Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

That's because you cannot use spurious and evidence lacking arguments to tell the text book it's wrong.

Oh, I don't know. Where's the scientific data or reasoning in this:...

It takes more than weasel words to go from stupid to Socrates.

...?

 

[Acleron]

Oh, I don't know. Where's the scientific data or reasoning in this:......?

Yes.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

...do you agree that a change in the composition of gasses (like increasing CO2) in the atmosphere changes the strength of the greenhouse effect?

I don't see any reason to argue against that, although if any component of the atmosphere didn't absorb some frequency of solar radiation, that radiation would then strike the ground and either reflect or be absorbed there (then warming the lowest few feet of air by contact or promoting plant growth or ...?).

I suspect that most of the difference between skeptics and believers turns on "how strong an effect?" and that turns on the absolute amount of CO₂ (it's a trace gas) and on atmosphere/ocean, atmosphere/biosphere, atmosphere/geochemical interactions (feedbacks). The point of "trace" here goes back to the thermos flask of warm water to which we add a heated brick. Suppose we add heated BB pellets. Won't the thermometer response depend on temperature and mass?

 

[Reality Check]

CaCO3 in ocean sediment, like coal underground, is biological in origin.

And your citations for this are?
I would guess that this is simple chemistry, e.g. clays sequestering CaCO3, since there are no biological phases in that diagram.

P.S.
Malcolm Kirkpatrick:

Originally Posted by Reality Check
Malcolm Kirkpatrick: Species of Foraminifera could not adapt to CO2 changes that took millions of years to happen.
What do you think will happen to Foraminifera when CO2 changes over decades?

First asked 10 September 2012

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

...Secure people don't do "crushing". They also share their data.

As do climate scientists.

They don't. That was the issue with Steve Macintyre's FOI.

Wrong. McIntyre's FOI request were for:
data already made public
data that did not belong to the people he was asking and could not legally be released by them. (In much the same way I can't legally sell you someone eases property)
This is why the freedom information officer who reviewed his requests ruled that the requests did not qualify under FOI laws

I recommend this and thisand this and this.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

CaCO3 in ocean sediment, like coal underground, is biological in origin.

And your citations for this are? I would guess that this is simple chemistry, e.g. clays sequestering CaCO3, since there are no biological phases in that diagram.

Here (p. 366)."The primary sources of calcium carbonate for deep sea sediments are pelagic calcitic coccolithophores and foraminifera that grow dominantly in the phototic zone (typically upper 100 m) and to a lesser extent aragonitic pteropods."
Living things. "Biological in origin".

 

[Corsair 115]

The greenhouse effect doesn't explain how greenhouses work. The name's a bit of a misnomer; it's analogous, but the mechanism is different.

That is perhaps why it is called the greenhouse effect rather than the greenhouse mechanism.

 

[Megalodon]

CaCO3 (either calcite or aragonite) in the sediment has mainly a biological origin. That doesn't mean that the CO2 we are introducing is being captured as CaCO3.

But I give up, everyone seems to have understood it but you, so I'm not interested anymore. Specially when I know that when you finally get it you'll do another "Finally..." post, trying to imply that you are some sort of Socrates.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

CaCO3 (either calcite or aragonite) in the sediment has mainly a biological origin.

Finally!

That doesn't mean that the CO2 we are introducing is being captured as CaCO₃.

Not all of it, likely, but there's no other origin given here for the carbon in the CaCO3 that precipitates out than atmospheric CO₂.

 

[aleCcowaN]

I don't see any reason to argue against that, although if any component of the atmosphere didn't absorb some frequency of solar radiation, that radiation would then strike the ground and either reflect or be absorbed there (then warming the lowest few feet of air by contact or promoting plant growth or ...?).

I suspect that most of the difference between skeptics and believers turns on "how strong an effect?" and that turns on the absolute amount of CO₂ (it's a trace gas) and on atmosphere/ocean, atmosphere/biosphere, atmosphere/geochemical interactions (feedbacks). The point of "trace" here goes back to the thermos flask of warm water to which we add a heated brick. Suppose we add heated BB pellets. Won't the thermometer response depend on temperature and mass?

Are you going to start a new chapter with hundreds of posts all of it based on more ways to ignore basic physics and other disciplines, starting by math and biology?

Arsenic was a trace metal in Napoleon cadaver. How strong was the effect?

About your woud-be mental experiment. Did you also try adding to your "thermos flask" a critical mass of Plutonium-239 and a machine to lump it very tight together? Will the final temperature depend on the initial temperature of the critical mass? It looks to me that you are a sorcerer capable of taking any physical problem and shaping it into a calorimetric one.

The problem looks inspired by the same philosophy behind all your mild harangue: the same way you took Dyson to endorse without a cause your own expectations about the whole subject, you are now mixing thermos flasks, warm water, bricks, and BB pellets in a very badly laid out problem and then infer some property -or lack thereof- of CO2. I suppose you'd see Governor Dyson inaugurating an electric power plant and you wouldn't exclaim "What a muscular strength has this man! He pushed one button with his forefinger and all the street lights in the city went on!". CO2 is here the controlling device activated by Gov. Dyson's action. Atmosphere is the whole power plant.

Stop posting calorimetric problems that nothing have to do with the subject.

 

[a_unique_person]

Finally!
This particular argument started here:...
(a_unique_person): "...The Global Warming idea, however, is still with us thirty years later, the world is warming, the ice is shrinking, the fundamental physics is rock solid. The only question is, how warm is it going to get."
This..."It doesn't, but that's because the science that they are disputing is not the science that they specialise in..." is the point I have been trying tio get across. The predictions about the consequences of burning fossil fuel and the resulting additional CO₂ depend on a lot more than "fundamental physics" or "basic physics". Otherwise people whose expertise we all accept would agree about such things as the degree of warming that would result and the speed of change.

The case for AGW is much more than just projections using models.

You seem to be confused about the fundamental physics. The "greenhouse effect", for want of a better term, some want to change it to the "Tindall Effect", is beyond dispute.

The models are, of course, less certain, but they are not the fundamental physics, and they are not the only evidence put forward. If you read the case for AGW by the IPCC, they have several, parallel, independent streams of research that all support each other. Dyson seems to be blissfully unaware of this, and only talks about models and the 'party line', a veiled reference to communism.

The irony is that much of his work relates to a very important model, the "Standard Model". Much of the work that has been done into the standard model relies on computer models and statistical analysis. No one has 'seen' the Higgs Bosun, we just accept it is there because statistally speaking, after the *insert very large number here* of collisions in the LHC, there is very probably a Higgs Bosun present in relatively small number of those collisions.

At a guess, his 'party line' reference is a product of his time spent researching during the Cold War. He is still seeing "reds under the beds".

 

[aleCcowaN]

Finally!

Octopus!

Not all of it, likely, but there's no other origin given here for the carbon in the CaCO3 that precipitates out than atmospheric CO₂.

Do you have the concept of dynamic equilibrium?

 

[a_unique_person]

I don't see any reason to argue against that, although if any component of the atmosphere didn't absorb some frequency of solar radiation, that radiation would then strike the ground and either reflect or be absorbed there (then warming the lowest few feet of air by contact or promoting plant growth or ...?).

I suspect that most of the difference between skeptics and believers turns on "how strong an effect?" and that turns on the absolute amount of CO₂ (it's a trace gas) and on atmosphere/ocean, atmosphere/biosphere, atmosphere/geochemical interactions (feedbacks). The point of "trace" here goes back to the thermos flask of warm water to which we add a heated brick. Suppose we add heated BB pellets. Won't the thermometer response depend on temperature and mass?

Referring to Co2 as a "trace gas" is a stop right there moment. Until you can get over that, you aren't going to be able to understand anything, really. If it's trace or not, is of little importance, it's the magnitude of the effect it causes that is. Another trace gas is ozone in the upper atmosphere, it is vital for life on earth. Trace elements in our diets are vital for our health. Just because you can tag something as being 'trace' is irrelevant. It's just a description of it's concentration, not it's importance.

 

[CapelDodger]

Forget goalposts

This might just be why. See if what you can undetrstand what he's saying and why he backed away slowly at the end.

He didn't so much back away as take his ball and stalk off home.

I think this tells the story :

"Among my friends, I do not find much of a consensus. Most of us are sceptical and do not pretend to be experts."

It's been clear since he intruded on this subject that he gets his opinion and information from the denier echo-chamber wherein he finds his fellow "iconoclasts". It's there to see in all the shallowness of hs comments : Al Gore, polar bears, it's all models, the subject has become politicised, clouds, uncertainty, there's a party line, CO₂ is plant-food, and so on. No mention of drought, deluge or wildfire. Polar bears and plant food, that's the heart of the matter for Dyson.

If he ever had any real intellectual depth he's lost it now.

 

[CapelDodger]

CaCO3 (either calcite or aragonite) in the sediment has mainly a biological origin. That doesn't mean that the CO2 we are introducing is being captured as CaCO3.

Shouldn't really need saying, should it?

But I give up, everyone seems to have understood it but you, so I'm not interested anymore. Specially when I know that when you finally get it you'll do another "Finally..." post, trying to imply that you are some sort of Socrates.

It's a Sisyphean pursuit. He knows his worldview is making him do it, yet he still does it. Hopeless.

 

[Reality Check]

The post to which you replied was about McIntyre's FOI request

Wrong. McIntyre's FOI request were for:
data already made public
data that did not belong to the people he was asking and could not legally be released by them. (In much the same way I can't legally sell you someone eases property)
This is why the freedom information officer who reviewed his requests ruled that the requests did not qualify under FOI laws

What bad recommendations, Malcolm Kirkpatrick!

I recommend this

Nothing to do with the FOI requests.

and this

and nothing to do with the FOI requests.

and this

and nothing to do with the FOI requests.

and this.

and nothing to do with the FOI requests.

Quadruple failure there, Malcolm Kirkpatrick.

ETA
If you really want to honestly address the FOI issue then a start would be reading Climategate and the Freedom of Information (FOI) requests

The Independent Climate Change Email Review found the CRU scientists were unhelpful and unsympathetic to information requesters and at times broke FoI laws. However, CRU is a small research unit with limited resources, and they perceived the requesters were not acting in good faith. The same inquiry found the rigour and honesty of the scientists are not in doubt, and their behaviour did not prejudice the advice given to policymakers.

 

[CapelDodger]

Because some people represented AGW as a matter of "fundamental physics"...or "basic physics"......and if that "fundamental physics" or "basic physics" implies what AGW believers claim then someone who certainly understands "fundamental physics" and "basic physics" far better than anyone in this forum would agree with the believers.

Non sequitur. He could still deny how great the impact would be if his worldview or self-image compel him to.

Dyson does not.

Dyson does accept the basic physics, of course, unlike you. What he won't accept is that AGW is a serious problem because to do so wouldn't get him the attention he craves. His worldview is that it should revolve around him (that's where he got the Dyson Sphere idea from) and his self-image is of a man still living in the 80's.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Dyson does accept the basic physics, of course, unlike you. What he won't accept is that AGW is a serious problem because to do so wouldn't get him the attention he craves. His worldview is that it should revolve around him (that's where he got the Dyson Sphere idea from) and his self-image is of a man still living in the 80's.

It's also a question of counterbalance: If Dyson thinks there is too much attention paid to the AGW field and he doesn't share many conclusions and implications, then he can overcompensate that by exaggerating his objections. It's not bad as it offers another point of view, but this requires both a very special personality that strives in polemics and a necessary wink to the opposite field just to state what and how he is doing that. From some paragraphs I read from what Malcolm linked here I'd say they doesn't oppose to those interpretations.

The problem is the copycats.

 

[CapelDodger]

It's also a question of counterbalance: If Dyson thinks there is too much attention paid to the AGW field and he doesn't share many conclusions and implications, then he can overcompensate that by exaggerating his objections. It's not bad as it offers another point of view, but this requires both a very special personality that strives in polemics and a necessary wink to the opposite field just to state what and how he is doing that. From some paragraphs I read from what Malcolm linked here I'd say they doesn't oppose to those interpretations.

The thing is he's just parroting what he's heard in the echo-chamber, not contributing any original thought - until he gets onto fantastical geo-engineering, of course, which is his thing.

Someone who's brilliance is earned in an essentially mathematical field is not necessarily going to have much intellectual depth when it comes to more generalised thinking. Dyson clearly doesn't question the prominence he gives to what are pretty trivial issues beloved of deniers for decades - it's all models, we don't understand clouds, polar bears, Al Gore and (most telling of all) anyone questioning the Party Line is harshly treated. They're not invited to give evidence in Congress (not that Dyson's noticed, anyway) nor do they appear on TV regularly nor get to write op-eds in the mainstream press. Events of the last few decades seem to have passed him by.

The problem is the copycats.

There's not really a problem in my opinion. Another old man gets on the bandwagon as the last wheels fall off it.

 

[lomiller]

I recommend this and thisand this and this.

So your argument is that McIntyre is right because he says he is. Not something many people will find convincing I'm afraid.

Besides, who cares if scientists don't drop what they are doing to do his legwork for them, he doesn't do anything with the data that has been made available (which as far as anyone can tell it all of it that can be released) nor has he ever advanced the science in any way. Why can't he go get the data himself like everyone else why does he need so much babysitting?