@CH: But my qualifications include both hydrology and environmental science. I have spent quite a lot of my life modelling and thinking about the hydrological cycle in all it’s gory details. This includes what happens in the root zone and in leaves believe it or not.
So let’s get serious and exploit these qualifications. You drive.
I can spell Archimedes right – I just don’t know why I don’t.
@CH: I have nothing against Arcimeded, although it seems that your original proposition is not strictly true if the density of the object is greater than water.
Point taken. My only excuse is that I’d written something longer than I thought was needed, but in the process of editing it for brevity I chose to delete the statement of the proposition I was proving (namely that a floating body displaces its weight in fluid) thinking it was obvious. In 20/20 hindsight, bad choice.
Robert, had I signed the Hippocratic Oath I’d probably have felt obliged to make you feel better with a complete list of my own typos. That may have something to do with why I didn’t follow in my parents’ footsteps.
The triffid roots was the clue. You assumed that the plant is water limited because of a drought. Too much time in Australia – but even here the root systems of big gum trees are 10 or so metres deep.
With much deeper roots and shallower groundwater – water limitation may be less of a problem. Light limitation in dense rainforest is always an issue – with more light providing more scope for photosynthesis. Transpiration can be reduced when leaves dry out – but if there is no water limit then transpiration reduces heat stress.
Projecting is a trifle derivative – lost any of the novelty that is the key to humour.
There is novelty in “derivative?”
Popper and Feynmann? They’re different of course! The skeptics have somehow convinced themselves that Popper and Feynmann are, or would be if they were still alive, on their side in the so-called ‘debate’.
They seem to particularly like Feynmann’s “the ignorance of experts” quote which they take to mean that all experts, apart from their designated exceptions, are, of course ignorant and have it all wrong. Feynmann didn’t mean it quite like that and no-one of any intelligence thinks he did. He wasn’t saying that all Physicists before him, including his fellow Nobel winning prize Physicists were ignorant in the accepted sense of term. He wasn’t saying that Plank , Schrodinger , Einstein et al were all ignoramuses. But it suits them to present climate scientists in that light.
They like Popper’s classical observationalist form of scientific method in favour of empirical falsification. They take his argument to mean that AGW can’t be real unless proved by controlled double blind experiments that it is. And if it can’t be ‘proved’ that way there can’t be any problem, can there? The creationists say the same thing about evolution of course and it is equally impossible to ‘prove’ that adding GH gases will cause planetary warming as it is to prove that humans and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor. Popper didn’t dispute the latter so there is no reason to expect he would take their line on the climate. I’m sure the sceptic/deniers must know that but it suits their purposes to claim otherwise.
Vaughan, you have probably realized by now that due to your past contributions, many here will jump on construing something you say in such a way, however absurdly, as to try to discredit you. It is part of the mud-slinging process to see what they can make stick and diminish your standing, but a lot of it just makes them look small.
If bein’ wrongs a crime – I’m servin’ time.
Perhaps more accurate to say the Norfolk police carried out an extensive obstruction and coverup operation, much like their fellow civil servants at UEA that they dutifully closed ranks behind.
So many straw men in one comment. Better hope nobody strikes a match.
‘It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress and great value of a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress that is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom, to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed, and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.’
There is a discussion of Feynman here – http://blog.iandavis.com/2012/07/12/feynman-on-science/ – that is succinct.
The attitude is at utter odds to certainties that are expressed on both sides of the climate war. Both I would suggest are arguments from ignorance – simple narratives of the climate warriors. Real science is much more complex and interesting. But the great responsibility of natural philosophy is to keep an open mind on the science.
Even evolution is on much less certain grounds than it seems. Einstein shows that the fundament of time is the 4 dimensional space/time continuum. Perhaps it is not so much that evolution does not need God but that relativity does not need evolution.
A real sceptic accepts the evidence and changes their opinion accordingly. A real sceptic would now accept that Fan’s comments were quite reasonable. Heck they might even apologise for some hasty remarks.
A real sceptic.
Not sure we’ll see DocMartyn back here doing any of those things.
Climategate definitely exposed fraud and skulduggery, and was definitely tax-funded. That exposing this is a crime, is itself a crime, an indication of a totalitarian regime resistant to accountability. Perhaps the MPs who voted for the relevant legislation should be sent to prison.
Irrespective of any flaws they calculate the greenhouse effect in far more detail than you are. And they find it is substantial.
33C is a ballpark estimate based on making the atmosphere IR and holding everything else fixed. The assumptions underlying it are well understood. You can try adding in extra details like thermal inertia and not using global averages, but when you do you’ll find the greenhouse effect remains.
It’s defense.
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Speaking of reading comprehension I just published a taxonomy of confusions that takes the science of readability to a new level. See http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/02/05/a-taxonomy-of-confusions/.
Heh, one man’s ‘thorough lashing’ is another man’s ‘opening his eyes’.
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