“New tool for climate change prediction – broken glass“. What are those crazy scientists up to now? Broken glass predicts climate change? I’m totally with Anthony Watts on this one, those climatologists have gone ’round the bend!

Oh. They’re just making a comparison between how dust and glass fractures, with new implications for the amount of dust in the atmosphere. What the hell was Anthony’s point?

From the article:

Physicists have long known that certain brittle objects, such as glass, rocks, or even atomic nuclei, fracture in predictable patterns. The resulting fragments follow a certain range of sizes, with a predictable distribution of small, medium, and large pieces.

Scientists refer to this type of pattern as scale invariance or self-similarity.

Physicists have devised mathematical formulas for the process by which cracks propagate in predictable ways as a brittle object breaks.

Kok theorized that it would be possible to use these formulas to estimate the range of dust particle sizes. By applying the formulas for fracture patterns of brittle objects to soil measurements, Kok determined the size distribution of emitted dust particles.

To his surprise, the formulas described measurements of dust particle sizes almost exactly.

Anthony finds an example of the thoughtful application of physical theory, and his response is derisive mockery. Now there’s an insight!