Global Cooling and Global Warming

GLOBAL COOLING

... GLOBAL WARMING

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The Climate Dice and the Butterfly

THE CLIMATE DICE AND THE BUTTERFLY

Sunset from a cruise ship near Albany, Western Australia Photo: John Maunder

" If you wait until the wind and the weather are just right, you will never sow anything and never harvest anything." Ecclesiastes 11:4

"The Uncertainty Business: Risks and Opportunties in Weather and Climate" by W. J. Maunder, Methuen, London, 1986

Sunset from Tauranga , New Zealand. Photo: John Maunder

"Everything is appropriate in its own time. ... even so, man cannot see the whole scope of God's work from

beginning to end". Ecclesiastes 3:11

Milford Sound (New Zealand) after rain taken from a cruise ship. Photo: John Maunder

Weather dice are on the cover of my book (shown above) published in 1986. The cover, which has two dice on a "monopoly board", with various weather symbols on each side of the dice, was to represent the reality that most if not all of the weather (and most of the climate) is ultimately related to how the weather dice fall.

Who or what controls the fall of the weather dice is the ultimate question for all meteorologists and climate scientists, including how much the activities of people are loading the climate dice; but if the "butterfly effect" (see below) is correct, we have to continue to learn to live with, and adapt to, whatever the weather and the climate provides.

Q1 The highest building in the Southern Hemisphere, Surfers Paradise, Australia. Photo: John Maunder

* Professor Edward Lorenz (1917-2008) was a meteorologist who worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, who in 1972 presented an academic paper entitled " Predictability: Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?" This paper resulted in the development of "chaos theory" or simply "the butterfly effect" which among other things endeavours to explain why it it is so hard to make good weather forecasts beyond about 10 days, and has implications for making good climate forecasts, particularly when considering the natural causes of climate change." For further details see http://www.answers.com/topic/Edward-Norton-Lorenz.

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The information given on the web pages listed below is provided by Dr John Maunder, President of the Commission for Climatology of the World Meteorological Organization from 1989 to 1997, who over the last 60 years has been involved in the "weather business" in various countries, including New Zealand, Australia, Canada, US, Ireland, Switzerland, and the UK , through activities in national weather services, universities and international organizations, and publications including four books : "The Value of the Weather" (1970), "The Uncertainty Business - Risks and Opportunties in Weather and Climate" (1986), "The Human Impact of Climate Uncertainty - Weather Information, Economic Planning, and Business Management " (1989), and the "Dictionary of Global Climate Change" (1994). The information is prepared so as to provide a "need to know" background on weather and climate matters, climate change, and "global warming" with the aim to promote a better understanding of these matters.

The city and the sea... Surfers Paradise, Queensland, Australia Photo: John Maunder

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For my web site which gives links to all my weather/climate related web sites just click on:

https://sites.google.com/site/climaterisksandbenefits/

Updated: June 21.2015