Towards a rational climate change model – part 2
In part 1, I attempted to list all of the sources of energy that reach the surface of Planet Earth, all of the factors that affect the amount of energy, and all of the energy flows out again.
I forgot to include gravity and tidal energy in the list. I also forgot that there are forms of lightening that flow up, known as elves, sprites and blue jets.
I don’t know much about them but would think that these transfer energy from earth to the solar system. We need to keep looking out for any items as yet missing from the list.
Just to remind ourselves of the basic thermodynamics:
When more energy arrives at Planet Earth than leaves then the temperature goes up. When more energy leaves than arrives then the temperature goes down.
What type of thermodynamic system, open or closed?
I was recently surprised to discover that enthusiasts for global warming think that Planet Earth is a closed system. It’s not.
The earth is a big ball of matter within the solar system. Meteorites come in and rockets go out without hindrance, and particles are exchanged. There is no lid. Both matter and energy come in and leave. That makes it an open system.
I was even more surprised when I looked this question up on the internet, and this was the very first thing that arrived on my screen:
‘What is an example of a closed system?
Earth can be considered as a closed system, since it only receives sunlight (energy), while the overall mass stays constant, without (almost) any exchange from space. Another example of a closed system is a saucepan or frying pan, on a stove, when its lid is closed.’ [Note 1]
When I looked around I found plenty more such statements. This is a very strange misunderstanding indeed! I mean, it’s not quite on the scale of breaching the laws of thermodynamics, but it’s not far off. It’s such a whopper that it leaves me sitting here wondering if I’ve lost my senses! I need a stiff cup of tea!
This turns out to be one of the critical arguments used in the attempt to prove that human activity is causing a ‘climate emergency’.
Here is a typical comment:
“But the planet is a closed system so it is acceptable to use an overall average budget when calculating the variance over time as a result of radiative forcing.” [Note 2]
Now, there can’t be many people alive who are not concerned at the state of the natural world and the environment. We can all see the dirty and degraded landscape around us, and can read about the extinctions going on, and worry about the rain forest and the bees and the polar bears. Practically everyone is worried. Unfortunately we are never going to agree upon the cause or the remedy by screaming at one another.
In this debate, whether or not the earth is an open system matters. It really, really matters.
I’ve had my strong cup of tea and recovered the balance of my mind and it’s open. Planet Earth is an open system. Matter and energy come in; matter and energy go out.
Whether we are looking at the planet as a whole (including its atmosphere) or whether we are considering just the surface of the planet – the earth is not a closed system.
We know that because it gets cold at night. More energy is leaving than arriving and so the temperature falls. When the skies are clear it gets colder than when the night is cloudy. The aeroplanes fly around through the upper atmosphere. If we are lucky we can see a shooting star. It’s an open system.
While we are on this topic, this is also the reason why the earth is not a greenhouse. A greenhouse has a lid. The lid slows down loss of heat via convection. The earth does not have a lid and there is no greenhouse effect. Clouds, yes. Thermodynamics, yes. Greenhouse, no.
Agree or disagree?
Writing this essay has turned into a bizarre and exceedingly unpleasant experience for me. All day yesterday a row was going on in my head. It seemed to beat down on me. I felt as if I was going crazy! It went like this:
The earth is a closed system
Don’t be silly
Yes it is. The internet says so. Look around. Everyone is saying so.
No. It hasn’t got a lid on. It’s wide open to the heavens
It’s closed. Everyone says so.
Could it be closed….? Is there something here to debate? NO NO I can see the stars, it gets cold at night, there is no lid!
Heat can’t escape, that’s why it gets hot
Now this is getting ridiculous. It gets cold at night. It’s cooler in the shade.
The light comes in but it can’t escape again
That would be a black hole, this is getting worse and worse.
It’s a closed system, we all agree
Oh yes of course, it’s got to be me that’s wrong …..then almost screaming NO!
After a fevered night of sleep, when every time I stirred the same thoughts were screeching round and round in my head, the soundbites suddenly changed. Now it was as if Big Brother was soothing my aching brow and murmuring, “There there, of course it’s an open system. We all know that. Everyone says so, you’ve just mis-read the posts. Pat pat. We all agree. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.”
To which the answer is, fine, ok, it is an open system, but they don’t all say so. They say that it’s closed and they say that heat can’t escape. That’s the reason there is going to be a ‘climate emergency’ in 5 years time, because, apparently, the laws of physics have suddenly changed and now light can come in but heat can’t get out.
I feel oppressed. It’s been going on and on. It’s no wonder people give in to this nonsense and accept it as true. I’ve only been writing for a few days, and the mental pressure feels appalling.
I don’t know how people working in this area stay sane with the alignment within one’s own mind between what one knows to be true (work = force x distance, the principle of the conservation of energy, 1 + 2 = 3) and wholly false ideas such as radiative forcing, the idea that heat energy is generated by the atmosphere, and the idea that Planet Earth is a greenhouse and a closed system.
Supposedly, on a sunny day, we feel hot, not because the sun is shining, but because of the ‘greenhouse effect’. On top of that is all the back-to-front logic (non-logic, that is to say) which starts by assuming that the earth is ‘out of balance’ and heating up and then finds a way to blame it on carbon dioxide.
The thing it feels most like to me, is that somebody decided that the following statements are both true:
2 + 3 = 5 and
3 + 2 = 6
and from that basis attempted to recalculate the whole of Newtonian physics. Nothing works, nothing adds up, the calculations get longer and longer and the reasoning more and more tortuous.
It’s no wonder that most of the public are taken in when I, with my piles of education and rational training, find the nonsense so difficult to resist with just a few days of concentrated immersion in it. It’s no wonder that tempers are frayed.
As a woman, my female brain is naturally inclined to compliance, to agree with general opinions. Even so, I like to think of myself as an independent-minded person and capable of thinking for myself. The experience of the last few days has been atrocious. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it before.
Judging by all this, those of us endeavouring to bring realism into the debate on climate change need to pay more attention to the ways in which we communicate, and take emotions and psychology into account as well as displaying accurate data and science.
Words matter
The words “budget” and “variance” do not belong in this debate. They come from the world of business and are not scientific terms. You can’t do science with budgets; only with measurement, the laws of physics, mathematics, and sound reasoning.
Another word that often crops up in this discussion is “balance”. In this context, balance is a suspect word that doesn’t belong either. It’s another word from the world of business (think “balance sheet”, “balancing the accounts”, and a “balanced budget”). In thermodynamics the word is “equilibrium”. Unlike the word “balance”, equilibrium has a settled and specific scientific meaning.
If one uses non-scientific words that have no scientific meaning then it can be no surprise if one gets the science wrong. Radically wrong. Fundamentally wrong.
I guess one could say that the term “radiative forcing” comes into this category.
“Radiation” is a scientific word. “Radiative” is not.
“Force” is a scientific word. “Forcing” is not.
Non-scientific words produce non-scientific answers.
Another problem with the words ‘budget’ and ‘balance’ is that they suggest that man is somehow in control; that, in the grand scheme of things, man’s activities have any effect. Mankind was not around to cause the Huronian ice age 2 ½ billion years ago, and we weren’t around to cause the subsequent melting.
We didn’t cause the many repeated episodes of freeze-melt and we didn’t even cause the most recent episode of drastic warming a mere 10,000 years ago. The floods caused by that warming are remembered to this day in the stories passed down from generation to generation in the Indian Vedas, and in numerous other records including of course The Bible.
It’s not that human activity is not radically affecting the planet and its creatures and landscape and wildlife; of course it is. It’s just that, at present, our models are not good enough to back-compute the huge shifts in temperature that occurred in previous eons, and most certainly cannot be good enough to predict what will happen in the next 5-10 years.
We are urged to destroy our lifestyles (and not to mention our landscapes and our wildlife into the bargain) in order to cut out carbon dioxide right now ‘just in case’ and ‘on the precautionary principle’. Plain common sense, as well as basic facts, science and data, all suggest that current climate change models are wrong, and the precautionary thing would be to leave well alone.
As I said before in part 1, if they go ahead with their plans to extract the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and if they really do drop reflective material into the upper atmosphere to cool the planet down, they risk killing us all and taking most of the world’s wildlife with us. That is a bit of a risky thing to do on the basis of current models. Let’s just remind ourselves:
Current models are not good enough to tell us what the temperature is today. The current models tell us that today’s temperature is minus 40C (or minus 18C, I’m not sure which it’s supposed to be, but either way it’s horribly wrong). The models do not use scientific language and they do not obey the laws of physics. And yet the politicians are acting as though these same models can tell us what the temperature will be next year, and that we face a “Climate Emergency.”
It is a pity that the people who originally devised these ‘climate change models’ were not taught by my mother. She was an excellent maths teacher and was especially good with the weaker pupils. Every day in every lesson she taught them to look at the answer they had come up with and ask themselves this question: “Is my answer sensible?” An answer of minus 18/40 degrees is not sensible and she would have said the same thing as me; check your understanding, and do it again.
And there was times I’d take my pen
And feel obliged to start again
What are we trying to achieve?
It would be ‘quite useful’ if we could decide between us what it is that we are trying to model.
Is it the temperature of Planet Earth including the atmosphere, in which case: Where are we measuring the temperature? What is our data? Are the data records sufficiently compatible to take an average? Are we going to weight the average, and if so, how? Is there an agreed description and definition of “global annual average surface temperature”. Somehow, I doubt it.
These terms are bandied around but does anyone know what they actually mean? Within all these points there is endless scope for picking and choosing one’s data, for adjusting it, and then coming up with the answer that the person funding you wants to see. This is an acknowledged problem with statistics and the phrase, “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics” has been around for many decades.
We also need to ask the question, why should global average temperature matter that much anyway? Is it in fact an important figure that needs to be pinned down and calculated with precision? I would suggest not.
Regional variation and regional instability are more significant than general averages. In real-world situations an average figure can obscure more than it reveals, and the best understanding is often unravelled by examining specific records at specific sites.
Perhaps, then, we are trying to model the amount of ice? The weather and glaciation processes going on at the poles, and the various exchanges of energy across the polar regions, are extremely complex and the relationship between quantities of ice and global annual average temperature is not linear.
Just this one part of the ‘climate change’ issue is extremely complex and difficult to understand well enough to model properly on computers. The practicalities make it hard to gather the relevant data, and the records, despite the sterling work of the British Antarctic Survey, are short and patchy.
Are we modelling sea levels? On a crowded globe with most cities next to the sea, we definitely are very interested in sea levels relative to the landscape. Therefore we need to remember that, thanks to tectonic plate movement, the land can go down relative to the sea.
Such flooding can be the land falling, not necessarily the sea rising. Or the sea might ingress because the rivers aren’t dredged and the sea walls neglected. Or because too much fresh water is pumped out from the ground and sea water rushes in instead. And do sea levels rise when ice melts? Sometimes yes and sometimes no, and that is something else we need to get clear in our collective minds.
What about carbon? That’s a different topic and the cycle acts on different time scales and by different processes – and so requires separate modelling. I’ll talk more about carbon soon.
Acidity is a different subject again. So too are weather patterns.
Each one of these areas acts in a different time framework, by different processes, and can have very different impacts upon humans or upon the natural world, and none of them have anything resembling a simple linear relationship to year-on-year global average temperature changes. Even if it were the case that the planet is warming up a touch (for which the evidence seems to be weak) every unusual phenomenon is not explained by the knee-jerk explanation of “Global Warming!”
The existing climate change models, the ones described and quite rightly criticized by Joseph E Postma in his paper ‘An Alternative Global Mean Energy Budget Model Which is Incompatible with Existing Ones‘ (January 2020), try to do too much in one ‘simple’ diagram. Simplification, I suggested in part 1, plays an important role. But those standard ‘climate change’ diagrams described by Mr Postma are, as he says, simply wrong.
So perhaps there is a better word here too. Out of the enormous heap of different processes, different things and complicating factors, perhaps, rather than ‘simplify’ we need to ‘filter’.
In part 1, I attempted to list all of the sources of energy that reach the surface of Planet Earth, all of the factors that affect the amount of energy, and all of the energy flows out again. The next step, in the imagination, would be to put it all through a giant filter paper and pick out the really big items. To do that properly we would need some figures.
More to come.
© Rosie Langridge 18 February 2020. Additional information from David McCobb. Additional clarity from Paul Charles Gregory at thinking-for-clarity.de
Note 1: I did not say this. I am quoting the very first thing that came up on my screen when I tapped in “open or closed system”.
Note 2: I did not say this. It’s a real quote though, and typical of the back-to-front reasoning used to justify blaming the world’s woes on carbon dioxide.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Rosie,
I rapidly skimmed the last half of your essay because the first half was so good that I wanted to be possibly the first to commend your efforts. And I now see why you chose to ignore my advice to not rewrite Part 2. I was wrong again. And I will have further points to make in the future after more comments have been made about Part 2.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
geran
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Rosie is trying it again! What luck! Everyone enjoys climate clowns, especially me.
Rosie can’t state in 200 words, or less, what her point is. That’s why Jerry Krause is so infatuated with her. Just keep on rambling.
Hilarious.
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T L Winslow
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The CO2 hoaxers of the IPCC global octopus use science as a punchline to accomplish their Mission: Impossible of framing CO2 emissions as evil to scare the world into dismantling the fossil fuel industry that underpins capitalism so they can foist global Marxism. They use scientific language the same way all Marxist theoreticians use it, namely, to turn people’s heads into zombie mush that takes orders like soldiers to foist the illusory Marxist utopia.
Here’s the latest product of the IPCC hoaxers, a personal “carbon footprint calculator” to guilt-trip you into becoming their good soldier that sacrifices all for the cause:
https://www.mic.com/p/a-carbon-footprint-calculator-should-be-your-first-step-in-evaluating-your-environmental-impact-17940990
When it comes to climate science, they turn real science upside-down to get what they want. To start with, they never admit that all climate is local. It must be global so they can claim that CO2 causes global warming and shut down the entire fossil fuel industry.
There must then be a global average temperature (GAT) official figure that only they control because only they have a global octopus that receives daily temperature data that they can tamper with to make the yearly GAT always increase a little bit to keep the scare going. It’s all pure moose hockey, but hardcore Marxists believe that the end justifies the means, and all they really want is useful idiots who advance their cause of making the world less and less capitalist and free. Love Hurts 🙂
Tony Heller video on Feel the Bernie’s $16 trillion Commie takeover attempt of the U.S., reduced to its essentials 🙂
Don’t ask the IPCC to do it, but if you’re going to model climate change for real, don’t start in space and pretend you’re calculating a global energy balance. Start on the ground and calculate what happens to daily solar irradiation after it hits Earth’s surface. You can ignore all energy processes that don’t depend on the Sun because if it went dark the Earth would rapidly turn into a giant snowball, with maybe a few geysers for ET vacationers. After accurately modeling a little patch of Earth’s surface, do it over and over until you have the entire globe modeled, then see what you get in the big picture.
Being relegated to beggars that have no hope of getting on the giant sow’s tits, we few remaining independent scientists have to refound climate science as best we can and hope we make the IPCC stink so bad there is a sea change. It’s like being Galileo back in the day of the mighty monolithic Church. Few will appreciate us finding the truth, but history proves that truth will win in the end even if we don’t live to see it happen.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-use-of-global-temperature-if-it-really-doesnt-exist/answer/TL-Winslow
Reply
geran
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“As a woman, my female brain is naturally inclined to compliance, to agree with general opinions.”
Rosie, this is not about your sex. It’s about science, which you have offered NONE.
“Even so, I like to think of myself as an independent-minded person and capable of thinking for myself. The experience of the last few days has been atrocious. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it before.”
It’s the real world. It’s not about you. It’s about science. If you want to pontificate on a science blog, but your science is seriously lacking, it won’t work. It’s called “reality”.
But, who knows, if you whine enough maybe Jerry Krause will attempt to save you.
More please.
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Robert Kernodle
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Honestly Rosie
You seem to be trying to do science writing as you would do literary writing, and the effect on me is annoying. You ramble on about your own uncertainties, as you belabor broad generalizations without qualification for the specific context within which you are presenting your ideas. It seems a bit self indulgent.
You oversimplify grand questions that really cannot be approached effectively with your breezy writing style.
Questions presented in this area of concern need to be approached with greater confidence, in a less rambling tone, with greater intellectual maturity, and certainly at a greater level of being informed about some of the basics.
For example, your mention of worry about polar bears is so passe’, even if you are only alluding to a past sentiment. People in touch with the latest facts about polar bears would not even visit this tired meme. People informed with the latest information on polar bears and focused on climate issues surely would not highlight such a defunct concern with any seriousness. Polar bears are doing okay.
Again, honestly, I could not read your entire article, because it seemed to be leading nowhere — I lost hope that you were reaching any sort of conclusion. I got the sense that you maybe are afraid to take a firm stand on anything yet. Take a stand. Get a focus. Don’t worry about possible contradictions.
Often times, worry over absolute categories, such as “open” and “closed” systems can be resolved by considering the context and the magnitudes of possible conflicting ideas. For example, in terms of mass, and, for practical or even scientific purposes in certain contexts, it might be okay to consider earth a “closed system”, because the QUANTITY of stuff entering into the system is so small that it does not affect specific assessments being made. Even all the cosmic material entering the planet each day does not significantly affect mass-dependent calculations. Earth is THAT big.
In absolute terms, of course Earth is not a closed system. But for some assessments, I think it is.
Similarly, gravitational, geothermal, and other possible small players in the energy arena are so small as not to matter much, where the bigger players, like the sun, are concerned.
In general, you seem to have a lot of ideas going around in your head, some of which are in conflict, and your article, thus, seems like a self-therapy session for an audience of viewers who wish to read beyond this stage in which you seem to be.
As someone seemingly prone to literary writing, I hope you can take this as a critical review, rather than as a rebuff of who you are or what you are trying to accomplish. Theories, ideas, rational thought, emotional leanings, biases, fragmented knowledge, whew! … how does anything ever get done? ANSWER: Keep on trucking, and, hopefully, the revelations will come.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Robert,
You counsel Rosie about how to ‘write as a scientist’ while I read you dropped out of academic life to become an artist. Have you read Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences as translated by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio (1914)?
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Jerry Krause
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Hi Robert,
I forgot to add that I have read many times that scientists do not know how to write well Conventional scientific articles are very boring and difficult to understanding by anyone not immersed in the specific topic being written about.
PSI is not intended for such an informed audience. Hence, Rosie’s literary style is very appropriate for PSI’s intended reader. And she does cover all (at least more) the factors involved in the ‘natural’ science about which she is writing Maybe you are at the wrong place and need to find writing elsewhere that appeals better to your taste.
And one more point, I’m not sure how many readers, as perhaps you, are aware that weather and climate are ‘natural’ sciences which cannot be brought into an artificial laboratory to be studied.
Have a good day, Jerry
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Robert Kernodle
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Jerry K, you wrote: You counsel Rosie about how to ‘write as a scientist’ while I read you dropped out of academic life to become an artist.
So, I see you attempt to demean the credibility of my words, based on my background. Did you read my words? Did you read why I dropped out of academic life? Did you read what I was studying before I dropped out of academic life? While in academic life, I learned quite a bit about how to write — that was one of my biggest takeaways, and I have attempted to practice ever since.
I was NOT, by any means, counseling anyone about how to write AS A SCIENTIST, as you wrote. Rather, I was suggesting a possible better approach for science writing. When I say, “science writing”, I am not talking about the strict, technical, academic, horribly wordy style of scientific journals. Rather, I am talking about clear, focused, well structured writing based on the latest information, presented in a manner that leads somewhere, … NOT a rambling style of raising more and more questions, without taking a focus stand on, at least, one of those questions, and reaching some kind of resolution towards an answer. Also, NOT a style that focuses on the writer’s own insecurities.
I found the article of this thread unseasoned in all those respects.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Robert,
You wrote just wrote: “NOT a rambling style of raising more and more questions, without taking a focus stand on, at least, one of those questions, and reaching some kind of resolution towards an answer.”
Rosie, Part 1, wrote: “There are two massive sources of energy and several relatively minor ones. We all know about the sun. It’s big and it’s hot and it’s almost on our doorstep (or at least, just down the road). But nobody doing these climate models seems to have remembered that Planet Earth is not cold and dead but, in itself, is raging hot.”
In this single, short paragraph Rosie has presented her, quite novel, thesis relative most others ‘fundamental’ understandings of the earth-atmosphere-solar system. And at the same time she gave the fundamental basis of her reasoning (thesis). Which I eventually accepted after carefully reading every thing she had written. If you did not notice this ‘simple’ paragraph that is not Rosie’s fault; it is your fault as a reader. It is so easy to blame the author for one’s failure to understand what was written. As if the reader has no responsibility in understanding what the author is attempting to communicate.
Now back to your statement. If I accept what Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman have written, I must accept that I can never reach an answer that resolves any focus [focused?] stand I might take, unless it was a wrong focused stand. Much better to admit I do not know than to endorse a ‘wrong’ idea. For wrong ideas, which are accepted as being correct ideas, greatly hinder progress.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
geran
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Jerry, in your childish infatuation with Rosie, you have inadvertently accepted her nonsense: “But nobody doing these climate models seems to have remembered that Planet Earth is not cold and dead but, in itself, is raging hot.”
Do you realize how stupid that statement is? Do you believe Earth, without Sun, is “raging hot”?
Two questions, both “yes” or “no”.
James McGinn
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RK:
You seem to be trying to do science writing as you would do literary writing, and the effect on me is annoying.
JMcG:
To me the effect is refreshing.
RK:
You ramble on about your own uncertainties,
JMcG:
If you are revolted by uncertainty I suggest you avoid science and stick with something like engineering.
RK:
as you belabor broad generalizations without qualification for the specific context within which you are presenting your ideas. It seems a bit self indulgent.
JMcG:
Hmm. With this statement it seems you are belaboring generalizations without qualification for the specific context within which you are presenting your ideas. It seems a bit self indulgent.
RK:
You oversimplify grand questions that really cannot be approached effectively with your breezy writing style. Questions presented in this area of concern need to be approached with greater confidence,
JMcG:
No! Confident presentation tends to be associated with false certainty. False certainty is the reason many skeptics, including myself, find the “slayers” repulsive. More importantly, false certainty is the enemy of progress.
Everybody likes to call attention to Galileo and Copernicus for the heliocentric theory. They forget that it took hundreds of years for it to be widely accepted. The problem was the momentum of the false certainty of the Ptolemaic system of celestial motion.
Also be aware that false certainty tends to have ideological undertones. People who are politically conservative tend to be blind to traditional falsities. Likewise, liberals tend to be blind to novel falsities.
It is very difficult getting people to apply the scientific method to things they can’t see.
James McGinn / Genius
Response to Brendon regarding greenhouse effect, convection model of storms, and Postma
https://anchor.fm/james-mcginn/episodes/Response-to-Brendon-regarding-greenhouse-effect–convection-model-of-storms–and-Postma-eaj9cj
Reply
Robert Kernodle
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@James M
RK:
You seem to be trying to do science writing as you would do literary writing, and the effect on me is annoying.
JMcG:
To me the effect is refreshing.
RK:
When I read a title suggesting that a RATIONAL climate model is about to be explained, I am not looking to be “refreshed”. I am looking to be informed in a manner that leads to support for the claim being made. Where was the rationality in this article? Where was the model? I detected little of either. Instead, I detected a high degree of emotionalizing, questioning, and unresolved feelings.
RK:
You ramble on about your own uncertainties,
JMcG:
If you are revolted by uncertainty I suggest you avoid science and stick with something like engineering.
RK:
I am not “revolted by uncertainty”. Rather, I am not being informed by a timid response to uncertainty. I am not being informed by a lack of commitment to resolve a stance in the face of uncertainty. I seek information, not refreshment (^_^) … in an article of this nature.
RK:
as you belabor broad generalizations without qualification for the specific context within which you are presenting your ideas. It seems a bit self indulgent.
JMcG:
Hmm. With this statement it seems you are belaboring generalizations without qualification for the specific context within which you are presenting your ideas. It seems a bit self indulgent.
RK:
I belabor the belaboring of generalizations with a generalization. Even if that were true, then it would be the poetically perfect way to make my point. (^_^) I do not believe, however, that I did this, and so I suggest that you are misrepresenting me in what you think is a clever, but what is, in fact, a false framing of what I actually did.
RK:
You oversimplify grand questions that really cannot be approached effectively with your breezy writing style. Questions presented in this area of concern need to be approached with greater confidence,
JMcG:
No! Confident presentation tends to be associated with false certainty. False certainty is the reason many skeptics, including myself, find the “slayers” repulsive. More importantly, false certainty is the enemy of progress.
RK:
No! Confident presentation tends to be associated with good organization and good qualification of known facts. I am, in no way, alluding to any false certainty that you put in my court. Taking a confident stance based on facts is not false certainty. To declare something false, as you do, requires a determination of some certainty, does it not? Science deals with uncertainty in a confident, systematic way, and I do not see this in the style of writing that I was attempting to critique.
And for your information, all “slayers” are not created equal. There is infighting even among them. I suggest that you not spray paint your certain contemptuous assessment of this name on all who are or who have ever been associated with it.
Everybody likes to call attention to Galileo and Copernicus for the heliocentric theory. They forget that it took hundreds of years for it to be widely accepted. The problem was the momentum of the false certainty of the Ptolemaic system of celestial motion.
The false certainty of those times could only be assessed AFTER the process of enlightenment occurred to move beyond it. You cannot compare this process to a writing style that I was talking about. Really, you are stretching your comparisons way too thin. Wouldn’t you think that somebody taking on the Ptolemaic system would have to have confidence enough at the time to state exactly what they were talking about? I don’t think Rosie introduced anything near that level of groundbreaking confidence to support the implied claim of her article title.
Also be aware that false certainty tends to have ideological undertones. People who are politically conservative tend to be blind to traditional falsities. Likewise, liberals tend to be blind to novel falsities.
QUESTION: How do you yourself proceed in life, going about your daily tasks? Do you not have some very solid sense of certainty about the things you do?
You achieve this level of certainty by making definite decisions to take definite actions, based on commitment to some objective. You don’t do it by questioning every step of the way.
When a writer teases readers with a grand promise of a RATIONAL CLIMATE MODEL, then readers expect some substance, even in the generalities of the discussion, … some confidence in the presentation of information leading there, … some indication of grounding in the latest facts, … and a tone, style, and approach that has a beginning, a middle, and a conclusion.
It is very difficult getting people to apply the scientific method to things they can’t see.
That statement makes no sense to me, in this context. It seems like a statement of the obvious, and out of place in this exchange.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi James,
How is it I can commend you for writing this much better than I can? My answer: Because we both now accept that any scientific idea, at the best, is uncertain and at the worst is wrong.
Have a good day, Jerry
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James McGinn
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RK: And for your information, all “slayers” are not created equal. There is infighting even among them. I suggest that you not spray paint your certain contemptuous assessment of this name on all who are or who have ever been associated with it.
JMcG: Well, you slayers are just very short sighted. You have a hammer, thermodynamics, and now you try to turn every problem into a nail.
Everybody likes to call attention to Galileo and Copernicus for the heliocentric theory. They forget that it took hundreds of years for it to be widely accepted. The problem was the momentum of the false certainty of the Ptolemaic system of celestial motion.
RK: The false certainty of those times could only be assessed AFTER the process of enlightenment occurred to move beyond it.
JMcG: The elixir to false certainty is the scientific method. It is timeless. It should be applied most rigorously to the things that you think are most certain. You “slayers” stubbornly refuse to apply it to in any context that does not coincide with your conservative ideological perspective. You display your bias like it is a badge of honor, and it is a big turn off to many. Copernicus and Galileo didn’t need to wait for “the enlightenment” to apply the scientific method to traditional narratives. You don’t need to wait either.
RK: I don’t think Rosie introduced anything near that level of groundbreaking confidence to support the implied claim of her article title.
JMcG: Confidence and false certainty go hand in hand. If you don’t actively, deliberately, and rigorously apply it–especially to the things that seem most certain–you will fool yourself.
Also be aware that false certainty tends to have ideological undertones. People who are politically conservative tend to be blind to traditional falsities. Likewise, liberals tend to be blind to novel falsities.
RK: QUESTION: How do you yourself proceed in life, going about your daily tasks? Do you not have some very solid sense of certainty about the things you do?
You achieve this level of certainty by making definite decisions to take definite actions, based on commitment to some objective. You don’t do it by questioning every step of the way.
JMcG: I agree. But I recognize that this is an artifact of existence–it is an artifact of being a lifeform. It is a bias that MUST be opposed. Otherwise you WILL fool yourself.
RK: When a writer teases readers with a grand promise of a RATIONAL CLIMATE MODEL, then readers expect some substance, even in the generalities of the discussion, … some confidence in the presentation of information leading there, … some indication of grounding in the latest facts, … and a tone, style, and approach that has a beginning, a middle, and a conclusion.
JMcG: It is very difficult getting people to apply the scientific method to things they can’t see.
That statement makes no sense to me, in this context. It seems like a statement of the obvious, and out of place in this exchange.
JMcG: You make the scientifically fatal error of assuming that you yourself are rational and logical. There is no recovery from this.
Response to Brendon regarding greenhouse effect, convection model of storms, and Postma
https://anchor.fm/james-mcginn/episodes/Response-to-Brendon-regarding-greenhouse-effect–convection-model-of-storms–and-Postma-eaj9cj
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
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Jerry Krause
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Hi James,
I had begun questioning your common statement: “Everybody likes to call attention to Galileo and Copernicus for the heliocentric theory. They forget that it took hundreds of years for it to be widely accepted.” Because Robert quoted this back to you I got confused as to whom actually stated this. But I it seems you were the first.
Here are couple historical facts. Galileo (1564-1642) Newton (1473-1727) Newton and the Royal Society did not accept the heliocentric theory until more than two centuries after Galileo had refuted the geocentric theory of the universe.??? Yes, those intellectuals who had accepted the reasoning of their hero, Aristotle for about 2000 years, but they were never scientists in the first place. They accept the bodies twice as heavy fell twice fast and for 2000 never though taking the idea to an extreme and did dropped a body from high place that was 10 times as heavy, or even a hundred times as heavy. For as Galileo reasoned, this means that when the heavier the hit the ground the lighter should have fallen only a tenth the distant or only a hundredth of the distance.
So James why did you write what does not seem to make historical sense?
Have a good day, Jerry
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Tom
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Thank you Rosie, for another interesting addition to part one.
I do value another perspective on the issues of climate, after all it’s not as if the science is settled, regardless of what some would have you believe. I’m probably the least well educated of all those who make comments to your posts, but I do know a little about human nature, in particular how people respond when they feel threatened. It is quite common in these circumstances for them to try to shut you down or even make personal comments. But please continue, you add value to the topic and promote new lines of thought, which has been so fruitful throughout history.
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geran
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“Tom”, which of her sycophants/pseudonyms are you: Gary Flood, Duncan MacCrimmon, David McCobb, Michael Detrick, or Rosie herself?
And since you “value another perspective on the issues of climate”, is science about “perspectives”? If someone pushes you out of an airplane, does your “perspective” counter gravity?
“Tom” admits he/she knows nothing about the topic: ”I’m probably the least well educated of all those who make comments to your posts, but I do know a little about human nature, in particular how people respond when they feel threatened. It is quite common in these circumstances for them to try to shut you down or even make personal comments.”
“Tom”, do you ever consider that $$$ can affect human nature? How about “ego”?
Hilarious.
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Whokoo
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Hi Geran. Another perspective is routinely called an audit. Special qualifications usually required but often an essential assessment regardless.
Now where has my dog gone. I thought I just heard the frenzied gnashing of teeth.
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Tom
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Geran,
My my, you are easily triggered, but thank you, your response endorses my comment. “Hoist by his own petard” is a phrase that springs to mind.
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geran
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Sorry Rosie, but I was merely exposing “Tom” as another of your pseudonyms. You seem to only be fooling the fools.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Rosie,
Remember that many of PSI are intelligent even if their special knowledge is about weather and climate. Hence, they can understand very well about what Geran just wrote.
Have a very good day, Jerry Maybe this will not be repeated.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Rosie,
And Rosie, I do not intentional make the mistakes that I make. I just trust these intelligent PSI READERS can correct my mistakes.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Monty
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Rosie, I enjoyed your essay. However, there is one thing you said: “The words ‘budget’ and ‘variance’ do not belong in this debate They come from the world of business and are not scientific terms.”
The word, variance, is a mathematical term, which is used analyzing data, even climate data.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Rosie,
How many times have you read all the comments to Part 1? I have read your essay and comments at least 2 times and portions 3 or 4 times. And I have furnished evidence that I obviously considered one of Zoe’s comments at length after dismissing it. I did this just as I pointed out some almost hidden things that you (Rosie) had written that supported your conclusion that the energy being produced by nuclear fission in the Earth’s interior is comparable to the solar radiation that the earth-atmosphere absorbs. And yes, over thousands of years this energy must be matched by that emitted by the earth-atmosphere system, if the earth-atmosphere system is to come back to the same approximate ‘condition’ which existed thousands of years earlier. Which general condition we have observed to occur from year to year the past 20 or so centuries.
And it might have slipped past others attention, but I read that you indirectly mentioned, as you rambled (which I consider okay because we really don’t know much), that large glaciers covering the lower portions of the North Hemispheres had been melted in prehistoric times. For the physical evidence is quite convincing that glaciers covered major portions of low elevation (say below 2000ft) surfaces, down to and beyond the 45th latitude of North America, Europe, and Asia maybe 13000 years or more years ago. And you recognized that there is no evidence today that these prehistoric glaciers still exist, even along the coast of the Arctic Ocean.
Hence, there can be little doubt that there was a significant climate change which melted these massive areas of glaciers during the time we refer to as prehistory.
And we should note that field geologists have found convincing evidence that there had been previous glaciers which had also melted. I consider this to be significant because it suggests that there is a cyclic climate change. But no where I have I read there is year of extremely high temperatures as the glaciers suggest there have been periods of significantly lower temperatures.
Now, there is fact which each reader of PSI can check for him/her self. In a comment to Part 1, I described some unquestionable data which refuted the only prediction of the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide. There is yet to be one comment relative to this comment. Only you all can individually answer why didn’t I make a comment.
Can you see how I might relate to Galileo experiences about how the intellectual community of his time reacted to the observations which he had made with the telescope he had constructed.
But my case is a little different, the data which I cite isn’t the result of my efforts; it is the result of the USA scientists whom cannot be trusted as they promote this wrong theory of the GHE which their data refutes. This because they ignore this data just as it seems you ‘all’ have.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Alan
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Bizarre is the word that stood out to me and describes this piece. It is as though no valid work has been done on the subject and you are the first to apply rational thought. Your time would be better spent looking at published papers or reading books on the issue. There are some well made points which show you understand the issue, but others are not and are ridiculous, for example that tectonic plate movement only results in land sinking. There are other reasons for land sinking, many related to human activity. As for the need to simplify, remember what Einstein said “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” You are going too far.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Alan,
To whom is your comment–“Bizarre is the word that stood out to me and describes this piece. It is as though no valid work has been done on the subject and you are the first to apply rational thought.”–intended? When there is a lack of accurate definition at the beginning, how can we understand the comment?
Have a good day, Jerry
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Matthew S Hudson
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I built a wet terrarium with fish and water in the lower 5″ and the rest was dry somewhat. It held the moisture as long as the top was closed and always rained. But I was never able to keep it warm no mater how warm I heated the water. I say this to say I thought the Earth was the same way but it’s not. If it was in my experience the animals inside the terarium would have died in a seriously nasty environment. I don’t know if this helps but I do relate.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Rosie,
Now that I’ve been critical of you and others, I must commend you for searching for factors which have to be part of the natural earth-atmosphere system. For at the beginning of this Part 2 you wrote: “I forgot to include gravity and tidal energy in the list. I also forgot that there are forms of lightening that flow up, known as elves, sprites and blue jets.” I find it amazing how so many seem to forget about, or ignore, tides. And have you ever read about atmospheric tides? The atmosphere is a fluid just as liquid water is a fluid. And lightning and does it matter which way the current flows?
When is the last time you played with the electro-scope? Static electricity (https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/where-static-electricity-comes-from-and-how-it-works). “Static electricity is a ubiquitous part of everyday life. … Static electricity is one of the oldest scientific phenomena people observed and described. Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus made the first account; in his sixth century B.C. writings, he noted that if amber was rubbed hard enough, small dust particles will start sticking to it.” Just think of it we can wipe electrons off of amber. Or are we adding electrons to amber? But we now know that the small dust particles which stick to the amber must have the opposite charge that the amber has. So where to the dust particles gain or lose electrons?
But a question is: Does lightning cause a ‘thunder storm’ or is lightning the result of the violent motion (friction) of the atmospheric molecules during a thunderstorm?
Rosie, you are identifying the many factors which are part of what we term weather. Good objective as you ramble.
Have a good day, Jerry
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