How Much Worse Can They Get?
Volume 4, Number 44: 31 October 2001
In the 1 February 2001 issue of Geophysical Research Letters, Lorenz et al. (2001) discuss the somewhat arcane concept of maximum entropy (disorder) production, which posits that a system with fixed boundary conditions and adequate degrees of freedom will always maximize its production of entropy. They begin by noting that this principle has been demonstrated to apply latitudinally to earth's real-world climate system by data-driven studies stretching back in time a full quarter-century (Paltridge, 1975; Wyant et al., 1988; Grassl, 1990), and that it has more recently been demonstrated to likewise apply in the vertical (Ohmura and Ozuma, 1997). The planetary scientists then go on to demonstrate, again by means of actual data, that the maximum entropy production principle additionally applies to the climate systems of Mars and Titan (a large moon of Saturn), and suggest that it probably also applies to Venus and may have applicability to planets beyond our solar system as well.
In a popular article describing some of the implications of the study, Lorenz (2001) explains that entropy production is closely related to a system's capacity to do mechanical work, and that in a climate system such as that of the earth, which is driven by the equator-to-pole temperature gradient created by the latitudinally-dependent receipt of solar radiation, both quantities - entropy and mechanical work - peak at about the same heat flow rate along this gradient, which is intermediate between the extremes of low heat flow (which would produce a much hotter equatorial region and much colder polar regions than exist now) and high heat flow (which would lead to nearly the same temperature everywhere).
The upshot of this real-world propensity for the maximization of mechanical work by the planet's complex climate system is that "earth's climate is finely tuned to be as violent as possible," says Lorenz, adding that "it can't get any worse." In more graphic and picturesque terms, he says "it whips up every last raindrop, wave and gust of wind that it can." And in the study that he and his colleagues made of the climate systems of Titan and Mars, it was discovered that the atmospheres of these other-worldly spheres function analogously.
Why this is so, no one knows for sure; but empirical data demonstrate the validity of the maximum entropy production principle wherever it can be validly tested, both on our world and on other worlds. In addition, concepts derived from the field of nonlinear dynamics indicate that this state of affairs, in the words of Lorenz et al., "is natural for complex systems," such as the one that defines earth's climate. Nevertheless, Lorenz reports that "scientists whose careers are built on large, sophisticated computer models are reluctant to believe that such a simple theory can be true."
Sounds familiar, doesn't it? And logical too. There just seems to be a mindset among scientists married to the computer modeling business (and it is a business) that - for whatever reason - their approach to the subject of global change is the only way to correctly foretell our climatic future. And so they continue to deluge us with prediction after prediction about how much worse earth's weather will become in the years ahead, as the air's CO2 concentration continues to climb and the putative "unprecedented" global warming of the last two decades of the 20th century (see our contrary Editorials of 9 August 2000 and 7 March 2001) stretches into the new millennium. And all this, in spite of the abundance of real-world evidence that clearly demonstrates there has been absolutely no increase in the mean global frequency or intensity of any type of extreme weather over the past century or so here on the "home planet" (see the several headings under Weather Extremes in our Subject Index).
Yes, you don't have to travel to Mars or Titan to learn the folly of earth's climate alarmists. But if you could, they'd be proven wrong there as well as here. Maximum entropy production will prevail!
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Dr. Sherwood B. Idso President |
Dr. Keith E. Idso Vice President |
References
Grassl, H. 1990. The climate at maximum entropy production by meridional and atmospheric heat fluxes. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 107: 153-166.
Lorenz, R.D. 2001. Driven to extremes. New Scientist 172 (2311): 38-42.
Lorenz, R.D., Lunine, J.I., Withers, P.G. and McKay, C.P. 2001. Titan, Mars and Earth: Entropy production by latitudinal heat transport. Geophysical Research Letters 28: 415-418.
Ohmura, H. and Ozuma, A. 1997. Thermodynamics of a global-mean state of the atmosphere: A state of maximum entropy increase. Journal of Climate 10: 441-445.
Paltridge, G.W. 1975. Global dynamics and climate change: A system of minimum entropy exchange. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 101: 475-484.
Wyant, P.H., Mongroo, A. and Hammed, S. 1988. Determination of the heat-transport coefficient in energy-balance climate models by extremization of entropy production. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 45: 189-193.