar temperatures were off by plus six degrees centrigrade. Since the temperatures and climates of the polar regions, especially Antarctica, are major drivers of global weather, this error makes the overall model nearly worthless. The IPCC knowingly used this flawed model in its projections about global warming and ice cap melting. The few IPCC scientists who objected to this vastly misleading process were quashed and publicly ridiculed.
I could give a long screed about how bad the data is concerning carbon dioxide and global warming, but I won't. I will state that there is no evidence that the greenhouse effects (studied in very limited, closed systems) apply to the open system that is planet earth and its atmosphere. Anyone with a good science or engineering education knows that one cannot assume that what happens in a closed system will happen in an open system. Using carbon dioxide as an example, in an open biological system with gas exchange (respiration), carbon dioxide is an adequate buffer that allows animals to maintain a slightly alkaline environment. In a closed system with no respiration (but with oxygen added to the blood), carbon dioxide is a worthless buffer, and the mammal quickly dies of acidosis.
One could ask, "What motive does the IPCC have for falsely predicting global warming, and why have so many governments and environmental groups accepted this prediction?" The motives should be obvious: increased publicity and influence, increased power over our lives, and the prospect of technology retardation, respectively. No one had ever paid attention to the IPCC until it predicted global warming and planetary disaster. Politicians love increased governmental power (look at what carbon dioxide cap-and-trade will do for politicians's abilities to snag bribes and favors). And many environmentalists are closet Luddites who wish to roll technology back to the stone age (supposedly so we cannot destroy the environment, but actually because they abhor modern technology). Last, I'll mention the role of media, who love global warming for its story value. Telling us that the recent warming was due to a solar energy increase that follows 10-12 year cycles doesn't have the same punch as one hundred foot rises in sea level and farmlands turned into deserts.
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You obviously have been reading the propaganda promulgated by the IPCC and most media, and you have missed the reports stating that Antarctica ice has been increasing steadily for the past 30 years except on the west edge of the continent (which is naturally the area that the pro-warming believers focus upon). You also missed the stories about how much northern ice fluctuates, and that after the winter of 2007-2008, overall ice coverage was greater than average. Everyone seems to forget that the Canadian region known as the Northwest Passage got its name because it had a good chance of being open in the summer. Now, we consider its opening to be evidence of recent, anthropogenic global warming. If it fails to open next summer, does that mean we're in an ice age?
The predictions of global warming and ice cap melting are based on an IPCC "meta-model" that combined two dozen models of global climate (none of which worked) into a model that used climate temperature data from 1970-1989 to predict temperatures from 1990-1999. This meta-model was accurate about mean annual temperatures within two degrees centrigrade for 95% of the model's zones. What the IPCC mentioned as briefly as possible, was that the 5% of poorly predicted zones included the polar regions. In fact, the IPCC meta-model predictions for polar temperatures were off by plus six degrees centrigrade. Since the temperatures and climates of the polar regions, especially Antarctica, are major drivers of global weather, this error makes the overall model nearly worthless. The IPCC knowingly used this flawed model in its projections about global warming and ice cap melting. The few IPCC scientists who objected to this vastly misleading process were quashed and publicly ridiculed.
I could give a long screed about how bad the data is concerning carbon dioxide and global warming, but I won't. I will state that there is no evidence that the greenhouse effects (studied in very limited, closed systems) apply to the open system that is planet earth and its atmosphere. Anyone with a good science or engineering education knows that one cannot assume that what happens in a closed system will happen in an open system. Using carbon dioxide as an example, in an open biological system with gas exchange (respiration), carbon dioxide is an adequate buffer that allows animals to maintain a slightly alkaline environment. In a closed system with no respiration (but with oxygen added to the blood), carbon dioxide is a worthless buffer, and the mammal quickly dies of acidosis.
One could ask, "What motive does the IPCC have for falsely predicting global warming, and why have so many governments and environmental groups accepted this prediction?" The motives should be obvious: increased publicity and influence, increased power over our lives, and the prospect of technology retardation, respectively. No one had ever paid attention to the IPCC until it predicted global warming and planetary disaster. Politicians love increased governmental power (look at what carbon dioxide cap-and-trade will do for politicians's abilities to snag bribes and favors). And many environmentalists are closet Luddites who wish to roll technology back to the stone age (supposedly so we cannot destroy the environment, but actually because they abhor modern technology). Last, I'll mention the role of media, who love global warming for its story value. Telling us that the recent warming was due to a solar energy increase that follows 10-12 year cycles doesn't have the same punch as one hundred foot rises in sea level and farmlands turned into deserts.
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