Friday, July 16, 2004

Climatology

Climatology isn't social science but it's in the same league when it comes to quantification. (See previous post.) There's a lot of uncertainty about the events that determine climactic conditions, about the relative importance of those events, and about the appropriate numerical values to assign to them. In spite of protests to the contrary, its likely that climatologists haven't adequately accounted for sunspot activity, which is reaching a 1,000-year high, the effects of activity in Earth's molten core, and the apparent reversal of Earth's magnetic field.