The planet is facing a crisis.

No, the planet is not facing any crisis. The ape-descended lifeforms have a problem.

The climate is changing. No surprise. It does that all the time. The Climate Engine is a very complex and complicated system.

Start by differentiating between the two terms:

COMPLICATED: a ball of string left around in the drawer for a

few years comes out as a mass of knots and loops. It is complicated.

But, there is only one piece of string and only two ends. No matter how many knots and loops have to be unravelled, that is all you have: one piece of string. The algorithm for untangling it is quite simple: find one end, follow it, at each knot, relax the knot and feed the end through.

COMPLEX: a whole load of pieces of string is left in a drawer for a few years. It comes out as knotted tangled mess. Yes, it’s complicated, but it is also Complex because there are multiple strings, not all of the same length. If you took a bunch of strings and then plaited or wove them into a sheet or a rope, it would still be complex, but simple because there is a known algorithm for undoing the weave. It gets tricky when you don’t know how many strings are involved and whether there are knots or some other feature involved.

The Climate Engine is complex because there are multiple “strings” involved in its workings:

• The Sun
  • The Sun is evolving and changing.
  • It is probably both a complex and complicated system.
  • It has cycles, which we do not yet fully understand or, probably, even detect at this stage.
  • It is evolving and we think it is evolving in a certain direction from observations of other celestial systems. But we cannot be sure.
  • It is radiating, probably not at a steady rate or on a fixed spectrum.
  • It has an electromagnetic field, probably due to its rotation. It rotates at a varying speed. Everything does, maybe we haven’t noticed that yet.
• External astronomical influences:
  • Cosmic radiation
  • Asteroid encounters. These have happened throughout the planet’s history and we do not know the effect that historic events have had or how long the effects of those encounters last. Do they modify the planet’s behaviour permanently, to what extent, are the effects transient and for what duration?
  • Planetary influences. At the moment we believe we are in a system of nine major planets and the orbit and behaviour of our planet is affected by those of our siblings. We cannot be sure of what  and how much influence this has on the trajectory, the surface behaviour and the internal mechanisms of our planet.
• The Earth itself:
  • Internal construction, systems and mechanisms. We believe that the planet is made up of a surface layer, a mantle and a core. As far as we can tell, the core is very hot and consists of heavy elements that constitute a damn great magnet and a nuclear reactor. But, since nobody’s been there it could be a cosy cocktail lounge where gigantic lizardy things sip margaritas and snigger at Proust and Einstein. If you have a chunk of iron, rotating with the Earth, and moving through an electromagnetic field, you will have an electric motor. That generates heat. If you have a  nuclear reactor, that generates heat as well. I am not saying the reactor is like Sizewell, but if there is heavy material within the core, some will be radioactive and it is decaying and that gives off heat. That heat has to go somewhere and the only place is the surface.
  • Surface configuration and evolution. The more observant will have noticed that on the surface we have dry bits and watery bits, sticky up bits and icy bits. Mountains get smaller. Or bigger. And land masses are moving as the tectonic plates move.
  • Ocean systems and dynamics. The oceans move around carrying heat, biomass, chemicals, dissolved gases and stuff. Because of their extent, their fluid nature, connectiveness, depth variations and how many other factors, they  will have an enormous influence on the behaviour of the planet’s systems. And we don’t have much clue how they work.
  • Atmosphere. This seems to be the bit we get most concerned about. And we have absolutely no idea how it works. By that I mean we can measure, observe, calculate and use supercomputers to come  up with fantastic models that can predict the weather with phenomenal inaccuracy. The predictions amount to saying that if you have a picnic on a busy motorway, it’s going to hurt.
  • Biosphere. Everything that lives or has lived on the planet, animal, plant, microbe, fungus or algae has made and will continue to make a contribution to how the systems of the planet work. We, the living scum on the surface layer, are as much a part of the machinery as the molten core or the hurtling asteroids. And in much the same way, we have no idea what that contribution is.
  • Tilt and wobble. Most people know that that the planet’s axis of spin is not perpendicular to the plane of its orbit. That tilt is the most obvious cause of seasonal variations in climate. The axis of spin changes and precesses as time passes and it also wobbles in other cycles as well. We are not at all sure what the influences for these are, nor the timings and cycles involved.

All in all, working out what is going on is like juggling on a unicycle travelling on a slack wire while the tension is being varied as it whirls around a merry-go-round on a big dipper on the deck of a freighter in a storm.

At the moment, we are in a period of Climate Uncertainty.

To understand what this means you need to take a look at Langton’s Ant.

https://fascinating-thevisitorfromthen.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=270&action=edit

This is a very simple system, it only has very few rules and yet, if you look at the trace, you will see that the ant goes through a period of apparent chaos before finally building a “highway” in a specific direction.

I say “apparent chaos” because it is not chaotic at all. It is rigorously controlled by the initial and unvarying rules.

Now, I’m typing this slowly for the hard of understanding: politicians, climate activists and the like.

If I “seed” just one square within that apparently chaotic region, I have no way of knowing what the overall effect will be.

Put it this way: the overall “gearing” of the system to a stimulus, the seeded square, is extraordinarily high.

The outcome on a “clean” sheet is:

But, if I seed just one square, we get this:

Spooky, innit?

If we apply this to the current climate change “models”, there is a distinct possibility that even a minor input could result in switching from “Southwest to Global Warming”, to “Southeast for Snowball Earth”.

We cannot, literally, bet the farm on our current finger-in-the-wind ideas, we have to cover all eventualities. We need to maintain a strategic capability to prepare for global cooling as well as global warming.

We are nowhere near a degree of certainty that would allow us to discount either outcome. Until then, which is probably longer than either outcome, we need to maintain fossil fuel resources and generating capacity. This will not work on the “mothball it till we need it” model. That has never worked. All you get is outdated inefficient useless industrial archaeological artefacts. The capacity needs to be working to keep pace with technology.

I mention this because Langton’s Ant belongs to a class of system/problem where there is no shortcut, no way of predicting the outcome. Even a valid prediction method would probably take longer to compute than the runtime of the ant. And that is not a joke.

As for the Obesity problem? We’re pretty much in the same position. We have no real idea of the underlying social, economic, emotional and lifestyle pressures that are causing it. Or of the interaction and relative weighting (if you’ll excuse me) of those factors.

The only thing that can be said is, “eat less, don’t die sooner.”

If we develop anti-obesity medication and interventions, all that will happen is that more people will become reliant on them, until we can no longer afford to support them.

We do not know how to analyse and model the present epidemic.

For heaven’s sake, we are just trundling through the exposé of the Covid debacle. Think we can do any better? Me neither.