Guest essay by Andi Cockroft
As I have outlined several times here, I am no scientist, despite having studied at University. But by far and away the vast quantity of learning has been obtained during life’s journey – both good and bad. All contribute to a depth of knowledge impossible to achieve through any 3 or 4 years of “Higher” education.
So what if I am not a qualified psychologist? How are psychologists qualified in any event?
Please then consider the arguments here rather than my lack of formal credentials – i.e. avoid Ad Hominem attacks and play the ball not the man. After all, at my time of life negative opinions of me are worth naught.
So why argue about the Abandonment of Logic?
I have met folks in my life who are seemingly exceptionally intelligent, yet believe in things I simply cannot comprehend. And I am not simply talking of Climate here, but, many aspects of modern living and knowledge.
It seems that in so many realms, Faith replaces Logic on so many levels.
In the beginning, and in so many cultures, the belief in some form of “supreme” being is fundamental. Be he the Christian and Judea God, the Muslim Allah, Viking Thor, Greek Zeus or any of the multiplicity of gods worshipped by races throughout the world such as the many gods of the Australian Aboriginals.
To this day, faith in Gods and Religion hold strong ties. Although some argue that the more liberal westernised societies are seeing a significant drop in spiritual feelings. Worship attendances are dropping for many, yet increasing for others.
But faith in some deity or other is only part of the changes taking place in western society. There is also an observable increase in the willingness of the same western societies to blindly follow argumentum ad verecundiam or the appeal to false authority.
One truly notable ruling authority of yesteryear was the Catholic Church. Galileo fell foul on suggesting the Sun was the centre of the Solar System, and the Earth revolved around it.
According to Wikipedia:
Galileo’s championing of heliocentrism and Copernicanism was controversial during his lifetime, when most subscribed to either geocentrism or the Tychonic system. He met with opposition from astronomers, who doubted heliocentrism because of the absence of an observed stellar parallax. The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, which concluded that heliocentrism was “foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture.”
Galileo was tried by the Inquisition, found “vehemently suspect of heresy”, and forced to recant. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
Nowadays, I have friends, many friends, who obtained post-graduate qualifications later in life – so they did have some life experiences before returning to study. Yet even these folks seem unable to think freely for themselves and blindly accept pronouncements from persons of elevated authority without at least researching facts for themselves.
In New Zealand, we have an expression known as the post tortoise:-
“When you’re driving down a country road and you see a fence post with a tortoise balanced on top, that’s a post tortoise. You know he didn’t get up there by himself. He doesn’t belong there; you wonder who put him there; he can’t get anything done while he’s up there; and you just want to help the poor, dumb thing down”
I’m told the expression is used in many Countries but let’s say it’s Kiwi just for now!
In far too many areas of “Science” these days, we see “Post Tortoises” occupying senior posts, some even tenured, but one has to wonder how on earth they actually got there.
This is no name-and-shame game, but perhaps you can connect the dots from your sphere of knowledge.
Now I will return to Climate, but I do have many other areas of research that warrant equal attention and perhaps I’ll cover these later.
This graph was featured prominently in the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR)
Why I wonder do so many people (albeit a diminishing number) blindly trust the “authority” figures predicting doom and gloom. A scenario of predictions that to my knowledge have all failed to eventuate. The last I wrote about here was a prediction for sea-level in 2300 – as though anyone can challenge the result nor be around to see if it works out or not.
Now I have to admit that the first time I saw Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” presentation, I was shocked by what he had to say, his rhetoric and the graphics were extremely compelling.
However, it didn’t take long for me to begin the logical process and unwind thread by thread his arguments. I remembered the doom-and-gloom merchants of the 70’s foretelling of another ice-age. I remembered the freezing winters in England of the early 60’s. I remembered my father retelling of the summers he enjoyed during the 30’s. In all it just didn’t quite add up.
I remembered a wonderful History teacher I had in Jack Carlton who brought history to life for me and the rest of the class. In particular I remember the retelling of London Frost Fayres of the mini-ice age of the 17th and 18th centuries. Of how Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were to be seen being hauled along the frozen Thames.
Again from Wikipedia:
On the 20th of December, 1688 [misprint for 1683], a very violent frost began, which lasted to the 6th of February, in so great extremity, that the pools were frozen 18 inches thick at least, and the Thames was so frozen that a great street from the Temple to Southwark was built with shops, and all manner of things sold. Hackney coaches plied there as in the streets. There were also bull-baiting, and a great many shows and tricks to be seen. This day the frost broke up. In the morning I saw a coach and six horses driven from Whitehall almost to the bridge (London Bridge) yet by three o’clock that day, February the 6th, next to Southwark the ice was gone, so as boats did row to and fro, and the next day all the frost was gone. On Candlemas Day I went to Croydon market, and led my horse over the ice to the Horseferry from Westminster to Lambeth; as I came back I led him from Lambeth upon the middle of the Thames to Whitefriars’ stairs, and so led him up by them. And this day an ox was roasted whole, over against Whitehall. King Charles and the Queen ate part of it.
So simply from my schoolboy recollections, I began to smell a rat. Further research showed quite simply that since the 1850’s, temperatures had been slowly yet inexorably rising. As in any inexorable rise, on average, each year should statistically be hotter than the previous. Inevitably then coming out of a “mini-ice age” we will see record after record temperature recorded. QED.
That’s my logically thinking.
But things are never simple, and that should show a trend not a guarantee of increasing temperatures.
The last time I had my IQ measured, it came in quite high – but a good 20 percentage points down from my 20’s. This is not for personal aggrandisement but rather a simple statement of fact. For I see IQ measurements simply as demonstrating A can think faster than B. It does not give any indication of the way in which A “thinks” better than B.
I know of many with an IQ higher than mine, yet of low intellect. Likewise many with a lower IQ yet an intellect and clarity of thought that far surpasses mine.
A friend of mine beats me hands down at chess, bridge and even poker. His motor skills are superb so he also beats me at pool, snooker and billiards – to such an extent that it’s hard to understand how we remain friends. Yet he is regarded as educationally below-par.
So intellect to my mind is the greater thought process, although regrettably it seems we only have quantative measurements.
As Ozzy Osbourne was quoted as saying “Out of everything I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most!”. Perhaps that’s why my IQ has dropped 20 percentage points – Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n Roll will do that to a person.
But is not rational thought an expression of intellect?
So why are so many of today’s “Top Minds” not thinking for themselves?
I have watched with abject horror the changes in the Education System over the decades. When I was a child of the ‘50’s we learned everything by rote. 9 x 1 = 9, 9 x 2 = 18, 9 x 3 = 27…… 9 x 9 = 81 etc.
It was my fortune to have at junior school, a Maths teacher who introduced a dartboard into the equation. Once we had completed our rote learning, it was time for some real-world mathematics. Someone would throw a dart, then teacher would point at some poor soul and say “add” or maybe “subtract” but worst of all would be “multiply” or “divide” – at which point a second dart was thrown – and so it went on – some poor soul having to do the sums after the second dart. I cannot remember anyone falling behind at their darts score though!
I wonder what todays “Liberal” educators would make of my old schoolmaster’s methods?
Then again, it also seems as though the idea that a child should be taught to think for themselves almost seems alien in today’s scholastic system. Is it any wonder then there are so many unwilling to challenge the authoritative “Consensus” pronouncements?
Over the years, I have also observed a major shift in the style, type and calibre of teachers and lecturers. My teachers were mostly elderly (yes I know I was just a child), but grey hair and arthritis figured large. I recollect at a time of searching for a University my then School Masters always say “Don’t worry, if you don’t make University you can always go to Teacher training College” – and so it was. Other than one chap who actually wanted to teach, it was those who failed to gain University places who ended up becoming Teachers.
With this emphasis (or lack of it) in England of the 60’s, is it any wonder the degradation in Educational Values was to accelerate? Just sayin from personal observation.
So again, now having said everything above, why are so many “supposedly” well educated people willing to accept the chicken-little type doomsayers foretelling all manner of catastrophe that will befall us all. From ice-age is coming through catastrophic global warming. From global pandemics to asteroid impacts. Even appealing to the biblical scholars end the “End of the World is Neigh” brigade. The willingness to accept anything that belittle us as a specie is astounding.
Carl Sagan during his final years warned of the dangers of what we now call “Fake News”. His reminder “Mistrust arguments from authority…. Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong. Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else”
Carl Sagan’s last interview with Charlie Rose is on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8HEwO-2L4w
As is his best seller “The Demon Haunted World – Science as a Candle in the Dark”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0yII8OT5fc
So it seems to be human nature that blinds us to “Real Science”, and the true scientific principle. How then do we persuade folks to simply demand that any doomsday claim is proven and not simply postulated?
Answer that my friends and you have the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”
Originally uploaded by en:User:Martinultima
agree every word. The trick is to be well read and curious. When the hockey stick vanished from IPCC propaganda, did we get an apology? Or an explanation?
Btw when you are asked your qualifications in ‘ climate change ‘ say I write steamy novels and have a degree in railway engineering.
I don’t have to do that. When reading physics back in the 70’s you had to take meteorology (and astrophysics) to be able to become a college physics teacher (this was in Sweden). We all had a teaching post as a “career of last resort”, so we all took those courses. After all the astrophysics was quite interesting and meteorology was not exactly taxing compared to quantum mechanics or solid state physics.
Now, I got into aerospace instead, so I managed to avoid teaching, but it is rather satisfying to be able to say “I have a degree in meteorology” when challenged by a CAGW:er.
Well, I have a BS in ChE and a JD, but in neither did I get any insight into climate or meteorology. But I did learn how to think and to reason. I still like the old saying, “I am from MIssouri.” Meaning, “Prove it”. Here we are almost twenty years after the prophecies of doom and not a one has taken place. I even read in the Chronicle an article that stated we would face catastrophe because we project the global temperature to be increased by 2.7 degrees C rather than the 2.0 degrees mandated by the Paris accords. Do these guys even read their own writings? Absurd. But…tipping points! Egad.
If anyone doubted that the Coma of Reason Produces Monsters, I give you…. climate science.
When people don’t have to struggle to survive and be responsible for their own lives they lose all ability to think and reason for there is no need. Hence the appeal of socialism it takes away the struggle and the responsibility of your life and gives you safety and security at least to the barest of need, reason is replaced by the religion of socialism because that’s where your survival comes from. When socialism begins its inevitable slide into total ruin and safety and security start to flee blind faith and group thought lead to ever more violence and rage, for reason has been extinguished and will only return when total collapse has come and the nee for it has returned.
Examples
Venezuela
inner cities in the US (which once had a lower rate of divorce, lower rate of children out of wedlock then middle class communities and a similar rate of employment at least until the great society to eliminate poverty, which by the by is pretty much at the same level as it was prior to 21 trillion dollars to eliminate it)
Mann’s “hockey stick” did not meet the sniff test. Anyone who knew any history of the Norse in Greenland, or history in general, would recognize the impossibility of the graph. But it was used anyway, which reveals a good deal about what the IPCC thought of its intended readers.
It also revealed a great deal about the Governments intent. Use fear and guilt (sounds a lot like a faith based religion) to sway the majority into believing they needed to turn to the Government to save them from themselves with every proposed solution leading to more centralized control over the individuals, higher costs of living and lower quality of life for the masses.
That’s the real objective.
Donald Trump conspired with Putin to win the election. He THEN tried to create a secret communication channel with Russia, during the TRANSITION PERIOD. (He didn’t need a channel to exchange data to conspire before.)
That not only does not pass the sniff test, it makes no sense what so ever.
Just like a tons of other claims about the elections are just facially absurd.
– The Macron campaign team knows there altered documents in the dump of emails and organisation documents, they determined that just after (maybe a few hours) the document dump was posted; yet they wouldn’t point to a single example of such alteration (and nobody asked for an example).
– Hillary Clinton was the most qualified candidate but spent more than one billion on advertising while Russia flipped the election with a few bucks because there was “targeting”, which means “the most qualified candidate” couldn’t vaguely “target” the billion of dollars her party spent, etc.
As if there was a market for ridiculous theories, just like there is one for ridiculous “sci-fi”. It’s “the Moon breaks up and fall on the Earth” (*) level of storytelling.
So there is a market for claims that species that existed since at least hundreds of millions of years are extremely sensitive to the smallest change in their environnement, and they never move to find suitable ground environment (or suitable marine environment for fishes).
(*) that’s actually a real TV movie story – I am not making that up; I don’t remember the title.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb has the noun phrase Intellectual Yet Idiot – IYI – scattered throughout his Incerto but expands on it in Skin In The Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life.
Skin in the game, doxastic comittment was introduced in his The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable as he damned particularly weather prognosticators without their Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, hanging by the fraying Thread of Truth.
Failure of logic extending into failure of basic scientific method?
How CO2 warms an atmosphere has been proved mathematically and it’s been debunked mathematically, but so far no one has actually done a controlled experiment that proves that the temperature profile of an atmosphere is altered by CO2– except the Connollys, who have shown that it is not.
This is very, very simple: do a physical experiment that proves that the basic mechanism that’s assumed for surface warming by CO2 actually exists. No?
“…a physical experiment that proves that the basic mechanism that’s assumed for surface warming by CO2 actually exists.”
What would such an experiment look like?
How about this experimental set-up:
Take a valley that forms a bowl. Fill it with a concentration of about 95% CO2 to a depth of 50 meters. Allow the CO2 to remain for several hours. Measure the temperature/heat/energy/radiation/etc. in the valley before, during and after the CO2 fills the valley.
Well, surprise! While it would be unethical for scientists to carry out such an experiment, Mother Nature helpfully implemented exactly that experimental design:
“On August 21, 1986…Lake Nyos suddenly emitted a large cloud of CO2….Carbon dioxide, being about 1.5 times as dense as air, caused the cloud to “hug” the ground and descend down the valleys…The mass was about 50 metres (160 ft) thick and it travelled downward at a rate of 20–50 kilometres per hour (12–31 mph). For roughly 23 kilometres (14 mi) the cloud remained condensed….”
This is exactly the experiment needed to provide data on the “sensitivity” of the atmosphere to increased CO2.
The data is there, somewhere, waiting for an enterprising citizen scientist to gather and analyze.
Have at it!
More details:
http://intelctweekly.blogspot.com/2015/01/mother-natures-experiment-with-co2.html
Excuse me? How about: a column of CO2, let’s say 10 meters tall, filled with say 1000 ppm CO2, and another with no CO2. We control for pressure, humidity, etc. According to the theory, the column with CO2 should back-radiate such that the bottom of the CO2 column is warmer than that without CO2.
OK, maybe I’ve got some details wrong but surely someone can design an experiment? It would be incredible if we could not design an experiment to test the alleged mechanism.
Or how about Nahle’s experiment which showed that LWIR doesn’t heat a greenhouse and is not “trapped.” Don’t believe it? Then redo it.
Don,
If the goal of your experiment is to discover what happens when the concentration of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere is increased, then….the best experimental design is to increase the concentration of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere.
Mother Nature did exactly this. She’s already run the experiment for us.
Sure, filling a 10 meter column with 1000 ppm CO2 might be okay. But Mother Nature filled an entire several mile long valley with CO2 for us already!
All we need to do is gather the data from the incident.
We already have anecdotal stories from the incident. Not one of the people in the valley reported “runaway warming” from “back radiation” or from anything else. In fact, those who survived tended to report a distinct cooling as the CO2 settled in.
Kent, that’d do.
Don,
Not only would it do…but it has been done!
Mother Nature ran that experiment.
You’d think “climate scientists,” who tout the “settled science” of CO2’s heat-trapping abilities would have rushed to the scene to collect the data on the heat-trapping effects of a 90% CO2 atmosphere–right here on Earth!
There must still be data available–observations and anecdotes at least. This is exactly the experiment called for above–but it’s already been done.
Some details on the 90% CO2 atmosphere in the valley:
http://www.massey.ac.nz/~trauma/issues/2011-1/fomine.htm
As I recall, the earth has had much higher CO2 content than just the 400ppm that has everyone’s panties in a twist. And yet, here we are still. No runaway heating. And a couple of ice ages afterward.
Sure Don, And we can bell some cats at the same time, all we need is a simple parallel universe where we can kill everybody except the scientists stop all the CO2 and see what happens.
If you have only logic and facts you will become disconnected from reality. You are likely to believe anything that isn’t self-contradictory.
You need context. That comes from experience.
Your thoughts should wash back and forth between the logical part of your brain and the part that considers everything in the context of your lived experience. Eventually you should come up with a viable picture.
Chess is a wonderful example. A master chess player can’t logic out many more moves forward than can a beginner. The difference is experience and deliberate practice. A master will recognize a good position just by looking at it. That’s why she can take on fifty duffers at the same time and beat them all. The lesson here is that pattern recognition is more important to us than logic.
You need context. That comes from experience.
And that is how we agree with Andi’s observation that things didn’t add up. Not surprisingly, they add up even less for every additional 100 hours of research.
to quote some else here though i forget who its every 72 hours
Good observation. A chess master can “see” what an amateur cannot.
Isn’t the problem with humans is that we get wedded to our internally-consistent paradigms and believe that they must be much more than just paradigms, and that they must accurately reflect reality too? Our paradigms can blind us. To find the truth, don’t we have to abandon allegiance to paradigms? Paradigms can be guides and tools for thinking but that’s all they are.
The meta-paradigm is that paradigms are just paradigms.
Climate science: our paradigm, which is based on a assumption with no physical proof, is right, and if you disagree with us then not only are you a science-denier, but you’re also a bit mentally deranged.
Can it get any weirder than that?
This time you have hit the nail on the head.
Unfortunately no one, especially second or third rate scientists, wants to accept that their view of reality is actually just a view, and not reality itself.
People talk about ‘facts’ and ‘scientific facts’ but unfortunately even in the most scientific terms, facts are relative to world-views.
Take the whole Galileo biznai: The average scientist here will tell you that Galileo was right, the Church was wrong and the ‘Earth’ does in fact ‘Go Round’ ‘The Sun’.
The cartoon that belongs here is:
http://vps.templar.co.uk/Cartoons%20and%20Politics/centrifugal_force.png
In short as the Church pointed out, it was simply a way to make the mathematics easier. The sun and the planets are part of a model, and the model has no ‘centre’ any more than the Universe has a ‘centre’ and gravity only exists as a concept in men’s minds.
That is the view of modern philosophy of science,.
However – and here’s where I restore some shred of dignity to third rate scientists, the fashionable idea in Leftist circles that ‘truth is relative to culture’ does not mean that it is only relative to culture…
And a few philosophers outside the cutting edge of the likes of e.g. the late Hilary Putnam, have also realised that whilst it is undoubtedly true that we view the world through a variety of anthropocentric spectacles all of which give wildly differing values for ‘Truth’, the fact is that a large part of the world outside our minds and social structures appears to utterly defy our ability to magic it away.
And that is where we can find justification in science. Not because it’s models are true, because we cannot prove that, but because it models an external truth and is functionally effective as a set of models that are all part of a bigger model we might call the ‘rational materialistic world view’ . This model of reality can be shown to be wrong, in the limit but it is a very handy shorthand, and a very effective way of dealing with, as Wittgenstein puts it ‘whatever is the case‘
The view that emerges is that all world views – your paradigms – can be shown to be ultimately false and limited. Including those on which science depends.
However this does not mean, as the post-modern Left has concluded – that there is no truth but what people can be induced to believe. This ‘magic thinking’ is a feature of the Left and survives because it is now a fact that over 50% of humanity now lives in a man made urban environment completely out of touch with nature. Survival in the Hive mind of the LeftyBorg is about what you believe, not what is. This is why the Idiocy of the Left prevails. Because the Right built a world that didn’t require its inhabitants to display any common sense whatsoever.
No, there is a Truth out there, beyond belief, or ‘magic thinking’ would work. We could say a few prayers and the rain would fall or the snow come.
It doesn’t.
That is the fundamental proof that the idea of a truth beyond belief exists. Unfortunately we have no direct access to it, and all we can do is try on different pairs of anthropocentric glasses till we find some that work well enough to not get us killed.
Our world-view today is the result of millennia of anthropic views that didn’t get us killed. Don’t knock it. It has indeterminable truth content, but it got us this far. The essence of Conservatism as a philosophy is summed up there. Don’t break what worked well enough already without very good reason.
The essence of Leftism as defined by Marx was break everything until something better and more natural emerges.
Like an early grave.
And this is the battle we in the West are part of. On the one hand we have the LeftyCnuts*, Trying to control the natural tides through belief, trying to tear down the mental and cultural structures that have got us this far, in the certain belief that this is the way to make a better world.
On the other (Right) side, we have social conservatives, who think that a grid that doesn’t black out is probably more important than whether a handful of people can feel socially acceptable as homosexuals just because they have aped some ancient religious practice of marriage which was specifically all about the procreation of children they will never ever be able to have. (I can only echo what Nigel Farage said once on being asked what he thought about Gay Marriage:
“I don’t”. he said. “I have far far more important things on my mind”.
Amen to that).
Social conservatives who think that what has worked before is probably not far off a decent working solution now, unless it is clearly broken.
Idealists dreaming of what the world ought to be like, versus pragmatists dealing with it as it appears to be.
Climate change, gender politics. animal rights, fox hunting, feminism, me too, black lives matter (presumably white ones don’t) political correctness – all of these preach at us how we ought to be.
Science we had hoped, told it like it was, and government we hoped, dealt with it as it was…
Up to a point even the habit of belief is probably pretty good at helping us survive. Comfortable lies are functionally effective. The truth may result in suicide,
There is an inherent conflict between the truth and survival sometimes. If there is no after life and no god and nothing really matters, the temptation to not struggle to bring up the next generation at all is quite strong.
So don’t knock sky fairies either. It got us this far.
Truth content is not the only parameter we are juggling with in terms of paradigm selection.
What am I saying?
I am saying that our world-views – paradigms if you like – are of necessity what gets us through life.
We can’t deal with the world as it really is, so we deal with our internalised models of it.
The first point to summarise is that those models don’t have to be true, to get us through life. They just have to be not harmfully false. A belief in the power of windmills doesn’t hurt provided you dont gamble a whole society on it…
The second point to say is that experience shows that people are all more or less insecure, and in today’s spiritual desert, they more and more define themselves through their interactions with others, and through shared activities and beliefs. Insecurity breeds narcissism – people who must indeed act as if they knew what is true and right and moral because they have no inner sense of self worth to guide them, and no externalised religion to supply them with a sense of self worth either.
If they lose their world – views – their paradigms, these people literally die. They depend on others to reflect back on them who they think they are, and take that as who they actually are.
Because they do not exist in any other sense, They are just ‘cardboard cutouts’ Hollow men, who are what they believe, and without belief, are nothing.
Few people can act in the absence of belief in something. Marxism has been functionally effective in removing belief in religions, and replacing it with a weird set of moral strictures and an intensely puritanical world view called ‘political correctness’ that we all now know and love (or hate).
‘Climate change’ is simply part of that world-view.
The interesting point, as a social conservative, is to consider whether or not political correctness and all the social justice politics and ‘magic thinking’ of the LeftyCnuts is actually going to kill those who believe in it, or not.
Marxism is perhaps just a mind parasite, that ultimately destroys those who believe in it.
Unfortunately it’s a connected world, and that is not all it threatens…
* I normally spell that slightly differently…
Leo Smith- shades of Jordan Peterson! I have rarely seen such a well-coordinated take down from anyone else. An excellent run through of the human condition. We’re damned if we do, suffer if we don’t “do”, and in the end we all die.
As the large majority of people seem to know, climate change, whatever that is, is the least of our worries, or world view. For quite a number of years climate change has ranked dead last in a world wide survey of opinions on salient topics.
Surely Mr. Bond will die but it’s the centripetal force that will kill him. Mr. Bond has momentum while the wheel exerts centripetal force on him. Mr. Bond’s predicament is described by the impulse-momentum equation:
Impulse = momentum
F t = m v
Where: F is centripetal force, t is time, m is mass, v is radial velocity
This is like when you’re running at 100 kph and you hit a brick wall at an angle. It’s not a head-on collision so you don’t fully stop but you change direction (bounce off the wall) When you hit the wall, it exerts a normal force on you. This is the force that kills you not your momentum. To prove this, run at the same speed and hit a paper wall. Same momentum but lesser normal force. You just rip the paper wall and survive. In Mr. Bond’s case, the centripetal force acts like the normal force in the brick wall. It changes the direction of motion of Mr. Bond from straight line to circular path.
“The sun and the planets are part of a model, and the model has no ‘centre’ any more than the Universe has a ‘centre’ and gravity only exists as a concept in men’s minds.”
Put a motionless spacecraft (with respect to the sun) midway between the sun and Earth. See it move towards the sun and away from Earth. The sun is the center because it has the strongest gravity. Jump from the top of the Empire State bldg. Surely a mere concept in men’s mind cannot possibly harm you.
>>
, where r is the radius of the circular path and v is the tangential velocity or speed.
, where G is the gravitational constant 6.674×10^-11 m^3 kg^-1 s^2, 
is the mass of the Earth 5.9722×10^24 kg, and r is the radial distance, we get about 8.69 m/s^2.
Dr. Strangelove
March 15, 2018 at 4:34 am
Surely Mr. Bond will die but it’s the centripetal force that will kill him. Mr. Bond has momentum while the wheel exerts centripetal force on him. Mr. Bond’s predicament is described by the impulse-momentum equation:
<<
I disagree. It’s not the force or momentum that will kill Mr. Bond–it’s the acceleration. The correct formula is the one used for circular motion
It’s similar to what pilots feel when they venture from the straight and narrow. The term is “pulling g’s” and refers to how many times normal gravity acceleration (1 g or 9.8 m/s^2) is being experienced.
It’s interesting to calculate the acceleration astronauts will experience in orbit on the ISS. The distance is 401 km (it’s really an elliptical orbit, but we’ll assume it’s circular) and their orbital speed is 7.67 km/s. We also have to add in the radius of the Earth or 6,371 km. This gives us about 8.68 m/s^2 using the circular acceleration formula..
If we use Newton’s law of gravity to calculate the acceleration,
8.69 m/s^2 is roughly 90% of what we “feel” at the surface. The astronauts have weight in orbit, but they don’t “feel” it, because they are in free-fall or are falling around the Earth. Another way to look at it is that they are traveling in a straight line for the curvature of space-time near the Earth.
>>
Jump from the top of the Empire State bldg. Surely a mere concept in men’s mind cannot possibly harm you.
<<
It’s not the jump that will kill you (unless you are afraid of heights) or the accelerated fall (at 9.8 m/s^2), it’s the rapid deceleration at the end of your trip that does the damage.
Jim
Sorry, your use of a chess master versus a beginner is wrong.
Most chess masters can work many moves ahead AND analyse the moves and resultant positions, benefits and dangers.
Beginners tend to think around 2 or 3 moves ahead and mostly react to the other player’s moves. Which is why they lose so much.
Add to that most Grand Masters also have eidetic memories so already know practically all the acceptable moves and responses to the majority of openings.
Some people can never grasp the “Strategy” side of chess which is why we do not all end up chess masters regardless of how many games we play.
I played league chess and taught others to play, so I speak from experience.
As a chess coach for 22 years at 4 schools will have to say that chess is a combination of the points being made.
Pattern recognition is profoundly important at elite levels and grand masters have many thousands of games and positions memorized with their photographic memories…….but there are still countless options open with each move that must be analyzed and every game is different.
All of the 32 chess pieces on the board have a relationship with all the other chess pieces and after each move, the relationship changes………usually a little bit on the visible board but when you dial in the next 2, 3 and 4 moves, that can build on that initial small change, along with countless possible choices for the next 2, 3 and 4 moves and the possibilities are endless.
No matter how good the memory or reliable the pattern, the chess player must be able to project and analyze new relationships between the pieces that grow exponentially with each projected move. Some of this cannot be taught or memorized and if one does not have a naturally analytical thinking mind(we use the same part of the brain solving math equations and doing analytical thinking that we do when playing chess) then one will never rise to an elite level chess player.
I have had a few gifted 5 year olds playing for a month that could whip decent players with 5 years of experience(out of around 3,000 students).
Unlike most things in life, where reaching an advanced level of understanding or skill takes years and years of training/learning(for example, before learning calculus, a student needs to learn basic math and work their way up) becoming skilled playing chess can happen almost immediately for a mind that can project the changing relationships between the pieces out many moves from the get go. Many players lacking this innate ability can be good chess players, partly from memorizing/pattern recognition and partly from teaching them to see several moves ahead but they will always underachieve compared to a similar student who “sees” the algebraic relationship between the pieces from the get go………without having to experience hundreds of games.
Show me a kid that is gifted at playing chess from the get go and I’d bet that he/she is also brilliant at math. By no coincidence, many of their parents are engineers or in fields that require analytical thinking. Besides our physical characteristics that define our outward appearance being inherited from parents we obviously inherit the way their brains work.
There are many exceptions and surprises and every child, regardless of ability will benefit by playing the “Sport for the Brain”. From the weakest to strongest player, they should all be treated equally and assisted in reaching their potential.
The benefits and enjoyment of playing chess can extend well into old age. My 92 year old dad still plays skillful chess.
http://www.pressandguide.com/news/checkmate-nonagenarian-chess-whiz-influences-generations-of-players/article_82494772-e57a-5f15-a0ed-b57ed9c33555.html
https://www.courierpress.com/story/news/local/2017/04/09/chess-grows-popularity-among-evansville-youth/99851156/
… yes, but not by logic alone. We all have similar limitations of short term memory and processing. Masters are guided by their knowledge of what moves are plausible. Given problems of a different nature they are not markedly superior.
An eidetic memory is commonly called a photographic memory. Chess masters don’t have that. After years of study, they can recognize familiar (to them) situations and reproduce them. Given a chance to briefly view a plausible chess board, they can reproduce it. (My friend’s dad could, as far as I could tell, reproduce every game ever played by Alekhine.) On the other hand, if the pieces are positioned randomly, the master won’t be able to reproduce it much better than a duffer.
Playing lots of games doesn’t help. Deliberate practice and study do help. The link I supplied has many references. It seems that chess players are rather well researched. Also, I would refer you to László Polgár. He was able to train his daughters so that at an early age (5 in one case) they were able to defeat veteran chess players. ” two of them becoming the best and second best women chess players in the world, respectively.”
That’s an educated (if somewhat verbose) way of saying what Mike Tyson discovered through empirical trials.
“Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the face.”
IMHO, a substantial proportion of true-believers have been hit square in the face with stinging jabs from the ubiquitous Old Man Winter.
A couple of aside comments:
1 – Galileo. The issue here is rather complex, and a study of C.S Lewis’s ‘The Discarded Image’ will help to understand it. Briefly, the relative positions of the Sun and Earth were not only of interest to Astronomy, but also to an all-encompassing Theology. What Galileo was saying, in Theological terms, was that Man was in a sphere at the same level as Angels, while God resided at the bottom of the heap. Which was, of course, a theological problem. It didn’t help that Calileo was very stubborn, and so was the Church Establishment…
2 – The Post Tortoise seems to be an example of the Peter Principle. This states that whenever you show that you are competent in your job, you are in the frame to be promoted. Thus, you proceed up the ranks of an organisation, until you reach a level where you are no longer competent. And at that point you are no demoted – you just stay there. Briefly, bureaucratic organisations work by promoting people to the level of their own incompetence…..
Bureaucratic organization promote you based you your level of ass kissing and backstabbing, all other types of organizations promote you to your level of incompetence.
Don’t forget Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy!
To expand on dodgy’s comments regarding Galileo…
I’m not Catholic, but I do tire of the mythologizing and downright fabrication of this fictitious war between religion and science, particularly in the case of the Galilean dispute. The church had already accepted, as a reasonable theory, Copernicus’ heliocentric model. Thus, Galileo’s observations were not widely disputed. The act that led to his summoning before the inquisition was a publication that took the Pope’s words and implied them to a simpleton.
I get it, though. EVERYbody “knows” the church hates science. And EVERYbody “knows” that Galileo is that anciene martyr for science. Except…in believing, and perpetuating, this highly inaccurate version of the story, you become guilty of the VERY thing you’re self-righteously accusing the 16th Catholic Church of.
I recommend not using Wikipedia as a source for anything. At best it’s potentially accurate. At worst, it’s downright mendacious.
rip
…The church had already accepted, as a reasonable theory, Copernicus’ heliocentric model….
The Church was happy with the concept that Astronomers could use the heliocentric model to perform geometric calculations. The Wiki puts it well:
“Bellarmine at first expressed the opinion that Copernicus’s book would not be banned, but would at most require some editing so as to present the theory purely as a calculating device for “saving the appearances” (i.e. preserving the observable evidence).”
Their problem was that the sky was built into their world model, so that statement that ‘this is how it really is’, as opposed to ‘for the purpose of calculations’ ended up making theological as well as physical assertions. That is why, in Feb 1616 ‘ the Qualifiers delivered their unanimous report: the proposition that the Sun is stationary at the centre of the universe is “foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture”; the proposition that the Earth’s moves and is not at the centre of the universe “receives the same judgement in philosophy; and … in regard to theological truth it is at least erroneous in faith.” ‘. Which is why, later that year, the Inquisition required Galileo:
“…to abstain completely from teaching or defending this doctrine and opinion or from discussing it… to abandon completely… the opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing.”
The Church, therefore, did not hold the heliocentric theory to be founded in reality, but were happy for it to be used as a calculating device. So long as it was clear that God was not placed in the low centre while Man was elevated to the higher spheres – which is what heliocentricism meant to a theologian….
I would recommend using the Wiki as a source for technical data. I would read it as a slanted source for modern history – though accurate if the history is not controversial. I would read it as propaganda for most environmental matters, including Climate Change.
Galileo certainly annoyed Urban VIII with his ‘Dialogue’ in 1632. But are you claiming that the Church did not formally require Galileo to cease advocating the heliocentric theory in 1616, and that they did not ban Copernican doctrine in that year? It is obvious that they did.
My point is NOT that the Church was ‘against science’, as you seem to think. My point is that the newly evolving ‘scientific’ thinking was coming up against established theological doctrine, and neither side was able to give way. They were both talking about different things – the Church was talking about the hierarchical spiritual establishment of Heaven while Galileo was talking about astronomical calculation. With the example of Georges Lemaitre and Gregor Mendel I can’t see how anyone can think that the ‘Church hates Science’, though their approach to Teilhard de Chardin shows the difficulty of merging the natural world and the theological….
dodgy,
Fair points, all.
But, it’s still avoids the question of what prompted the Catholic Church’s trial of Galileo. Galileo, apparently, deliberately insulted the Pope. And this after receiving explicit permission from the Pope himself to publish his theory.
Yes, the church directed him to publish it as a theory, but in the context of the Protestant reformation, the tribulations of which were being felt throughout the Church, it’s understandable that the Church would “cling” to it’s tested scientific beliefs in the face of unverified theories. (Note, I’m not defending this. I’m simply extending a measure of charity to the Church, since it’s clear from all other sources that the Church was an advocate and supporter of science.)
And so, the two things that this tempest in a teapot were really and truly about, were a) insulting the Pope, and b) publishing as scientific fact that which had not been scientifically proven.
The idea that Christian belief needed the earth to be at the center of the Universe and the Church was threatened by this is…overstated. I think it’s more likely that, just as many modern Christians have had to make peace with evolutionary biology, and the understanding that their faith is not affected by it, the 16th century Christians were wary of such a fundamental shift to their understanding of the universe.
Maybe I’m guilty of extending too much charity to our historical ancestors, but by perpetuating this fanciful war between faith and science, it denigrates the centuries of scientific work that was led and supported by individuals of faith from all across the world. It’s just unnecessary. And, frankly, seems to be little more than an attempt to subtly belittle those who hold the view that all that can be observed by man is not necessarily all there is.
Respectfully,
rip
Sorry dodgy, looks like I was typing while you were.
I agree with you. Thank you for your clarification. In my opinion it’s spot on (re: the church’s theological position versus Galileo’s scientific one).
Also note, I was not necessarily directing this at you, but rather was attempting to address what I perceived to be a continuation of a fallacy (science vs church). I apologize for ascribing to you that which you didn’t intend.
Thanks for the conversation.
rip
Ripshin, if that was the case, why was On the Revolutions declared heretical in 1616? The good Dr. Copernicus was too dead to have offended anyone.
While the Catholic Church was using Copernicus’s math for calendar reform, the book itself had to be edited to make it appear to be a mathematical construct in order for it to be removed from the banned book lists.
While Gallileo’s true crime was offending the authorities, the backlash caused by him put the entire heliocentric worldview in the crosshairs. Don’t go too far in the other direction.
Ben,
Good point. It’s so easy to swing too far in the opposite direction. Definitely have been guilty of that in the past, and definitely could be here. I appreciate the feedback.
Sincerely,
rip
The accusation has been made that Roman Catholicism is too willing to bend its beliefs based on human logic and science.
Trying to keep spirituality in tune with current science is a mugs game. It leads down blind alleys. Every time the science changes, it invalidates the spirituality that attempts to embrace it.
I too would not rely on wikipedia .
If you are also attacking Judaism and Christianity , ..In the writings. Abraham was contacted by God.Moses was contacted by God. and subsequent belief is based on their observations and their actions .They changed their lives dramatically and in Moses ‘ case, unwillingly.
Islam is also based on contact by one who Muslims believe is the same God. and there was a similar change in outlook.
Like science these beliefs are founded on observation, in these cases of one time happenings. They are not philosophical systems such as Aristotle’s, and
Scientific Enquiry is based on recurrent happenings of the same kind, I hear. So they can’t be investigated by scientific means
So maybe we have Revelation ( somebody told us) Science ( we find this to be generally true) and Philosophy ( this is how we put things together) People are capable of all these methods of thought. We aren’t calculating machines
OK folks, let’s steer clear of religious discussions please, way off topic.
I always wonder why we take the views of religionists and scientists from ages ago as being of much consequence in answering today’s problems.
The church/science debate is easily resolved by humility on both sides.
Having worked for a Federal bureaucracy myself, I thought of ANOTHER explanation. Some workers were incompetent but impossible to fire. They were promoted to lower management, where they would do less damage.
This is a particular response and application of the peter principle: it is not an alternative.
Impossible to fire, is, a mark of competence. Of a sort…
Nice post even with tortoise on top (but turtles all the way down).🤣
However the MOL should apparently have been 72.😜
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14217443
Could you show that research? HadCRUT shows temperatures generally falling from the 1850s to around the 1920s, then rising until the middle of the 20th century, then cooling, then rising again till the present day. That doesn’t suggest the rise was inexorable.
Go tell the glaciers that – they have been retreating worldwide since c. 1850
Not all of them and quite a few are growing.
So if you have some ice, and the temperature is say 20 degrees it melts. I then cool the temperature to say 10 degrees – does it freeze or does it carry on melting?
You have just illustrated the point of the piece perfectly.
Use a graph showing glacier extents for the last 3000 years. (You, of course, will have use data from the proxy records so try to avoid mixing with instrumental or satellite records.) Come back to me with the trend results complete with the data you used.
Well it all boils down to this: Would Lewandowsky put himself in a space ship designed by Mann?
Recently there was a conference in the Netherlands about The Things Network, a collaboration to start a LoRaWan network (low power radio devices). One of the talks was by DecentLab talking about the Co2 live network in Switzerland. Pay special attention to the section on sensor calibration:
Ow, my brain…
“…the Christian and Judea God, the Muslim Allah…”
The Judeo-Christian ‘God’ is the same god as the Muslim ‘Allah’, they just bicker over whether Jesus was a prophet or the living incarnation of said god, and as to whether Mohammed was The Prophet, or some bloke in a seventh century desert.
I’m afraid I must disagree with Mr. Wintersgill about the existence of a “Judeo Christian ‘God'” and that god’s likeness to the “Muslim ‘Allah'”..
To oversimplify somewhat, in Christo-Muslim belief, their god sent perfect avatars to provide perfect exemplars of a perfect way of living, although they “bicker” (to use Mr. Wintersgill’s terminology) over the name of the avatar and the nature of the perfect way of living. In Christian belief, this perfect exemplar was Jesus who was a living incarnation of the godhead, with the perfect way of living being “turning the other cheek”. In Muslim belief, this perfect exemplar was Mohammed, who received his teachings direct from the godhead, with the perfect way of living being forcing (by any means possible, including war) all humans to become obedient to the Muslim way of life, or, at the very least, to become obedient to Muslims.
In Jewish belief, on the other hand, the only perfect being is God, who is, by nature, unknowable. There are no perfect human beings, although humans should strive to live as perfect a life as is humanly possible, where the ideal to strive for includes doing as little harm as possible to other humans. Even Moses, the greatest of our prophets, had faults, with some of his worst mistakes recorded in the Five Books of Moses.
As far as the Jews are concerned, both Jesus and Mohammed were men. To use Mr. Wintersgill’s terminology, Jesus was “some bloke living in first century Judea” and Mohammed was “some bloke living in 7th century Arabia”.
[And with this final addition, this sub-thread is officially closed. Further posts on this topic will be deleted. Thank you for your understanding. -mod]
No, but that is a common misconception. Many of the core beliefs (for example marriage) of the Judeo-Christian ‘God’ are the opposite of the Muslim ‘Allah’.
Both religions consider their God to be the Supreme God of the Universe, so they are both worshipping the same God. There can be only one Supreme God.
That there is only God is not proof that every religion that has a supreme being is worshiping that God.
That Christ was the son of God is the core of Christianity.
If he was just a prophet, then Christianity is completely false.
It’s not just an issue to bicker over.
Sorry mod, I didn’t read further before responding.
However if responses are to be removed, shouldn’t the inaccurate post that required responses also be removed?
Logic abandonment?
Easy:
It’s caused by something they (almost everyone) eats.
At least 3 set-times per day plus countless ‘snacks’ in between
And something new-born babies (up to 24 months at least) are NOT eating.
And drinks.
Are we up to doing some science? Not clicking links and counting Faeries.
I hereby make myself THE most unpopular person here but, if you cannot put the whiskey, beer and wine into the garbage and leave them there, you have no place in this discussion. Sorry.
Everything you think and say will be coloured by those countless neurons constantly hammering away in the back of your head demanding something/anything to get them (fake) Dopamine.
And get it ASAP
I cannot and will not point you to a link, not least as that’s EXACTLY what those neurons want = an easy quick way out so you can get to the pub, the weekend, the holiday, the vacation, the airport, the birthday party, the boss’s leaving do etc etc all that bit faster.
And presently you will die before admitting that why you look forward to those things is because booze will be there.
By all means DO continue visiting pubs/bars/restaurants/parties but drink tea, coffee, fizzy water but NOT Coca Cola and its likes. Go places.
It gives you MASSIVE freedom to do so and, the lack of dis-inclination to actually do it.
Go places. Go to many places, real and virtual. Look. Listen. Learn
You will not ‘shut those neurons up’, they will always be there (same as the ones with a penchant for Nicotine possibly), you learn to ignore them.
If you cannot run that experiment for at least 6 months, ideally 12, I’m sorry but ‘Talk to the hand’
Maybe then, it will start to dawn where ‘logic’ has gone.
Climate science is not based on an argument from authority, but on very basic physics. You can cry all you want about appeals to authority, logic and psychology, but the first law of thermodynamics doesn’t really care.
Add radiation energy to a system and it will warm.
Climate science is NOT based on a physical experiment that proves the basic mechanism!
“Add radiation energy to a system and it will warm.” But that isn’t what is at issue, is it, because no one is talking about adding energy to the system but rather trapping, supposedly, the energy that’s already there.
So prove that CO2 will warm an atmosphere as predicted. Don’t talk to me about radiation this or radiation that: show me how CO2 actually warms as described. Refute Nahle’s experiment of 2011, at least.
Where is the foundational experiment for the science? Nowhere. It doesn’t exist.
Don, you sound like Sky Dragon. I’m sorry, I can’t help you. Only you can pull yourself out of this delirium. I’m sorry you’ve been mislead.
Mat March 14, 2018 at 6:20 am:
“Don, you sound like Sky Dragon. I’m sorry, I can’t help you. Only you can pull yourself out of this delirium. I’m sorry you’ve been mislead.”
First of all, I don’t understand what a sky dragon is.
Secondly, I concede that climate science is based on physics– or is it? Because if it were then there would be an experiment done that verifies that CO2 radiative transfer actually does alter the temperature profile of an atmosphere, and I’m assuming that the “atmosphere” we’re talking about is a laboratory one controlled for pressure, humidity, etc., such that the effects of CO2 upon that atmosphere can be measured.
I’m sorry that you’ve been mislead that there’s actually proof of the mechanism for CO2 warming. It does not exist. You can throw math and radiative theory at me all you want; I want to see the experiment that proves that what we suppose must be true, is actually true. Why would that be so hard? Perhaps because such an experiment will refute the theory, as Nahle’s did?
Only you can pull yourself out of the delirium that says that a theory must be true because the theory says it must be true.
Mat
perhaps you should answer his challenge by actually showing credible evidence instead of resorting to a personal attack.
Don132 – Your inquiries are spot on!
“Add radiation energy to a system and it will warm” … we can warm the sun?
” the question is not whether CO2 will warm but how much” .. then it should be simple to show how the 95% Mars’ atmosphere warms Mars.
Why is up to Don132 to derive an experiment to prove the GHG effect doesn’t exist? The burden of proof is on those that believe it does exist.
Don “First of all, I don’t understand what a sky dragon is.”
A Sky Dragon, or Slayer, according to lukewarmer/skeptic Dr D Weston Allen:
“don’t deny climate change, only man-made climate change; but they do deny any greenhouse effect or greenhouse gas. Indeed, they claim that all IR-absorbing gases including water vapour have only a cooling effect.”
I am linking only to skeptic blogs, because working scientists don’t really bother wasting time on this stuff.
Try Jo Nova
Or Roy Spencer
And I just looked up “Nahle’s experiment”. Hilarious. He actually tested CO2 absorption in a real life vegetable growing greenhouse. He “finds” that heating inside the glass is caused by “blockage of convective heat transfer between the interior of the greenhouse and the open atmosphere”, and concludes from that the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist. So all we see that Nahle and Don don’t understand what a metaphor is.
It’s kind of like saying “I made a big bang in my backyard but it didn’t create a universe – ergo, Big Bang Theory is disproven.”
The foundational experiment is Tyndal 1859. The theoretical foundation is Fourier, Arhennius and Plass. Go look up Plass’ 1956 article: “The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change”, the first line of which is:
“The most recent calculations of the infra-red flux in the region of the 15 micron CO2 band show that the average surface temperature of the earth increases 3.6° C if the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is doubled”
That estimate is right in the midrange of current IPCC estimates. It’s from 1956. So will that satisfy those who say where is the foundational work for climate science? Or it’s all based on computer models? Or the term “climate change” was made up to replace “global warming”? You tell me.
@ Mat March 14, 2018 at 6:25 pm
Thank you for pointing out what I sky dragon is. I don’t know yet what influence greenhouse gases have on atmospheric temperature. I’m trying to figure that out. From Nahle’s experiment it seems that the theory that trapped longwave energy heats a surface is wrong. Does longwave energy heat a surface? I assume that yes, it does. Does “trapped” longwave energy heat a surface? That’s a different question, isn’t it? Maybe what’s confusing us is that we assume it’s the same question? In any case we have to resolve Nahle’s experiment, which I assume can be done given the amount of brainpower focused on this website. That’s what I’m hoping will happen. I’m hoping that people will look at the experiment and say, yes, that makes sense, or no, it doesn’t prove what it says it proves.
From your comment it’s clear that you didn’t read Nahle’s experiment, but maybe someone’s warped and completely inaccurate and perhaps intentionally deceptive caricature of it. His experiment did not involve a real greenhouse.
I’ve provided the link to the experiment elsewhere including in another reply to you, below.
I am afraid the question is not whether CO2 will warm but how much. The basic understood physics does not answer that question. The climate models assume that clouds and the atmospheric moisture ampliify the GHG effect but they might in fact damp it out. that is they ASSUME what will give the alarming answer.
ccscientist, I would argue that the basic physics assumes that CO2 must warm because of radiative calculations, but the assumption that these calculations are correct has never been experimentally proved. It could be that the radiative calculationa are confounding, not illuminating, what is actually happening.
You are missing the point entirely. The vast majority of people who say they believe in AGW would not be able to tell that it is based on the first law of thermodynamics, let alone tell you what that it.
They believe from authority – that is why so many Alarmists point to the 97% consensus, or try to claim that all sceptics are crackpots and so on.Much of what is churned out regarding AGW is entirely to reinforce the authority, not to debate the physics.
And your argument falls at the first hurdle – we all know energy is also lost from the system to space, and we all know that energy is continually being added to the system from the sun. Whether net energy increases over a long period and whether any increase makes any observable difference to a massive, complex non-linear system full of feedbacks is precisely the arguments that we are trying to resolve.
+100
That’s about as facile as saying that obesity is based on eating.
the earth is constantly subject to various drivers that increase or decrease the input of radiation from the sun, CO2 is just a very minor one of them.
The argument is not that CO2 affects climate, we all know it does, just like butterflies flapping their wings in the Brazilian rainforest do, but by how much, and the answer there is the square root of Sweet Fanny Adams,
Its a second order effect and a bit player, that’s all.
That things will warm is not disputed.
That things will warm catastrophically is.
The point is that you are not talking about adding radiation to cause AGW. The hypothesis is that adding CO2 will cause AGW. AGW proponents argue that additional CO2 will cause AGW. This is a physical problem and an experiment should be designed to measure it. If scientists can measure gravity waves it should not be a problem with all the money available for climate research to develop an experiment and get it built. No computer models, just plain old physical devices that confirm (or not) the hypothesis!
Don, see Tyndal’s paper in 1859 for the laboratory experiment you are asking for.
Also see Plass’ 1956 paper entitled “A carbon dioxide theory of climate change” for a theoretical underpinning of processes in the atmosphere, including accurate predictions.
Nahle’s experiment showed he doesn’t understand metaphor. It’s as convincing as saying:
“I made a big bang in my backyard and no universe was created – ergo Big Bang Theory has been disproved.”
Mat, from your earlier comment: “And I just looked up “Nahle’s experiment”. Hilarious. He actually tested CO2 absorption in a real life vegetable growing greenhouse. He “finds” that heating inside the glass is caused by “blockage of convective heat transfer between the interior of the greenhouse and the open atmosphere’.”
This shows that you did not read that actual experiment. Try again: http://www.biocab.org/Experiment_on_Greenhouses__Effect.pdf
Tyndall may be right, but he did not do a measurement of how CO2 warms a column of air. Plass may be right, but he did not do a measurement of how CO2 warms a column of air. The IPCC may be right, but they did not do a measurement of how CO2 warms a column of air. In fact, no one has done an experiment of how CO2 warms a column of air. Nahle did a measurement of how much the blocking of the majority of longwave radiation inside a carefully-constructed box (not a greenhouse, as you allege) will warm that box above a similar box that is nearly transparent to longwave, and his answer was zero. You can look at the experiment, so why don’t you look at the experiment? It seems to me that it says that “trapping” longwave radiation has no effect on temperature.
So again, are we getting confused over radiative balances, etc? Are we modeling and theorizing too much? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe we should do some actual experiments to test our theory and our modeling and our understanding? Seems like an excellent idea to me.
Hi Don, reading back on my comments earlier in the day I see they were rude. I apologise, there is no reason for that. You’re asking totally valid questions.
I’ve re-read Nahle’s experiment, and yes you are correct that he didn’t use an actual greenhouse – he was re-creating an experiment from Wood in 1919 which did apparently use a greenhouse. Nahle used cardboard boxes.
The problem with Nahle’s approach is that greenhouse theory won’t work in a small cardboard box, or even a greenhouse. Greenhouse theory requires an upper atmosphere which is thermally separated with the lower troposphere. That all comes from conservation of energy, which can’t be beat.
We are still receiving pretty much the same level of insolation from the sun as we have for the last 10,000 years. So if the incoming radiation is the same, and greenhouse theory says it’s warmer at the surface, then conservation of energy requires that the upper atmosphere will get colder. That’s what was predicted, and what is now observed. The stratosphere is cooling. So the greenhouse effect actually requires two thermally separated layers of an atmosphere to do its job. And our atmosphere does that, because it’s colder higher up. That isn’t the case in a cardboard box, or in an actual greenhouse, so CO2 warming won’t be apparent there.
Lastly, you were originally sceptical that trapping, rather than adding heat could cause warming:
> “no one is talking about adding energy to the system but rather trapping, supposedly, the energy that’s already there”
Think about a pot on the stove. If you want to boil the water faster, you can either turn up the gas, or put the lid on. Both do the same thing, by either adding energy, or trapping the energy that’s already there.
Mat March 15, 2018 at 4:47 am:
“The problem with Nahle’s approach is that greenhouse theory won’t work in a small cardboard box, or even a greenhouse.”
The greenhouse theory is based on the assumption that LWIR energy gets trapped by greenhouse gases, and hereby heats the atmosphere below. Or, we could say that LWIR energy is back-radiated. However, Nahle shows that even if LWIR is trapped, it does not warm an enclosure, and according to the theory it should. If it applies to a box, then the basic principle– LWIR “trapping” (scattering?) has no effect on temperature– applies everywhere. Or, we retest to confirm/broaden our understanding.
No, we are not receiving the same level of insolation from the sun as we have been for the past 10,000 years: http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/sorce/files/2011/09/TIM_TSI_Reconstruction-1.png You must know that this is TSI, and that shortwave energy varies in far greater amounts than TSI, and that shortwave penetrates many meters into the ocean, as opposed to LWIR which barely penetrates the surface.
Supposedly “trapping,” as I said. Nahle has shown that even if LWIR is trapped, it does not add heat. If this is so, then we need to rethink our ideas about radiative transfer. That is what the experiment is telling us. If we don’t believe the experiment, then we need to do another experiment.
A warming planet– which I don’t think anyone denies– does not necessarily mean warming by CO2.
Mat: Here is my problem with your conjecture. ” So if the incoming radiation is the same, and greenhouse theory says it’s warmer at the surface, then conservation of energy requires that the upper atmosphere will get colder.” What you are postulating is that radiation is trapped at the surface and REMAINS THERE. This would mean every day there would be more radiation trapped and not released. In other words, constantly increasing temperatures, forever. We know that isn’t the case. Perhaps you are thinking the radiation is released to space only at night thereby restoring equilibrium. But we don’t have equilibrium do we? Also, how does radiation from the sun keep the lower atmosphere radiating to space, just like at night? Your conjecture has holes in it.
Don: “No, we are not receiving the same level of insolation from the sun as we have been for the past 10,000 years”
I said “pretty much the same”, and the plot you link to backs up my point. Look at the scale, from 1362 W/m2 to 1360 W/m2. That that is a drop from 100% to 99.85% of TSI. I would call that “pretty much the same”.
Otherwise, you didn’t acknowledge any of what I said about the necessity for a thermally separated layers of the atmosphere for the greenhouse effect to do its job. Without this separation, the greenhouse effect will not be apparent, so you WILL NOT measure it in a box, or an actual greenhouse.
Please read this link on the relevant physics, particularly sections “Emission to Space” and “More GHGs” to see a summary of what I’m saying.
Mat March 16, 2018 at 7:53 am:
Mat, although TSI varies little, that portion that is shortwave, and that penetrates into the oceans, varies much more widely, in step with TSI. I believe it’s on the order of 100% variation, not 0.15% variation.
You link is to Science of Doom. This is a very smart guy but to my mind he is stuck on radiative physics. Radiative physics may be mostly correct, but it seems to me it’s confusing us.
Regardless of what you say about the atmosphere, Nahle’s experiment has demonstrated that trapped CO2 will not warm a surface; back-radiation does not cause warming. That is what it says. The greenhouse effect, no matter whether there are atmospheric layers or not, depends on warming by back radiation.
I’m stuck on Nahle’s experiment. What is it telling us? Once we figure that out we can move on. It seems to be telling us that warming by LWIR back radiation does not exist.
“Mat, although TSI varies little, that portion that is shortwave, and that penetrates into the oceans, varies much more widely, in step with TSI. I believe it’s on the order of 100% variation, not 0.15% variation.”
Don, you are wrong. Solar radiation peaks in the visible (or shortwave), so if anything the shortwave component will have less than 0.15%. If it was 100% variation, it would either be completely dark, or double the power. Do you really think that is a reasonable thing to say?
“You link is to Science of Doom. This is a very smart guy but to my mind he is stuck on radiative physics. Radiative physics may be mostly correct, but it seems to me it’s confusing us.”
I sent you the simplest, no maths version I could find. However, just because you don’t understand it doesn’t make it wrong.
“Regardless of what you say about the atmosphere, Nahle’s experiment has demonstrated that trapped CO2 will not warm a surface; back-radiation does not cause warming. That is what it says. The greenhouse effect, no matter whether there are atmospheric layers or not, depends on warming by back radiation.”
I already told you why the experiment is not valid for showing what you or Nahle claim. The only thing you can observe from CO2 in a non-thermally separated atmosphere (i.e. a cardboard box). is that it is more opaque to longwave radiation than other constituents of the atmosphere like N2 or O2. That is simply because N2 and O2 have two molecules, while CO2 has three, giving it an additional vibration mode and an ability to absorb certain wavelengths of light.
“I’m stuck on Nahle’s experiment. What is it telling us? Once we figure that out we can move on. It seems to be telling us that warming by LWIR back radiation does not exist.”
The experiment is not telling us much at all, hence why it has not made any scientific impact. Certainly it is telling us less than a similar experiment by Tyndal in 1859, who at least measured the infrared absorption of CO2.
@ Mat March 16, 2018 at 7:27 pm
I never said that the visible light portion of TSI was order of magnitudes greater than TSI. Here: “Improvements made to date suggest that UV irradiance during the Maunder
Minimum was lower by as much as a factor of 2…” http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/2009RG000282.pdf (page 9) And see here https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/22/new-paper-finds-solar-uv-b-output-is-correlated-to-global-mean-temperature/
My objection to scienceofdoom is that we have a science of radiative physics but we have experiments that contradict some assumptions of that science. For example, there was a lengthy debate between the Connollys and ATTP (“And Then There’s Physics”} regarding the measurements of balloon data that showed that the atmospheric temperature profile isn’t altered by CO2– and you must be claiming that it is. In my opinion ATTP was arguing about the theory and the equations, while the Connollys were pointing to the actual observed measurements. So ATTP may be right, but to prove it we need … an experiment? Do an actual experiment to prove that CO2 does what we claim it does; the Connollys and Nahle have done experiments that prove it does not. https://globalwarmingsolved.com/2013/11/summary-the-physics-of-the-earths-atmosphere-papers-1-3/
Mat says of Nahle’s experiment: “The only thing you can observe from CO2 in a non-thermally separated atmosphere (i.e. a cardboard box) is that it is more opaque to longwave radiation than other constituents of the atmosphere like N2 or O2.” No. You can observe that “trapped” LWIR does not warm a surface. That is the alleged central mechanism for CO2 warming.
The scientific community wants to talk about absorption spectrum this and radiative theory that. They may be right! But one thing they haven’t done is an experiment that proves that they are right, while actual experiments by skeptics prove that they are not. They need to do an experiment that proves that all their equations are correct. Why has this never been done?
Don, I must commend you for continuing to reply.
You keep going back to Nahle’s experiment. I keep saying Nahle’s experiment is invalid. Glancing through it again, it is hilariously bad for many reasons. But fundamentally, he completely misunderstands what greenhouse theory is. Other than the very poor experimental methodology (if he is trying to disprove a radiative theory, why is he not making measurements of radiation inside and outside his boxes?).
Look at page 25, that is some really strange logic. “if the greenhouse effect hypothesis were false, a difference of temperature would be present due to convective heat transfer allowed by in the partially covered box.” Why does he think that because there is some convective effects, that means there are no radiative effects and GH effect is false? Does he really think scientists don’t know about convection?
Let’s get back to basics. It sounds like you fundamentally accept that if you add energy to a system it will warm, but not that if you block energy leaving a system, that will also warm. If that’s the case, think about this: boiling some water on a stove. Now tell me, what’s the two ways you can speed up how fast the water will boil? 1. turn up the gas (add more energy in the system) or 2. put on the lid (trap more energy in the system). They both have the same outcome, faster boiling water.
Now, very, very importantly, before you construct any more straw men: This is an analogy. Just like the “greenhouse” effect. The actual greenhouse effect occurs at planetary scales.
Don, here is another backyard experiment that tries to replicate Wood’s 1909 experiment, but comes to the opposite conclusion to Nahle. This experiment is done by the global warming skeptic Roy Spencer.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/08/revisiting-woods-1909-greenhouse-box-experiment-part-i/
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/08/revisiting-woods-1909-greenhouse-box-experiment-part-ii-first-results/
Mat, thanks to the link to Spencer’s experiment. I’ve scanned this and my first comment is that it doesn’t look like a definitive experiment in that all sorts of confounding things seem to be happening– like for example that Spencer only used two boxes and that all things equal he could not get the temperature to be the same for both and to run the experiment he had to resort to switching the plexiglass from one box to another.
The other thing I’ll note is that there were 286 comments to this experiment, and reading through these I’d say others share my concerns about the experiment.
That said, OK, let’s say Spencer showed that IR back-radiation heats a box. We still need a series of carefully designed, replicated experiments that all say the same thing to come to any conclusion. So my real question is, why has no one done such a series of careful, replicable experiments to prove that the assumed CO2 warming mechanism actually exists?
@Mat March 17, 2018 at 8:13 pm
You misunderstand what Nahle is saying on page 25. It’s really a side argument about the greenhouse effect and he’s just being careful; it’s called controlling for possible confounding factors. Do you really suppose that he imagines that no one understands convection?
Mat says: “if he is trying to disprove a radiative theory, why is he not making measurements of radiation inside and outside his boxes?” Because the theory says that radiative effects will cause a temperature change, that’s why. He is examining whether or not the alleged radiative effects on temperature can be measured.
The bottom line is that we need a definitive experiment to prove that the alleged CO2 warming effect is real. As I’ve repeated before, why not take an atmosphere in an enclosed column and actually measure this back-radiation that warms the bottom portion of the atmosphere? Prove that it does! Or repeat the Nahle/Spencer/Wood/Pratt experiment except much more carefully.
You and I can argue back and forth all day and not solve anything. We need the damn experiment. When is someone going to step up to the plate and do it– to ground the theory in experimental evidence?? Because that, supposedly, is the scientific method … or maybe we dispense with that method if we support the theory of CO2 warming?
Am I really so crazy for demanding some proof that the mechanism really exists? It’s not the theory of relativity, for Pete’s sake.
Don, you’re not crazy to want an experiment which shows CO2 can warm. But as I’ve said before, it’s an impossible experiment with CO2 because it only works at planetary scales. The mechanism needs a column of gas from the surface up to the upper atmosphere, not very practical in the lab!
So all we can do is show that CO2 absorbs infrared, which we’ve been able to do since 1859. I’m quoting a good answer from someone called “Dikran Marsupial” to a question similar to yours:
The surface loses heat by radiating in infra-red wavelengths. Greenhouse gases absorb some of the IR radiation, which causes the atmosphere to warm up (the GHG molecules transfer some of this heat to non-greenhouse gasses by collisions, but heat is also transferred upwards by convection). The warm atmosphere re-radiates some of this energy both upwards into space and downwards back to the surface. The part that is radiated downwards is also known as “back-radiation” (and is directly observable). Now the important factor is not the amount of outbound IR radiated from the surface that is absorbed, but the altitude at which there are not enough greenhouse gases above to absorb the IR radiated upwards from that layer, so that it can escape out into space. The lapse rate means that the temperature of the atmosphere decreases with increasing height. This means that the more CO2 we put into the atmosphere, the higher this emitting layer becomes, and the colder it is. As the amount of IR radiated depends on the temperature of this layer, if this height increases then the amount of IR radiated from the planet falls, leading to an energy imbalance, with the planet absorbing more of the sun’s radiation than it emits as IR, and so the planet warms up. This continues until the radiating layer warms up enough for the outbound IR to be in balance with the incoming radiation from the sun. So the more CO2, the warmer the mean surface temperature, all things being otherwise equal.
So in order to have a lab experiment that could replicate the mechanism of the greenhouse effect, we would need a vacuum chamber large enough to contain a vessel containing a column of air high enough to have a measurable lapse rate. This is clearly impractical. We can perform experiments in the lab to investigate the absorption of IR by greenhouse gases, and indeed Tyndall did this over a century ago, but we can’t experimentally verify the greenhouse effect in laboratory conditions, just as we cannot experimentally demonstrate gravitational lensing in the laboratory.
Mat March 20, 2018 at 6:58 am
It’s ridiculous to think that CO2 only works at planetary scales– it’s a molecular mechanism, not the theory of relativity. We don’t need to replicate the entire atmospheric temperature profile; we only need to measure it, for example, in a column 5 meters tall. Does CO2 back-radiation cause the bottom of the column to warm more than one without CO2, yes or no? If we can’t measure it at 400 ppm at that scale then jack it up to 2000 ppm and measure it. Heck, go 100% and measure it. Does the back-radiation mechanism warm the bottom, yes or no? I don’t care how much it radiates and what the transfer equations say, I want to see the alleged temperature change from an atmosphere with no CO2.
Lapse rate: CO2 raises emissions height and then we count down from there according to the lapse rate to get surface temp. OK. But GCMs use infrared cooling models that describe how the lapse rate is distorted by CO2. So does CO2 distort the lapse rate or not? If not, then why do the models say it does? If it does, then why do we count down from the emissions height with an undistorted lapse rate?
Stay on it, Don!
“Everybody knows! It’s basic physics!” are just hand-waving attempts to ignore reality.
Not to beat a dead horse, but there is data that describes an exact implementation of your experiment: a mass of CO2 25 meters high, several miles square, filled a valley in Africa.
The Smithsonian Institution volcano group studies.this. There is data somewhere. Someone just needs to tap into the data and analyze it for “atmospheric sensitivity to CO2.”
Did the valley experience “runaway Greenhouse Effect” when it was 25 meters deep in nearly pure CO2?
If not, why not?
Pictures from the time seem to show no “runaway heating.”
https://www.slideshare.net/NouhailaTA/lake-nyos-limnic-eruption
Kent Clizbe March 20, 2018 at 8:29 am
Yes, but I’m getting tired of repeating myself.
Don,
Welcome to the world of “lukewarmers!”
You do know that term?
Don, you say:
“We don’t need to replicate the entire atmospheric temperature profile; we only need to measure it, for example, in a column 5 meters tall. Does CO2 back-radiation cause the bottom of the column to warm more than one without CO2, yes or no?”
Think about the physical mechanisms at play in your experiment. Take two 5m columns, fill one with CO2, turn on a lamp. In both cases, shortwave photons hit the floor and warm it. That heat is emitted as longwave radiation. BUT at the same time, convection occurs. The air parcels rise and mix throughout the column, and any air temperature increase is radiated at the edges of the column as longwave radiation to the “outside” environment. Sure, within the column CO2 captures some of the upwelling longwave radiation and re-radiates that randomly. But at this scale convection completely overpowers any effect of CO2. It will not matter whether the column of air has CO2 in it or not, because at this scale convection will overpower any of the radiative effects.
That’s why I say you need to do the experiment at planetary scales. Convection only occurs in the lower part of the atmosphere, where density and temperature allow it. The CO2 radiative impacts only come into play above the troposphere. The only way the greenhouse effect can occur is if there is a layer opaque to LW above the convective layer. The only way the greenhouse effect can increase is if that opaque layer increases in height up to a colder part of the atmosphere, which means it will emit LW out to space at a lower flux.
With that information, re-read the explanation of Dikran Marsupial and tell me if there is something you disagree with.
Mat March 20, 2018 at 8:05 pm
Mat, just leave the columns at room temperature in a controlled temp room. We should see the CO2 column take whatever warmth is in the room and back-radiate it toward the bottom.
Convection also overwhelms whatever CO2 is or isn’t doing in the atmosphere.
Don,
At least Mat has the courage to engage and discuss.
But note that the honest CO2 believer’s explanation of the theoretical “Greenhouse Effect” essentially destroys the theory.
It cannot be theoretically explained, when their feet are held to the fire. And they refuse to conduct simple experiments to demonstrate their “fundamental physics.”
An apple dropping from a tree demonstrates gravity.
Where is the burning hot room full of CO2 to demonstrate CO2’s magical powers?
Should be simple.
Why not?
Don:
“Mat, just leave the columns at room temperature in a controlled temp room. We should see the CO2 column take whatever warmth is in the room and back-radiate it toward the bottom.”
Yes, exactly. We do observe back-radiation from a column of CO2. That is exactly what Tyndall did in 1859.
“Convection also overwhelms whatever CO2 is or isn’t doing in the atmosphere.”
Only in the lower troposphere. As I said, convection is no longer active in the stratosphere (upper atmosphere). And that’s where the greenhouse effect does its work.
I don’t know how much you know about atmospheric physics, so I’ll get back to basics. Imagine the pot of boiling water on the stove again. It is boiling (i.e. convecting) because it is being heated from below. That is exactly what happens in the troposphere, where sunlight hitting the ground warms up and causes convection. But that stops at the stratosphere, which is defined as when the temperature profile isn’t getting colder any more, it’s getting warmer as you increase in height. Now, you can you see that when hot fluid is above a cold fluid, it is stable, or stratified. Think of a still dam, or any very still water – that is warmed from above, and you don’t have to go down very far at all before it gets very cold. There is no convection. That’s what happens in the stratosphere.
So at the top of the troposphere energy transfer changes from being convection dominated to being radiatively dominated, and CO2 matters up there. You can’t get those dominant radiative conditions in a 5m column, at least I’ve never seen it.
Kent, I had already replied to Don, but for some reason my posts go into moderation.
Physical theory’s are usually scale specific. Sure, we can test Newtonian gravity by dropping an apple. But how about general relativity? How about gravitational lensing? How about the collapse of black holes? How about time dilation? These are all gravity based phenomena, but the gravitation theory underpinning them says they only occur at very different scales to an apple. And we do observe them at those other scales. That’s exactly what’s happened with the radiation theory of greenhouse gasses. We can observe it at the scale that the theory predicts it will occur. Like here: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14240
Don,
Yes, but….
As Don keeps saying, again and again, and again…
Forget the “scale” and planetary application of the theory.
Please show an actual, physical experiment that demonstrates the “heat-trapping” capabilities of CO2.
Once that is demonstrated, then you can move on to larger scales.
As Don says, there are NO physical experiments/demonstrations that prove the claimed trapping/reflection/downwelling/whatever capabilities claimed for CO2.
The fundamental “heat-trapping” property of CO2 is what the entire scare is based on.
Waving hands and saying that planetary scales require layers, or whatever is just changing the subject.
Please: A real, physical demonstration of CO2 trapping/reflecting/producing heat.
Thanks.
Mat, I can’t keep this conversation up, sorry. As for your link to the Nature paper, I’m sick to death of hearing about how we observe radiative this and radiative that. Fine. But prove that these translate into temperature changes.
We observe no IR radiative forcing from nitrogen and oxygen in the air, yet these have a temperature too. I think we’re just confusing ourselves with our over-concern with radiation. Measure the actual temperature change from the alleged mechanism! It’s not happening in outer space; it’s happening in our atmosphere, and it’s a molecular mechanism, not a mechanism that works on planetary scales.
Don, don’t give up, I had given a direct reply to your last message to do with direct observation. Please wait for my comment to come out of moderation. Or perhaps we can use a more direct method of communication where I am not constrained.
Kent. Radiation is heat. It’s not handwaving, it’s a definition. What do you think we’re getting from the sun?
Mat,
Excellent!
Please demonstrate CO2 creating an increase in measurable heat on Earth.
Doesn’t matter what you call it–radiation, or Joe, heat, or energy, or DWLR, or anything you want. Let’s see it, please.
The Catastrophic Greenhouse Effect, which is the basis of the entire “science” industry discussed here daily, assumes that CO2 “traps heat,” first; and then that this “trapped heat” multiplies, through other physical effects.
Please show a demonstration of CO2 “trapping heat” on Earth. In a micro environment, or in a macro environment, or anywhere else.
Once we have that, then you can start to generalize and expand demonstrations to larger labs.
Don points to Nahle’s physical experiment that appears to refute the hypothesis.
If this is such a fundamental law of nature–CO2 “reflects” heat and makes hotter already hotter objects–please, let’s see the physical application of this law.
Thanks!
Ok, I’ll try again, I don’t know why my comment hasn’t come out of moderation.
“Mat, just leave the columns at room temperature in a controlled temp room. We should see the CO2 column take whatever warmth is in the room and back-radiate it toward the bottom.”
Yes, exactly. That’s exactly what we do see, and exactly what Tyndall reported in 1859. Anybody can do this experiment at home with a jar of CO2. The CO2 will back-radiate, but N2 or O2 will not. Look up the experiment (or do it yourself) and you will see exactly what you describe.
“Convection also overwhelms whatever CO2 is or isn’t doing in the atmosphere.”
It depends where in the atmosphere, Don. Convection only occurs in the lower part, the troposphere. That is the part that gets colder as you go up. The stratosphere starts where it gets warmer as you go up, so convection can’t occur there.
Think of a pot on a stove. When it’s warmed from below, it boils (convects). The heat will start at the bottom and rise, and it will be well mixed. But now think of when you go swimming in a dam or very still water. It’s cold only a meter or so down. It is “stratified” because the warm water has risen to the top, and the heating is from the top. There is no mixing, and the water is very oxygen poor. That’s like what happens in the stratosphere. That’s why jets fly that high, because there is no convection up there (i.e. no turbulence).
So, in the troposphere heat transport is convection dominated, and it is well mixed. But in the stratosphere because there is no convection, heat transport is radiation dominated. The greenhouse effect occurs above the troposphere, above all that convection.
And remember, radiation IS heat by definition.
Go away Kent, I’m talking to Don.
Keep a civil tongue in your head, buddy.
You’re discussing an issue in a public forum.
I have the exact same concerns and questions as Don does.
If you’re having trouble providing simple answers, don’t shoot the messenger(s).
Again, please provide a demonstration of the “fundamental physics” behind the ability of CO2 to heat already hot material.
Thanks.
Mat March 21, 2018 at 7:19 am
So you say that Tyndall did the experiment? Then why are we arguing about whether it’s possible to do one?
No, Tyndall did not measure temperature. He measured absorption. No one is arguing about that. No one is arguing over the IR properties of CO2. We’re arguing over whether what the theory predicts regarding atmospheric temperature has ever been proved. The answer is a resounding “no.”
Simple experiment: replicate Nahle’s experiment and demonstrate that this warming effect of back radiation actually exists. You may disagree that he did a good experiment, but the design was excellent: show how the alleged radiative effects lead to a temperature change.
Mat,
An excellent explanation of Tyndall’s confused experiment is here:
” And that’s all that the Tyndall experiment shows: that EMR is absorbed in a cooler object from a warmer one.
“The fact that CO2 absorbs more EMR at infrared frequencies than oxygen or nitrogen under these conditions is of no consequence as to whether energy can be generated by such a process — it can’t.
“Whether it’s more or less absorption, there is no such thing as a “blanket for EMR” than can generate extra energy. Likewise backradiation can produce no such extra energy.
“The analogy is entirely false that an atmosphere with molecules free to move in it can in any way act like a blanket or the glass top of a greenhouse — these work by blocking convection.
And if the target gas was to warm through absorption, the amount of energy gained would be perfectly matched by the amount of energy lost from the Leslie Cube heat source. How could it be any other way?”
“In the end none of these absorption experiments, such as Tyndall’s and similar, are anything more than experiments showing scattering of IR to thermal heat. There is no energy production and no greenhouse-style warming.”
https://planetaryvision.blogspot.com/2014/04/why-tyndalls-experiment-does-not-prove.html
The belief system to which you subscribe requires heat to be CREATED in the atmosphere by the magical trace gas, CO2.
This would be really cool, and in fact, a miracle.
Please show a demonstration of this creation of heat by CO2.
Thanks.
Nonsense. The greenhouse effect is well established, the only question is climate sensitivity to it.
And by the way those silly, uncontrolled experiments on YouTube with CO2 in a bottle prove nothing at all, except how gullible people are.
Anthony Watts March 21, 2018 at 11:06 am
Anthony, I’m not going to get into a big back-and-forth here because I have other things to do. But the greenhouse effect is not well-established; it’s well-assumed. There’s a very long way to go to get from “assumed” to “proved.”
The issue isn’t one of absorption/emission or of radiative balances, which to my view operate within a paradigm that isn’t tested by experiment regarding the key alleged mechanism: warming by back-radiation of IR.
I’ve asked repeatedly for an experiment that establishes the truth of this mysterious back-radiation, such that the scattering of IR leads to a temperature change. No one has offered one single shred of experimental evidence; instead, they continue to confuse the scattering effect of IR with it’s heating by back-radiation. Nahle has demonstrated experimentally that this mechanism simply doesn’t exist.
We can assume all we want; we can write it out in textbooks; we can teach it in college. But until there’s an experimental proof it’s merely an assumption. No amount of clamoring or assertion will change that basic fact.
Let’s take an imaginary walk.
We’re going to Death Valley, California, where the temperature often gets to 110 F, which translates to 316 K. The air is dry there and I understand there’s a road that some people will even run on, as an endurance test.
Let’s say we’re on the road and it’s 316K.
According to those who uphold the greenhouse theory, the reason the air temperature is at 316 K is because the first 255 is from IR emission from the surface, and the other 61K is from back-radiation from what little water vapor and CO2 are in the air in addition to IR heating (of what?) from the surface. But N and O don’t absorb any IR to speak of. According to them, the air isn’t heated by conduction from the surface– or is it? It seems like the first 255 K is, or maybe not, because the entire theory is confused. The reason it’s confused is that they simply disregard conduction from the surface because they refuse to admit that atmospheric pressure– caused by that “laughing matter,” gravity– is pressing the molecules of N and O hard toward the surface where they conduct heat into the atmosphere. According to them, this doesn’t exist because only the only source of warming is IR– I guess. So atmospheric pressure has no play in warming by conduction– it’s all done by IR. But, this IR warming from the surface stops warming N and O after 255 K, I suppose. Or are N and O not at 255K or 316 K? Are they actually very, very cold, since they can’t absorb IR? And the air warmth we feel at Death Valley on that 110 degree day due solely to the few molecules of H20 and CO2 in the air?
If it’s sounds confusing, it is. Maybe we should stop trying to ban conduction from heating the atmosphere.
Don,
“If it’s sounds confusing, it is. Maybe we should stop trying to ban conduction from heating the atmosphere.”
So you’re just straight up making stuff up now. Nobody said surface temperatures are a consequence of radiation only. Throughout this whole thread, I’ve been posting that convection dominates over longwave radiation in the troposphere as a means of heat transport.
You say there is no evidence that CO2 can warm by back radiation. I have told you where to look for long standing data on CO2 absorption and re-emission if you care to look at it.
‘The issue isn’t one of absorption/emission or of radiative balances, which to my view operate within a paradigm that isn’t tested by experiment regarding the key alleged mechanism: warming by back-radiation of IR.”
Radiation IS heat by definition.
Finally (because I’m sick of this too). What does it tell you when you’re not just arguing against 99.9% of working scientists, but Roy Spencer makes multiple posts contradicting your ideas, and you have had personal responses rebuking you from Christopher Monckton and Anthony Watts, who’s JOB it is to argue against the consensus position on climate change.
That’s called the logical fallacy of “Appeal to Authority.” It’s a sure sign of a lost debate.
Do you really think that your 99.9% of “experts,” and Lewandowsky’s 97%, and John Cook’s legions, and Michael Mann’s disdain actually are meaningful?
But, thanks for being so clear.
How about 97 articles that debunk your 97% of authorities?
http://www.populartechnology.net/2014/12/97-articles-refuting-97-consensus.html
OK. I can’t pursue this much more. What I said last was a bit sloppy.
The idea that gravity– which is the engine for atmospheric pressure since it holds the atmosphere in place and hence gives it weight and hence pressure– has a dominating impact on surface temperature requires turning our beliefs upside down, in that we have to see the lapse rate as determined bottom-up by atmospheric pressure and not top-down by the emissions height. It’s silly to think that atmospheric pressure, which can crush a railroad tanker with partial vacuum inside, has no effect on the conduction of heat from the surface to the molecules of N and O, which warm up not by IR radiation but by conduction, and which cool not because the emissions height dictates their cooling rate, but because as air rises it thins and cools, in accordance with the gas laws, and this pressure difference, not the emissions height, determines the lapse rate.
Once the air rises to the emissions height, whatever that may be, then the GHGs can radiate IR. Water vapor by virtue of its heat capacity alters the lapse rate.
Whatever back radiation is happening by GHGs, which allegedly warms air below, is immediately cancelled by the rising and subsequent cooling of the air that was warmed. My guess is that the heat capacity of water vapor far outweighs its radiative effects in the atmosphere.
“My guess is that the heat capacity of water vapour far outweighs its radiative effects in the atmosphere.”
Don, it’s become quite clear you know a little bit about atmospheric science, but not a lot. Unfortunately not enough to be questioning established science. You are an exemplar case of “Dunning-Kruger”.
Everything you say is completely accepted science and not contested – IN THE TROPOSPHERE. You continuously and studiously ignore the differences between the troposphere (where convection dominates) and the stratosphere (where radiative heat transport is more important, and where greenhouse effect does its work).
You are like a creationists who makes an argument with an evolutionist by saying “Show me an experiment where are monkey turns into a man. If you can’t show me the experiment, then your theory is demonstrably false!”. The evolutionist never said monkeys turn into a man, so his theory cannot be falsified in that way, but the creationist doesn’t care. But that is what you are attempting to do. You misrepresenting what greenhouse theory predicts. You need to understand what you intend to criticise.
My advice would be to stay away from characters like “Don” who will send you down a anti-scientific rabbit hole. Go to the library, get a book on atmospheric science and study the basics like the difference between the troposphere and the stratosphere, the temperature gradients in each, what a stable and unstable atmosphere is, what potential temperature is and so forth. This is first year atmospheric science stuff, but you’re not at that level yet. After you have that knowledge, then start to criticise.
Don, my apologies, I meant to say stay away from characters like “Kent”. Your questions for experimental evidence have been reasonable.
“Mat”,
If you cannot avoid ad hominems, and appeals to authority, then you clearly have no logical leg to stand on.
My name is not “Kent,” it is Kent Clizbe. I’m not hiding behind a pseudonym as you are.
I’ve asked you questions, and commented on your assertions and beliefs.
One of my professional skills is fraud detection. And I’m good at it.
I have the courage of my convictions. Do you?
Kent Clizbe
http://www.kentclizbe.com
Mat, I’m well aware of the difference between the troposphere and the stratosphere.
And no, the greenhouse effect– if we’re referring to why the surface temperature is at 288K instead of 255K– does not work primarily in the stratosphere. It works in the troposphere according to pretty much everyone. Maybe you know even less about atmospheric science than I do?
Nahle has shown that this alleged effect isn’t real, and he can do that because the mechanism says that back-radiating LWIR warms the atmosphere below it because the LWIR is “trapped.” Because this back-radiation works on wavelengths that are much smaller than the size of his boxes, he can demonstrate this. It would be a simple matter indeed to prove Nahle wrong. So someone do it.
“And no, the greenhouse effect– if we’re referring to why the surface temperature is at 288K instead of 255K– does not work primarily in the stratosphere.”
Don, light a big fire. Stand 5 metres away. Now, although the action of combustion is acting far away from you, you can still feel the effects of its radiation. That is the stratosphere vs troposphere analogy.
Stop criticising things you don’t understand. Learn about atmospheric physics, and then criticise the theory on legitimate grounds. Dunning-Kruger.
Mat,
This conversation is a nearly perfect encapsulation of the problem with the “arguments” on your side–that is the human-caused-CO2-is-destroying-Gaia side, for you are surely a full-on believer in the 97%, oops, sorry, you upped it to 99.9% !.
You were asked a simple question about the “fundamental physics” of your belief system: Please show a physical experiment that demonstrates CO2 creating heat.
Unable to show such a physical demonstration, you resort to personal attacks, appeals to authority, introduce hand-waving complications, personal attacks, and more personal attacks.
This style of “debate” is a near perfect imitation of that paragon of “settled CO2 science,” Michael Mann, and all his acolytes.
Could it possibly be….?
No way.
Experiment showing CO2 creating runaway heat increase? Or more personal attacks? Your choice.
Thanks.
Kent Clizbe is right. You’re now resorting to insults.
I do not assume I’m superior– Dunning-Kruger, as you say. I assume that if someone wants to prove that LWIR warms an atmosphere, then they’ll do so by experimental proof, the first of such might be to demonstrate that Nahle’s experiment is flawed.
I know that the theory says. I know what back-radiation is supposed to do. I know that downwelling radiation has been measured and OLR too. I know that CO2 supposedly raises the emissions height (never measured) and that it supposedly distorts the atmospheric temperature profile (never measured) but what I don’t know is if this beautiful, wonderful, and completely self-consistent paradigm that looks so lovely and inviting has ever been actually proved by experiment. Actually, I do know: it hasn’t.
Correction: that LWIR back-radiation warms an atmosphere. And now I’m done so you can insult me all you want to.
“I assume that if someone wants to prove that LWIR warms an atmosphere, then they’ll do so by experimental proof, the first of such might be to demonstrate that Nahle’s experiment is flawed.”
Don, I pointed you to Roy Spencer’s experiment which showed LWIR radiation from a cooler body could warm an atmosphere. I thought you accepted that. What I’ve been arguing about is that CO2 requires a warm and cold layer of the atmosphere to do its job, and that is not the case in a jar or small column.
Don, for more information WUWT has posted the information provided in court for the recent Exxon case.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/03/23/all-the-tutorial-and-reference-documents-for-the-exxonknew-federal-court-case/
Have a look at all of them, a lot of it is kept at a basic level for the judge, but there is one that attempts to show graphically what I’ve been talking about.
http://www.oaklandcityattorney.org/PDFS/Climate%20Change%20Lawsuit/Understanding%20Climate%20Emissions%20(2).pdf
Starting on page 7 it has diagrams which show why more CO2 raises emission height and requires an increase of temperatures at the surface via conservation of energy. Also on page 14 it discusses Plass’ contribution to show that water vapour is a strong greenhouse gas, but is constrained to the lower troposphere, while CO2 can act as a greenhouse gas in the stratosphere and do the real work of changing the radiation balance.
Early in the formative years, personalities develop a sense of either, internal or external locus of control.
Neural maps (schema) determine how meaning is derived from stimuli, thus an inclination towards an external locus of control, produces a predictable response to climate doomsday prophecies.
This is why the lack of diversity in world views in all levels of the education system is problematic.
Dr. Lewandowsly is a prime example. He no doubt studied Psychology to help people. His clinical experiences (and a healthy dose of hubris) doubtlessly, inform a worldview, that requires his majestic intervention.
Good article, to a point; but I had hoped for more examples of illogical positions to be debunked. One definite error, however: “the ‘End of the World is Neigh.'” Obviously a misprint for Nigh. What is written is that the end of the world is a horselaugh, which it could well be; however, as T. S. Eliot put it, “This is the way the world ends, Not with a bang, But a whimper.”
Years ago, while teaching a music theory class, I made an error in an example on the blackboard. Seeing the error, I pointed it out to the class, saying, “I hope you won’t give me the horselaugh for that!” To which a quick young student replied, “Oh, neigh, neigh, Mr. Ware!”
Well that takes me back. When I was looking to go to University in the late sixties my school peers and I were told if we couldn’t get a place then go for Teacher Training or the Civil Service. It was that, we were told, or a factory and ‘you don’t want that’. As I grew older recalling that explained a great deal as to what was wrong with teaching and government.
I recollect at a time of searching for a University my then School Masters always say “Don’t worry, if you don’t make University you can always go to Teacher training College” – and so it was. Other than one chap who actually wanted to teach, it was those who failed to gain University places who ended up becoming Teachers.
With this emphasis (or lack of it) in England of the 60’s, is it any wonder the degradation in Educational Values was to accelerate? Just sayin from personal observation.
You seem to have forgotten the developments in further education that occurred during the 60’s in Britain.
There were very few university places available in the early 60s, in 1960 22,500 full time students obtained first degrees, during the 60s that number more than doubled due to the Robbins Report of 1963. The attitude you speak of was due to the lack of openings at university at that time, which dramatically changed and you could argue that ‘Educational Values’ were upgraded rather than degraded at that time. My head teacher in 1966 encouraged me to apply to university, which I did to become the first member of my family to attend university, (a couple of my aunts and uncles had gone to teacher training colleges though).
Good question. Speaking for myself:
I would have more faith in Climate Science:
If the predictions from climate science seemed to be true.
If climate scientists complied with FOI requests.
If climate scientists agreed to debate the issue.
If climate scientists didn’t rig the peer preview process.
If climate scientists didn’t try to sue the opposition.
If climate scientists didn’t resort to name-calling.
If climate scientists didn’t appear to fudge the data.
Exactly. I am sceptical about everything (i hope) but there are various behaviors common in climate science that have all the characteristics of previous junk and bad science. Those make me especially scepetical about AGW. If a scientist won’t share data and workings, then I don’t believe them, no matter what.
It is a good practice to be skeptical at the beginning of everything you see or hear. Only move to belief when you see proof or very good evidence that something is factual. Then be prepared to suspend your belief if new evidence leads to doubt.
It is, however, wise to believe the man who tells you there is a tiger behind that bush until you have safely examined the bush.
To most people, climate change is that tiger but few have examined the bush. As many times as we walk around that harmless bush most will just give it a wide berth because they have not seen you come harmlessly out the other side.
Rockyredneck: “It is a good practice to be skeptical at the beginning of everything you see or hear”
I understand what you’re saying. However, it was actually my initial acceptance of the prevailing theory that “CO2 causes warming” that had me attempt to formulate some sort of equation to answer rather simple questions. That’s when I learned that there are no Laws, Postulates, Theorems, formulae, etc. within that ‘Theory’. There is no science to apply.
Anyone who thinks there is science to apply is someone who has never tried to apply that science.
Thomas Homer March 14, 2018 at 8:42 am:
“Anyone who thinks there is [climate] science to apply is someone who has never tried to apply that science.”
Great comment!
I’m speculating that climate science in a victim of the computational age wherein we can calculate all sorts of things and have all sort of models and all sorts of paradigm-consistent confirmations, but in becoming so fascinated by theory and computations and models we’ve neglected the actual science experiments that confirm what we suppose must be true. Surrounded by all of these elaborate models we seem not to recognize that they’re just ghosts of untested assumptions.
Here a few more Ifs.
If climate scientists didn’t work to end the careers of other scientists.
If climate scientists didn’t participate in rigged grant programs.
If climate scientists didn’t overplay knowledge or model capability in assigning human caused components of change.
If climate scientists didn’t stand by while IPCC policy reports went in opposite directions from science uncertainty.
If climate scientists didn’t harm student learning in science process with unbiased guidance.
Thanks, I keep a file of smart remarks and tag lines. I’ll add you few more to it.
Surely unbiased guidance is preferable to the other kind.
Climate science is the perfect storm of logical fallacies (ad hominem, appeal to authority, confirmation bias, etc.), virtue signaling, profiteering, and political posturing. It will take a long time to unwind this nonsense, but I think it will go out with a whimper, not with a bang, as over time reality wins, and the next liberal scare designed to separate us from our freedom and money comes along.
In short it bears all the stamps of AgitProp, commercial marketing and cultural Marxism, and almost none of RealScience ™
I blame it on the Hippies: the primary thing was not to harsh the mellow. Feelings were the thing. Logic was so old fashioned. This has now been amplified by SJWs who champion the feelings of the individual (if you feel oppressed or offended, you are, and you don’t need to prove it with data or logic). From this point of view, we get people insisting they can “see” climate change, and they know they are being poisoned by pollutants and are sure 1 of 4 women are assaulted in college. Presenting counter data just offends them because it shows you don’t feel the right way.
It has been my experience that “higher education” does NOT give the student a lifetime worth of knowledge or wisdom, but does give the student a head start. Unfortunately some never increase in knowledge or wisdom after they leave school…
Agreed; they’ve had a good education but never let it go to their heads!
My logical (call it skeptical) mind always reminds me to … “follow the motivation”. Some call it “follow the money”. So when I first heard of Al Gore’s “shocking” filmstrip, and the UN’s creation of the IPCC … I asked “why”. Why is this coordinated call for the dismantling of our industrialization being so stridently pushed? And then came the call for punishing taxation, transfer of wealth, and imposition of a Marxist-Socialist State – administered by the UN. Then came a steady increase of Fedral funding of any “scientific” study to do with “solving mankind’s most critical existential challenge”. Then came the institutionalization of Global Warming in our schools and business community. The Marxists had created their raison d’etre … post Soviet Union. That’s all. Nothing more.
The problem with “follow the money” is that it’s basically an Ad hominem attack. Don’t we all get paid some way or another? The fact how an individual gets paid doesn’t have anything to do with his or her views. It’s a logical fallacy. I’m also skeptical about the supposed conspiracy. It seems illogical simply because it would be way too big. It’s just more likely that many just believe that climate change is real and serious, and that we can and should do something about it. They believe that because they have been told they should believe that, not because they are evil.
Logic is painful. It can lead you to conclusions that you might not like. You might discover that you were wrong about something or that the facts contradict what you wish were true or what your in-group beliieves. It might make you unpopular to believe what the facts tell you. Above all, it is much easier (less work) to just proclaim things without bothering to verify them. If polar bears make a perfect symbol for the melting arctic, it is best not to find out that they have been increasing because increasing populations ruin the meme.
Math can also be painful:
0 ^ 0 = 1 ???
I figure it won’t be long before the CAGW proponents leverage that mathematical anomaly to produce something from nothing. For example:
Take the current amount of heat that CO2 is trapping on Mars –> zero
Raise that to the density of CO2 on Earth rounded to the nearest .1% –> zero
0^0 = 1 … now we just need to figure out how to label that 1, Sensitivity perhaps?
Do you have evidence to support this belief that CO2 isn’t trapping any heat on Mars?
MarkW – Do you have evidence to support this belief that CO2 isn’t trapping any heat on Mars?
Excellent question, and you’ve exposed my attempt at prompting anyone with evidence to show me I’m wrong. My evidence is the complete lack of any evidence showing otherwise.
I would expect that if NASA engineers had any method of measuring this that it would have been done already. Clearly this is a prominent issue that is currently perplexing mankind, and NASA has the tools to resolve this, or do they? Are we to believe that NASA could measure this but have chosen not to?
I suspect that if they were actually able to measure the radiative forcing of CO2 on Mars, it would resolve to an infinitesimal amount of heat for a duration on the same magnitude as the length of time a room full of mirrors stays lit after turning out the lights. i.e. zero
Thomas,
Here’s some NASA facts for you–the real kind–the ones they use to plan and control actual interplanetary flight:
Martian atmosphere
CO2 proportion: 953,200 ppm
Surface density: 0.020 kg/m3
Mass of CO2 per cubic meter on Mars: 0.01906 kg/m3
Earth atmosphere
CO2 proportion: 400 ppm
Surface density: 1.217 kg/m3
Mass of CO2 per cubic meter on Earth: 0.000004868 kg/m3
Or, the mass of CO2 in Mars’ atmosphere is 3915 times more massive than the mass of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere.
Factoring in possible math skill errors, it seems that the evil, heat-spewing, runaway furnace, ocean boiling CO2 on Mars is vastly more massive than on Earth.
Even taking into account Mars’ less dense atmosphere, the proportional difference 953,200 to 400.
If CO2 is so dangerous and powerful a wily deadly molecule, why isn’t Mars a runaway greenhouse?
Or am I missing something?
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html
From everything I have read, the temperature on Mars is well above what one would expect for a body with no atmosphere.
“well above” ??? Mars sheds 100F each night, show me where (how much and how long) any heat is being ‘trapped’ while this shedding is taking place.
We could calculate how much energy is required to raise the air temperature of the Minnesota indoor stadium by five degrees. Now let’s determine how much energy is required to ‘keep’ the Mars temperature ‘well above’ what’s expected, where is that energy coming from again?
Kent Clizbe March 14, 2018 at 12:41 pm
If CO2 is so dangerous and powerful a wily deadly molecule, why isn’t Mars a runaway greenhouse?
Or am I missing something?
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html
You’re missing a few things.
First, since the surface temperature is much colder due to the distance from the sun therefore there is very much less energy being emitted in the CO2 absorption band (T^4 dependence).
Second, due to the much thinner atmosphere (~100x thinner) the absorption lines are much narrower and therefore absorb much less of that energy (less broadening).
The Greenhouse effect on Mars is between 1 and 5ºC.
Thanks, Phil.
There still seems to be a problem.
You say Mars’ atmosphere is “thinner.” Note the NASA numbers for kg/m3 for both the Earth and Mars above, and the calculation of mass of CO2 per cubic meter of atmosphere.
Mass of CO2 per cubic meter on Mars: 0.01906 kg/m3
Mass of CO2 per cubic meter on Earth: 0.000004868 kg/m3
Regardless of the relative “thinness” of Mars’ atmosphere, there is 3,915 times more CO2 per cubic meter on Mars than there is on Earth.
If tiny, miniscule, trace amounts of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere “trap heat” so effectively, then why is Mars’ nearly pure CO2 atmosphere, with 3,915 times Earth’s CO2 in each cubic meter, not causing super CO2 greenhouse effect?
The doomsday cult of CO2-death tells us that we’re doomed because CO2 exceeded 0.00000350ths of Earth’s atmosphere.
Something does not compute.
who learns logic in school? how many people know that “and” is false if either side of the “and” is false?
how many know that the same holds true for science. that a theory. is false if any prediction is false.
instead people are taught to weigh true and false. if something is more true than false it must be true. this is science by consensus.
science by consensus fails the most basic element of logic, the “and” condition.
For the logical– T + T + F = F T= true F=false
well no, if the ‘+’ is logical OR.
T + T + F = T.
True and false are relative now.
Furry logic.
I’m not sure this is logic so much as scepticism. I see nothing in history that suggests that being sceptical doesn’t mean you are “right” more often than you are wrong.At a very rough estimate, i would guess that perhaps 85% of science has been wrong over the last 200-300 years, and I see no reason why we would now be getting more things right.
What makes some people scepical and others not?I don’t know, but I don’t think it is connected to intelligence (or at least what we currently measure as intelligence). Perhaps it is certain types of experience, where the real world clashes with forecasts and predictions?
I think the best phrase here is ‘critical thinking’ .
E.g to understand the implicit truth of ‘one swallow doesn’t make a summer’ ‘correlation is not causation’ etc etc.
One can proceed from a false assumption through pure logic to a preposterous conclusion. Logic is not at a fault here. Neither will scepticism work in this case – scepticism may recognise the conclusion is preposterous but only critical thinking can examine each chain in the reasoning, find them all correct and therefore return to question the original assumptions.
In the case of Climate Change ™ we have a simple progression of logic:
1. CO2 absorbs and re-emits radiation in a specific way.
2. All other things being equal this would lead to a global temperature change proportional to the log of atmospheric CO2 concentration.
3. This however is an insignificant factor.
4. Global temperature rises since the 1970s -2000 have been significant.
5. If we ascribe these to CO2, there must be some amplification going on. CO2 alone can’t do that.
6. With that much amplification is going on, we are in a scary scenario of man made climate change.
7. Lets set up the IPCC to see how scary and what might happen. |but never to question if in fact it will)
The key here is point 5.
And the conditional that is omitted by all climate alarmists. They START with the assumption that CO2 is THE main driver of modern climate change. From then on its all *very logical*. There must be amplification, This makes it all scary. The pause must be something else (though NEVER the original scary rise from 1970-2000)
Alarmists NEVER mention that IF.
‘Denial of point 5’ becomes ‘denial of points 1-4 and point 6-7’.
The key weakness of the AGW hypothesis is that amplification.
It should produce a tropical tropospheric hotspot. It doesn’t.
It should result in a monotonic increase in temperature as CO2 rises, It hasn’t – 30 years or rise and 18 years of pause.
It should amplify the effects of volcanic eruptions. It didn’t.
All the evidence is that there is no amplification at all and in fact a small negative feedback which would dampen the effect of CO2 is more likley.
Such conclusions lead to a completely uninteresting slight sensitivity of world climate to CO2 that would be utterly dwarfed by its effect on photosynthesising plant mass.
THAT is how critical thinking identifies the key point at which the logic of climate change has been correctly applied to a single false assumption.
The temperature rises of the late 20th century cannot be ascribed to Carbon Dioxide alone. Or even be largely caused by CO2
Accept that and the whole edifice collapses.
I am at a total loss to understand how my post can possibly be triggering moderation.
Isn’t the problem not so much logic or skepticism but the failure to test the key premise of the CO2 theory, which is that CO2 back radiation will warm an atmosphere? Isn’t that what the scientific method is about, testing a hypothesis? It seems that we’re making all these assumptions about how radiative physics acts without doing the most fundamental of tests: does CO2 do what we say it does? Does longwave back-radiation, whatever the heck that really is, warm a surface?
Nahle’s experiment says no. http://www.biocab.org/Experiment_on_Greenhouses__Effect.pdf Now what? We explain the results of the experiment or we replicate/refute the experiment or we put CO2 in a column and control for confounding factors and measure this elusive back-radiation to prove it really acts like we suppose it must act.
Instead since Nahle’s experiment, if valid, blows our paradigm to smithereens, we don’t want to look at it. Instead we seem to be pronouncing that it must be invalid because it contradicts our paradigm.
An experiment contradicts our image of how the world works so we throw out the experiment? Are we caught in a paradigm and can’t get out? Does our paradigm blind us at the same time as it illuminates the world for us?
The meta-paradigm: paradigms are just paradigms. We have this illusive thing called “intelligence” that can’t be put in a box. Paradigms are boxes.
Stay on it, Don!
You’re poking around in the heart of the matter.
Without a “Greenhouse Effect,” there is no CO2 caused global warming.
Without CO2 caused global warming, there is no anthropogenic global warming.
Without anthropogenic global warming, there is no catastrophic antropogenic global warming.
Without catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, there is no need to destroy the American capitalist economy.
The entire manipulative and destructive edifice is constructed on an imaginary foundation.
Keep pointing out that the Emperor Has No Clothes. Sooner or later, the throngs of supplicants, elbowing for a place close to the Emperor, must concur to the reality.
Stay on it!
Kent,
I’m not a smart guy but I’m as persistent as hell. People want to gloss over or ignore Nahle’s experiment. Look at it: what is it telling us?
You’re right, this is the heart of the matter. This simple, elementary but well-done experiment refutes the entire edifice not only of CO2 warming but of some of our key ideas about radiative physics. I’m surprised that I’m not being bombarded with reasons why that experiment is wrong. If it’s wrong, speak up. If not, then what is it telling us?
I’m OK with being proved wrong. It’s not about being right. It’s about what’s really going on.
Don,
Stay on it, brother.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but there are those who throng around the emperor admiring the fine cloth, the excellent sewing, the exquisite tailoring, arguing among themselves about the best technique for attaching jewels to the Emperor’s collar, and discussing the finer points of production of the new silk, and on and on, and on and on….
All of that throng will be totally irrelevant when the day comes that all recognize that THE EMPEROR IS TOTALLY NUDE!
People would rather have an important place in an irrelevant throng than for the whole scam to disappear.
I specialize in exposing scams. There is a long, long history of people willingly participating in being defrauded. Bernie Madoff is an excellent example. Wayne Simmons is another.
Don’t give up.
The emperor has no clothes!
“This graph was featured prominently in the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR)”
I hate those stupid blown up scale graphs…..if they showed my temp like that…I’d look like I was going to die too
Same with the CO2 graphs…..another 100 ppm is nothing
Well since the graph was NOT in the TAR, looks like you swallow everything an author says without checking. Fake sceptic
Well said Andi,
Logical thinking is not province of a university education. There are many examples of this. The IPCC logical? route to its conclusions is littered with anomalies, dubious assumptions, errors of definition and inappropriate use of equations that one doesn’t really know where to start.
However here is a supreme example:
I doubt anyone remembers that time when sat in their nappies they placed a wooden block on top another and noticed that the height of the column increased. Well little did they know but this was a demonstration of the first law of thermodynamics which states that when an energy flux passes from one thermodynamic system to another the total enthalpy(energy) of the recipient system increases.
Now fast forward to the IPCC definition of Radiative Forcing. Précis it in your own terms and decide whether it complies with the first thermodynamic law.
Here is the definition:
The definition of RF from the TAR and earlier IPCC assessment reports is retained. Ramaswamy et al. (2001) define it as ‘the change in net (down minus up) irradiance (solar plus longwave; in W m–2) at the tropopause after allowing for stratospheric temperatures to readjust to radiative equilibrium, but with surface and tropospheric temperatures and state held fixed at the unperturbed values’. Radiative forcing is used to assess and compare the anthropogenic and natural drivers of climate change. The concept arose from early studies of the climate response to
changes in solar insolation and CO2, simple radiative-convective models.
I have emboldened the relevant bit! ( seems the bold got lost in the pasting. The bit is: “—-but with the surface——————at the unperturbed values”.)
Later a value of some 1.6 Watts/sq.m is given as this forcing flux, which opens up the question as to how an increase in CO2 ppm levels could somehow make the Sun shine brighter! Now, of course this is ridiculous and shown to be; but and I repeat but; only by explaining that the radiative Forcing is not a flux; but only a perceived reaction due to the properties of Albedo and Emissivity of the GHG in question. ( A matter of inappropriate reverse logic?). Indeed a complex subject.
To me it is a good example of what Andy Cockcroft is saying and the implications are serious as it seems that this figure of 1.6Watts/sq.m is now, I believe, probably taken as a given flux to be included in modelling calculations hereafter. A bug in the system?
I have raised this issue on numerous occasions over the last 10 years; but have never obtained any satisfactory response either from the warmists or the sceptics. Very frustrating —-: C’est la Vie!
My regards Andi.
Alasdair
“Faith replaces Logic”. This is a false dichotomy. Perhaps you meant blind faith.
Faith and Logic can and do absolutely co-exist. I agree with those here who suggest that only unquestioned or blind faith is problematic.
Anyway, I’ve recently come to the belief that two things that need to be taught in schools are personal finance and logic. Understanding of both is sorely lacking these days.
I’ve been saying for years that logic and ethics should be taught in schools, as well as the basics of personal finance. I’d like to add that objective history, if such a thing exists, also should be taught. It should be tied to geography, geology, paleontology, climate, agricultural practices, and prevailing philosophical and political belief systems. For example, the founding principles of the United States, and the reasons therefor, should be emphasized.
Huge propaganda machines operate to promote the CAGW narrative so it is understandable that many people are not skeptical of CAGW. Everywhere they turn it is promoted, and most people are not inclined to dig into the details. So they go along with the crowd. Which is a human inclination.
The people I don’t understand are the ones who are genuinely afraid that CAGW is going to appear and destroy their lives. If I were one of those persons, I would want to know every little detail about my possible destruction.
And if I had a reasonable amount of intelligence, I would eventually see that the CAGW narrative is a scam. A huge scam, pushed by many entities, but a scam nonetheless. And then I would feel a lot better. 🙂
Your body is incomparably more intelligent than your thinking can ever be. But you don’t even see it.Thinking is often out of whack with ‘reality’ in the intelect because imagination is over used, and its ideas are hugely over rated and mostly useless.
An idea will never describe the physical cosmos because the cosmos is not a part of ideas. Tell that to a cosmologist and they definitely will not have thought processing intelligence that can grasp the truth of that, instantly.
Thinking does not work without ideas in memories being recalled, but the cosmos is not an idea recalled from memory, so how can an idea ever explain something not related to a memory?
Even when stated like that they still wont follow.
It is simply intellectually unacceptable to suggest their thinking is not capable of understanding.
They don’t even understand thinking, so how will they understand anything real via thinking about it.
But this never even permiates to the surface.
“argumentum ad verecundiam or the appeal to false authority …”
I don’t believe argumentum ad verecundiam needs the qualifier “false”; it’s just the appeal to authority.
Take it from me. I’m the expert.
Depends. If you’re a climate scientist, then yes, it does. That way all the people on your side are the “not false” authorities and everyone else is a false one. Climate science, I believe (but still cannot confirm), added the “appropriate authority” for that very reason—they could dismiss anyone who disagreed. The actual fallacy was “appeal to authority” and philosophy knew this until politics took over. When I studied philosophy, it was just “appeal to authority”—nothing whatsoever about “appropriate”.
I acknowledge your expertise, of course. 🙂
Since this started with religion bashing, I stopped reading. Psychology was very careful not to call religion a delusion. The author’s lack of knowledge is very evident. So is his inability to not attack religion right up front. Bad choice. Try actually learning some psychology and philosophy. MIght help.
Science and logic cannot prove themselves. They are taken on faith as much as religion. Belief that science is the ultimate truth can no more be proven than God exists.
RE: “The Tortoise Pole”
If you had very little knowledge of nature and animals, etc. (e.g. 3 years old), a perfectly valid conclusion is that tortoises can climb poles.
Let’s say people you trust confirm that they actually can climb poles. Now imagine what it would take for you to completely change your thinking on how that tortoise got there.
I think that’s a metaphor for a lot in life today.
“Now imagine what it would take for you to completely change your thinking on how that tortoise got there.”
A good game cam and patience.
42
That answers many things, especially concerning “climate science”.
Was it derived and calculated by use of a turboencabulator?
Relationship of 97 is becoming more apparent that it is 42. Precision is likely calculated to infinite decimal places.
Only a hitch hiker would understand. When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead go ask Alice, I think she’ll know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turboencabulator
My older brother has an IQ that puts him in the top 1%. However I learned long ago not to leave him alone with power tools.
“It seems that in so many realms, Faith replaces Logic on so many levels.”
These concepts are not diametrically opposed. Logic is a process of argumentation; starts from assumptions and ends with conclusions. Logic does not require or assume the truth of its propositions.
Thus it is rather common for “faith” to assume the truth of propositions, and the logic produces deductions. Or you can reverse it, start with observations (deductions) and work back to causes in a process of induction. Since many causes can exist, “faith” will decide which one you personally prefer to believe is THE cause.
Intellectuals being climate alarmists is not about climate or nature but about social-economic order. The climate discussion is not scientific but religious and social in nature. Religion answers questions about the unknown. God is another word for what we don’t know. Religious theses cannot be proofed and become true by authority and consensus which is the reason that heretics have to be silenced (like Galileo) Nobody understands the climate. The reason for us being vulnerable to salesman of fear is secularisation. Religion is (among other aspects) a firewall against fear. This firewall has collapsed and so fear became a successfull business model. Religion places the future in God’s hands (which means: we don’t know the future and cannot be responsible either) but now we are responsable for a future we cannot know. This raises fear and uncertainties. This makes us build a crazy energy system.
For more: http://www.davdata.nl/math/mentalclimate.html
I regard climate alarmism as the revolt of a new elite that fears resource shortages and therefore wants to control the economies of nations. The fear to miss connection the fear not being part of this future new elites, makes intellectuals skip logical reasoning.
“This graph was featured prominently in the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR)”
err NO, you copied it from wikipedia. it was NOT in the TAR.
. the axis says pages2k data… Pages2k project starting in 2013 .
The chart you showed did NOT appear in the TAR, it was created by Stephan Ramesdorf after Pages2K
Funny dude talks about the abandonment of Logic and he cant even get a frigging chart right
You know Willis always Moans when someone quotes IPCC and doesnt give the page number.
where is willis?
“teacher who introduced a dartboard”
Such steel sharp-pointed throwing weapons would not be allowed in today’s PC classrooms.
I have a friend who is home-schooling an awesome 10 year old. (She’s just the cutest little smarty-pants.)
My friend asked me for advice about what to teach. My answer is to provide the tools for intellectual self-defense, and those tools should include, at an age appropriate level:
— logic (and logical fallacies)
— probability and statistics
— basic double-entry accounting
I am forever encountering adults who are blithering idiots — for example, the homeopathy crowd — because they are oblivious to one or more of the above fields.
Anyway, it’s great. My friend’s daughter has logical fallacies on flash cards (I think she’s up to about 40), and is getting better everyday at spotting them in the wild. She loves knowing them, and it’s a treat to watch.
I swear to God, she’s way more fun and interesting to talk to than 95% of adults I know.
Maybe a little off-topic, but not really if were talking about logic and truth.
Can anyone find fault with Nahle’s experiment? If it’s valid, what does it say? It seems to me to be sound and to refute the theory that LWIR warms an atmosphere.
http://www.biocab.org/Experiment_on_Greenhouses__Effect.pdf
It seems like this would be a good project for high school students: replicate and refute Nahle.
Correction: Nahle’s experiment seems to refute the idea that “trapped” LWIR warms a surface. So is it really saying there’s no such thing as trapped LWIR? If CO2 scatters LWIR, does that necessarily mean it’s emitting LWIR? Is the emission exactly balanced by the absorption? So why don’t we flip it around and instead of saying that CO2 emits LWIR, it absorbs it? Maybe all-in-all it’s doing neither; it’s just scattering LWIR.
Random late-night thoughts.
“End of the World is Neigh”, and a good neigh to you as well.
It worries me to see some of the young folks leaving college and entering the work force. Many of them are technically savvy, but lack critical thinking and decision making skills. It also upsets me that my field of engineering, perhaps like many others, has allowed itself to be “decaffeinated” if you will, over the years. Many institutions have continually lowered the necessary hours required to earn an undergraduate degree, and lessened the significance in achieving professional certification after graduation. It seems the impetus has become getting the kids (and money in hand) in and out of school as fast as possible, rather than actually preparing them adequately for their respective exits.
Although I shouldn’t, I do find myself sparring a bit with nimrods on the various message boards regarding the climate issues occasionally. It is baffling how many folks are so jaded by political ideology, are so ignorant of basic physics, and completely buy in to the shotgun inundation of alarmist propaganda from the liberal media.
My kids will be armed and ready when they hit the indoctrination efforts of HS science.
Stream of consciousness meaning what? The RATE of global warming is the nexus of logical arguments. IMO the bigger issues relative to quality of life involve toxic pollution and equitable distibution of wealth. Regardless of global temps, toxic pollution and inequitable distribution of wealth will persist.
Having students think for themselves is not only alien in today’s education system, it’s anathema.
Horrible news about this University of Florida bridge collapse:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43418898
What story will emerge from that?
Here’s one: adding TiO2 to concrete to make it “self-cleaning” decreases its mechanical strength:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320622047_Experimental_Investigation_on_the_Composition_Mechanical_Strength_and_Self-Cleaning_Ability_of_Photocatalytic_Mortars
The deductive logic is easy. It’s the inductive logic that throws global warming climatologists. Using the deductive logic one draws specific instances of it from a general rule. Using the inductive logic one draws a general rule from specific instances of it. For the purpose of regulating Earth’s climate the regulator needs an information providing general rule but builders of global warming models are unskilled in the art of inducing one.