Change-over to enewable energy

[Bill Sloman]

On Sep 25, 11:39 pm, n...@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote:

BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

The argument that anthropogenic global warming is going on isn't
"green", it is scientific. People who disagree with it are either
ignorant or paid-for members of the denialist propaganda machine.

The most interesting part is that it really doesn't matter. It
happened several times before and mankind is still alive.

Something like it happened at the ends of the last couple of ice ages,
and our immediate ancestors managed to survive.

Our current industrialised civilisation seems to be exploiting most of
the earth's carrying capacity. If anthropogenic global warming
complicates this exploitation to any significant extent, we are
probably looking at a population crash, which will matter a lot to the
people who don't survive it.

The most recent comparable temperature excursion would be the
Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, some 55.8 million years ago, We
weren't around then.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sep 26, 3:56 am, Sylvia Else <syl...@not.here.invalid> wrote:

On 25/09/2011 11:23 PM,BillSlomanwrote:









On Sep 25, 2:31 pm, Sylvia Else<syl...@not.here.invalid>  wrote:
On 23/09/2011 12:29 AM,BillSlomanwrote:

IEEE Spectrum seems to have some people who share my enthusiasm for
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power....

Where is the supply and load modelling?

In so far as it exists

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/JDEnPolicyPt1.pdf

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/DJEnPolicyPt2.pdf

Or is it, as I suspect, just a lot of hand waving?

It's fairly high-level hand-waving. Anything more authoratitive would
cost serious money to put together.

The problem is that just adding power capacities together, or in the
case of wind and solar[*], average capacities, doesn't tell you what you
want to know, which is the probability of a supply shortfall that cannot
be addressed by contractually based load shedding.

The modelling needs to look at variability in supply and demand using
real meteorological data, including appropriate failure probabilities
for both generators and transmission equipment, and come up with a
defensible probability. Having established a model of a system that
gives an acceptable probability (no worse than we currently have, I'd
suggest), we'd have a basis for determining the cost.

The IEEE Spectrum article did lay some emphasis on the necessity of
the construction of a super-grid to allow long-distance power sharing,
and made the point that wind- and solar-power were erratic enough that
their solution wouldn't work without the super-grid.

Without that, it's not a plan, it's just wishful thinking. Yes, the
modelling would be expensive, but no one, other than the converted, will
take any notice if it's not done.

Exxon-Mobil - and its friends - have spent their propaganda money
effectively. Nobody seems to be taking any notice anyway.

I'm ignoring wave power because it's such a trivial amount anyway,
and almost certainly not worth doing.

But it's wind-dependent while being out of synch with local wind-
speed, which could be useful.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

On Sep 26, 12:51 am, josephkk <joseph_barr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

On Sun, 25 Sep 2011 17:25:04 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sep 25, 5:15 pm, "dcas...@krl.org" <dcas...@krl.org> wrote:
On Sep 25, 5:06 pm, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 25, 8:27 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sep 25, 6:07 am,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm

It is a brutal assault, suggesting that the reader can't manage to
read popular physics, but John Larkin - amongst others - has managed
to shrug it off.

I particularly enjoyed the rarified scientific objectivity of the
section entitled "Talking Points."

The complete lable is "Conclusions: A Personal Note - Talking Points
(pdf)"

It is a bit odd of you to expect "rarified scientific objectivity" in
something indexed as a "personal note" - less odd for you to pretend
to expect "rarified scientific objectivity" and carefully omit the
"personal note" part of the title. Such little sleighs of hand are
part and parcel of your debating style.

I expect objectivity in conclusions.  Are you saying that you do not
expect objectivity in the conclusions?

That document linked pretty well admits a basic point John, I, and the
esteemed Mr. Horde have made several times: that the models do not
derive from any fundamental understanding of the physical systems, and
so are not "models" in the true sense; but are merely the work of
curve-fitting finaglers.

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/pdf/Weart_APS_News_2-06.pdf
 "The modelers can get these
  results only by adjusting a lot of
  parameters that are poorly known,
  such as the numbers in the model
  that tell how clouds are formed."

We said that years ago, so Bill called us idiots.

Curve-fitting predicts the past wonderfully, just not the future.

Alas, their curve fitting does not predict the past correctly either.

?-)

It predicted their paychecks all these years, which is good enough for
government work.

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

 

On Sep 26, 4:20 am, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sep 26, 6:22 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sep 25, 10:47 pm, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 25 Sep 2011 19:10:03 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman wrote:

The climatology community does see some point in putting together
models that more or less work, and they do test them against reality..

They can only test them against the past.

I can do a very accurate polynomial curve fit to the data from a
random process. Its predictive value will still be worthless.

Clouds are huge.  They can't predict them.(*)

Some of the models thaty tried didn't produce clouds, and were
consequently discarded. This is not "can't predict them".

Yes, it is.

 Even a small error overshadows the entire alleged AGW signal.(**)

But most of the models predict roughly the right amount of cloud, and
fit the the sort of AGW we've seen so far.

Your own linked expert said the opposite.

During the recent storms (Irene and Lee), I was amused to note that
the whethermen[sic]'s rainfall and energy predictions were off by
factors of 2-5. That is, current methods can't accurately /measure/
the moisture or energy content of clouds, or predict macroscopic
behavior--even when right under their noses, much less predict
formation, reflectance, opacity, etc.

*See quote above.
**So to speak.(***)
***Exxon-Mobil paid me to say that.

Exxon-Mobil expects its propagandist to be a little less enthusiastic
with the obviously fraudulent text-chopping.

I try to trim the trolling, and stick with the interesting,
substantive parts exploring the merits of the various AGW arguments.
Plus a little bit of fun, of course. YMMV

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sep 26, 1:26 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Sep 26, 4:20 am, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sep 26, 6:22 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sep 25, 10:47 pm, John Larkin wrote:
On Sun, 25 Sep 2011 19:10:03 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman wrote:
The climatology community does see some point in putting together
models that more or less work, and they do test them against reality.

They can only test them against the past.

I can do a very accurate polynomial curve fit to the data from a
random process. Its predictive value will still be worthless.

Clouds are huge.  They can't predict them.(*)

Some of the models thaty tried didn't produce clouds, and were
consequently discarded. This is not "can't predict them".

Yes, it is.

Not in this context. Climate modelling involves getting the broad
features roughly right. As John von Neumann pointed out a long time
ago, climate modelling is different from weather modelling. Since it
doesn't aim for cell-by-cell veracity it is consequently immune from
the butterfly effect.

 Even a small error overshadows the entire alleged AGW signal.(**)

But most of the models predict roughly the right amount of cloud, and
fit the the sort of AGW we've seen so far.

Your own linked expert said the opposite.

Some of the range of models tested didn't predict the right amount of
cloud, most did. How is this "the opposite" of what I said?

During the recent storms (Irene and Lee), I was amused to note that
the whethermen[sic]'s rainfall and energy predictions were off by
factors of 2-5.   That is, current methods can't accurately /measure/
the moisture or energy content of clouds, or predict macroscopic
behavior--even when right under their noses, much less predict
formation, reflectance, opacity, etc.

That's the distinction between weather modelling and climate
modelling, which seems to have been obvious enough to John von
Neumann.

http://www.aos.princeton.edu/WWWPUBLIC/gkv/history/dahan-dalmedico-histmetor01.pdf

discusses the point in a lot more detail and depth.

Climate modelling isn't aimed at getting precise prediction of
specific weather patterns on a moment-to-moment basis. It's aimed at
getting the right averages over months and years, which turns out to
be a more tractable problem.

*See quote above.
**So to speak.(***)
***Exxon-Mobil paid me to say that.

Exxon-Mobil expects its propagandist to be a little less enthusiastic
with the obviously fraudulent text-chopping.

I try to trim the trolling, and stick with the interesting,
substantive parts exploring the merits of the various AGW arguments.

But you idea of "interesting" doesn't stretch far enough to capture
the difference between weather models and climate models. John Larkin
has the same problem, and can't be persuaded that the fact that
weather is chaotic - as are the orbits of the planets - isn't evidence
that you can't you make useful long-term predictions, and your text-
chopping is decidedly selective.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sep 26, 1:08 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Sep 26, 12:51 am, josephkk <joseph_barr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:









On Sun, 25 Sep 2011 17:25:04 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sep 25, 5:15 pm, "dcas...@krl.org" <dcas...@krl.org> wrote:
On Sep 25, 5:06 pm, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 25, 8:27 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sep 25, 6:07 am,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm

It is a brutal assault, suggesting that the reader can't manage to
read popular physics, but John Larkin - amongst others - has managed
to shrug it off.

I particularly enjoyed the rarified scientific objectivity of the
section entitled "Talking Points."

The complete lable is "Conclusions: A Personal Note - Talking Points
(pdf)"

It is a bit odd of you to expect "rarified scientific objectivity" in
something indexed as a "personal note" - less odd for you to pretend
to expect "rarified scientific objectivity" and carefully omit the
"personal note" part of the title. Such little sleighs of hand are
part and parcel of your debating style.

I expect objectivity in conclusions.  Are you saying that you do not
expect objectivity in the conclusions?

That document linked pretty well admits a basic point John, I, and the
esteemed Mr. Horde have made several times: that the models do not
derive from any fundamental understanding of the physical systems, and
so are not "models" in the true sense; but are merely the work of
curve-fitting finaglers.

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/pdf/Weart_APS_News_2-06.pdf
 "The modelers can get these
  results only by adjusting a lot of
  parameters that are poorly known,
  such as the numbers in the model
  that tell how clouds are formed."

We said that years ago, so Bill called us idiots.

Curve-fitting predicts the past wonderfully, just not the future.

Alas, their curve fitting does not predict the past correctly either.

?-)

It predicted their paychecks all these years, which is good enough for
government work.

Ignorance may not be bliss, but it does provide the basis for some
remarkably silly snide comments. Presumably when James Arthur was
first let lose with non-linear multi-parameter curve-fitting program,
he tried to fit more parameters at once than the data could define -
it's the sort of mistake the naive have been known to make if they
don't read their text-books. He's got to have a totally unrealistic
idea of academic research standards to think that kind of obvious
idiocy could be parlayed into a research career.

My own multi-parameter curve-fitting program exploited the fitting
process to generate confidence limits on the parameters being fitted -
mildly optimistic confidence limits, as it turned out, because the
citical part of the noise spectrum turned out to be 1/f noise rather
pure random noise - but it did make it obvious when I was trying to
extract more information than the data could support.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmnegen

 

On Sep 26, 9:31 am, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sep 26, 1:26 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sep 26, 4:20 am, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 26, 6:22 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Even a small error overshadows the entire alleged AGW signal.(**)

But most of the models predict roughly the right amount of cloud, and
fit the the sort of AGW we've seen so far.

Your own linked expert said the opposite.

Some of the range of models tested didn't predict the right amount of
cloud, most did.

o "Right amount"?

"...one of my
runs ended up with no clouds, other
people had all the water precipitate
as ice at the poles, etc.)."

Yep, they've got it nailed all right.

o Models were gauged by hindsight, not successful predictions.
o "...most did"? Where'd you find that?

How is this "the opposite" of what I said?

He said they try a bunch of crappy parameters, then cherry-pick the
results they like. That gives them a model, but doesn't guarantee any
correspondence with physical reality.

Clouds and other factors are poorly understood, and the modeler's only
way around is fiddling, then trying.

"Once you
get a set of parameters that gives a
fair approximation to the known
past climate, you can double the
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
and run it again."

That's adaptive curve-fitting. It doesn't prove causation.

During the recent storms (Irene and Lee), I was amused to note that
the whethermen[sic]'s rainfall and energy predictions were off by
factors of 2-5.   That is, current methods can't accurately /measure/
the moisture or energy content of clouds, or predict macroscopic
behavior--even when right under their noses, much less predict
formation, reflectance, opacity, etc.

That's the distinction between weather modelling and climate
modelling, which seems to have been obvious enough to John von
Neumann.

http://www.aos.princeton.edu/WWWPUBLIC/gkv/history/dahan-dalmedico-hi...

discusses the point in a lot more detail and depth.

Climate modelling isn't aimed at getting precise prediction of
specific weather patterns on a moment-to-moment basis.

You claimed they predict clouds. Your source says he can't, and I
showed they can't even measure them, much less predict.

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 25 Sep 2011 03:19:59 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sep 25, 12:15 am, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Sat, 24 Sep 2011 15:09:55 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman









bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 24, 9:53 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:29:07 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
IEEE Spectrum seems to have some people who share my enthusiasm for
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power...

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=46404

and Republican cherry-picking of Democratic project that went sour
tells us what?

That billions of dollars are being wasted on illogical, political,
"green" projects.

The projects listed don't added up to billions of dollars, or anything
like it. If the Republicans hadn't been able to find failures to froth
at the mouth about, we can be pretty confident that there wouldn't
have been any successes for them to ignore, and an unbiassed observer
would write off the losses as the normal cost of encouraging a range
of initiatives.

And that most Democrats are idiots; some of them are
nice people, some have their hearts in the right place, but most are
idiots who tend to make things worse.

Whereas Republicans - such as Sarah Palin and Dubbya - are a bunch of
intellectual giants who never put a foot wrong?

Even if you won't vote Republican, you seem happy to recycle their
electoral propaganada and now seem to be trying to claim that it isn't
even propaganda? As evidence that "most Democrats are idiots" fell a
long way short of being convincing - so far short that it could be
said that the Republicans must think that most voters are idiots.

You - of course - aren't an idiot, but merely so politically partisan
that you don't realise that the propaganda you are recycling isn't
remotely plausible.

I am not political at all. I want a happy, peaceful, prosperous world.
Leftist politics doesn't produce that.

I told you, here, years ago, that Europe was working on making a
demographic and economic crisis, and you didn't believe me. It's just
happening faster than I thought it would.

Liberal lefists, the coastal latte-drinking NYT-reading types, are the
ones who think the average citizen is an idiot. Read the Times or the
SF Chronicle for lots of examples. I think the US population,
especially the common folk who live in flyover territory, have a
pretty good longterm collective wisdom, and they are worried about
having too much government. They are right.

John

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sep 26, 6:06 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Sep 26, 9:31 am, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sep 26, 1:26 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sep 26, 4:20 am, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 26, 6:22 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
 Even a small error overshadows the entire alleged AGW signal.(**)

But most of the models predict roughly the right amount of cloud, and
fit the the sort of AGW we've seen so far.

Your own linked expert said the opposite.

Some of the range of models tested didn't predict the right amount of
cloud, most did.

 o "Right amount"?

  "...one of my
   runs ended up with no clouds, other
   people had all the water precipitate
   as ice at the poles, etc.)."

  Yep, they've got it nailed all right.

 o Models were gauged by hindsight, not successful predictions.
 o "...most did"?  Where'd you find that?

In the bit of the quote that you first posted, then snipped when you
reposted it above.

How is this "the opposite" of what I said?

He said they try a bunch of crappy parameters, then cherry-pick the
results they like.  That gives them a model, but doesn't guarantee any
correspondence with physical reality.

If the model behaves like physical reality - which is what they were
looking for - that's a useful correspondence.

Clouds and other factors are poorly understood, and the modeler's only
way around is fiddling, then trying.

They are pretty well understood, but a physically realistic model is
not only computationally impractical but also unstable - the butterfly
effect - and what's needed is a simpler model that captures the
crucial behaviour.

  "Once you
   get a set of parameters that gives a
   fair approximation to the known
   past climate, you can double the
   carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
   and run it again."

That's adaptive curve-fitting.  It doesn't prove causation.

Causation depends on other evidence and other logic. We know - without
a shadow of doubt - that more greenhouse gas means that the surface of
the earth is warmer. The tricky bit is working out how much warmer.
The ice core data and the ocean sediment data tells us a fair bit
about how much cooler with less CO2 in the atmosphere, but we haven't
had warmer for some 20 million years and the evidence from back then
isn't as good.

During the recent storms (Irene and Lee), I was amused to note that
the whethermen[sic]'s rainfall and energy predictions were off by
factors of 2-5.   That is, current methods can't accurately /measure/
the moisture or energy content of clouds, or predict macroscopic
behavior--even when right under their noses, much less predict
formation, reflectance, opacity, etc.

That's the distinction between weather modelling and climate
modelling, which seems to have been obvious enough to John von
Neumann.

http://www.aos.princeton.edu/WWWPUBLIC/gkv/history/dahan-dalmedico-hi...

discusses the point in a lot more detail and depth.

Climate modelling isn't aimed at getting precise prediction of
specific weather patterns on a moment-to-moment basis.

You claimed they predict clouds.  Your source says he can't, and I
showed they can't even measure them, much less predict.

They predict clouds - in the sense of areas of the atmosphere that are
loaded with small water droplets or ice crystals - as a function of
gross geography. For climate modelling they don't have to predict
exactly where or exactly when.

Having weather radar that could dissect the fine structure of a
thunderstorm is useful - for weather modellers - and some researchers
have that kind of gear to play with. It's a bit too fine-grained to be
useful to climate modellers at the moment.

IEEE Spectrum had a article on a "computer for the clouds"

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/a-computer-for-the-clouds

which addressed to problem of running a model that was fine-grained
enough - 1 km per side cells - to cope with individual clouds rather
than treating "some cloud" as a property of a cell that is 100km by
100km.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[dcaster@krl.org]

On Sep 25, 10:28 pm, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

The URL is essentially a review of the history of the development of
the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis, not a scientific paper on
the subject. The section is labelled "Conclusions: A Personal Note -
Talking Points (pdf)". It doesn't represent itself as any kind of
concluison to the document, but rather as the organisor's conclusions
after he'd put the document together, where any pretension to
objectivity would be inappropriate.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

It is sad that you do not expect conclusions to be objective.

Dan

 

On Sep 26, 12:53 pm, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sep 26, 6:06 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sep 26, 9:31 am, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 26, 1:26 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sep 26, 4:20 am, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 26, 6:22 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
 Even a small error overshadows the entire alleged AGW signal.(**)

But most of the models predict roughly the right amount of cloud, and
fit the the sort of AGW we've seen so far.

Your own linked expert said the opposite.

Some of the range of models tested didn't predict the right amount of
cloud, most did.

 o "Right amount"?

  "...one of my
    runs ended up with no clouds, other
   people had all the water precipitate
   as ice at the poles, etc.)."

  Yep, they've got it nailed all right.

 o Models were gauged by hindsight, not successful predictions.

 o "...most did"?  Where'd you find that?

In the bit of the quote that you first posted, then snipped when you
reposted it above.

Then you mistook what he said.

He said they ran a spread of models with various parameters, then
selected the model runs that correlated with PAST data. Producing
correlation with past events was the parameter-selection criterion.

That's adaptive curve-fitting.

They did not make predictions, then compare those to subsequent
events.

How is this "the opposite" of what I said?

He said they try a bunch of crappy parameters, then cherry-pick the
results they like.  That gives them a model, but doesn't guarantee any
correspondence with physical reality.

If the model behaves like physical reality - which is what they were
looking for - that's a useful correspondence.

It's still curve-fitting until they successfully predict things before
they happen. Everything else is retrospective.

Clouds and other factors are poorly understood, and the modeler's only
way around is fiddling, then trying.

They are pretty well understood, but a physically realistic model is
not only computationally impractical but also unstable - the butterfly
effect - and what's needed is a simpler model that captures the
crucial behaviour.

Which is a critical weakness of today's models. Critical.

  "Once you
   get a set of parameters that gives a
   fair approximation to the known
   past climate, you can double the
   carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
   and run it again."

That's adaptive curve-fitting.  It doesn't prove causation.

Causation depends on other evidence and other logic. We know - without
a shadow of doubt - that more greenhouse gas means that the surface of
the earth is warmer. The tricky bit is working out how much warmer.
The ice core data and the ocean sediment data tells us a fair bit
about how much cooler with less CO2 in the atmosphere, but we haven't
had warmer for some 20 million years and the evidence from back then
isn't as good.



During the recent storms (Irene and Lee), I was amused to note that
the whethermen[sic]'s rainfall and energy predictions were off by
factors of 2-5.   That is, current methods can't accurately /measure/
the moisture or energy content of clouds, or predict macroscopic
behavior--even when right under their noses, much less predict
formation, reflectance, opacity, etc.

That's the distinction between weather modelling and climate
modelling, which seems to have been obvious enough to John von
Neumann.

http://www.aos.princeton.edu/WWWPUBLIC/gkv/history/dahan-dalmedico-hi....

discusses the point in a lot more detail and depth.

We don't need to go into the depth and detail. Your expert has
already restated what I deduced years ago: so far, clouds (and other
factors) defy analysis. Currently, instead, they're approximated by
twiddling coefficients, then cut-and-try.

Climate modelling isn't aimed at getting precise prediction of
specific weather patterns on a moment-to-moment basis.

You claimed they predict clouds.  Your source says he can't, and I
showed they can't even measure them, much less predict.

They predict clouds - in the sense of areas of the atmosphere that are
loaded with small water droplets or ice crystals - as a function of
gross geography. For climate modelling they don't have to predict
exactly where or exactly when.

The exact location--and possibly timing--is of course extremely
critical, since the effects and insolation are dramatically different
at different latitudes.

Having weather radar that could dissect the fine structure of a
thunderstorm is useful - for weather modellers - and some researchers
have that kind of gear to play with. It's a bit too fine-grained to be
useful to climate modellers at the moment.

IEEE Spectrum had a article on a "computer for the clouds"

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/a-computer-for-the-clouds

which addressed to problem of running a model that was fine-grained
enough - 1 km per side cells - to cope with individual clouds rather
than treating "some cloud" as a property of a cell that is 100km by
100km.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:44:13 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sep 26, 8:16 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Sun, 25 Sep 2011 03:19:59 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman









bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 25, 12:15 am, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Sat, 24 Sep 2011 15:09:55 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 24, 9:53 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:29:07 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
IEEE Spectrum seems to have some people who share my enthusiasm for
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power...

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=46404

and Republican cherry-picking of Democratic project that went sour
tells us what?

That billions of dollars are being wasted on illogical, political,
"green" projects.

The projects listed don't added up to billions of dollars, or anything
like it. If the Republicans hadn't been able to find failures to froth
at the mouth about, we can be pretty confident that there wouldn't
have been any successes for them to ignore, and an unbiassed observer
would write off the losses as the normal cost of encouraging a range
of initiatives.

And that most Democrats are idiots; some of them are
nice people, some have their hearts in the right place, but most are
idiots who tend to make things worse.

Whereas Republicans - such as Sarah Palin and Dubbya - are a bunch of
intellectual giants who never put a foot wrong?

Even if you won't vote Republican, you seem happy to recycle their
electoral propaganada and now seem to be trying to claim that it isn't
even propaganda? As evidence that "most Democrats are idiots" fell a
long way short of being convincing - so far short that it could be
said that the Republicans must think that most voters are idiots.

You - of course - aren't an idiot, but merely so politically partisan
that you don't realise that the propaganda you are recycling isn't
remotely plausible.

I am not political at all.

Dream on.

I want a happy, peaceful, prosperous world.
Leftist politics doesn't produce that.

And rightist politics would?

You keep thinking Left and Right, like they were sports teams.


The invasion of Irak made the world more

peaceful and prosperous?

We don't know yet. If the Arab Spring goes right, yes.

I told you, here, years ago, that Europe was working on making a
demographic and economic crisis, and you didn't believe me. It's just
happening faster than I thought it would.

The demographic crisis was that Muslim immigrants were going to
outbreed the local population - which might happen if the next three
generations shared their parents ideas about optimum family sizes.

I didn't say that. I said that low birth rates and high "social"
benefits were a time bomb. The Greeks turned out to have the shortest
fuse.

No

other immigrant group has behaved that way, but you found it necessary
to warn us that you though that Muslims were different from - say -
Jews or Protestants.

No.

John

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sep 26, 9:59 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Sep 26, 12:53 pm,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sep 26, 6:06 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sep 26, 9:31 am,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 26, 1:26 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sep 26, 4:20 am,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 26, 6:22 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
 Even a small error overshadows the entire alleged AGW signal.(**)

But most of the models predict roughly the right amount of cloud, and
fit the the sort of AGW we've seen so far.

Your own linked expert said the opposite.

Some of the range of models tested didn't predict the right amount of
cloud, most did.

 o "Right amount"?

      "...one of my
       runs ended up with no clouds, other
       people had all the water precipitate
       as ice at the poles, etc.)."

  Yep, they've got it nailed all right.

 o Models were gauged by hindsight, not successful predictions.

 o "...most did"?  Where'd you find that?

In the bit of the quote that you first posted, then snipped when you
reposted it above.

Then you mistook what he said.

He said they ran a spread of models with various parameters, then
selected the model runs that correlated with PAST data.  Producing
correlation with past events was the parameter-selection criterion.

That's adaptive curve-fitting.

In fact adaptive curve fitting involves adjusting the value of a
particular set of parameters to fit a particular set of data (which
can be quite large).

The spread of models with various parameters are a variety of
different models, rather than a single model being adjusted to fit
historical data.

You've failed to understand what's going on, and on the basis of your
imperfect understanding have written off a large chunk of academic
research on the basis that it's something simpler - and totally
idnadequate - which you do think you understand. It's distinctly
comical.

They did not make predictions, then compare those to subsequent
events.

The usual technique to to split up the test data, and fit the model -
or models - to some of the data, then test the fit between the models
and the rest of the data. This is elementary stuff, but you don't seem
to know about it.

How is this "the opposite" of what I said?

He said they try a bunch of crappy parameters, then cherry-pick the
results they like.  That gives them a model, but doesn't guarantee any
correspondence with physical reality.

If the model behaves like physical reality - which is what they were
looking for - that's a useful correspondence.

It's still curve-fitting until they successfully predict things before
they happen.  Everything else is retrospective.

Not if you do it right - and you clearly haven;t any idea how one
would do it right.

Clouds and other factors are poorly understood, and the modeler's only
way around is fiddling, then trying.

They are pretty well understood, but a physically realistic model is
not only computationally impractical but also unstable - the butterfly
effect - and what's needed is a simpler model that captures the
crucial behaviour.

Which is a critical weakness of today's models.  Critical.

Every other physical model that we work with is an over-simplified
version of reality, which doesn't make the models useless. One does
have to understand their limitations, but the absence of
computationally simple and theoretically rigorous model for clouds
isn't - in fact - a critical weakness, any more than the absence of a
computationally simple and theoretically rigorous model for integrated
circuits isn't a critical weakness of Spice.

  "Once you
   get a set of parameters that gives a
   fair approximation to the known
   past climate, you can double the
   carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
   and run it again."

That's adaptive curve-fitting.  It doesn't prove causation.

Causation depends on other evidence and other logic. We know - without
a shadow of doubt - that more greenhouse gas means that the surface of
the earth is warmer. The tricky bit is working out how much warmer.
The ice core data and the ocean sediment data tells us a fair bit
about how much cooler with less CO2 in the atmosphere, but we haven't
had warmer for some 20 million years and the evidence from back then
isn't as good.

During the recent storms (Irene and Lee), I was amused to note that
the whethermen[sic]'s rainfall and energy predictions were off by
factors of 2-5.   That is, current methods can't accurately /measure/
the moisture or energy content of clouds, or predict macroscopic
behavior--even when right under their noses, much less predict
formation, reflectance, opacity, etc.

That's the distinction between weather modelling and climate
modelling, which seems to have been obvious enough to John von
Neumann.

http://www.aos.princeton.edu/WWWPUBLIC/gkv/history/dahan-dalmedico-hi...

discusses the point in a lot more detail and depth.

We don't need to go into the depth and detail.  Your expert has
already restated what I deduced years ago: so far, clouds (and other
factors) defy analysis.  Currently, instead, they're approximated by
twiddling coefficients, then cut-and-try.

The twiddling goes rather deeper than just adjusting coefficients, and
clouds don't "defy analysis". They defy the kind of detailed analysis
that you'd like - it's not impossible but it is totally impractical in
the anthropogenci global warming context. They don't defy analysis
based on intelligent simplication - which is what the Princeton paper
appears to be talking about, but you lack the background to appreciate
this approach.

Climate modelling isn't aimed at getting precise prediction of
specific weather patterns on a moment-to-moment basis.

You claimed they predict clouds.  Your source says he can't, and I
showed they can't even measure them, much less predict.

They predict clouds - in the sense of areas of the atmosphere that are
loaded with small water droplets or ice crystals - as a function of
gross geography. For climate modelling they don't have to predict
exactly where or exactly when.

The exact location--and possibly timing--is of course extremely
critical, since the effects and insolation are dramatically different
at different latitudes.

That's gross geography and that's exactly the kind of crude stuff they
can - and do - model.

<snip>

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sep 26, 7:02 pm, "dcas...@krl.org" <dcas...@krl.org> wrote:

On Sep 25, 10:28 pm,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

The URL is essentially a review of the history of the development of
the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis, not a scientific paper on
the subject. The section is labelled "Conclusions: A Personal Note -
Talking Points (pdf)". It doesn't represent itself as any kind of
conclusion to the document, but rather as the organisor's conclusions
after he'd put the document together, where any pretension to
objectivity would be inappropriate.

It is sad that you do not expect conclusions to be objective.

It's a good deal sadder that you can't realise quite how stupid this
observation is.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sep 26, 8:16 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Sun, 25 Sep 2011 03:19:59 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman









bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 25, 12:15 am, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Sat, 24 Sep 2011 15:09:55 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 24, 9:53 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:29:07 -0700 (PDT),BillSloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
IEEE Spectrum seems to have some people who share my enthusiasm for
the change-over, and are rather better placed to calculate the
implications

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power...

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=46404

and Republican cherry-picking of Democratic project that went sour
tells us what?

That billions of dollars are being wasted on illogical, political,
"green" projects.

The projects listed don't added up to billions of dollars, or anything
like it. If the Republicans hadn't been able to find failures to froth
at the mouth about, we can be pretty confident that there wouldn't
have been any successes for them to ignore, and an unbiassed observer
would write off the losses as the normal cost of encouraging a range
of initiatives.

And that most Democrats are idiots; some of them are
nice people, some have their hearts in the right place, but most are
idiots who tend to make things worse.

Whereas Republicans - such as Sarah Palin and Dubbya - are a bunch of
intellectual giants who never put a foot wrong?

Even if you won't vote Republican, you seem happy to recycle their
electoral propaganada and now seem to be trying to claim that it isn't
even propaganda? As evidence that "most Democrats are idiots" fell a
long way short of being convincing - so far short that it could be
said that the Republicans must think that most voters are idiots.

You - of course - aren't an idiot, but merely so politically partisan
that you don't realise that the propaganda you are recycling isn't
remotely plausible.

I am not political at all.

Dream on.

I want a happy, peaceful, prosperous world.
Leftist politics doesn't produce that.

And rightist politics would? The invasion of Irak made the world more
peaceful and prosperous?

I told you, here, years ago, that Europe was working on making a
demographic and economic crisis, and you didn't believe me. It's just
happening faster than I thought it would.

The demographic crisis was that Muslim immigrants were going to
outbreed the local population - which might happen if the next three
generations shared their parents ideas about optimum family sizes. No
other immigrant group has behaved that way, but you found it necessary
to warn us that you though that Muslims were different from - say -
Jews or Protestants.

You'll need to remind me why you were predicting an economic crisis
for Europe. The bursting of the US property market bubble and the sub-
prime mortgage business that blew it up in the first place rather
devalued American opinions on other peoples' economic crises.

Liberal lefists, the coastal latte-drinking NYT-reading types, are the
ones who think the average citizen is an idiot. Read the Times or the
SF Chronicle for lots of examples. I think the US population,
especially the common folk who live in flyover territory, have a
pretty good longterm collective wisdom, and they are worried about
having too much government. They are right.

Not so much right, as little too far to the right. The American media
has been lying about socialism for more than a century now - to the
point where most Americans think that socialism and communism are
interchangable - and it seems that you can fool enough of the people
enough of the time.

The average citizen isn't an idiot - any more than you are - but can
be misinformed - as you all too frequently are - if right-wing
interests control enough of the newspapers and the television
stations.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[dcaster@krl.org]

On Sep 26, 6:24 pm, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

It is sad that you do not expect conclusions to be objective.

It's a good deal sadder that you can't realise quite how stupid this
observation is.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

And the same about you.

Dan

 

[dcaster@krl.org]

On Sep 26, 6:44 pm, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

Not so much right, as little too far to the right. The American media
has been lying about socialism for more than a century now - to the
point where most Americans think that socialism and communism are
interchangable - and it seems that you can fool enough of the people
enough of the time.

The average citizen isn't an idiot - any more than you are - but can
be misinformed - as you all too frequently are - if right-wing
interests control enough of the newspapers and the television
stations.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

I really enjoy reading your posts. It is interesting to see how wrong
your view of the U.S. media is. For instance you believe right wing
interests control much of the newspapers and television stations.

Dan

 

[Jamie]

On 9/26/2011 2:16 AM, Nico Coesel wrote:

My idea exactly. Most studies assume people and cities will stay where
they are. They couldn't be more wrong. The city I live in didn't exist
30 years ago and currently its one of the 10 largest cities in the
country. IOW: when pieces of land get flooded or get too dry people
will move!

There is a weird sense of protectionism which probably stems for being
afraid of change. For those people: look at how face of the world has
changed in the past couple of hundred years. Our planet doesn't need
to stay the same. In fact it doesn't even 'want' to stay the same.

Hi,

Solar panel prices are extremely low right now due to oversupply and
lower demand, $1.34/watt at this website:

http://www.sunelec.com/sv-solar-panel-190-watts-2670-vmp-p-1658.html

cheers,
Jamie

 

On Sep 26, 6:21 pm, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sep 26, 9:59 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sep 26, 12:53 pm,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 26, 6:06 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sep 26, 9:31 am,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 26, 1:26 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sep 26, 4:20 am,BillSloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Sep 26, 6:22 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
 Even a small error overshadows the entire alleged AGW signal.(**)

But most of the models predict roughly the right amount of cloud, and
fit the the sort of AGW we've seen so far.

Your own linked expert said the opposite.

Some of the range of models tested didn't predict the right amount of
cloud, most did.

 o "Right amount"?

      "...one of my
       runs ended up with no clouds, other
       people had all the water precipitate
       as ice at the poles, etc.)."

  Yep, they've got it nailed all right.

 o Models were gauged by hindsight, not successful predictions.

 o "...most did"?  Where'd you find that?

In the bit of the quote that you first posted, then snipped when you
reposted it above.

Then you mistook what he said.

He said they ran a spread of models with various parameters, then
selected the model runs that correlated with PAST data.  Producing
correlation with past events was the parameter-selection criterion.

That's adaptive curve-fitting.

In fact adaptive curve fitting involves adjusting the value of a
particular set of parameters to fit a particular set of data (which
can be quite large).

The spread of models with various parameters are a variety of
different models, rather than a single model being adjusted to fit
historical data.

You've failed to understand what's going on, and on the basis of your
imperfect understanding have written off a large chunk of academic
research on the basis that it's something simpler - and totally
idnadequate - which you do think you understand. It's distinctly
comical.

You're lost in the details. If the model doesn't accurately reflect
the physical system, tweaking a bunch of unrelated coefficients
doesn't rehabilitate it. You can artificially make it reproduce
arbitrary historical data, and pretend you've modeled reality, while
conferring zero actual power of prediction.

The same methodology, applied, could extract the pertinent parameters
w.r.t. to fires, fire intensity, and historical data regarding red
trucks. A model would quickly emerge showing strong correlation, with
coefficients capable of roughly predicting the size of the fire based
on the number and size of the trucks, plus other data.

But, model or no, it's wrong--red trucks don't cause fires.

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Rich Grise]

Jamie wrote:

On 9/26/2011 2:16 AM, Nico Coesel wrote:

My idea exactly. Most studies assume people and cities will stay where
they are. They couldn't be more wrong. The city I live in didn't exist
30 years ago and currently its one of the 10 largest cities in the
country. IOW: when pieces of land get flooded or get too dry people
will move!

There is a weird sense of protectionism which probably stems for being
afraid of change. For those people: look at how face of the world has
changed in the past couple of hundred years. Our planet doesn't need
to stay the same. In fact it doesn't even 'want' to stay the same.

Solar panel prices are extremely low right now due to oversupply and
lower demand, $1.34/watt at this website:

http://www.sunelec.com/sv-solar-panel-190-watts-2670-vmp-p-1658.html

And how much of that cost is covered by money extracted from the working

stiffs in the form of taxes for subsidies?

Thanks,
Rich