farmdoc's blog post number 474

A major side-effect of the recent and ongoing information explosion is super-specialisation. For example, these days a shoulder problem’s best treated by an orthopaedic surgeon whose practice is confined to shoulder problems. At least not yet – to my knowledge at least – does any shoulder surgeon specialise in either the right or left shoulder. Because of the information explosion, it’s impossible for a non specialist in any field to keep up-to-date in that field. And so regarding the existence and severity of global warming and climate change, though I read books written for the general public, I rely on the consensus of specialist climate scientists. Their consensus is that global warming and climate change do exist, they’re man-made, and they’re severe – indeed at the high end of the severity range. One of my medical axioms is that nobody’s illness or injury improves in a straight line. Rather there are ups and down with a (moving average) trend line of improvement. Which I think explains the latest junk science espoused by Senator Fielding, and shown on this graph whose time scale dates only from 1995. Al Gore didn’t meet with him [1] – properly I think, because Mr Gore was on a hiding to nothing. You can’t hold a rational discussion with an ignoramus. Meanwhile Mole Creek’s has its wettest July in 25 years, and in Liawenee – Tasmania’s coldest place – July’s been colder than usual [2]. I’ll bet Senator Fielding’s drooling over these statistics.