Political aspect of climate change
A new research paper came out recently, by a father-son team of independent PhD physicists — Michael and Ronan Connolly — from Dublin, Ireland. They analyzed 80 years worth of data encompassing 20 million sets of records, including weather balloon data that encompassed different atmospheric layers. Using a particular equation — molar density against pressure divided by temperature — they discovered that all layers of the atmosphere are in thermodynamic equilibrium. They were so surprised that at first they thought they’d made an error. When they checked it for confidence (R-squared), it came out to .9997, meaning very high confidence, since highest possible confidence is 1. This means this study is replicable and other scientists can replicate the findings doing the same thing.
So why was this so surprising, you may ask? Well, the hypothesis that carbon dioxide is currently causing extra warming would mean that the atmospheric layers would NOT be in thermodynamic equilibrium due to trapping extra heat.
Ronan Connolly and his father both identify as left wing environmentalists, and he noticed that when he was doing research into climate science that his results were not lining up with with what “his side” (the left) was claiming about climate. A university had invited the pair to speak, but then some individuals leveled threats of violence against the university. The university responded by telling the Connollys that they had to purchase insurance in order to come and speak, and then said that they needed additional personal insurance in order to come and speak, when it was far too late to purchase it. When Ronan discovered this political aspect of climate science, he said, “Surely this should be about SCIENCE.”
April J. Gibson
Duncan