Climate discussions

All topics of global warming and climate change are currently banned at physicsforums. The policy has been announced, and discussed, at the thread New GW/CC Policy. Those interested can read the policy discussion thread for more on this, although further discussion of the matter is now closed.

I am an enthusiastic and loyal supporter of physicsforums, and will be abiding by the guidelines and policies established by the staff. Greg and his mentor team have done a terrific job with this forum, and I have no wish to undermine that, or undermine their authority or their right to set the forum direction.

I've discussed climate quite a lot here in the past, and I will continue to be active in other topics, most especially in the cosmology forum, and also in anything else that tickles my fancy in all the discussions that go on here.


For the record, however:

Enthusiastic support of a forum and a declaration of unqualified loyalty is not the same as considering a forum to be perfect. Agreeing to abide by policy is not the same as agreeing with policy.

The forum owners prefer that discussion of policy itself take place in the feedback forum only, so I've edited this blog post accordingly, and refer readers to the feedback topic linked above for the discussions that did take place.

Anyhow, as matters stand, my interests in physics are wider than what physicsforums can support. This means I will also be spending some time elsewhere, on discussions I would normally prefer to engage here, were it up to me.

Why climate?

The two areas of physics which I personally find most gripping are cosmology, and climate.

As described at the end of my "Who is sylas?" blog post, I have a longstanding interest in basic science education in fields where, for one reason or another, there are widespread public misconceptions on some topic.

Cosmology has this is in spades. So too does climate.

There is a massive disconnect between the questions about climate that are the focus of popular press and public discussion, and the questions that are the focus of active scientific work. Furthermore, it is a topic of considerable public interest and with major implications for policy makers and for individuals. People are confused, and do not know who to trust.

I have described climate here as a part of physics. Climate is all related to how Earth sheds the energy it receives from the Sun. Energy flows vertically from space down and from the surface up, and also horizontally around the globe, and also the exchange with the ocean heat sink. Pretty much everything that affects climate does so by modulating energy flows; by changing albedo, by altering the transmission of radiant flow through the atmosphere, and by altering the way energy circulates horizontally around the planet through fluid flows in the atmosphere and ocean.

There are, of course, aspects where other sciences like biology and chemistry and geology are important in climate science. Another feature of climate is its great complexity, with many mutually interacting processes. But in my opinion, energy flow stands out as the most critical central organizing principle of climate science. Physics is, by far, the major part of climate science.

A lot of people now are interested in climate as a matter social responsibility or pragmatic urgency. I can see this, but to be honest, this has never been what really gets me motivated and interested.

Both climate and cosmology are fascinating to me in their own right, as science. Both are very active areas of science that are advancing rapidly, with new developments occurring every year and with a host of open problems that are a focus of research.

Questions and answers in science

It seems to me that up until the discussions here were closed, the service offered at PF was unique. Blogs are a dime a dozen. Advocacy sites abound. Freewheeling discussion occurs in many places -- and bogs down into a morass.

Only here have I found a place where there were effective structures in place that did not simply define acceptable answers, but rather gave a way to identify reasonable questions.

Thinking about it now, this would have been a good point to make in my earlier blog article: What is mainstream science? The actual guidelines constrain claims to be backed from the scientific literature. But this effectively meant that it was the open questions that were identified, because these are the ones for which alternative answers are still being actively sought.

Science is driven by questions, not by answers. Science finds answers, and then scientists immediately use them as a stepping stone to open up new vistas of questions they can focus upon.

Engineers and policy makers take and use the answers for their own ends. Science uses the answers to open up more questions; and science is most active when there are open questions with the answers just a bit beyond our reach. This is what makes scientists stretch!

Where now?

I'm currently looking into how best to pursue this side of my interest in physics, now that the physicsforums discussions on climate have closed down. I'd like to find -- or perhaps even establish -- a space within which the kinds of discussions that took place here in the past could occur again. I'll give some kind of pointer when I settle this, for colleagues here who have shared climate discussions with me in the past and who may have an interest.

And I'll still be a regular here, of course. I don't have a lot of readers at this blog, so it is mostly a way for me to think out loud. But if anyone has read this far, do let me know what you think.