CEI’s Chris Horner asks WUWT readers for some help in locating “Phil Jones’s Aspirations”
So, I’m leafing through another 1,500 pages of emails dumped on me by NASA in an apparent attempt to forestall litigation we informed them was coming this week after the clock tolls on their requirement to comply with requests under the Freedom of Information Act (it’s complicated, so here’s the gist of what two of the requests were about; the third one is about NASA using taxpayer resources to produce content for and manage the third-party “global warming” activist operation RealClimate, which you will read about soon).
Near the end of the first of three large folders of documents I see a particular email thread between James Hansen and Phil Jones.
In Jones’ final reply at the top of the thread, there is some mildly interesting discussion of e.g., China temperatures, and then, after a little nattering about how those ocean temperature observations seem too cool for their tastes and so clearly the observations are wrong, Jones writes to Hansen, “As I think you might has said earlier, we aren’t doing a great job in measuring surface T[emperatures] in a consistent manner”.
But, before this and in the same email, Jones admits to Hansen, “I hope the Met Office prediction for 2015 in last week’s Science are correct!” [hyperlink to Met Office press release added]
He is referring to the prediction by the Met Office, in Science magazine’s August 10, 2007 issue, of accelerating “global warming” leading to record temperatures, beginning 2009 or so. The article (by Doug Smith et al.) is behind a paywall, but it declared an understanding, courtesy of a new modeling technique, that we will see at least five years claiming “warmest ever” by the year 2015.
It is possible that someone in Jones’ position hopes for record temperatures simply because their enterprise thrives on the global warming panic. But I was reminded of an earlier email of Jones’s, which I thought had made the rounds pre-CRUGate, asserting in response to a challenge that, yes, he does wish/want/need disruptive anthropogenic climate change to be true/real (the precise word choice eludes me), because it will cause society to straighten up and fly right in terms of its policies and lifestyles.
I cannot locate this email, either by web-searching or on the various East Anglia email sites. So, I appeal to readers: who can recall and produce a copy of that earlier Jones email?
I ask because together they do rather support the argument that the global warming alarmists, even if donning the vestments of “science”, remain ideological advocates. They want their Man-as-agent-of-doom theory to be true, they need it to be true. Such evidence would certainly color their claims, and the exposed fudging, lying, withholding and the rest of the nasty little bag of tricks that collectively amount to pushing an agenda. With a line of reasoning that goes do what I want or people die! In the name of “science”.
The irony here is that the same issue of Science published a letter [subscription required] by Robert Gitzen of the University of Missouri, titled “The Dangers of Advocacy in Science”.
Regardless, any help in tracking down this earlier Phil Jones email is appreciated.
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africangenesis (10:51:30) :
The question becomes how accurately do we know the masses, distances and velocities in the Solar system?
We know these things extremely well as we need them for [and get them from] spacecraft moving around in the solar system. For example the average distance to the Sun [more accurately the Astronomical Unit] is 149,597,870.691 km and is increasing 0.00001 km per year [the Sun is losing mass].
It is hard to hypothesis an internal mechanism for longer term periodic solar variation, there must be external drivers, mustn’t there?
No, lots a stars pulsate and change their brightness and activity level by large amounts, e.g. the Cepheids. I steal a bit from a website on those:
“The accepted explanation for the pulsation of Cepheids is called the Eddington valve,[10] or κ-mechanism, where the Greek letter κ (kappa) denotes gas opacity.
Helium is the gas thought to be most active in the process. Doubly-ionized helium (helium whose atoms are missing two electrons) is more opaque than singly-ionized helium. The more helium is heated, the more ionized it becomes.
At the dimmest part of a Cepheid’s cycle, the ionized gas in the outer layers of the star is opaque, and so is heated by the star’s radiation, and due to the increased temperature, begins to expand. As it expands, it cools, and so becomes less ionized and therefore more transparent, allowing the radiation to escape. Then the expansion stops, and reverses due to the star’s gravitational attraction. The process then repeats.”
university social networking (09:58:41) :
See reply up thread at
Leif Svalgaard (07:08:40) :
to johnnythelowery (06:44:58) :
Leif. You have to be gentle with us in the gallery and you have. You have to imagine what it’s like for us without the horsepower to understand the arguments. I rely on you to tell it how it is and then Oliver says it’s different. Up until about a week ago, I was unaware of that there were physicists that doubted the SSM. Which is similar to my AGW experience. When I read in a British paper the firestorm over a program on CH4 there called ‘the great global warming swindle’…i was unaware there was any dissenting issue against AGW by anyone competent. Watching that program on Youtube here in the US was like someone opened the curtains on a sunny morning. AGW has erroded this avg joe’s confidence in ‘concensus’ when applied to things Science. Not that I believe every idea is valid. There is still some Dr. in Calif. who thinks that HIV is not caused by Aids. so, the ‘Concensus’ has a role. The AGW’s overweening authority (and the Catholic Church) has taught me not to go with the concensus for going with the concensus sake. I’m very thankfull someone of your quality
even answers my questions. I suppose I’m saying to be kind to the Oliver’s of the world which is not the same as the AGW proponents which is a scam. I don’t think doubts of the SSM is driven by scam leanings -power, cash, relevancy, fame.
Anyway….back to the Solar issue (there is a novel coming out called ‘Solar’ BTW
by a Brit author)
Does this article from sciencedaily say anything to this discussion.
‘……Thanks to a serendipitous discovery by Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Colin Price, head of TAU’s Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science, and his graduate student Yuval Reuveni, science now has a more definitive and reliable tool for measuring the Sun’s rotation when Sunspots aren’t visible — and even when they are. The research, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research — Space Physics, could have important implications for understanding the interactions between the Sun and Earth. Best of all, it’s based on observations of common, garden-variety lightning strikes here on Earth.
Waxing and waning, every 27 days
Using Very Low Frequency (VLF) wire antennas that resemble clotheslines, Prof. Price and his team monitored distant lightning strikes from a field station in Israel’s Negev Desert. Observing lightning signals from Africa, they noticed a strange phenomenon in the lightning strike data — a phenomenon that slowly appeared and disappeared every 27 days, the length of a single full rotation of the Sun.
“Even though Africa is thousands of miles from Israel, lightning signals there bounce off Earth’s ionosphere — the envelope surrounding Earth — as they move from Africa to Israel,” Prof. Price explains. “We noticed that this bouncing was modulated by the Sun, changing throughout its 27-day cycle. The variability of the lightning activity occurring in sync with the Sun’s rotation suggested that the Sun somehow regulates the lightning pattern.”
He describes it as akin to hearing music or voices from across a lake: depending on the humidity, temperature and wind, sometimes they’re crystal clear and sometimes they’re inaudible. He discovered a similar anomaly in the lightning data due to the changes in Earth’s ionosphere — signals waxed and waned on a 27-day cycle. Prof. Price was able to show that this variability in the data was not due to changes in the lightning activity itself, but to changes in Earth’s ionosphere, suspiciously in tandem with the Sun’s rotation.
Taking the pulse of the Sun
The discovery describes a phenomenon not clearly understood by scientists. Prof. Price, an acclaimed climate change scientist, believes it may help scientists formulate new questions about the Sun’s effect on our climate. “This is such a basic parameter and not much is known about it,” says Prof. Price. “We know that Earth rotates once every 24 hours, and the moon once every 27.3 days. But we haven’t been able to precisely measure the rotation rate of the Sun, which is a ball of gas rather than a solid object; 27 days is only an approximation. Our findings provide a more accurate way of knowing the real rotation rate, and how it changes over time………..”
Thanks…. Johhnnnnny
johnnythelowery (13:57:01) :
Does this have any bearing on this issue. I’m sure you read it but if not…..
‘Thanks to a serendipitous discovery by Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Colin Price, head of TAU’s Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science, and his graduate student Yuval Reuveni, science now has a more definitive and reliable tool for measuring the Sun’s rotation when Sunspots aren’t visible
We have been able to do that with precision for a hundred years. Here is a paper I co-wrote 30 years ago on our measurements at Stanford: http://www.leif.org/research/Rotation%20of%20the%20Sun.pdf
Leif: Lastly, why is this so and does this interfere with your inquiries into the Solar/Earth/planetx effects such as whether there is a connection between the sun, a planet, and earthquakes ?
‘……….”That’s partly because physicists can handle two-body problems quite well and many-body problems fairly well, but when there are just a few objects, like the three bodies in these Efimov trimers, there are just too many variables.” As Hulet points out, there is still no general mathematical solution for the most classic of all “three-body” problems — the sun-Earth-moon problem. “You can do a numerical calculation, of course,” he said. “You can calculate to arbitrary precision what the sun, Earth and moon are doing relative to one another at any given time, but you cannot write out a formula for that on paper. There is no general solution for that or any other three-body problem……….”
Anthony: Any way you could delete ‘johnnythelowery (13:57:01) :’ posting from me. I got my laptop out of synch with it showing up at WUWT i thought it didn’t take or I didn’t send it. Cheers! Have another weekend off!
johnnythelowery (13:23:10) :
Leif. You have to be gentle with us in the gallery and you have. You have to imagine what it’s like for us without the horsepower to understand the arguments
Gentleness is my middle name 🙂
On the other hand I do not suffer fools gladly, and when people don’t want to learn I turn a bit crass.
I spend a lot of time explaining in terms as simple as I can make them how things work. On some things I qualify as a real expert. On other things I rely on my very reliable bullshit detector. On some things I don’t comment because I don’t know much about them, but I may try to get people to explain. If they can’t, the detector kicks in.
So, if you have questions, I’ll do my utmost to answer them as fully as I can. This kind of ‘outreach’ is an important part of modern science. You will find many eminent scientists that make a real effort of this [you will also find people that peddle junk-science, sadly more of the latter than of the former].
johnnythelowery (14:10:00) :
“You can calculate to arbitrary precision what the sun, Earth and moon are doing relative to one another at any given time, but you cannot write out a formula for that on paper. There is no general solution for that or any other three-body problem……….”
We don’t need a ‘general solution’ for this. Our numerical calculations are precise enough and with modern computers not a real problem anymore.
leif: I take it that the rotation of the sun in it’s ‘gas ball’ constitution would be the same even if it was a (theoretically) ‘iron sun’.
See that in your findings. Is the idea that the sun is causing lightning in Africa instep with the rotation of the sun interesting?
johnnythelowery (14:38:58) :
leif: I take it that the rotation of the sun in it’s ‘gas ball’ constitution would be the same even if it was a (theoretically) ‘iron sun’.
The iron sun is nonsense. The rotation would not be the same. The iron sun would rotate as a solid body if it were rigid. But, better get away from that avenue, it leads nowhere,
See that in your findings. Is the idea that the sun is causing lightning in Africa instep with the rotation of the sun interesting?
The Sun has a great influence on the ionosphere 100-300 km up and as the sun rotates and turns more or less active sides towards us, this influence will vary. The ionosphere is electrically connected [weakly] to the electric field near the surface and thus is connected with thunderstorm activity, so no surprise [has been known for a long time]. Trying to use lightning to measure the sun’s rotation is sort of round-about, when you can just look at the sun.
Solar Commenters,
I find these solar comment streams to be the most enjoyable.
It is pleasant to see that they are likely to pop up in the most unlikely of threads.
Thanks Anthony and moderator team. This is literally the stuff of the (intellectual) universe.
John
Leif: Thanks ever so. I’m humbled. I still don’t understand why
“You can calculate to arbitrary precision what the sun, Earth and moon are doing relative to one another at any given time, but you cannot write out a formula for that on paper. There is no general solution for that or any other three-body problem……….”
Okay on the ‘not a problem’ and that we can ‘run a calculation’ but……but……why is there ‘no general solution’ . What does that mean in this context? What is it about a three body ‘formula’. For all we can do with math… it seems like it would be a trivial mathematical problem?
John whitman:
I hope you are not taking the pee. I have 100,000 questions but why would anyone answer me? But the internet & blogs, with gracious people on here, is a dream come true. I could do a Ph.d dissertation and get it back stamped “Bolox” before bedtime!! By Lief no less!!! so getting feedback so quick…it’s a new day!! It’s fantastic. It’s a new world. But this solar thing is center stage for me at the mo’ as the AGW is in the bag more or less. I know very little about either. But the Solar thing, with the LHC, the Superstring Vs. E8, Higgs or not, the SSM vs. ?, the Sun doing it’s minimum/maximum, Earthquakes cracking off, SDO, SOHO….. has suddenly gone very sexy!
Leif:
…………..johnnythelowery (14:38:58) :
leif: I take it that the rotation of the sun in it’s ‘gas ball’ constitution would be the same even if it was a (theoretically) ‘iron sun’?
———————————————
The iron sun is nonsense. The rotation would not be the same. The iron sun would rotate as a solid body if it were rigid. But, better get away from that avenue, it leads nowhere
—————————————
As the rotation issue shows, the theory of the Iron sun is false just by the rotation issue alone. It’s pretty low hanging fruit this rotation comparison so I struggle to understand how some one as competent(to understand the situation) as Oliver, would continue in his idea? I absolutely don’t want you to go off on Oliver but i’m trying to gauge what the deal is. Why physics is like this? and how much is physics like the AGW?
Leif: ….there is one other force you have left out of your considerations, and as I am wholy unqualified to even be talking about anything really here on WUWT I can float this puppy without the slightest endeared feelings for it, and that is entanglement? over what distances can particles(?) be entangled? What is the medium facilitating entanglement? Could a portion of the matter in the earth be entangled with portions of other bodies….and hence be entwined in a unseeable web. Complete bolox I know….but…… Thx Johnnny
johnnythelowery (20:43:07) :
why is there ‘no general solution’ . What does that mean in this context? What is it about a three body ‘formula’. For all we can do with math… it seems like it would be a trivial mathematical problem?
We know precisely how to calculate all of this to as many decimals you would like, so the problem is solved: to get from A to B we divide the distance [or the time] into small pieces and calculate piece for piece how to move.. A ‘general’ solution [or as it is often called a ‘closed’ solution] works differently, you do not need to go in little steps, you just plug in the end point and the formula tells you how to get there [or how long it would take or something similar]. So, the difference is that a general solution gets you there without having the calculate the intermediate steps. In practice it doesn’t matter because our computers are so fast.
Why physics is like this? and how much is physics like the AGW?
Oliver’s problem is a different one: he thinks there is a worldwide conspiracy trying to keep ‘his’ truth from becoming known. Once your are on that path, science takes a backseat to the anger over the conspiracy and the ‘filth’ as he calls it, and that clouds his thinking. Example: he predicts a certain neutrino flux. We ‘observe’ something quite different which invalidates his theory. I put ‘observe’ in quotes because Oliver believes that the data has been cooked to hide the truth, and that the observations are bogus. So much for that.
Now, physics is extremely ‘hard-nosed’, and physicists want things shown before they believe anything. We are quite willing to entertain ‘far-out’ and ‘weird’ ideas as long as there is a chance that they can be shown to ‘work’ [and that is the operative word – not if ideas are true, but if they work], and to drop them quickly when they don’t work. It is only by thinking out of the box that progress is made, but it is only progress if it still embraces what used to work or works better, so thinking out of the box is normally still rooted in what is possible and what does not contradict observations.
johnnythelowery (20:57:59) :
But the Solar thing […] has suddenly gone very sexy!
A friend of mine claimed it is better than sex. But, hey when you are 87…
johnnythelowery (21:27:45) :
there is one other force you have left out of your considerations, […] and that is entanglement?
Entanglement os not a force. And there is no distance limit to entanglement, but entanglement is very easily disturbed, especially in our chaotic universe, so is extremely unstable.
As I said physicists are VERY skeptical and they always demand: “show me”, and nobody has ever shown any significant effects of entanglement on a macroscopic scale.
johnnythelowery (20:57:59) : to John whitman:
””””””I hope you are not taking the pee. I have 100,000 questions but why would anyone answer me? But the internet & blogs, with gracious people on here, is a dream come true. I could do a Ph.d dissertation and get it back stamped “Bolox” before bedtime!! By Lief no less!!! ””””’
Johnnythelowery,
These comment streams on solar are precious. But, I am not downplaying the great earthly realm stuff with Anthony, Spencer, Christy, Willis, Lansner, Goddard, Horner, “chiefio“, Pielke(s), M & M, etc, etc
I try to express my appreciation often and in simple ways.
John
Leif: Much thanks for answering my (idle) musings. This stuff is definately sexy! And, to placate my wife if were to wonder onto this thread: Physics is a she darling! Much Thx………………….. JOhnnny
John Whitman: No problem. I didn’t think you were.
[img]http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4013/4318051005_95c1f0fe2b.jpg[/img]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs7t475ZVXQ]
Anu (16:50:14),
You’re coming around. Here’s a small debate between Christy and Schmidt: