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Post by gettingchilly on Apr 7, 2009 21:28:39 GMT
You are too blinkered to see the truth socold.
"socold" "It's like someone saying "the problem with rocket science is thrust vs gravity", which only begs the question - what are they claiming to know that the experts haven't already factored in. "
Ok, I want to launch a rocket into orbit and I claim to be an expert but I've decided that the gravity from the earth has no real effect and of course I'm only talking to non-experts in rocket science, so I will only include the gravity of the moon in my model and they will not notice. Therefore my model looks far more dramatic. My rocket not only goes into orbit, it flies across the solar system at an ever increasing rate and disappears into outer space.
Does this not sound a bit like the 0.03% man made CO2 emissions versus the NASA reported 6% reduction in the solar UV output.
Take some time off and think about what you are saying socold! People are starting to think for themselves. Experts are only as good as their predictions which have all failed miserably.
Tick Tock Tick Tock, that's the remaining time for AGW alarmism ticking away as we write.
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Post by socold on Apr 7, 2009 22:30:17 GMT
Ok, I want to launch a rocket into orbit and I claim to be an expert but I've decided that the gravity from the earth has no real effect and of course I'm only talking to non-experts in rocket science, so I will only include the gravity of the moon in my model and they will not notice. Therefore my model looks far more dramatic. My rocket not only goes into orbit, it flies across the solar system at an ever increasing rate and disappears into outer space. The analogy is flawed because you state this person is only claiming to be an expert and there is only one of them. Imagine instead the suggestion that actual experts in rocket science from different countreis around the world had been deliberately getting it wrong for decades. Does that sound remotely plausible? Doesn't to me. Apply some skepticism to these silly conspiracy theories. Don't selectively apply skepticism only to AGW, selective skepticism isn't really skepticism at all. The physics governing the climate has been developed and modelled over decades by real experts (not claimed experts) worldwide. It would be the most amazing conspiracy ever if all of them were deliberately leaving out physics behind evaporation and latent heat. They aren't leaving either out, but that's another subject really. The issue here is people who make claims that theory shows X when in fact decades of experts have come to the conclusion that theory shows Y. That sounds like a completely different subject in fact.. 9/11 truthers already started doing that in 2001.
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Post by gettingchilly on Apr 7, 2009 22:55:27 GMT
"The analogy is flawed because you state this person is only claiming to be an expert and there is only one of them."
Hmm, so if we can get a few of those claiming to be experts to agree even if thousands disagree, that makes it OK so it must be correct. "Expert" is a very loaded word nowadays, everyone is an "expert" in something, most so called experts are nothing of the sort.
"Imagine instead the suggestion that actual experts in rocket science from different countreis around the world had been deliberately getting it wrong for decades. Does that sound remotely plausible? Doesn't to me."
Well now that depends if these were real scientists making real rockets and pressing the launch button. A failure is pretty hard to hide. Real scientists and real politicians or computer modelers are very different things.
If I claimed to be a rocket scientist and built a rocket I'm not sure how far it would get. On the other hand I've a good physics background, I've spend years designing all sorts of non rocket things so maybe it would fly if I put in a few months of serious internet research, who knows.
On my other other hand, I'm a very good programmer so could make a computer model of a rocket and of course I could tweak that so that it fly every time. Would that make me an expert rocket scientist by default.
The obvious point here is that they would not be deliberately getting it wrong, they would be deliberately getting it absolutely right every time for their particular agenda.
"Apply some skepticism to these silly conspiracy theories"
I apply a lot of skepticism to everything and even bother to reply to things which seem way off the reality track.
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wylie
Level 3 Rank
Posts: 129
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Post by wylie on Apr 7, 2009 23:29:35 GMT
[quote author=socold board=globalwarming thread=546 Ok, I want to launch a rocket into orbit and I claim to be an expert but I've decided that the gravity from the earth has no real effect and of course I'm only talking to non-experts in rocket science, so I will only include the gravity of the moon in my model and they will not notice. Therefore my model looks far more dramatic. My rocket not only goes into orbit, it flies across the solar system at an ever increasing rate and disappears into outer space.
The analogy is flawed because you state this person is only claiming to be an expert and there is only one of them. [/QUOTE]
Socold,
I would like to thank-you for maintaining your "cool" (with civility) in the face of significant argumentation. Civility is important in any debate and you have been an excellent example of this. How can anyone expect to convince anyone else of the justness of their cause by insulting them? Generally, I strongly disagree with your science and I would consider myself strongly in the "anti-AGW" camp and agreeing with Kiwi for example. However, recently, your strong advocacy in favor of the similarity between surface and satellite temperature records (UAH vs. HADCRUT) "won me over" (i.e. I think you were on the mark).
I do have a question for you however. In the face of repeated and eloquent and usually very carefully thought-out opposition to AGW on the behalf of the many who disagree with you here, do you find yourself admitting the possibility (ever so slightly) that they may be correct? I.e. the possibility AGW as caused by CO2 is not a correct theory? If not, what set of circumstances in the Global climate would convince you? If some of the solar scientists, e.g. Landschiedt is correct, we are due for a very cold period (perhaps a little ice age) as caused by a very deep solar minimum. Would a new little ice age in the face of 400ppmv CO2 convince you? If not what other circumstances or data would convince you? By the way, I agree that a "group climate model" would be an interesting exercise.
Thank-you for being consistent and CIVIL (and keeping your cool!).
Ian
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Post by icefisher on Apr 8, 2009 0:10:11 GMT
"Imagine instead the suggestion that actual experts in rocket science from different countreis around the world had been deliberately getting it wrong for decades. Does that sound remotely plausible? Doesn't to me." Hmmm, how about those financial experts that all went broke last year? They were multinational and many of them do have PhDs. Some folks seem to believe that if you have a PhD in science its somehow different. Stock analysts and actuaries can hold their own with anybody. All it takes is to not pay sufficient attention to stuff thats hard to pay adequate attention to. Its human nature. Properly modeling the climate isn't easy and thats why its not being done. We had the ability to properly analyze the mortgage-securities market but it wasn't done because the expense was too high. Now that its politicized it might not be possible either, kind of trying to find an unbiased jury in a sensationalist case. Same deal with financial markets. Folks were amazed at how smooth derivatives made markets run. . . .there were so many positives that even when red flags started going up there was denial. As Greenspan put it, folks are mistaken if they think the problem was a lack of regulation. Fact is regulators aren't good at imagining new problems, what they are good at are regulating known problems. In my view now we are all along for the ride, whereever its headed.
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Post by kiwistonewall on Apr 8, 2009 3:08:41 GMT
Because my wife (like every good wife!) is constantly telling me I'm wrong, I've spent some days researching emission, black bodies, etc to see if I could possibly be wrong... I'm still convinced that the thickness of the atmosphere is the prime cause of the greenhouse effect. This is very good as a backgrounder kr.cs.ait.ac.th/~radok/physics/l12.htmMy argument goes this: The Earth's atmosphere is primarily cooled by radiation. The primary heating is by solar incoming UV and IR (those portions close to visible), and by heat rising from the Earth's surface by convection and in the release of latent heat when water vapour condenses. (This is standard climate textbook stuff, but I'll happily dig up references for any unbelievers) The Earth's thermal radiation is in the far infra red and has very low energy compared to incoming solar energy. (energy proportional to T^4). While greenhouse gases can absorb this energy, it is a tiny fraction of the energy budget used to warm the atmosphere. The atmosphere radiates with a standard black body radiation curve. NOTE: Gases follow the Boltzmann distribution, and gases are close to ideal, and thus generate a true black body spectrum. (The outer solar surface is less dense than the Earth's atmosphere, but also generates a radiation with a black body curve). I am not saying that the atmosphere is a black body, just that the radiation curve emitted from it is in the form of a blackbody curve. Because the atmosphere is not entirely opaque at all IR frequencies, what gets radiated to space is the Earth's black body emission with atmospheric emissions added to it. By a different process, the greenhouse gases have discrete absorption and emission spectra. These narrow spectral lines modify the standard black body curve slightly, but, as I will show, make almost no difference to the actual greenhouse effect. So, the atmosphere, warmed by convection and latent heat, is radiating its black body radiation in all directions. Since it is well known that emissivity=absorptivity (good emitters are equally good absorbers), any increase in greenhouse gases will result in increased radiation out to space. So a non-greenhouse atmosphere will absorb less and radiate less, and a greenhouse atmosphere will absorb more and radiate equally more. It is the atmosphere, as a whole, that provides the greenhouse effect. Which is why Mars, with much more greenhouse gas, way more than enough to compensate for reduced solar energy, is much cooler than Earth, and why Venus, with a thicker atmosphere, is way hotter than Earth. All the arguments about greenhouse gases absorbing more, log relationships, widths of absorption bands is totally irrelevant, since any improvement in absorption will result in more emission, and loss of energy to space. It all cancels out. Increasing greenhouse gases will (ever so slightly) thicken the atmosphere. That will provide a very small increase, but likely not measurable. One could even put forward the argument that, since the atmosphere warms mainly by latent heat & convection, that increasing greenhouse gas might cool the planet. But I think that any changes will be neutral. I've posted previously about two containers of gas, one ofgreenhouse gases, the other non greenhouse gases, separated by a filter transparent to IR. Both at same temperature. Both radiate toward each other - with overall no effect (else one would warm, which can't happen!) Think about what is going on when this happens! I am very happy for anyone to pick holes in my logic, but please read up on your emissions, absorption & thermodynamics first.
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Post by tacoman25 on Apr 8, 2009 4:00:47 GMT
So you are merchandising a model that doesn't do any of these calculations but expect anybody who doesn't buy it to prove it by doing the calculations? What do you do for a living? Sell cars? One thing I do know is that climate models do include evaporation and latent heat. I don't know the physics well enough to provide numbers. I defer to the multitude of models out there of various complexities from simple radiative-convective models to full blown GCMs. My position is simply that the models handle the physics as well as anyone can. So I become very skeptical when someone uses a few basic terms to imply they can calculate the physics better than the theoreticians. It's like someone saying "the problem with rocket science is thrust vs gravity", which only begs the question - what are they claiming to know that the experts haven't already factored in. Common sense and skepticism should ring alarm bells that they probably don't understand it better than the experts to make such a claim. Ie the argument defies common sense. This is really what it boils down to, isn't it? You believe what the current "experts" say, because they are the experts. Nevermind how many times experts have been wrong before (to some degree or another)...let's just say it happens more often than not.
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Post by jorgekafkazar on Apr 8, 2009 5:44:23 GMT
[trimmed] This is very good as a backgrounder kr.cs.ait.ac.th/~radok/physics/l12.htmThe atmosphere radiates with a standard black body radiation curve. NOTE: Gases follow the Boltzmann distribution, and gases are close to ideal, and thus generate a true black body spectrum. [trimmed] Your background link is not the best. it's hard to read, for one thing because of the colored words. Gases are not black bodies. if they were, you couldn't very well see through them, could you? For more information, see: arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
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Post by poitsplace on Apr 8, 2009 6:26:43 GMT
It's like someone saying "the problem with rocket science is thrust vs gravity", which only begs the question - what are they claiming to know that the experts haven't already factored in. Common sense and skepticism should ring alarm bells that they probably don't understand it better than the experts to make such a claim. Ie the argument defies common sense. Actually, what it's a LOT like is putting up a satellite and expecting it to stay up because the height of the atmosphere is more or less constant... ...and then having a solar maximum causing skylab to fall early due to increased drag. That's the kind of rocket science it's like. You can make models fit the limited,recent known conditions because they've got all these "variables" that can be tweaked and no knowledge of the mechanisms. They ASSUME positive feedbacks but it's absurd to think most feedbacks are positive. There is only one "model" that has the correct values...and you live on it. Factoring in all feedbacks and forcings...known or unknown...for a 100ish PPM increase in CO2 we've had EXACTLY as much warming as we have. The "model" doesn't have predictive capability but from what we can tell from past "model" runs (history), CO2 isn't a significant driving force....it's more like a proxy for temperature, or at least it was until we started dumping the stuff into the air. Anyway, since the "model" shows no signs of significant CO2 forcing in its previous runs there is no reason to suspect that CO2 is doing anything substantial now. As such, it would be silly to expect CO2 increases to increase temperatures at even the most recent rate of temperature increase of .5C/century. As a courtesy I'll concede that .5C/century of warming...but only because it's probably just normal warming anyway and therefore within reasonable expectations.
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Post by kiwistonewall on Apr 8, 2009 8:32:10 GMT
I didn't say that Gases are Black bodies. I said that gases DO give off the black body radiation curve. Gases are close to ideal, and give off close to the ideal black body curve (in addition to spectral emission/absorption). The proof is simple: 1. The less dense solar atmosphere gives off a black body radiation curve, as do hot & cold bodies of gas, as does the background of the Universe - each according to its temperature. So the atmosphere radiates a black body curve. Obviously the emissivity is less than 1, but the point is that all emissions and absorptions are equally likely. Go check it out.
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Post by tobyglyn on Apr 8, 2009 8:33:50 GMT
That was a clear and logical post poitsplace - thank-you!
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Post by steve on Apr 8, 2009 12:09:59 GMT
Because my wife (like every good wife!) is constantly telling me I'm wrong, I've spent some days researching emission, black bodies, etc to see if I could possibly be wrong... I'm still convinced that the thickness of the atmosphere is the prime cause of the greenhouse effect. This is very good as a backgrounder kr.cs.ait.ac.th/~radok/physics/l12.htmMy argument goes this: The Earth's atmosphere is primarily cooled by radiation. The primary heating is by solar incoming UV and IR (those portions close to visible), and by heat rising from the Earth's surface by convection and in the release of latent heat when water vapour condenses. (This is standard climate textbook stuff, but I'll happily dig up references for any unbelievers) Sounds reasonable. The heat that rises from the earth's surface is obviously derived from those bits of the solar spectrum that get through the earth's atmosphere and that aren't reflected away by the earth's surface. I don't understand this "very low energy" bit. The earth's thermal radiation should match the incoming absorbed solar radiation, so the energy would be the same. As it is in the far IR, each individual photon will be lower energy, but there will be many more of them. Greenhouse gases (all of them) absorb a large proportion of heat radiated from the earth's surface (about 90%). This is because their spectral lines are actually quite wide. All the spectra of the atmosphere I have seen show spectral lines aligned with CO2 and water vapour. I am still waiting to see an example from you of an observation that shows a black body curve. The earth's surface radiates about 40W/m^2 to space. Atmosphere and cloud emissions are about 195W/m^2. They are not that discrete and narrow. The pressure and temperature of the atmosphere cause the lines to be broadened. The last bit is the wrong conclusion. emissivity=absorptivity in thermal equilibrium. As the atmosphere cools with increasing height, we have warm layers of atmopshere emitting a certain amount of radiation (in proportion to its T^4) below cold layers that emit less radiation. ie. the radiation incident on the colder layer is characteristic of a warmer gas such that we do not have an equilibrium situation. Adding CO2 to this colder layer increases the amount of radiation it absorbs by more than the effect of the increased emissivity. The converse happens in the stratosphere where it gets warmer the higher you go. Here you have cold layers underlying warm layers. Increasing CO2 increases the radiation into space from the higher warmer layers more than can be countered by the the increased emissivity from the lower colder layers. Hence CO2 causes cooling in the stratosphere. The cooler stratosphere was a prediction of AGW theory that was borne out by the later observations. It's an interesting thought experiment with an apparent paradox. But essentially you cannot divorce your experiment from its surroundings. It is easier (for me at least) to conceptualise this with familiar objects. If you have a hot lump of metal next to a hot lump of wood in a cold room, the metal will cool quicker than the wood. But eventually, both will cool to room temperature at which point they are in thermal equilibrium. In your example, the CO2 will cool if there is no radiation keeping it warmer, but equally, the O2 will be cooling albeit at a slower rate. If you surrounded it with a black-body radiation field at the same temperature though, the low radiation of the O2 60MHz line would be balanced by the same amount of 60MHz absorption. The higher radiation of the CO2 15 micron line would be balanced by the same amount of absorption by the CO2 15 micron line. The system will therefore remain in equilibrium.
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Post by steve on Apr 8, 2009 12:25:24 GMT
...I would consider myself strongly in the "anti-AGW" camp and agreeing with Kiwi for example. However, recently, your strong advocacy in favor of the similarity between surface and satellite temperature records (UAH vs. HADCRUT) "won me over" (i.e. I think you were on the mark). May I ask you where precisely you agree with Kiwistonewall, because the following makes a number of points which are not necessarily all related: There are many eloquent arguments against AGW. But they don't all agree with each other. The basic physics of CO2 warming the atmosphere is a no-brainer. Obviously Kiwistonewall disagrees with this, but I have Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen on my side both of whom are "sceptics" and both of whom do serious scientific research into the greenhouse effect per se (eg. in contrast with someone who researches ice cores, ocean temperatures, cloud physics etc.). And I also feel that Kiwistonewall basis some of his arguments on flawed beliefs such as claiming AGW theory says Mars should be warmer, and not quite seeing the wood for the trees with regard to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. On the other hand AGW theory does not disagree with the possibility that changes in the sun could impact our climate (though it says that little of the most recent 50 years warming has much to do with the sun. AGW theory would say that high CO2 would counteract some of the effect of a cooler sun. The cooler climate would not falsify the AGW theory. AGW theory also does not disagree with the possibility that temperature rises this century may (with a fair wind of reduced emissions and climate sensitivity at the lower end) be only 1.5C. Such a rise may have serious impacts on some people or in the very long term, but probably could not be regarded as catastrophic. But if politicians were to *assume* the lower level of prediction despite the equally expected risk of temperature rises at the higher and, probably catastrophic, end (4.5C rise this century), would be for them to abdicate their responsibility.
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Post by poitsplace on Apr 8, 2009 13:23:30 GMT
AGW theory also does not disagree with the possibility that temperature rises this century may (with a fair wind of reduced emissions and climate sensitivity at the lower end) be only 1.5C. Such a rise may have serious impacts on some people or in the very long term, but probably could not be regarded as catastrophic. But if politicians were to *assume* the lower level of prediction despite the equally expected risk of temperature rises at the higher and, probably catastrophic, end (4.5C rise this century), would be for them to abdicate their responsibility. Yeah, they'd be crazy to *assume* that the environment was going to suddenly take off, warming at ONLY twice the observed rate. They should expect that it would be perfectly reasonable for it to take off at up to 9X it's current rates. (see crappy temp graph) www.poitsplace.com/temp/GISprojected.pngI'm sorry...even the low end on the models is questionable at best. The high end is laughable. The high end assumed the ENTIRE warming period (trough to peak) was just the tip of the iceberg and that warming would actually accelerate. It was obviously wrong. Even AGW proponents should be saying the high end projections are wrong, it's an albatross around their necks.
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Post by steve on Apr 8, 2009 13:37:09 GMT
I'm sorry...even the low end on the models is questionable at best. The high end is laughable. The high end assumed the ENTIRE warming period (trough to peak) was just the tip of the iceberg and that warming would actually accelerate. It was obviously wrong. The high end does not "assume" anything about the "entire" warming period. So your point is wrong. You would say that wouldn't you. Unfortunately scientists have to review their results without fear or favour. If one end of their prediction is catastrophic, they would be wrong to alter it to fit with political sensitivities.
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