There was a book review in The New York Times last week by Cornelia Dean which began:
"When coastal engineers decide whether to dredge sand and pump it onto an eroded beach, they use mathematical models to predict how much sand they will need, when and where they must apply it, the rate it will move and how long the project will survive in the face of coastal storms and erosion.
Orrin H. Pilkey, a coastal geologist and emeritus professor at Duke, recommends another approach: just dredge up a lot of sand and dump it on the beach willy-nilly. This “kamikaze engineering” might not last very long, he says, but projects built according to models do not usually last very long either, and at least his approach would not lull anyone into false mathematical certitude.
Now Dr. Pilkey and his daughter Linda Pilkey-Jarvis, a geologist in the Washington State Department of Geology, have expanded this view into an overall attack on the use of computer programs to model nature. Nature is too complex, they say, and depends on too many processes that are poorly understood or little monitored — whether the process is the feedback effects of cloud cover on global warming or the movement of grains of sand on a beach...
Read the complete article entitled 'The Problems in Modeling Nature, With Its Unruly Natural Tendencies'
here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/20/science/20book.html?_r=3&ref=science&a&oref=slogin
You can buy the book entitled 'Useless Arithemetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can’t Predict the Future' at Amazon.com
In this debate, Luke has repeatedly asserted that Ian is stupid. I don't know either of the participants. I've read every comment above, and am satisfied that the discussion above proves Luke's assertion is false, and that he should know it to be false.
I haven't yet followed up all the references given, but certainly the book Jennifer tells us about in this blog entry supports Ian's position.
Well maybe if you read the actual papers you might have found one? Are rabid property rights nutters unable to read?
One other thing that Luke and the Climate Cretins can't get their head around is the fact that while both carbon emission and sequestration will start when temperatures rise above freezing, the actual amounts are miniscule. The damned growing season is only 1 month long so the emitting season is also only 1 month long.
Notice how no-one appears to have provided an estimate of methane/km2/year? That would only spoil the story. And the truth would only set you free.