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Comment on Magical theories by Robert I Ellison

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I have – amongst other things – been researching eggs lately. Eggs seem quite respectable these days – although commonly not recommended for diabetics because of studies linking egg consumption by diabetics with increased risk of heart attacks and stroke. The National Heart Foundation in Australia recommends 6 eggs a week max for both diabetics and non-diabetics. I have had 5 so far this week.

In the end I have settled on an ultra high quality diet. Beans, nuts, seeds, fruit, vegies, lean meat, good fats that include small amounts of butter and cheese, low GI and few simple carbohydrates. I also take supplements – multi-vitamins, extra chromium, fish oil, low dose aspirin. Along with various plant products for blood sugar control – damiana, ginger, cinnamon, macca root, Gymnena sylvestre. Super foods in moderation – spelt, oats, goji berries, chia seed, flax seed – with almond milk in a tasty raw muesli for my free range egg and low fat, grass fed beef sausage free days. The latter with a slice of wholemeal toast and rich, luscious butter.

The question naturally arises – have I gone totally insane? There is nothing wrong with any of this – and good food is a passion. Last night we had baked ‘fried chicken’ and an Italian bean salad. It was just OK – the salad was good and I can improve on the chicken. Night before we had Thai chicken satay kebabs with steamed vegies a la Gado Gado. Splendidly good – a perfect mix of sweet (I am not above a little poison in a really good cause), salt and sour that is the defining characteristic of Thai food. It seems less magical – if a little obsessive.

AGW on the other hand seems less magical than utterly wrong in principle. Unless one counts ignoring the dynamic complexities of ocean and atmosphere circulation – with accompanying changes in cloud, snow, ice, dust, biology and cloud – as magical. Or imaging that these things -including the nonlinear couplings between powerful climate sub-systems – are well understood. The reality is that climate responds to small changes in conditions with abrupt and nonlinear change as internal sub-systems feedback in unpredictable ways. Not AGW as such but dynamic emergent behavior. DEB for short.

On the other hand there is a magical solution – tax carbon dioxide emissions. The inadequacy of this response is so obvious that I imagine ulterior motives. Such as the overthrow of capitalism and the consumerist ethic.

A truly effective response to carbon emissions is as simple as diet. It involves a comprehensive multi-gas strategy that builds societal resilience and maximizes economic development – along with accelerated technological innovation. But this is not what they want to hear. I guess it has parallels with diet.

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Comment on Magical theories by phatboy

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Joshua:

The article concludes the latter w/o even bothering to make a freakin’ argument.

Sorry, I didn’t read the thread from the start, so I thought you were implying something else.
In this case, I agree with you 100%

Comment on Magical theories by Wagathon

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How would you like it of the doctor told you he was going to be the first to use the new but untested and unverified Bayesian implant system — to replace your mom’s hip — because, there’s no evidence to falsify his opinion that it will ultimately prove to be the superior restorative option?

Comment on Magical theories by Don Monfort

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“Of course, they need to be simple enough for a space cadet to grasp.”

You may not be familiar with some American colloquialisms, Pekka. Anyway, I was sure you could help louis, if louis could be helped.

Comment on Magical theories by pokerguy (aka al neipris)

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“many a slip…”

So true dear Beth. I take nothing for granted these days. Truthfully though, I find it an exhausting way to live.

Comment on Magical theories by phatboy

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Speed:

The pathogenesis of high blood pressure remains unclear, and consequently treatment is currently based on using drugs with an emphasis on reducing the elevated blood pressure rather than treating its causative factors.

That’s not only in the US. In the UK they want to put millions more people onto statins. I reckon the drug companies have far too much influence in govt.

Comment on Week in review by Ted Clayton

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Pekka,

I’m sorry for not introducing Andreas Trupp more carefully … who appears in his article to be after a Perpetual Motion Machine Of The Second Kind … although he might well be content with Free, Zero Point or Limitless-for-Nothing energy & power, however it could be conjured!

Besides citing Loschmidt generally, Trupp makes a special plea using Venus, which is also a strong theme of Visiting Physicist:

Abstract: … special attention is drawn to the atmosphere of Venus, the temperature gradation of which might be capable of corroborating Loschmidt’s thesis in a much better way than lab experiments on planet Earth could.

4) III. [Proof of Stratification] Section III. is 3 paragraphs of detail on the ways Venus lends itself to support of Loschmidt.
====

But no – I did NOT mean to commend this field of ‘research’!

When we go to Google Books and search ‘perpetual motion’, we quickly find a flock of popular titles on the topic, clustered in the early 20th C. These carefully disclaim that they offer anything Free or Perpetual, but they know interest is still keen in the huge variety of ways such a machine has been attempted (although perpetual motion had fallen from grace, some decades before). These books made a generation of yeoman technical writers a solid living, and sent their kids to college in nice cloths. And they’re often very enjoyable books!

I would recommend to Visiting Physicist that he take his evident familiarity with the Loschmidt body of work, and craft it into an exploration of the anomaly that this otherwise fine scientist represents. The story really does have compelling elements to it, as indeed an all-too-human account.

Ludwig Boltzmann clearly held Loschmidt high regard … there are fairly clear signs even to a dabbler like myself, that Boltzmann protected his mentor from the full consequences of his folly, and is the main force behind having certain phenomena named after him. But that is generally the only familiarity one acquires of Loschmidt in school, and one images that the reason is his involvement with a subject that only later became Taboo (along with the fact that he ‘muffed’ his effort at it, when it was still not Taboo – as in fact it was not, at the time).

All should know, that Maxwell, Boltzmann and many others, all gave careful attention to Perpetual Motion and sought it as a Holy Grail. Searches of the 19th literature show that many if not most of our respected science pioneers, ‘put in their 2¢’. Loschmidt’s error & downfall, was NOT that he pursued a Perpetual Motion Machine, in & of itself. No – that was normal, then.

Though Loschmidt is very lightly covered in school, he was not only closely associated with Boltzmann & Maxwell, but was a meaningful partner in their combined 3-man effort that led to great fame for the others, while he ended up ‘written out’ of the bigger story.

There is a fascinating potential opportunity here for Visiting Physicist (who greatly admires Loschmidt) … but not in using his old perpetual motion mechanism to defeat Anthropological Global Warming.

Our literature teachers (and editors) always beseech us: “Write about what you know! (and love…)”.

Comment on Magical theories by Al Bedo

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“the shills who argue C02 is a plant food,”

Uhmmm, have you invented a new theory of photosynthesis that no one is aware of?

Everything you are likely to eat is here by way of CO2 and most of those things are here in greater abundance from greater amounts of CO2.


Comment on UK-US Workshop Part IV: Limits of climate models for adaptation decision making by Michael

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“You have no way of knowing that if zero CO2 was ever emitted by humans as of tomorrow that the weather would be noticeably different or better overall.” – Rob

Rob,

I think we can say that the liklehood of a 30% increase in non-condensing GHGs having no effect is rather slim.

Comment on UK-US Workshop Part IV: Limits of climate models for adaptation decision making by Rob Starkey

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Michael
Use your example of sea level rise. Since we have had a reasonably reliable means of measurements, there has been zero increase in the rate of sea level rise. It has been rising at a rate which will result in about a foot of rise by 2100. Coastal areas that wish to be protected from the sea will not have a significantly more difficult job in building a sea wall to protect them from a sea impacted by AGW than one not impacted by AGW. It may be slightly higher, but the delta cost for the potential rise due to AGW is minimal. It isn’t like if we stop emitting CO2 that there will not be adverse weather.

Comment on UK-US Workshop Part IV: Limits of climate models for adaptation decision making by Mi Cro

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<blockquote>I think we can say that the liklehood of a 30% increase in non-condensing GHGs having no effect is rather slim.</blockquote> The <strong>only</strong> evidence you have for this is the extrapolated effects on the planet due to temperature increases that themselves are extrapolations of temperatures based on GCM's that have proven to be inaccurate.

Comment on UK-US Workshop Part IV: Limits of climate models for adaptation decision making by Visiting Physicist

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<b>Judith Curry</b> writes .. <I>"all agreed that global climate models were potentially very valuable and could be made more useful for adaption decision making, but that this potential was not yet realized."</I> Well I suppose all would agree if they have a pecuniary interest in maintaining the status quo and continuing to develop and use models that are based on the completely false physics that radiation from a colder atmosphere can actually help the Sun in raising the temperature of Earth's surface. It cannot do so. Physicists will tell you (if you even bother to ask a specialist in thermodynamics like myself) that such radiation undergoes what they call "pseudo scattering" in which it is immediately re-emitted in a resonating process, without any of its electro-magnetic energy being converted to thermal energy. This provides some of the electro-magnetic energy in the SB calculation for the warmer surface, and thus slows radiative cooling, but it can have no effect on molecules colliding at the interface and transferring thermal energy by conduction and evaporative cooling. But none of this is what really determines planetary surface temperatures anyway. The base of the Uranus nominal troposphere is hotter than Earth, and yet it receives no direct solar radiation worth mentioning. <b>Valid physics can be used to confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that a gravitationally-induced temperature gradient will always evolve spontaneously in a vertical plane in any solid, liquid or gas that is exposed to a gravitational field. This happens at the molecular level where molecules swap kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy when in free flight between collisions. No one has correctly rebutted this, and wires outside cylinders also develop thermal gradients so no perpetual motion can occur.</b> There is a predetermined thermal profile in Earth's atmosphere caused by gravity which, without water vapour or greenhouse gases, would intersect the surface in the vicinity of 25C, but then water vapour reduces the gradient (due to inter-molecular radiation, <I>not the release of latent heat</I>) and we end up with a mean of about 15C. It is natural cycles, probably regulated by planetary orbits, which are the primary determinants of climate. That's why it's not carbon dioxide after all.

Comment on John Kerry’s remarks on climate change by William McClenney

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Flat earthers………..Hmmmmmmm

Let’s see if we can get our minds wrapped properly around this gem. Would a flat earth experience eccentricity, obliquity and precession? Would a flat earther even know what those are? Would a flat earther know anything at all about when they live? Would the number 11,717 have any significance to a flat earther? Would the term ‘glacial inception’ have any meaning to a flat earther?

This next question is meant for all flat earthers and all non flat earthers. What would be your educated guess on the probable length of the Holocene?

(For goodness’ sake, please don’t anyone quote Loutre and Berger 2003 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818102001868. Lisiecki and Raymo 2005 soundly put that modeling exercise to rest with actual data. http://www.350.me.uk/TR/Hansen/LisieckiRaymo_preprint.pdf)

For all you flat earthers, we live today in the Holocene epoch, or the 11,717 years since we melted our way out of the Younger Dryas. A.K.A. the interglacial in which all of human civilization has occurred.

Seven of the last eight warmings to interglacial levels (i.e. O18<3.6 o/oo) have each lasted about half a precession cycle. The precession cycle varies from 19k to 23kyrs, and we are at the 23kyr part now, making 11,500 half……

At face value we therefore have a 12.5% chance of going long, like that 8th interglacial. A closer look yields a 50% chance the Holocene will go long, like MIS-11 did, because then, as now, we are also at an eccentricity minimum. Be careful with that argument though. MIS-19, 800kya, also occurred at an eccentricity minimum, and it didn't go long. So 50/50. For an excellent treatment of the subject I recommend Tzedakis 2010 http://www.clim-past.net/6/131/2010/cp-6-131-2010.pdf.

Gosh! What is a flat earther supposed to do? Well, it could be a lot worse than you think. Assume, for the purposes of discussion, that CO2 is the heathen devil gas it is made out to be. Use the upper end limits of whatever non flat earther you choose to believe regarding CO2. Now remove it from the late Holocene atmosphere to whatever 350.org concentration you prefer.

Voila! Instant glacial inception speedbump removed. Feeling better yet?

Now, assume for the purposes of discussion that CO2 is not the heathen devil gas it is made out to be. If you are truly a non flat earther then this should bring the focus onto what the ends of the other interglacials looked like.

And this is where it gets ugly, very ugly indeed. And just how ugly is that? We will not take the median AR4 value for sea level rise by 2099, we will take the upper error bar of the worst case scenario which measures out to +0.59 meters. That's a lot, right? Well, only if 0.59 is a larger number than 6.0 or 52.0. It's the new math!

http://www.uow.edu.au/content/groups/public/@web/@sci/@eesc/documents/doc/uow045009.pdf

http://lin.irk.ru/pdf/6696.pdf

It's allright! Really, it is! Let's just all agree that MIS-1 will be like MIS-11! Houston, we have a problem……. You see MIS-11 peaked at about +21.3 meters amsl http://www.researchgate.net/publication/240752030_A_sustained_21_m_highstand_during_MIS_11_(400_ka)_direct_fossil_and_sedimentary_evidence_from_Bermuda._Quaternary_Science_Reviews_28_271-285/file/9c96051c7177e8b1b2.pdf

Just remember "If you like your current sea level, you can keep it. Period." Apologies to Resident Obama and his Secrete-ary of State John Kerry.

Now, will all the real flat earthers please stand up. (Remember to choose the right side of the disc to standup on, otherwise you will fall off, like Columbus……:-)

Comment on UK-US Workshop Part IV: Limits of climate models for adaptation decision making by Michael

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Mi Cro,

The observed increased in temp’s have nothing to do with GCMs.

Rob,

Opportunity costs.

Comment on John Kerry’s remarks on climate change by David Springer

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JCH | February 18, 2014 at 1:34 pm |

“My father was a WW2 US Navy corpsman.”

I’m a Vietnam era Marine sergeant.

“When a Marine or sailor showed up for wound care he wrote out a casualty card. Even if under devastating enemy fire. If there was a wound, no matter how severe, the man got a Purple Heart. That is what his commander in chief ordered, and that is what he got.”

“Period. If it bled, it got written up. If it was written up, the man got a Purple Heart.”

With all due respect to your father bleeding is not required. Treatment by a medical officer is required and an official entry describing the treatment made a part of the record. The award is recommended by the service member’s chain-of-command and is supposed to be reviewed to ensure it meets the criteria of being sustained as a result of enemy action.

Three Purple Hearts is a get out of jail free, card. You can go home.

But that’s not the nature of these objections, whether there was blood or not. The wounds were self-inflicted due to negligence. Those wounds do not qualify. Kerry requested the first Purple Heart from his commander and was denied based on witness reports. Kerry subsequently re-applied several months later to a less discriminating officer with no knowledge of the previous denial. The award was granted that time. His third Purple Heart was also self-inflicted according to eyewitnesses. Both incidents were from shrapnel from one of Kerry’s own explosives where he was a little too close to the explosion and no enemy actions were involved.

Whether the other eyewitnesses were lying or Kerry lied I suppose is a matter that can never be resolved but one might consider that Kerry got himself sent home upon receiving that third Purple Heart the witnesses got nothing for their conflicting accounts.


Comment on John Kerry’s remarks on climate change by Pooh, Dixie

Comment on UK-US Workshop Part IV: Limits of climate models for adaptation decision making by Alexander Biggs

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The 20 or so models that the IPCC supports are but shadows on the wall of credibility. That is because they have no substance outside the IPCC: I have never seen an analysis of any one of those models and as far as I am aware, none has been subject to the of detailed examination, even by physicists capable of understanding the methodology.

Having 20 different models is only useful if their diversity is sufficient to encompass one good one. The world’s physicists are not privy to such detail, so we don’t know. Yet the US secretary of state is willing to lay the reputation of his country on the line to support the IPCC!

About 14 years ago I parted company with the Oxford climatologists when I discovered that their “grid” computing scheme included no attempt to explain the Nino phenomena. That was because I knew that Nino had a greater affect on climate in Australia than any other variable. It seems that Oxford has not advanced much since then.

However I do remain resolute that if the predictability of regional climate is ever solved it will be by mathematical moodelling.

Comment on UK-US Workshop Part IV: Limits of climate models for adaptation decision making by popesclimatetheory

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In science, accuracy counts, even if you don’t understand why.
SAY WHAT?
In science, accuracy counts, even if you don’t understand why.

I read this several times. If you don’t understand, what exactly do you know that is accurate.

Correlation is not causation. Accuracy, when you don’t know why, is not accuracy, that is just dumb chance. What are you thinking? What are you not thinking?

Comment on John Kerry’s remarks on climate change by Robert I Ellison

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‘Thus, we have now been able to test the ocean’s response to freshwater forcing. While the 8.2 kyr event is not an analog for what may happen in the future, a slowdown in the MOC is predicted by our model (and others) for a future world, partly as a function of ocean warming and partly as a function of increased freshening from ice melt and increased rainfall. As more models perform these kinds of experiments, it may be possible to narrow the uncertainties in the future projections based on how well they simulate the 8.2 kyr event.’ http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/legrande_01/

The real question it seems is what triggers a sudden shift from warm intergalcials to cold glacials more generally.

I’d put money on warming resulting in high winter snowfall and high spring runoff – a further slowdown in AMOC – not ruling out an abrupt change – causing NH cooling and ice sheet accumulation in the context of low NH summer insolation. Any day now basically.

Comment on John Kerry’s remarks on climate change by timg56

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I was only capable of getting about a third or so through it before I had to stop.

I will say that Kerry alone should be able to power a small neighborhood, he’s that big of a windbag.

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