Paul Milenkovic schlimm wjstix You're in a car going 60 MPH. A report comes on the radio that due to a huge sinkhole forming, the road you're driving on now ends in a cliff one mile ahead of where you are now. Do you stop or at least slow down now, or wait until you're driving off the cliff? 30 doctors examine you and say you have lung cancer, but you'll be OK if you get treatment now. One doctor says you're fine, don't worry about it. Do you get treatment, or assume the one who says you're OK is the only one who's correct, and do nothing - perhaps until it's too late for treatment? What if the one doctor who says you're fine gets all his funding from the tobacco industry? Might that affect his diagnosis - or how much faith you have in his opinion? If every scientist who isn't funded by the carbon fuel industry says all the scientific evidence (not opinions) indicates that global climate change is real, and is a real threat to all of us, but a threat that can be controlled by reducing pollution, wouldn't it be prudent to lessen our pollution? If all those scientists are wrong, the worst result would be cleaner air and water for our kids and grandkids. On here, as elsewhere, you have a bunch of folks who have zero research expertise making unsupported claims that reject many years of research in the field of climatology. The weapons are to make unsupported claims that climate science is either a vast conspiracy led by China to destroy the US economy, "junk science," a huge hoax or that climatologists worldwide are doing it for grant money. On the latter point there is substantiated evidence of exactly the opposite: oil money (mostly the Kochs) funding anti-climate-science publications, some through the Heartland Foundation. A more accurate analogy of the role of science denialists would be they are driving the bus off the cliff and taking the rest of us and future generations over with them. So Freeman Dyson has zero research experience or was unqualified to do climate work back when he was at one of the "national laboratories"? Has he been bankrolled by Charlie and Dave? Who is denying science? I set out the foundation set by Roger Revelle by which the "carbon cycle" set the scientific community (the IPCC) on the path that half of human emissions appear in the atmosphere, half are absorbed in sinks, half off that half is absorbed into the oceans by mechanisms to which there is reasonable scientific certitude, and the other half-of-the-half is absorbed on land, where the coefficients of absorption are much less well understood but are inferred to supply the remainder of the carbon sink to make the "books balance." So I get told I am talking about an "old paper" and that a person needs to be careful citing Roger Revelle "because deniers." I am talking about the IPCC "consensus", for gosh sakes, and I am served up conspiracy theories. And then I point to the fluctuations in net CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, and yes, only "deniers" and "bus cliff drivers", and "folks with zero research expertise" have pointed out, but those fluctuations are as factual and hard-data as the "Keeling curve" record of atmospheric CO2 measured on a mountain on the big island of Hawaii can be, and all I have seen "respectable climate science" people say about these, if they say anything at all, is the wave their hands at these data. Murry Salby points to these fluctuations and claims that almost none of the increase in CO2 is human-induced. He has ignored the Revelle buffer to come up with that conclusion -- it seems you, and you, and you over there have no idea what a Revelle buffer is, and you probably flunked "P-chem" in college or never attempted to take it. I have taken the Revelle buffer and the compartmentalized ocean model into account, the basis for the current consensus on the anthropogenic (human) contribution to the increase in atmospheric CO2, and I come up with that only about half of that increase is from us and the other half is from a temperature-stimulated natural process. I guessed that it had to be terrestrial soils, and lo-and-behold, a recent article published in Nature claims just such a CO2 emission from soils of just about the right magnitude. But I guess we don't talk science because reading journal papers and book monographs is such hard work, and it is easy to accuse any dissent from one's views as the result of conspiracy theories and Koch Brother funding? And as for the medical treatment analogy, who anymore accepts a doctor's "don't worry your pretty little head" patronizing advice about a major treatment decision? The days where patients accept everything on "higher authority" are long gone, and doctors work with their patients explaining their treatment options and health care providers have long come to accept this reality in the modern patient-practictioner relationship. Cancer treatment? The days of "you have breast cancer and we have to operate -- now, before it spreads" and they take away half your chest and leave a mass of scar tissue are long gone. Patients are offered treatment options, there are tests to assess the relative danger of growth and spread of a cancer, there is much deeper understanding of the underlying disease process. Climate science is at the "your only hope is we operate now" stage of understanding of the climate system, "we will disfigure you, it is for your own good, but we may or may not be able to save your life doing this." Furthermore, it is like any research into "maybe you don't need the radical surgery" and "maybe we can just remove the lump and follow up with radiation and chemotherapy" based on research showing "the radical surgery doesn't do the good we thought it does and removing the lump doesn't have the risk we once thought it was, instead of such research being embraced, it is met with cries of "denier, denier" "bad science, bad science" "who is funding you" "who is funding you" "do you want your patient to die" "do you want your patient to die."
schlimm wjstix You're in a car going 60 MPH. A report comes on the radio that due to a huge sinkhole forming, the road you're driving on now ends in a cliff one mile ahead of where you are now. Do you stop or at least slow down now, or wait until you're driving off the cliff? 30 doctors examine you and say you have lung cancer, but you'll be OK if you get treatment now. One doctor says you're fine, don't worry about it. Do you get treatment, or assume the one who says you're OK is the only one who's correct, and do nothing - perhaps until it's too late for treatment? What if the one doctor who says you're fine gets all his funding from the tobacco industry? Might that affect his diagnosis - or how much faith you have in his opinion? If every scientist who isn't funded by the carbon fuel industry says all the scientific evidence (not opinions) indicates that global climate change is real, and is a real threat to all of us, but a threat that can be controlled by reducing pollution, wouldn't it be prudent to lessen our pollution? If all those scientists are wrong, the worst result would be cleaner air and water for our kids and grandkids. On here, as elsewhere, you have a bunch of folks who have zero research expertise making unsupported claims that reject many years of research in the field of climatology. The weapons are to make unsupported claims that climate science is either a vast conspiracy led by China to destroy the US economy, "junk science," a huge hoax or that climatologists worldwide are doing it for grant money. On the latter point there is substantiated evidence of exactly the opposite: oil money (mostly the Kochs) funding anti-climate-science publications, some through the Heartland Foundation. A more accurate analogy of the role of science denialists would be they are driving the bus off the cliff and taking the rest of us and future generations over with them.
wjstix You're in a car going 60 MPH. A report comes on the radio that due to a huge sinkhole forming, the road you're driving on now ends in a cliff one mile ahead of where you are now. Do you stop or at least slow down now, or wait until you're driving off the cliff? 30 doctors examine you and say you have lung cancer, but you'll be OK if you get treatment now. One doctor says you're fine, don't worry about it. Do you get treatment, or assume the one who says you're OK is the only one who's correct, and do nothing - perhaps until it's too late for treatment? What if the one doctor who says you're fine gets all his funding from the tobacco industry? Might that affect his diagnosis - or how much faith you have in his opinion? If every scientist who isn't funded by the carbon fuel industry says all the scientific evidence (not opinions) indicates that global climate change is real, and is a real threat to all of us, but a threat that can be controlled by reducing pollution, wouldn't it be prudent to lessen our pollution? If all those scientists are wrong, the worst result would be cleaner air and water for our kids and grandkids.
You're in a car going 60 MPH. A report comes on the radio that due to a huge sinkhole forming, the road you're driving on now ends in a cliff one mile ahead of where you are now. Do you stop or at least slow down now, or wait until you're driving off the cliff?
30 doctors examine you and say you have lung cancer, but you'll be OK if you get treatment now. One doctor says you're fine, don't worry about it. Do you get treatment, or assume the one who says you're OK is the only one who's correct, and do nothing - perhaps until it's too late for treatment? What if the one doctor who says you're fine gets all his funding from the tobacco industry? Might that affect his diagnosis - or how much faith you have in his opinion?
If every scientist who isn't funded by the carbon fuel industry says all the scientific evidence (not opinions) indicates that global climate change is real, and is a real threat to all of us, but a threat that can be controlled by reducing pollution, wouldn't it be prudent to lessen our pollution? If all those scientists are wrong, the worst result would be cleaner air and water for our kids and grandkids.
On here, as elsewhere, you have a bunch of folks who have zero research expertise making unsupported claims that reject many years of research in the field of climatology. The weapons are to make unsupported claims that climate science is either a vast conspiracy led by China to destroy the US economy, "junk science," a huge hoax or that climatologists worldwide are doing it for grant money. On the latter point there is substantiated evidence of exactly the opposite: oil money (mostly the Kochs) funding anti-climate-science publications, some through the Heartland Foundation.
A more accurate analogy of the role of science denialists would be they are driving the bus off the cliff and taking the rest of us and future generations over with them.
So Freeman Dyson has zero research experience or was unqualified to do climate work back when he was at one of the "national laboratories"? Has he been bankrolled by Charlie and Dave?
Who is denying science? I set out the foundation set by Roger Revelle by which the "carbon cycle" set the scientific community (the IPCC) on the path that half of human emissions appear in the atmosphere, half are absorbed in sinks, half off that half is absorbed into the oceans by mechanisms to which there is reasonable scientific certitude, and the other half-of-the-half is absorbed on land, where the coefficients of absorption are much less well understood but are inferred to supply the remainder of the carbon sink to make the "books balance."
So I get told I am talking about an "old paper" and that a person needs to be careful citing Roger Revelle "because deniers." I am talking about the IPCC "consensus", for gosh sakes, and I am served up conspiracy theories.
And then I point to the fluctuations in net CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, and yes, only "deniers" and "bus cliff drivers", and "folks with zero research expertise" have pointed out, but those fluctuations are as factual and hard-data as the "Keeling curve" record of atmospheric CO2 measured on a mountain on the big island of Hawaii can be, and all I have seen "respectable climate science" people say about these, if they say anything at all, is the wave their hands at these data.
Murry Salby points to these fluctuations and claims that almost none of the increase in CO2 is human-induced. He has ignored the Revelle buffer to come up with that conclusion -- it seems you, and you, and you over there have no idea what a Revelle buffer is, and you probably flunked "P-chem" in college or never attempted to take it.
I have taken the Revelle buffer and the compartmentalized ocean model into account, the basis for the current consensus on the anthropogenic (human) contribution to the increase in atmospheric CO2, and I come up with that only about half of that increase is from us and the other half is from a temperature-stimulated natural process. I guessed that it had to be terrestrial soils, and lo-and-behold, a recent article published in Nature claims just such a CO2 emission from soils of just about the right magnitude.
But I guess we don't talk science because reading journal papers and book monographs is such hard work, and it is easy to accuse any dissent from one's views as the result of conspiracy theories and Koch Brother funding?
And as for the medical treatment analogy, who anymore accepts a doctor's "don't worry your pretty little head" patronizing advice about a major treatment decision? The days where patients accept everything on "higher authority" are long gone, and doctors work with their patients explaining their treatment options and health care providers have long come to accept this reality in the modern patient-practictioner relationship.
Cancer treatment? The days of "you have breast cancer and we have to operate -- now, before it spreads" and they take away half your chest and leave a mass of scar tissue are long gone. Patients are offered treatment options, there are tests to assess the relative danger of growth and spread of a cancer, there is much deeper understanding of the underlying disease process.
Climate science is at the "your only hope is we operate now" stage of understanding of the climate system, "we will disfigure you, it is for your own good, but we may or may not be able to save your life doing this."
Furthermore, it is like any research into "maybe you don't need the radical surgery" and "maybe we can just remove the lump and follow up with radiation and chemotherapy" based on research showing "the radical surgery doesn't do the good we thought it does and removing the lump doesn't have the risk we once thought it was, instead of such research being embraced, it is met with cries of "denier, denier" "bad science, bad science" "who is funding you" "who is funding you" "do you want your patient to die" "do you want your patient to die."
OMG, Carol King's song must have been about you! Everything, no matter how irrelevant or tangential, in your mind revolves about you. That delusional obsession even interferes with your being able to read without distorting what others say. It is pointless for others to respond to your rambling spiels because one can't have a dialogue with someone who seems to challenged to read simple, declarative sentences without your trying to dazzle the crowd with scientist name dropping. There's a term for that. Figure it out.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
Carly Simon
schlimm OMG, Carol King's song must have been about you! Everything, no matter how irrelevant or tangential, in your mind revolves about you. That delusional obsession even interferes with your being able to read without distorting what others say. It is pointless for others to respond to your rambling spiels because one can't have a dialogue with someone who seems to challenged to read simple, declarative sentences without your trying to dazzle the crowd with scientist name dropping. There's a term for that. Figure it out.
I just need to get this straight. I am not included among those "around here and elsewhere" with no research experience who are Climate Change Deniers who want Uncle Harry to die of lung cancer by declining treatment, want to drive a bus off a cliff, and refuse to accept the authority of climate scientists with lifelong contributions to the field?
So when I think those charges are leveled at me, that is my self-obsessed delusion of misreading the meaning of a comment? We are clear on that, that is indeed not about me?
So when I claim that the concern about climate change may not be as dire as previously thought, there isn't any questioning of the science behind what I have explained, so I don't have to "show off" by citing references to back that up?
Just checking, to make sure.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
matthewsaggie Carly Simon
And wasn't "that song" about Mick Jagger. Am I like Mick Jagger? Never thought I had that much swagger. Cool!
schlimm Paul Milenkovic schlimm wjstix You're in a car going 60 MPH. A report comes on the radio that due to a huge sinkhole forming, the road you're driving on now ends in a cliff one mile ahead of where you are now. Do you stop or at least slow down now, or wait until you're driving off the cliff? 30 doctors examine you and say you have lung cancer, but you'll be OK if you get treatment now. One doctor says you're fine, don't worry about it. Do you get treatment, or assume the one who says you're OK is the only one who's correct, and do nothing - perhaps until it's too late for treatment? What if the one doctor who says you're fine gets all his funding from the tobacco industry? Might that affect his diagnosis - or how much faith you have in his opinion? If every scientist who isn't funded by the carbon fuel industry says all the scientific evidence (not opinions) indicates that global climate change is real, and is a real threat to all of us, but a threat that can be controlled by reducing pollution, wouldn't it be prudent to lessen our pollution? If all those scientists are wrong, the worst result would be cleaner air and water for our kids and grandkids. On here, as elsewhere, you have a bunch of folks who have zero research expertise making unsupported claims that reject many years of research in the field of climatology. The weapons are to make unsupported claims that climate science is either a vast conspiracy led by China to destroy the US economy, "junk science," a huge hoax or that climatologists worldwide are doing it for grant money. On the latter point there is substantiated evidence of exactly the opposite: oil money (mostly the Kochs) funding anti-climate-science publications, some through the Heartland Foundation. A more accurate analogy of the role of science denialists would be they are driving the bus off the cliff and taking the rest of us and future generations over with them. So Freeman Dyson has zero research experience or was unqualified to do climate work back when he was at one of the "national laboratories"? Has he been bankrolled by Charlie and Dave? Who is denying science? I set out the foundation set by Roger Revelle by which the "carbon cycle" set the scientific community (the IPCC) on the path that half of human emissions appear in the atmosphere, half are absorbed in sinks, half off that half is absorbed into the oceans by mechanisms to which there is reasonable scientific certitude, and the other half-of-the-half is absorbed on land, where the coefficients of absorption are much less well understood but are inferred to supply the remainder of the carbon sink to make the "books balance." So I get told I am talking about an "old paper" and that a person needs to be careful citing Roger Revelle "because deniers." I am talking about the IPCC "consensus", for gosh sakes, and I am served up conspiracy theories. And then I point to the fluctuations in net CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, and yes, only "deniers" and "bus cliff drivers", and "folks with zero research expertise" have pointed out, but those fluctuations are as factual and hard-data as the "Keeling curve" record of atmospheric CO2 measured on a mountain on the big island of Hawaii can be, and all I have seen "respectable climate science" people say about these, if they say anything at all, is the wave their hands at these data. Murry Salby points to these fluctuations and claims that almost none of the increase in CO2 is human-induced. He has ignored the Revelle buffer to come up with that conclusion -- it seems you, and you, and you over there have no idea what a Revelle buffer is, and you probably flunked "P-chem" in college or never attempted to take it. I have taken the Revelle buffer and the compartmentalized ocean model into account, the basis for the current consensus on the anthropogenic (human) contribution to the increase in atmospheric CO2, and I come up with that only about half of that increase is from us and the other half is from a temperature-stimulated natural process. I guessed that it had to be terrestrial soils, and lo-and-behold, a recent article published in Nature claims just such a CO2 emission from soils of just about the right magnitude. But I guess we don't talk science because reading journal papers and book monographs is such hard work, and it is easy to accuse any dissent from one's views as the result of conspiracy theories and Koch Brother funding? And as for the medical treatment analogy, who anymore accepts a doctor's "don't worry your pretty little head" patronizing advice about a major treatment decision? The days where patients accept everything on "higher authority" are long gone, and doctors work with their patients explaining their treatment options and health care providers have long come to accept this reality in the modern patient-practictioner relationship. Cancer treatment? The days of "you have breast cancer and we have to operate -- now, before it spreads" and they take away half your chest and leave a mass of scar tissue are long gone. Patients are offered treatment options, there are tests to assess the relative danger of growth and spread of a cancer, there is much deeper understanding of the underlying disease process. Climate science is at the "your only hope is we operate now" stage of understanding of the climate system, "we will disfigure you, it is for your own good, but we may or may not be able to save your life doing this." Furthermore, it is like any research into "maybe you don't need the radical surgery" and "maybe we can just remove the lump and follow up with radiation and chemotherapy" based on research showing "the radical surgery doesn't do the good we thought it does and removing the lump doesn't have the risk we once thought it was, instead of such research being embraced, it is met with cries of "denier, denier" "bad science, bad science" "who is funding you" "who is funding you" "do you want your patient to die" "do you want your patient to die." OMG, Carol King's song must have been about you! Everything, no matter how irrelevant or tangential, in your mind revolves about you. That delusional obsession even interferes with your being able to read without distorting what others say. It is pointless for others to respond to your rambling spiels because one can't have a dialogue with someone who seems to challenged to read simple, declarative sentences without your trying to dazzle the crowd with scientist name dropping. There's a term for that. Figure it out.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Murphy SidingCarol King? Will you still love me tommorrow? Weird.
Nah. Wrong (but great) song. It's "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you" in reference to Warren Beatty.
schlimm Murphy Siding Carol King? Will you still love me tommorrow? Weird. Nah. Wrong (but great) song. It's "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you" in reference to Warren Beatty.
Murphy Siding Carol King? Will you still love me tommorrow? Weird.
Murphy Siding schlimm Murphy Siding Carol King? Will you still love me tommorrow? Weird. Nah. Wrong (but great) song. It's "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you" in reference to Warren Beatty. That's odd. Carly Simon wrote a hit song with the same title.
That's odd. Carly Simon wrote a hit song with the same title.
Oops!! My bad. I always confuse them. Carly, of course.
Paul Milenkovic Dyson's break-out essay in popular writing was an essay "The Children's Crusade"
https://books.google.com/books?id=RQsAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA1&dq=%22excerpt+from+disturbing+the+universe%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwih_I_R9ffQAhWG5CYKHYsWAfgQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%22excerpt%20from%20disturbing%20the%20universe%22&f=true
I can't believe that Trains magazine has stooped to the nonsensical fantasies of the democratic party (small "d"--VERY SMALL). Global Warming? Climate Change? There are no facts out there. This is a liberal/media generated hoax, just as is the nonsensical "affordable care act", to extract money from businesses and individuals ("suck" would be a more appropriate word!). I was taught in the 1970's by "science professors" that by the year 2000 we would be entering into the next ice age, and would be in the middle of World War III. Global cooling was all the rage back then. Man cannot alter the environment--at all. Any simple understanding of volcanology (the study of volcanoes for the undeducated and willfully ignorant) proves that this "theory" is dead wrong! One volcanoe spues more crap into the air than all of the history of mankind. One! That is a fact. I will certainly have to re-consider subscribing to Trains after this article. I've been a reader of Trains since 1964. It used to be a magazine about railroads and railroading, not promoting political agenda's and fairy tales!
That's nice.
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b4116127;view=1up;seq=7
wanswheel: I am not going to block quote your excerpt from the Presidential Report -- readers can refer to your post.
I stand accused of "name dropping" prominent scientists in my posts. If I claimed, "Yes, when I had a beer with Roger and Freeman at the Caltech Atheneum, where we hashed these topics out, and where 'Dick' Feynman was overhearing us from the next table and was making faces", such woud be name dropping, and I am doing nothing of the kind as I never met any of those people (OK, OK, I met one of them, once, and no scientific topic was discussed).
I am going to cite prominent scientists because that is what "we" do in academic scholarship. Yes, this forum is not a scholarly venue, but were I to not cite sources for what I am claiming, I would then get criticized for not offering references.
To summarize the CO2 consensus, half of the CO2 "we" emit ends up in the atmosphere, with virtually none of the increased CO2 in the atmosphere coming from natural sources. The other half of the CO2 is split about equally between ocean and land "sinks." One thing that I hadn't mentioned in earlier posts is the the sense that our CO2 emission could reach a dangerous tipping point, influencing comments related to "driving the bus off a cliff with you, me, and everyone else in it" along with being "cursed at by future generations" when they are starving on bleak, bleached, desert plains. The tipping point is related to the understanding that the ocean sink could "fill up" and not accept more CO2, and warming temperatures could drive CO2 out of the land sinks, notably the melting of arctic tundra from "An Inconvenient Truth". These would be self-reinforcing feedback resulting in accelerating CO2 and temperature increases in the lifetimes of many people living today.
Claims have been made contradicting the consensus that just about all of the CO2 increase is human-caused, but the arguments were "hand waving", and even Climate Change "deniers" have their standards and regard the "CO2 Deniers" as on the far-fringe. Ferdinand Englebeen is famous as a climate denying blogger who vigorously attacks "CO2 deniers" as giving proper climate denial (yes, CO2 is increasing, but it is not affecting global temperature, or at least not as much as claimed) a bad name. This is on the supposition that more far-fetched theories than "consensus denial" can give climate denial a worse name than it has.
Imagine to my surprise when a "respectable" climate-denying source (Anthony Watts) featured a video of a recent lecture by Murry Salby claiming that not only are we not at risk of "saturating the sinks", the sinks are so vast and so potent that almost none of the increase in atmospheric CO2 is human-caused. He also offered carefully laid out scientific arguments instead of blatant hand-waving (I discussed earlier how his assumptions could be invalid, but that is how science works, you offer assumption and see where that leads, and then see if the results are contradicted by data or by known physical mechanisms for which there is data).
Were this true, this would be game-changing with respect to being worried that the bus is headed for a cliff. The global carbon cycle involves the transfer of "stuff" between reservoirs, and if someone tells me the mathematical laws governing how "stuff" is stored and transfered between reservoirs (such as in the above report if you follow the link), that is very much my area of professional expertise in electrical engineering. This is simply electric circuits (linear) and electronic circuits (non-linear), these circuits are used to express the mathematical models in other problem domains such as acoustics, mechanics, and here, chemistry, and the use of circuit-derived models to mass transfer in those other domains is very much my research experience.
The result of my intensive post-Salby investigation of this matter turned up the Revelle-Seuss paper. Old that this paper is, it introduced me to the Revelle buffer mechanism, which is not considered in Salby's recent work. It also introduced to me the scale of the ocean in relation to the atmosphere as well as conditions under which a static analysis is valid (such as in the above report and used frequently in arguments as to why humans contribute nearly all of the CO2 increase) and conditions under which a non-linear dynamic model is required (as in the Revelle and Seuss paper, and it is puzzling to me why Revelle chaired a committee writing a Presidential Report ignoring that aspect of his prior paper).
With an inadequate model, the Presidential Report comes up with a pretty good prediction of the 2016 atmospheric CO2 level, a prediction made in the mid 1960's. On the other hand, the Report offers model approximations could lead one to believe that the "sinks" are going to fill up any time soon.
One such approximation is the "surface ocean/deep ocean" separation. This assumption was not made in the Revelle and Seuss paper. That the deep ocean is effectively isolated because of a "500-1000 year turnover" is a misunderstanding of the effect of reservoir size (the capacitance C in a circuit model) separate from the rate coefficient for CO2 exchange between reservoirs (the resistance R is a circuit model). The Report does not distinguish from a large time constant from the product from R times C that is the result of a large C from that of a small C and a large R, with the second being a reservoir that will saturate contributing to a catastrophic climate change but not corresponding to physical reality.
As to the melting tundra effect from An Inconvenient Truth, I am also telling you there is evidence that a natural temperature-stimulated emission of CO2 is already taking place, and its contribution to atmospheric CO2 increase is about comparable to what can be blamed on humans. The existence of that natural source will never be inferred from a static model (as in the Report). It is inferred from a dynamic model, which builds upon the Revelle Seuss dynamic model but also adds a separate deep ocean "compartment", where the model settings are adjusted to account for the observed variability in the slope of the CO2 curve and how this slope varies with changes in global temperature. The resulting model settings are corroborated by the temperature-stimulated soil emission measured very recently by Bond-Lamberty and Thomson.
Yes, there is a cliff that the bus could go over, but it is not right up against the roadway as some have warned. I am also telling you that the Presidential Report is "sloppy" modelling according to the kind of work I do. Sometimes a "sloppy" model is good if it gives you a good prediction, but this sloppy model leads to a misplaced worry that the ocean "sink" will fill up anytime soon.
As to my fellow Forum participants who are claiming "Climate Change is all a scam", I am not telling you that you are "wrong to not accept the authority of climate scientists who have studied this." I am telling you that maybe your intuitions on this matter, influenced by your "life experience" that judges instruct jurors they may take into account, may be leading you in a correct direction to at least not accept the testimony of scientific experts without questioning.
There remains uncertainty in the science of Climate Change, and I am pointing to an uncertainty revealed by my own skills applied to understand these matters. I am suggesting that there is hype offered to lay audiences that masks this uncertainty, and this mode of interacting with the lay public is patronizing, and such is no longer acceptable in medical practice on individual life-or-death decisions.
Paul, thanks for commenting. I learn a lot from your posts, particularly of the existence of Freeman Dyson. The Children’s Crusade was the subtitle of Slaughterhouse 5, as you know. Keep in mind the 1965 report was written for one specific reader: LBJ. It was his decision to publish it.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=27355
Paul MilenkovicI am going to cite prominent scientists because that is what "we" do in academic scholarship.
As any first year grad student knows (or rapidly learns), a lit review cites relevant (by scholars in the field at hand) and mostly recent research. Sure, an examination of the history of research on climate change would dig back years, but not most research. And it would include in depth recent research as a rule or be rejected. And a good lit review stays focused, not constantly veering off on interesting tangents, no matter how amusing they may seem to the author.
Paul MilenkovicAs to my fellow Forum participants who are claiming "Climate Change is all a scam", ...
As with all things - there is a continuum. The truth, if you will, lies somewhere between a climate change based solely climate change based solely on the effects mankind has wrought and on natural causes.
The arguments placed by those who seek to change it all by making man make massive changes and the hard-core deniers are at those ends of the spectrum. Kinda like how politics seem to be going these days.
As noted before, there are changes mankind can make - we've seen the positive results of lessening pollution before.
But don't tell me I have to give up [insert whatever here] or life as we know it will end, and all too soon. Ain't so.
The contribution of volcanos to CO2 emissions has been noted. And I've noted the effect that one "Krakatoa" had on the climate around the world.
It's still my feeling that any effort that involves people gambling on climate change (carbon credits) is, indeed, a scam.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
tree68 Paul Milenkovic As to my fellow Forum participants who are claiming "Climate Change is all a scam", ... As with all things - there is a continuum. The truth, if you will, lies somewhere between a climate change based solely climate change based solely on the effects mankind has wrought and on natural causes.
Paul Milenkovic As to my fellow Forum participants who are claiming "Climate Change is all a scam", ...
Much of what I've seen on climate history suggests that the changes in the last few decades aren't completely out of line with purely natural variations. One explanantion for "the pause" in the satellite (UAH and RSS) temperature records is that warming in the early years was from a combination of natural warming cycle and man-made warming, with the pause caused by a natural cooling counteracting man made warming. Background: The "satellite records" refer to radiometer readings processed by University of Alabama at Hunstville (Christy and Spencer) and later by Remote Sensing Systems. "The pause" refers to a rapid rise is temps between 1979 and 1998, followed by a relatively flat trend from 1998 to present with El Nino spikes in 1998 and 2016.
Dr Roy Spencer of UAH is of the opinion that CO2 induced warming is real, but likely to be mild enough to be a slight benefit. His concern is that any program that requires drastic cutback in fossil fuel use will lead to a lot of suffering for the poorer people of the world. He also has called out "the skydragons" (his name for people who deny the effects of CO2) - one common "skydragon" meme is that radiant heat transfer can't happen from a cooler gas to a warmer ground as it is a violation of the second law of thermodynamics, where the reality is that the second law only requires that the net heat transfer is from warmer to cooler. (FWIW, this is THE cause for the "green house effect").
I'm also of the opinion that the focus on CO2 is counterprodctive. There's a lot of other things that man does to affect the climate, from the amount of dust, aerosols and other green house gases going into the atmosphere, with the chief GHG being water vapor.
As for my expertise on the subject... My BS degree is Electrical Engineering and my MS degree is Nuclear Engineering. The former is useful for understanding how CO2 acts as an antenna, i.e. vibrational bending moment creating an electric dipole. The latter is useful for understanding radiation transport through materials with narrow resonance absorption peaks.
erikemAs for my expertise on the subject... My BS degree is Electrical Engineering and my MS degree is Nuclear Engineering.
Erik: You have demonstated many time that you are a real expert on nuclear engineering and I believe many of the answers to carbon-free power generation lie there. But you would not agree for a moment that a PhD biologist has any expertise in nuclear reactor design, yet various engineering types on here seem to weight their opinions as more valid than the climatology researchers, many with decades of research experience.
zugmann Euclid And the universe extends in all directions with no end to it. That we know of.
Euclid And the universe extends in all directions with no end to it.
That we know of.
The problem I see with trying to understand the universe is that it is impossible to imaging space extending forever; and equally impossible to imagine it ending with nothing beyond it. Both explanations have to account for infinity, yet infinity is cognitively incomprehensible.
Some might say infinity is impossible because it defies science. But if you set aside infinity as a possibility, you are stuck with beginnings and endings. That is, when anything begins and ends, it must be preceded and followed by an infinite number of other things that also begin and end. So, the road leads right back to the problem with understanding infinity.
Therefore, infinity cannot be dismissed by simply denying that it exists because the denial leads right back to infinity. Infinity seems to be a root assumption of our entire reality, as troubling to rational thought as that may be.
That reply is almost infinite.
Euclid The problem I see with trying to understand the universe is that it is impossible to imaging space extending forever; and equally impossible to imagine it ending with nothing beyond it. Both explanations have to account for infinity, yet infinity is cognitively incomprehensible. Some might say infinity is impossible because it defies science. But if you set aside infinity as a possibility, you are stuck with beginnings and endings. That is, when anything begins and ends, it must be preceded and followed by an infinite number of other things that also begin and end. So, the road leads right back to the problem with understanding infinity. Therefore, infinity cannot be dismissed by simply denying that it exists because the denial leads right back to infinity. Infinity seems to be a root assumption of our entire reality, as troubling to rational thought as that may be.
Perhaps that's because, in spite of our own perceptions of our importance, in the overall scheme of things, we are, in reality, very minor players who were not given the powers to understand the universe.
Norm
Euclid zugmann Euclid And the universe extends in all directions with no end to it. That we know of. The problem I see with trying to understand the universe is that it is impossible to imaging space extending forever; and equally impossible to imagine it ending with nothing beyond it. Both explanations have to account for infinity, yet infinity is cognitively incomprehensible. Some might say infinity is impossible because it defies science. But if you set aside infinity as a possibility, you are stuck with beginnings and endings. That is, when anything begins and ends, it must be preceded and followed by an infinite number of other things that also begin and end. So, the road leads right back to the problem with understanding infinity. Therefore, infinity cannot be dismissed by simply denying that it exists because the denial leads right back to infinity. Infinity seems to be a root assumption of our entire reality, as troubling to rational thought as that may be.
When did time start? Will it end?
schlimm But you would not agree for a moment that a PhD biologist has any expertise in nuclear reactor design, yet various engineering types on here seem to weight their opinions as more valid than the climatology researchers, many with decades of research experience.
But you would not agree for a moment that a PhD biologist has any expertise in nuclear reactor design, yet various engineering types on here seem to weight their opinions as more valid than the climatology researchers, many with decades of research experience.
For climate, I would give the most credence to someone who has a stong background in meteorology. The basic defintion of climate is weather averaged over a sufficiently long period of time. As Dr. Spencer has pointed out on several occasions, the circulation in the troposphere is driven in part by the lapse rate (drop in air temperature with increasing altitude), which exists largely from the presence of radiative gases (e.g. CO2, H2O, O3, CH4, etc). One of the few things with "climate change" that may not come up in meteorology is the carbon cycle.
I have been very unimpressed with people who claim to be a climatologist but do not have a strong background in meteorlogy. One example is Michael Mann whose "hockey stick" graph was largely based on the data of a handful of trees if not a single tree by a couple of accounts. I was also very unimpressed with a recent study claiming that Greenland is warmer than it was during the time of Leif Eirikson - there are Viking farm sites on the west coast of Greenland that are now permafrost.
As far as enginnering types and climatology, it can be looked at as a large scale mechanical engineering problem, i.e.fuild flow, thermondynamics, heat transfer (all part of computational fluid dynamics) with some chemistry and biology thrown in. There are a lot of unique assumptions specfic to such a large scale model, but most of those should be relatively easy to explain to an M.E. (FWIW, I did take several courses in thermodynamics, fluid flow, heat transfer in pursuit of my NE degree, since a vast majority of energy produced by fission goes to boiling water).
My biggest frustration with the whole climate change debate is how much the talk of policy has overwhelmed discussion of the underlying physics. The rush "to solve the problem" has lead to a few wrong turns, number 1 being the push for compact fluorescent lights as LED's are both more benign (no Hg) and more efficient.
OTOH, with the price of fossil fuels coninuing on a long unsteady rise, in a few decades it may be more economical to go to an almost 100% electric based transportation system, where rail makes the most sense for long distance haulage. With electric trucks, we may see the rail/truck break-even mileage drop to say 200 miles versus teh current 500.
One final point - don't get me started on John Holdren. I attended a talk he gave at UCB in spring 1976 where he stated that coal mining technology and electric power plant technology would be good enough such that the biggest loss of life from using coal would be people dying in RR grade crossing accidents. Apparently he hadn't heard of Operation Life Saver.
erikemI have been very unimpressed with people who claim to be a climatologist but do not have a strong background in meteorlogy. One example is Michael Mann
Climatology is usually housed in meteorology departments but has a very different focus. Mann's credentials look as good as they get.
Dr. Michael E. Mann is Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State, with joint appointments in the Department of Geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (EESI). He is also director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC).
Dr. Mann received his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Applied Math from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. degree in Physics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University. His research involves the use of theoretical models and observational data to better understand Earth's climate system
Electroliner 1935 When did time start? Will it end?
That is a good question. It seems to me that both time and space have to be infinite. Just as it is impossible to imagine space beginning with nothing preceding it, and ending with nothing beyond it; it is also impossible to imagine time beginning with no time preceding it or ending with no time after the ending of time. It is actually impossible to imagine there being no time, and being no space. So they have to be infinite, but that is equally impossible to imagine.
LensCapOn- Good post...exactly! Divided issue that no one will change their opinion on and it could go on forever and to what end? ...which leads us to........Euclid,- think long and hard about that and I think you go insane or something. The answer is probably simplicity itself, staring us right in the face, "can't see the forest for the trees" thing. We are not there yet but were designed to get there one day.
LensCapOnWhy have a piece that can only divide readers and says nothing new?
It's usually called freedom of the press. Why is this such a problem for you that you need to distort positions of those who accept what specialists generally see? Being a skeptic means not accepting things on blind faith, not denying the prevalent consensus of years of empirical research. Or calling climatology reseach "junk science." Who are you to denounce this? Are you an active researcher in the field with a doctorate? We now live in a post-factual age where one opinion is as good as the next, even without much of any foundation of empirical research to support that opinion.
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