The problems with that view are that the integrated coal and oil contribution is more than 0.01% and as humans we actually care about very small changes - a degree or two on the back of an absolute temperature about 300 or so, depending where on the surface of the planet you care to measure. And considering the average temperature only gets you so far - the slightly un-even nature of the heat distribution is extremely important to us. We need summers that are hotter than winters and a UK that is cooler than the Sahara, as much as we need the gulf stream to flow the right way and the poles to be cooler. If the earth were a billiard ball in space painted in one colour then the uniform view would be more or less right, but it isn't.
I am a physicist by profession, albeit one who pushes electrons about for a living, but I am one who can appreciate a need for a model with fine structure when I see it, even if I am happy to assume that horses are spherical for first approximations.
Mike.
The problems with that view are that the integrated coal and oil contribution is more than 0.01% and as humans we actually care about very small changes - a degree or two on the back of an absolute temperature about 300 or so, depending where on the surface of the planet you care to measure. And considering the average temperature only gets you so far - the slightly un-even nature of the heat distribution is extremely important to us. We need summers that are hotter than winters and a UK that is cooler than the Sahara, as much as we need the gulf stream to flow the right way and the poles to be cooler. If the earth were a billiard ball in space painted in one colour then the uniform view would be more or less right, but it isn't.
I am a physicist by profession, albeit one who pushes electrons about for a living, but I am one who can appreciate a need for a model with fine structure when I see it, even if I am happy to assume that horses are spherical for first approximations.
Mike.
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