The model essentially assumes that the change in flux due to temperature is instantaneous, so if the factor “F” in Dr. Lindzen’s presentation is positive, the effect of the delta heat added is amplified.

I will have to contemplate if I can find any other weaknesses in this argument, but for now, I would have to withdraw my previous comment. In any case, it is Dr. Lindzen’s position that the “F” factor is, in fact, negative, hence there is attenuation rather than amplification.

. . .

If our climate system were dominated by positive feedback, it would long ago have spiraled out into a runaway greenhouse, and the Earth would be like Venus already, indeed, eons ago. <<

This is one of the strongest arguments against AGW. Long-lived systems aren’t inherently unstable. I’ve made this statement many times, and it seems to fall on deaf ears. Apparently the believers in AGW that I’ve dealt with can’t process the statement and have little understanding of the realities of feedback in systems. Of course, I’m not a climatologist, so my opinion has little value.

Jim

This, fundamentally, is why the climate system cannot be dominated by positive feedback. Positive feedback is pernicious and assertive. It does not lie in wait for a trigger. It feeds off itself like a cancer and marches forward relentlessly until the patient is dead.

If our climate system were dominated by positive feedback, it would long ago have spiraled out into a runaway greenhouse, and the Earth would be like Venus already, indeed, eons ago.

>> Ric Werme (18:41:24) :

Hmm, orbital angular momentum would stay the same (twice the distance times half the speed), and that’s a problem because the Earth’s spin has to slow down. I guess the answer is that the Earth actually orbits the center of gravity (the barycenter) of the Earth/Moon system and that distance will increase for both Earth and Moon. The Earth is so close to the barycenter we might not be able to treat it as a point so I hope the Earth manages to gain some angular momentum due to the orbital motion. Please straighten me out if I’m confused. <<

Now I’m awake enough to do this calculation. We need several formulas. Angular momentum is the vector cross product of distance with the linear momentum. We can ignore the vector arithmetic and just do the scalar math. Lm = Rem*Pm = Rem*Mm*Vm. (Where Lm is the Moon’s angular momentum, Rem is the distance from the Earth to the Moon, Pm is the Moon’s linear momentum, Mm is the Moon’s mass, and Vm is the Moon’s velocity.) I’ll just assume that the Moon’s orbit is circular so we can use the formula for centripetal acceleration: a = v^2/r. If we multiply through by the Moon’s mass we get the formula F = Mm*Vm^2/Rem. We need Newton’s gravity formula F = G*m1*m2/r^2. Substituting for our case, we have F = G*Me*Mm/Rem^2. (Where G is Big G, Me is the mass of the Earth, and so on.) If we solve for the Moon’s angular momentum we get Lm = Mm*((G*Me*Rem)^(1/2)). So if we increase the distance of the Moon four-fold, then the angular momentum doubles.

Jim

Hmm, orbital angular momentum would stay the same (twice the distance times half the speed), and that’s a problem because the Earth’s spin has to slow down. I guess the answer is that the Earth actually orbits the center of gravity (the barycenter) of the Earth/Moon system and that distance will increase for both Earth and Moon. The Earth is so close to the barycenter we might not be able to treat it as a point so I hope the Earth manages to gain some angular momentum due to the orbital motion. Please straighten me out if I’m confused. <<

Now I’m awake enough to do this calculation. We need several formulas. Angular momentum is the vector cross product of distance with the linear momentum. We can ignore the vector arithmetic and just do the scalar math. LM = REM*PM = REM*MM*VM. (Where LM is the Moon’s angular momentum, REM is the distance from the Earth to the Moon, PM is the Moon’s linear momentum, MM is the Moon’s mass, and VM is the Moon’s velocity.) I’ll just assume that the Moon’s orbit is circular so we can use the formula for centripetal acceleration: a = v2/r. If we multiply through by the Moon’s mass we get the formula F = MM*VM2/REM. We need Newton’s gravity formula F = G*m1*m2/r2. Substituting for our case, we have F = G*ME*MM/REM2. (Where G is Big G, ME is the mass of the Earth, and so on.) If we solve for the Moon’s angular momentum we get LM = MM*((G*ME*REM)(1/2)). So if we increase the distance of the Moon four-fold, then the angular momentum doubles.

Jim

Many, many years ago when I was doing something or another I could not get the display to stabilise, twiddle as I might. And I twiddled mightily to no avail.

Everyone else in the lab with their tea and bickies, it was elevenses, was standing around watching with interest to see when I would notice the smoke and flames pouring out of the back.

Kindest Regards

How the hell can a “string” be fundamental; or anything else that has shape or vibrations or any other properties that dictate that it must also be structured of something even more fundamental.

Ah, the problem with Maxwell’s theory in a nutshell. At a time when people needed an ether for electromagnetic waves to propagate that was the something structured, but when special relativity came in, bang goes the ether. So the electromagnetic waves structure themselves in space, that is what the equations tell us. Grand Unified Theories extended this concept to include the weak and strong force. Strings include gravity, all by the same mechanism as with Maxwell’s equations.

And people actually get paid to come up with this rubbish.

Yes, isn’t that great :) . It might be that your great grandchildren will be using the technology that will have come out of this rubbish, the way now we are using Maxwell’s “rubbish” to communicate over thousands of miles. Or if not exactly strings, something somebody will come up with trying to fit or refute strings. That is the story of scientific advancement, not engineering.

Now I could confuse the issue further by bringing in ether by the side door, but I will not do it.

http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=a054096

Description: After having outlined the difficulties that Einstein and others have encountered in trying to unify our understanding of macroscopic/classical and microscopic /quantum physics, I will explain in simple terms how the latest particle theory revolution, string theory, may finally offer a surprisingly simple realization of these long-standing dreams. Einstein thought that his difficulties stemmed from a clash between the classical and the quantum. Yet, paradoxically, superstrings appear to realize his dream thanks to -and not against- quantum mechanics.

Note: Some knowledge of quantum mechanics and special relativity is needed. Having followed previous courses of the school should provide a sufficient background.

Hi George. I have to speak up for strings :). It is the only theory at the moment that we have that can unite all known forces , including gravity , in a simple system of equations. Elegance has a lot to do with theoretical preferences.

The reason that they are attractive, which keeps you warm at night
The nonsense that Maxwell’s four equations of electromagnetism, are actually just a subset of ten or eleven equations, and that suddenly each equation becomes synonymous with a physical “dimension”, six or seven of which are rolled up so tightly in the concept of string theory or some other neo-religious baloney; keeps me warm at night when I would otherwise freeze.
is that this unification of known forces except gravity had already happened with the three forces : gauge theories, molded after Maxwell’s equations, are very successful in describing elementary particles. String theories are a step further, trying to incorporate gravity too.

I do not know if they will be the theories of the future, but they have a simple origin: the multidimensional harmonic oscillator, an ubiquitous approximation for any solution of problems in many quantum mechanical cases. They have elegance in concept, but I agree that all that curling up reminds of hair :).

Now zero point energy, if we take the ubiquitous harmonic oscillator solutions, is the ground state energy. This does not mean that the ground state has 0 absolute energy ( even +/- heisenberg’s principle). It could very well be that our earth is in a position of the galaxy where we are sitting at very high potential energy, and that is our zero point energy. If there are other physical forces than the four we know, it is possible that , in a similar way we get energy from waves in the sea by using one way valves under platforms, a smart inventor in the future could tap the vacuum sea :).

The whole place became an upturned ant hive. For about a month it was like living on a shaking tree from the aftershocks, and for a long time after that people were sensitized to earth quakes. This means that every scientist and his cousin became amateur seismologists.

And this is where the connection comes with PR and AGW. A young physics instructor measured the tellurian currents , these are earth currents that are observed to change during quakes, and decided he could predict the next quakes.
The media took off on it, his politics was with the governement of the time so he got his grants, and the whole thing took off.

No matter if scientists pointed to statistics, statistical errors in space and time : predictions take a third of Greece, and Greece is a quake prone area, and 2 sigma on a 1 richter scale error is within everyday shakes, etc. etc. Science could not convince the feeling that pushed the research and the desire of the public to have a prophet. Even now, the group comes up with @#$%^ predictions with three month sigma and a third of the greek land as target, and they still get publicity, though they have cried wolf too often.

It is similar with AGW. It will be like Hydra, unless the gods are good to us and the icebergs start moving . Can you hear them creaking?

> … Tektronix; who never the less still make the best Oscilloscopes.

Indeed. Do they still have fun with the schematics? I haven’t had the need (damn things never break) to look at many, but I remember things like a cartoon figure of a washerwoman cleaning the display tube, probably a school bus traveling along a wiring bus, amusing stuff like that.

> Maybe somebody should sketch the Pole/Zero plot for a typical atmospheric GHG feedback model. But I think that would just terrorize the Gavin Schmidts of the world.

One could build a case that climate systems analysis is too important to be left to the climatologists and should be given to the engineers. :-)

I agree entirely that the Realist (vs. AGW) viewpoint requires much better marketing than it has heretofore received.

And yes,

. . .we need to be more proactive and put over our views in a more concerted manner, but to do that we need access to a resource of literate and credible material (WUWT amongst others) and a group of knowledgable people who can ensure that any crafted response (to say an article) does make scientific sense. This material then needs to be sent to key media in a planned campaign. (all this has time and resource implications!)

As for the ability of a Realist organization to distance “fringe groups, politically motivated viewpoints or vested interests,” as you put it, that’s a complex matter.

First, you have to realize that any anti-AGW movement is going to be slandered as ‘fringe’, made up of ‘kooks’, allied with ‘greedy oil and coal interests’, ‘crackpot science’, and so on, and so forth. Yes, it’s vitally important to establish scientific bona fides, but you know how easily those are dismissed by the AGW orthodoxy (‘not peer reviewed’, meaning by the correct peers). The objective has to be to gain public credibility, and that’s where the marketing comes in, because as Senator Inhofe said (above), the science is over most people’s heads.

Second, because AGW has become a political issue more than a scientific one, the AGW crusade has be stopped in the halls of Congress and Parliament, and that means some kind of political action. You may be able to avoid identifying with other issues (social questions, foreign affairs, etc.), but there’s one you can’t dodge, and that’s the economy. The ‘remedies’ that the Alarmists propose are all top-down, statist measures, and the way to combat them in the public mind is to emphasize how much they will curtail economic growth and individual freedom.

Notice, BTW, that the Alarmists’ affiliations with extreme leftwing ‘fringe’ groups and with avowedly leftwing and socialist political parties has done nothing to marginalize them or damage their effectiveness. The reason is that, as you point out, they have taken the moral high ground, with rhetoric like “Saving the planet.”

You are absolutely right that we have to recapture the moral high ground. I think the way to do this is not by shouting “Fire!” in the theater, as the Alarmists do, but by shouting “Water! Quick!” The lesson has to be:

What the Alarmists want to do, with or without good intentions, is to stop Civilization and Progress in their tracks. But economic growth, which means cheap and abundant energy, is essential for progress, and contrary to the Alarmists, the CO2 that might produce is good, good for plants, good for the Earth, and good for you. They offer a dead and dying Earth, with everyone cowering in fear; we promise a bright future of development for all people on the planet, a planet of beautiful cities and fields and gardens, fueled by abundant energy.

That’s the form the debate should take, as I see it.

Anyone interested in a Realist organization, and in discussing these ideas further, please go to MikeD’s website,
http://westinstenv.org/ and click on the Contact link.

Apologies to Anthony if this is going to far afield, but TonyB raised important questions, I hope of some general interest.

/Mr Lynn

George,
“Well how do you determine whether a feedback system is stable or unstable, if you remove time from the equations.”

Stability analysis involves recasting the equations to the frequency domain so time is factored out in effect. If I know my system is stable at all frequencies, then I know it is stable for all time. Ignoring time is the same as analyzing the system at a frequency of zero. Another way of looking at it is to “open the loop” and analyze that system. If the loop gain at any frequency has a magnitude greater than unity when its phase shift is 180 degrees, then the system is unstable. This rule is completely different if the loop feedback sign is positive rather than negative, and trying to invert it hurts my brain. This is how they developed radar controlled anti-aircraft guns in WW2 thereby winning that conflict.

Looking at the OT problem, consider the “feedback factor” which is the negative of the loop gain. To put time in, analyze this factor at all frequencies. If at any frequency, it has a phase shift of zero (rather than 180) and a magnitude of unity or greater, then it is unstable.

So ignoring time is OK, but inverting the feedback sign is not, even if Hansen has done it already. He probably did it to confuse everyone. “”"

Well Peter I made the mistake of assuming (there’s that word) that the cognoscenti would understand that frequency and time (period) are just two aspects of the same thing. You can do the analysis in the frequency domain or in the time domain as you wish.

As I grew up in the Tektronix Academy where frequency was regarded as a mental aberration; it was not to be used in technical discussions of Oscilloscope circuitry. It was of course Tektronix who first built an oscilloscope, with that radical idea of a triggered Timebase, which was calibrated to read cm/second rather than frequency of a free running; and not too damn linear “horiontal deflection”.
When Tektronix first introduced their model 511 oscilloscope in 1947, an early visitor to their show booth was an old geezer who stayed for hours all through the show, playing with the knobs, and saying nothing.
Finally at the show’s conclusion, Howard Vollum, one of Tek’s two founders approached this geezer and asked him what he thought of the instrument. Well it is quite fancy said the visitor; but nobody will ever pay $1000 for an oscilloscope.

That old geezer was Allen B. Dumont; who had just witnessed the instant demise of his whole oscilloscope universe. No-one serious, would ever again buy a scope with a horizontal fequency knob on it; or one without a vertical amplifier not calibrated in Volts per cm, instead of a variable gain pot.

Tek’s shunning of the frequency domain eventually got to bite them in the butt; when Hewlettt Packard introduced a one GHz sampling oscilloscope; with a sampling head that was designed by Microwave engineers, in the Frequency Domain, in the form of a Microwave Magic Tee, that completely bamboozled the Tek engineers; who ultimately came to respect what those HP guys had done. Frequency is no longer a swear word at Tektronix; who never theless still make the best Oscilloscopes.

I’m kind of partial to the old model 547; the first Horizontal Sweep Switching Oscilloscope. I designed that first Horizontal sweep switching circuitry; although I did not invent the concept; we were already doing alternate and chopped vertical signal switching anyway.

So frequency domain or time domain; you still need to know the dynamic response of the feedback circuitry to know whether you have an oscillator or an amplifier.

And if their really was a feedback going on in the greenhouse climate system; it most assuredly would be an oscillator and not an amplifier.

Maybe somebody should sketch the Pole/Zero plot for a typical atmospheric GHG feedback model. But I think that would just terrorize the Gavin Schmidts of the world.

Believe me; water vapor can do all the feedback it wants to; sans CO2 to set it off.

George

As for winning WW-II with radar controlled anti-aircraft guns; the Germans are believed to have fired 5000 rounds out of those mighty 88s, for evey B-17 they brought down with flak.

Far more important was the Proximity fuze, which the US Navy developed, and only belatedly allowed the US Army, and the British to have. Neither Germany or Japan ever caught on; or the war’s outcome could have been a whole lot different. It was used with devastating effect in the battle of the bulge.

George E. Smith (09:58:50) :
I think Lucy spends too much time listening to Art Bell’s Dreamland program; along with Richard C Hoagland. I’d like a dollar for each time someone mentions hyperdimensional physics or zero point energy, or string theory.

I’ve never heard Art Bell’s programme. Actually most of my education recently has been on this website which I adore; I love hearing what you say George, and generally (not always) I agree with you. But I also like to think for myself.

I put those (provocative) remarks on this thread because I have enormous respect for Lindzen and I want to see decent Climate Science again: sometimes spiking the conversation brings in needed energy. Yes, how do we hit back as “climate realists” and keep integrity? NIPCC is an essential document. IMHO a skeptics’ climate science wiki would also help turn the tide. That’s also why I wrote my primer (under my name) and, George, if there’s anything there that’s not ok science by you, please let me know and I’ll change it until it’s ok with you. Hopefully it passes already. “”"

Well My Dear Lucy; please accept that my comment was very much tongue in cheek; and no offense was intended. But if even a smidgeon was felt, then please accept my apology. It’s actually good to see you here rather than some of those other places, I ran across you and felt we were both wasting our time.

But “Hyperdimensional Physics” which seems to be a joint creation of Richard C. Hoagland and Dr Michio Kaku, is one of those red capes to El Toro, along with zero point energy. The nonsense that Maxwell’s four equations of electromagnetism, are actually just a subset of ten or eleven equations, and that suddenly each equation becomes synonymous with a physical “dimension”, six or seven of which are rolled up so tightly in the concept of string theory or some other neo-religious baloney; keeps me warm at night when I would otherwise freeze.

My understanding of zero point energy is very little, and some 50 years in the past; but I believe it relates to a quantum theory concept of Absolute Zero; where in classical Physics all motion would cease, there being no thermal energy to cause any; but in quantum mechanics some residual “zero point energy” persists even at absolute zero; and since it truly is absolute zero; that miniscule zero point energy is totally inaccessible; science fiction notwithstanding.

Another favorite of science fiction which may have more validity is the concept of the energy of the vaccuum; whereby particles (matter and anti-matter pairs) can simultaneously appear out of nowhere; and by inference a kaboodle of energy along with that. This of course is right up Anna V’s alley, rather than mine.
I believe the origin is the lesser known form of Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty (unbestimmheit (mit ein umlaut)) where the product of positional uncertainty, and momentum uncertainty (delt_p * delta _x) is greater than (h/2pi) where (h) is Planck’s constant. So we can never know exactly the position and momentum of even a single particle simultaneously; which means the laws of physics can not predict its future position and momentum better than a certain accuracy level.
In the alternative form the product is (delta_E * delta_t) ; energy times time.

This uncertainty evidently allows a certain amount of energy to suddenly appear out of nowhere; but maybe for only a brief instant of time.

I have often commented whimsically that the “big bang” was nothing more than the bottom end of the 1/f noise spectrum; so named because the noise amplitude increases inversely with the frequency; which is a problem because it implies that the noise can get infinite in amplitude at very low frequencies. Sanity returns, once we show that for any 1/f noise spectrum, the amount of energy in any frequency octave is a constant, so even though the amplitude may seem to increase without limit at low frequencies; the power does not, and in order to observe those larger and larger amplitudes, you have to wait a hell of a long time, so the apparent huge energy level is actually spread over that long time. And of course (so far as we know) the big bang only happened once; but it was a doozy when it happened.

So not to Worry Lucy; I was just taking advantage of the opportunity presented to yank your chain; but really I do still believe in Chivalry.

George