Misunderstandings
One lesson of blogging (and life) is that little imprecisions of language can lead to big misunderstandings. My earlier post on the so called "butterfly effect" links to some other blogs disputing the same points, especially Colorado State Professor Roger Pielke Sr's climate blog. Pielke says in one post:
After sleeping on it, I now think I see what he means (not that I accept the way he says it). Net momentum of the atmosphere with respect to the Earth is zero. We know that, because the atmosphere stays attached! Consequently, any local momentum of a parcel of air is matched by equal and opposite momentum other places. Turn off the Sun and the various momenta become well mixed, driving the local momentum to zero everywhere. Net momentum doesn't change, but any give parcel of air exchanges momentum with other parcels, which, on average are opposite in direction (because the net momentum is zero!) and the opposite vectors tend to cancel.
Turbulent energy is composed of momentum! Since turbulent energy dissipates into heat, so will momentum. Turn the Sun off, even in a climate model, and watch the momentum go to zero after a period of time.That's a big red flag to any physicist. Momentum conservation is just about as sacred a principle as you can find in physics.
After sleeping on it, I now think I see what he means (not that I accept the way he says it). Net momentum of the atmosphere with respect to the Earth is zero. We know that, because the atmosphere stays attached! Consequently, any local momentum of a parcel of air is matched by equal and opposite momentum other places. Turn off the Sun and the various momenta become well mixed, driving the local momentum to zero everywhere. Net momentum doesn't change, but any give parcel of air exchanges momentum with other parcels, which, on average are opposite in direction (because the net momentum is zero!) and the opposite vectors tend to cancel.