Putting Sir Isaac Newton on the right path
Short story by Christopher Bowring
When lay global warming skeptics point out to alarmists that the recent seventeen year period of steady global temperatures invalidates their climate models which predicted runaway global warming, there is often a standard response.
‘How can you, global warming (or climate change) denier, who have no experience of climatology, dare to argue with me, a renowned expert in my field of science?’ Let us return to the England of the seventeenth century to see what is wrong with this rebuttal.
I am in Grantham in Lincolnshire. It is a sunny day. A respectable looking man in a wig is sitting under an apple tree. It is Sir Isaac Newton. I greet him. He smiles back, but looks agitated. ‘What is wrong?’ I ask. ‘I have made a wonderful discovery,’ he replies. ‘I call is my Law of Gravitation’. ‘What does it say?’ I enquire.
‘It says that any two bodies in the universe repel each other with a force proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of their distance apart’. ‘Really?’ I respond. ‘But that is nonsense!’ ‘Nonsense?’ explodes the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. ‘Nonsense? How can you, a nobody, a nonentity, dare to question the mind of the greatest living scientist in the world?’
‘Sir, I refute your law quite simply’. And with that I take an apple from the tree and drop it on Sir Isaac’s head.
@Bruce Cobb
“I think someone must have dropped a box of apples on your head.”
You’ve probably experienced this yourself, as the intellect required to come up with the above statement indicates you work as a fruit picker.
Of course, a global temperature does not make sense conceptually. However, it does make sense to have markers or proxies as measures of our environment, as long as the metric is acquired consistently and reliably over time.
My field of research is Multiple Sclerosis. So how does one measure a disease – such as MS – to determine if treatment is effective or whether the disease is progressing ? How does one measure mobility, sensory disturbances, depression, sexual dysfunction, vision loss, cognitive dysfunction, urinary troubles ? What about sub clinical disease activity ? MRI only detects part of the problem. Biological markers anyone ? The answer is that we have come up with scales and numbers and Z scores that tally up to a number which is meaningless in itself but which is a decent indicator of disease activity as long as the underlying metrics are obtained in a consistent and standard manner.
So, is gravity a repulsive or attractive force? Us un-educated would really like to know.
François GM says:
November 30, 2013 at 7:06 pm
Of course, a global temperature does not make sense conceptually. However, it does make sense to have markers or proxies as measures of our environment, as long as the metric is acquired consistently and reliably over time.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well there’s the problem right there. I’m surprised it hasn’t come up in this thread, but the fact of the matter is that temperature is not, and cannot, be a consistent and reliable proxy for energy balance, That would defy the laws of physics. Energy flux measured in w/m2 varies with temperature in degrees K raised to the power of 4. With no linear relationship between the two, no matter how you average temperature, or calculate anomalies, you do not have a useful metric.
A temperature change of 1 degree at -40C is indicative of a change in energy balance of 2.89 w/m2
A temperature change of 1 degree at +40C is indicative of a change in energy balance of 6.99 w/m2
Averaging temperature, even if there was a way to do it, still delivers a result that is NOT directly related to energy balance. In fact, one could be negative and the other positive under the right circumstances.
François GM:
In medical research, the norm is for a statistical population to underlie the model that emerges from a study. Please note that for the IPCC climate models the underlying population does not exist.
A few years ago at work, I was waiting for the microwave oven to finish heating my lunch. During that time I happened to observe a mug that a co-worker had left on top of the microwave oven. It was one of those tourist mugs. This one had the outline of New Mexico on one side, and some statistics about New Mexico on the other side. I saw, with some amusement, that the average yearly temperature in New Mexico was 50 degrees F.
I have very seldom experienced 50 degrees F in New Mexico, except for perhaps two or three days in the Spring, and two or three days in the Fall. I got to thinking about averages, and I realized that an average is really quite meaningless unless you know the actual range that has been averaged. Here in New Mexico a generally-accepted low temperature of negative 10 degrees F, usually in the northern part of the state, could be observed for a few days or weeks in winter. And a general-accepted high temperature of positive 110 degrees F is often observed in the southern part of the state for a few days or weeks in summer. In addition, even during winter the temperature might go up 60 degrees from nighttime lows to daytime highs, and during summer the temperature might go down 60 degrees from daytime highs to nighttime lows.
Climate is not an average temperature. Climate is the variable range of temperatures that is experienced in certain regions, taking into account the differences between day and night, altitude, prevailing winds, and humidity shifts, along with several dozen other parameters.
In reference to Newton, his observations on gravity had nothing to do with apples. He observed that two large lead balls that he had hung inside of a tall tower, had slightly deflected towards each other. The reason he was measuring deflection was because he was trying to transmute one of the lead balls, because he was making a living as an alchemist. Luckily, his observation of the deflection sidetracked him from his efforts to turn lead to gold, and he is now remembered more for his practice of scientific methodology, than for his forays into producing precious metals.
I suppose that some disillusioned soul may want to compare Newton’s wages as an alchemist to the grant money given for climate studies, but I’m sure there is no correlation there.
Mommy/Daddy, why is the Emporer naked?
The story illustrates the point that Christopher Bowring makes that a lay person can point out a problem with a “hypothesis” proposed by a respected scientist.The story also illustrates the fact that the lay person does not listen to anything that anyone else has to say because their ego won’t let them .The lay person does not achieve the same respect unless he shows that he has also read what others have to say.
But it is even worse than you think!
NASA-GISS/Hansen-HADCRU (and others) are desperate to “spread” their thermometer records as wide as possible over as much area as possible, regardless of the logic involved or the physics, geology, and all of those “seven-league steps” needed to cross the geography between each thermometer.
Thus, we are told the Arctic (all ice and salt water and ice-covered salt water between 70 north and 90 north) is warming dangerously when the Canadian and Siberian tundra and forest (all growing at different rates under different conditions between 60 north and 72 north) is reported as one overall “average” record: “Arctic temperatures – averaged for 60 – 80 north”. 20 degrees latitude is the distance between Key West (just at lat 23.5 under the Tropic of Cancer) and .. well … Mongolia, North Korea ..
Oregon
Idaho
Wyoming
South Dakota / Nebraska border
South Dakota
Iowa
Wisconsin, and more specifically, down at lat 43 itself ….
43°0′N 87°53′W Lake Michigan
43°0′N 86°13′W Upper Peninsula, Michigan. Sure – Let’s use this 60-80 “arctic average” to discuss water temperatures out on the ice pack by averaging Miami’s temperature readings with Michigan and Idaho.
But it is even worse than you thought!
At minimum ice conditions, we see now 3 – 4 million square kilometers of ice in the Arctic in September. 3 million square km’s is a “beanie cap” roughly centered on the pole, extending down to latitude 81.2 At mid-September, day-of-year = 264 at the solstice, the DMI daily average temperature (unchanged since records started in 1959) is right at 265 deg K for 80 north latitude.
So, 3 million sq km’s are emitting into space from ice (or water) at a average temperature of 265 ^4th power. Seems like a lot.
Maybe we should average that 265 deg K with the temperature of the earth at three other spots: 23.5 north (Key West, FL), near 0 latitude (Madang, New Guinea), and near 23.5 south latitude (Tahiti) – all also near the water level, and all in September. Just to be fair.
Key West, FL. air temp (T ave, Sept) = 302 K. Water temp = 301 K.
Madang, NG air temp (T ave, Sept) = 300.5 K. Water temp = 301 K
Tahiti. air temp (T ave, Sept) = 298 K. Water temp = 299 K.
A small question for the class: How many million sq kilometers of water (and land) are emitting into space between 23.5 north latitude and 23.5 south latitude at 300^4 power in September each year?
Do we really want to destroy our world’s economy based on a flat-plate “average” temperature approximation of radiation into space?
Mike Bromley the Kurd says:
November 29, 2013 at 10:45 pm
“The climate scientists are a particularly smug and narcissistic lot….characteristics seemingly confined to that ‘discipline’. Characteristics strange as they are distasteful, give the GIGO that they espouse”.
Right.
And we have been here before when a similar pact of “particularly smug and narcissistic lot” started to measure the size and shape of the human nose to determine which people they were going to send into the gas chambers.
The current lot has a similar objective but now target all of humanity.
We’re all Jews now.
http://green-agenda.com and UN Agenda 21
A layperson’s view….m mann’s hockey stick…climategate e-mails
17years of no warming while co2 rises. Nuv said. I rest my case
“Aristotle claimed objects fall with a speed proportional to their weight. This was accepted for a thousand years until Galeileo disproved it with a simple experiment. Anyone could do the experiment, so why did the world believe Aristotle for do long?”
It made sense within the schema of Aristotelian physics, which was based on everyday observation and so seemed a reasonable way of thinking about the world. No-one did the experiment because they had insufficient reason to doubt Aristotelian physics until Galileo’s time. He worked out, via a thought experiment, that Aristotle was wrong about that, and then devised his rolling balls experiment to prove it.
sabretruthtiger says:
November 30, 2013 at 6:23 am
“Newton’s third law also states that 2 colliding objects exert equal force against each other which means that for every floor destroyed in the resisting section a floor must be destroyed in the falling section, meaning that after 15 floors there cannot be any piledriver destroying the building.”
Are you thinking that when the top 15 floors dropped, the floors at the plane’s impact point were being removed from existence 2 by 2, one from above and one from below that point? Actually, floors were being collapsed. A collapsed floor has essentially the same weight after collapsing as before collapsing. I say essentially the same because some debris would spill out to the sides. Even with some loss of material, after collapsing each floor would actually have even greater pile driving capability. Collapsing absorbs energy. That’s why we don’t have much use for rubber hammers.
SR
Janice says:
November 30, 2013 at 8:42 pm
“Climate is not an average temperature. Climate is the variable range of temperatures that is experienced in certain regions,…”
Yes, indeed! For years I have head TV weather people make statements like “Today will be 10 degrees above normal” when they actually meant today will be 10 degrees above average.
SR
Joseph W. says:
November 30, 2013 at 6:01 am
Box of Rocks — For a question like that you should really let your fingers do the walking on the web. There are scores of articles to explain it, like this one. The “heat” from CO2 is (ultimately) from the sun, not from the CO2 itself.
Short answer – The sun heats things up. These things emit infrared radiation. Greenhouse gases (including CO2) absorb infrared radiation. Absorbing this radiation heats them up; they then heat up the atmosphere. (Oxygen and nitrogen don’t absorb infrared radiation, so if there were no greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, this infrared radiation would make it into space without heating up anything.)
But how is that generating energy??
The CO2 molecule is merely absorbing then re-emitting energy, or recycled….
No new energy is produced or generated.
Right?
Really is what happens whether you believe in it or not.
Years ago I was designing an FM radio,. At one pint I had to redo it because the (German) sponsors wanted a (German) front-end in it. They believed that German engineering was always perfect.
At some point about then it became noisy. I was busy working on other parts of the set to s a consultant was brought in who diligently went through my own design bits (the front end was bought in) and after two weeks pronounced that ‘it was unlikely it was my stages that were introducing the noise’ . My response was ‘I could have told you that in 5 minutes’
‘Oh? How?’
‘Simple;” I unsoldered the front end and replaced it with a dummy load, and injected a signal at the IF frequency instead of FM. ‘Look, no noise with it not there’ I said. ‘Oh’, he said….
My brother in law is a palaeogeologist, his study is techniques for dating old rocks. A lot of this involves proxies from almost everything to cross measure age effects of which temperature and carbon dioxide are bit tow ‘signatures’ . Being a sort of average to cooking PhD I had expected him to fully go along with AGW, as most scientists not in the field used to. Not a bit of it . ‘Total bunk;’ He declared. ‘Oh? why?’ ‘Because if CO2 had done then what they claim it is doing now, life would never have evolved on Earth at all’…..
Er that should have been REALITY is what happens etc..
Robert of Ottawa says:
November 30, 2013 at 2:43 pm
@ur momisugly Samuel C Cogar November 30, 2013 at 9:50 am
“The greatest transfer of energy from Sun to Earth is via the oceans, which absorb the entire visual spectrum, and reflects the IR, as I understand. Any SCUBA diver will explain the relationship between light and heat in the oceans.”
——————–
Right you are Robert, the greatest transfer of energy from Sun to Earth is via the oceans simply because the oceans cover 71% of the Earth’s surface.
And keep in mind the fact that even though the water is capable of absorbing the entire visual spectrum ….. the actual amount that it absorbs is highly dependent upon the “angle of incidence” that the Sunlight strikes the surface of the water. Maximum absorption will only occur at 90 degrees to perpendicular ….. and as that angle decreases toward 0 degrees ….. the amount of reflected Sunlight off the surface of the water increases. And water also absorbs and emits IR, as well as reflects it.
See absorption spectrum @ur momisugly http://atoc.colorado.edu/wxlab/radiation/background.html
The root cause of The Great CAGW Scare and the reasons that intelligent people refuse to acknowledge the factual science that negates and/or disproves such junk science.
Me thinks one will get a more sound and realistic perspective if they honestly look at the “roots” of human caused CO2 causing Anthropogenic Global Warming.
And to do that they have to look at the three (3) distinctly different groups of people who “have a BIG dog in the CO2 fight”, and it is of my opinion …… that all of them, ….. for their own personal reasons, …… have been desperately trying to convince the public that, to wit:
1. Increasing Global Warming is “right as rain” and will destroy life on earth if not kept in check;
2. The cause of AGW is the “greenhouse” gas CO2 that is increasing in the atmosphere;
3. Human activities are the cause of CO2 increasing in the atmosphere;
And the three (3) groups are, to wit:
Group #1: Government funded Climate Scientists – This group has expended years n’ years and hundreds of millions of government funds researching the effects of Greenhouse Gases and to justify past expenditures and their future existence they were forced to provide a PJE (Proof of Job Existence) for public approval …. and thus their “proof(s)” are their claimed “increasing average temperatures”.
Group #2: Opportunists wanting “part of the action” – with so much “free” taxpayer money being distributed indiscriminately they seized upon the opportunity to “jump on the Global Warming bandwagon” anywhere they could get “hold” so as to get their share of said tax dollars and used the “claimed proofs” attested to by the aforementioned Climate Scientists to justify their actions.
Group #3: Environmentalists and liberal socialists – when Group #1 and Group #2 got CO2 declared an “air contaminent” and the primary cause of AGW ……. it was a Godsend for Group #3 and they also “jumped on the Global Warming bandwagon” and cited the “claims” of Group #1 and Group #2 for the explicit purpose of furthering their agenda of “shutting down” all Capitalism and Capitalists ventures they could by claiming they contribute to the increase in atmospheric CO2 quantities.
Given the above, is there any question as to why there is a “concensus of opinion” among the three (3) above Groups that ….. CO2 causes AGW?
And how do you put a “stop” to it?
You cut off their money supply.
But cutting off their money supply is nigh onto an impossibility simply because …. many of those who have the authority to supply said money are also actually or politically connected to the above noted Group #2 ….. and/or are dependent upon political support from above noted Group #3.
Adelard of Bath (12th century)
(a call on) “authority does not even necessarily add probability to a given argument”
Personally I think AGW is the emperors new clothes.
Steve Reddish says:
“Are you thinking that when the top 15 floors dropped, the floors at the plane’s impact point were being removed from existence 2 by 2, one from above and one from below that point? Actually, floors were being collapsed. A collapsed floor has essentially the same weight after collapsing as before collapsing. I say essentially the same because some debris would spill out to the sides. Even with some loss of material, after collapsing each floor would actually have even greater pile driving capability. Collapsing absorbs energy. That’s why we don’t have much use for rubber hammers.”
The debris has no cohesive structure and is virtually all expelled from the sides. In fact in the video you see it all expelled explosively up and out. 90 percent of the concrete was pulverised over several city blocks, there were no stacked floors or mountain of rubble and floors at the bottom to suggest the accreted mass was heavily utilised in the collapse. Collapsing does absorb energy which absorbs the momentum from the initial motion, so yes you’re saying that momentum is absorbed by the disintegration, but it is also absorbed by the superior upward resistance, either way momentum is absorbed and the superior upward resistance slows it to a stop. The 64% freefall acceleration of the roofline shows there was no accreted mass involved as there would be a distributed absorbtion of energy down the building as floors were destroyed and rubble particles involved in the collapse released energy in multi-directional interactions along with the retaining of most of the building’s mass. The massive roofline acceleration shows the mass was being expelled.
A good link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjSd9wB55zk
@Steve Reddish
>>weather people make statements like “Today will be 10 degrees above normal” when they actually meant today will be 10 degrees above average.<<
Even better would be: Today's high temperature will be 10 degrees above average, while today's low temperature will be 10 degrees below average, and today's average temperature will be… average… when compared to the official, historical range of temperatures measured here since 1890. Then they should throw in the disclaimer: "Beyond that, we have no idea."
@Sabre”truth”,
Truthers such as yourself generally have the cranial capacity of a fruit fly, and even that may be being generous. Your belief in a huge government conspiracy behind the 9/11 tragedy is laughably absurd.
In my humble opinion, 9/11 Truthers with their whacko conspiracy theories have no place on this website. “Sabretruth” is simply talking out of his arse.