On Tue, 24 May 2005 19:03:34 GMT, "Coby Beck"
"James Annan" wrote in message
Anyway, I'm not sure it's really such a great analogy. Summer v winter
is more directly applicable, cos they really are the average of lots of
chaotic weather under slowly changing patterns of radiative forcings.

Two problems for me with using summer and winter to make the general point
about short term chaotic behaviour and long term patterns. First, it is not
really an analogy about climate and weather, it is the very issue at hand.
Analogies work by putting an aspect of the unfamiliar into a familiar
context. Second, the cycle of summer-winter can be thought of as a steady
state, cettainly it is not a pattern that will be affected by global warming
(at least not in a broad sense). I think it does not successfully isolate
the easiest way to debunk the classic "you don't know if it will rain
tomorrow, how can you tell it will be warmer in 100 yrs".

Climate is per definition average weather, so there are two operators
in that classic, one, how can you predict average weather, when you
cannot predict isolated instances of weather, and two, how can you
predict the average result of some forcing which influences the
weather, when you cannot predict what will result from that forcing
on any particular day. I'd say the cyclical annual change in
insolation over the seasons should demonstrate quite well, that one
can indeed predict the former rather more reliably than the latter.