Ping Bil Slowman; The global warming hoax reveiled

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:32:53 -0800 (PST), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Nov 27, 8:53 am, John Larkin
jjSNIPlar...@highTHISlandtechnology.com> wrote:
On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 09:41:07 +0000, Martin Brown





|||newspam...@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Nov 2009 09:53:04 -0800 (PST)) it happenedBill Sloman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote in
4688b1c8-f155-4b23-bb22-a8e56c28f...@c34g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>:

And even if you assumed CO2 levels did, where did the CO2 come from?

CO2 is being subducted - as carbonate rock - all the time. The
carbonate is unstable once it gets into the outer mantle and comes out
again in volcanic eruptions. The spectacular volcanic eruptions that
created the Deccan Traps and the Siberian Traps released a lot of CO2
in a relatively short time - geologically speaking.

Good, so it does not come from us burning stuff.

We already know how much fuel we burn and the residual amount staying in
the atmosphere is around 60% from Keelings original work at Mauna Lau.
Now refined by NOAA with global monitoring. You can even watch the
fossil fuel CO2 emitted by the northern hemisphere industrial nations
move to the southern hemisphere with a suitable time lag.

AND you can tell it isn't coming out of the oceans because the changing
isotopic signature matches the fossil fuel that we burnt.

Be careful what you wish for...today volcanic activity contributes about
1% of the carbon dioxide net increase. The rest is coming from us. A
reasonably detailed article on CO2 from vulcanism is online at:

http://www.bgs.ac.uk/downloads/directDownload.cfm?id=432&noexcl=true&...

Climate change around the time of the Deccan traps vulcanism 65 Million
years ago was one of the worst periods of global extinction the Earth
has seen. Do you really want to go the way of the dinosaurs?

The fact that some of the laval flow came up through coal fields meant
that they burnt a fair bit of fossil carbon in the process.

It is much more simple (Occam's) to think CO2 levels went up because the =
warmer climate
had more animals populate the earth....
But even that may not be so.
It isn't. there aren't enough animals around to to have much direct
effect on the CO2 level in the atmosphere - if they don't go in for
digging up and burning fossil carbon on an industrial scale.

Good, then we can forget all that Gore stuff about farting cows and pigs that are bad for the world,
and need to be more taxed.

He has a point at least where methane emissions are concerned.

CH4 though short lived is a more potent GHG in the atmosphere than CO2.
And it could be a real menace if we release the huge volumes trapped in
permafrost and oceanic seabed clathrates.

And it would improve the health of the US population to eat a bit less
meat. Japans high life expectancy is in part due to a much better diet.

Regards,
Martin Brown

Don't you people ever do electronic design? One nice thing about
electronics is that you know pretty soon whether you're right or not.
Another is that you can finish one thing and move on to another.

Unfortunately, real life is less accomodating.

What could be more real than building things that work?

John

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Nov 28, 5:15 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Nov 27, 10:19 pm,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Nov 26, 9:18 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
Or just do an error-budget analysis.  The AGW contribution alleged
from CO2 is, well, not even clear.  A range of estimates from ~0.25 to
1 W/m^2 out of roughly 300W/m^2 has been offered.  (That wide an
uncertainty band is pretty pathetic on its face, isn't it?)

Check out the ranges of forcings estimated here:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas

"   * water vapor, which contributes 36–72%     [a 2:1 range]
    * carbon dioxide, which contributes 9–26%  [3:1]
    * methane, which contributes 4–9%
    * ozone, which contributes 3–7%"

These aren't, stictly speaking. forcings.

If you had read further down the page, you would have come across this
line

"It is not possible to state that a certain gas causes an exact
percentage of the greenhouse effect. This is because some of the gases
absorb and emit radiation at the same frequencies as others, so that
the total greenhouse effect is not simply the sum of the influence of
each gas. The higher ends of the ranges quoted are for each gas alone;
the lower ends account for overlaps with the other gases.[8][9]"

Forcings are calculated for for actual atmospheres containing
specific concentrations of gases and this particular source of
uncertainty largely goes away. Since the lapse rate means that water
vapour concentrations drop away quite rapidly with increasing
altitude, this isn't an entirely trivial calculation.

For the record, you have just proved - once again - that you don't
know what you are talking about.

It might be if it had been offered by someone who knew what they were
talking about. These are the sorts of numbers that Christopher
Monckton comes up with

http://www.altenergyaction.org/Monckton.html#sec7

More reliable sources seem to be able to come up with a narrower
range.

http://atoc.colorado.edu/~seand/headinacloud/?p=204

They estimate it using models:

  "So how is Radiative Forcing calculated? For the most
    part, it is estimated using data from what is referred
    to as General Circulation Models (GCM’s). These
    models use numerous methodologies[...]"

As I mentioned in the post to which you are responding, (a point also
made in the wikipedia page you cited, but don't seem to have read
either), the greenhouse effect of each gas in the atmosphere depends
on the concentration of the other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,
and you have to construct a model of the atmosphere before you can
calculate a radiative forcing for that atmosphere.

gives a figure of 1.66 W/m˛, with a range between 1.49 and 1.83 W/m˛.

The same source goes on to give a 4:1 uncertainty range(!) for net
anthropogenic forcing:

  "Overall, the total net anthropogenic Radiative Forcing
   is equal to an average value of 1.6 W/m˛ [0.6 to 2.4 W/m˛].
   This means a warming of the climate."

IIRR these are 95% confdence limits, and include quite a lot of
uncertainty to cover features of the atmosphere that the current
generation of climate models, running on the current generation of
computers don't model well.

We may be able to do better in a few years

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

<snipped the rest - James Arthur really doesn't know what he is
talking about, and it would be unkind to make the point again and
again>

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Nov 28, 5:53 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Nov 27, 10:19 pm,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Nov 26, 9:18 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
And yet you'd tell me you know for a fact that man-made CO2 is beyond
any doubt the one, most important, overriding factor?

Yes, you would.

And I'd be right. Your capacity for creative scepticism verges on
denialism, and you can't - or won't - identify your sources, so your
credibility is totally shot.

You cite authorities. That is, you rely on experts to explain
something that's over your head--you said that about the models, not
me--and take what they say on faith.

The same kind of faith that I have in the results of most scientific
work being produced by a number of separate groups of scientists
working in parallel and criticising each other's work.

I don't claim any authority, nor do I require any credibility.

Just as well.

I only claim I can add, and read, and think.

You don't seem to be all that competent in any of these areas, given
your capacity to get things wildly wrong.

You're free to do the same.

Very generous of you.

I constantly cite public sources of raw data, but most people don't
have the time to waste checking them. So for alls' sake I prefer to
point out obvious contradictions, sanity checks. Quickies.

Except that when you cited

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas

it didn't support the point you were making, because you obviously
hadn't read the text that you were citing.
If it was a sanity check, you failed it.

To wit, the common man doesn't need to know what makes a car go to
tell whether or not it goes--he can just try driving the car and see.

<snipped the rest of the patronising rubbish>

Global Climate Models fail simple tests like that. They don't know
from ocean currents.

Yet. Because we don't yet have the ocean current data to plug into
them.

They don't accurately model clouds.

Yet.

Without
those things you can't model heat flow from the equator to the poles,
which is what drives our entire climate.

Nonsense. You just can't model as accurately as you could if you had
the data about the ocean currents and didn't have to smear out the
effets of clouds.

The heat still has to get from the equator to the poles, and you can
plug in black boxes that will do it well enough for government work.

That *is* our climate. They
assume static ice sheets and static vegetation, i.e., semi-static
albedo. IOW, they run on hamsters. And they're missing some wheels.

They're getting better, but they still aren't predictive 100 years or
even 20 years--or even 10 years, as we've just seen--into the future.

Of course they are predictive. It's just that the predictions are a
good deal less than perfectly accurate.

So, pointing to GCMs as proof of apocalyptic prognostications of doom
is, well, bogus. They just aren't nearly that good yet--they don't
handle all the many factors well enough--and even if they did we have
no way to prove they're right, to know they haven't omitted something
important, or just plain made a mistake.

They aren't proof of apocalyptic prognostications of doom. They are
tools that let us see that if we continue to inject CO2 into the
atmosphere at the current rate or faster, the world will be several
degrees warmer than it is now within a hundred years or so

The oceans will then be warm enough that CO2 will start coming out of
solution - while at the moment some 30% of teh CO2 we emit is
dissolving in the oceans ratther than increasing greenhouse warming -
and it may be warm enough to start melting methane clathrates.

The last time this happened was during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal
Maximum -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum

which left the global temperature going up some 6C and staying high
for some 20.00 years.

This didn't produce a global extinction, but did lead to a lot of
speciation. If it happened to us, our civilisation would fall apart,
and our population would crash, which is a pretty good approximation
to doom

This is not a prognostication - I'm not predicting that it is going to
happen - merely an observation that there is a risk that continued
warming might pan out the same way it did in the geological past, and
that our descendants might not enjoy such an experience.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Nov 28, 2:44 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Nov 27, 10:19 pm,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Nov 26, 9:18 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Nov 26, 5:26 pm,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
Of course you can see that easily, independently, if you just look at
the models, see how incomplete they are, how rudimentary our
understanding of critical processes is, how loose the parameters are,
how many arbitrary and unexplained factors they apply, and so forth.

Not having spent years working on the models, I doubt very much that I
could see anything of the sort. I had enough trouble with the much
simpler simulation I wrote in 1968 to model the chemical reaction in
the reaction cell I used in my Ph.D. work.

If James Arthur can produce this model which he claims to know so much
about we could - of course - test this hypothesis, but since neither
of us has spent our professional careers improving climate models our
opinions are unlikely to be even useful, let alone decisive.

So, your argument is that you're a poor judge of source code when you
see it, and that it's all over your head anyhow.  And, you can say
this without reading the code, or trying to see if it makes sense.
Therefore, the code is reliable.

No. You want me to have blind faith in your judgement of the
reliablity of the code. Granting your memory and credibility problems,
even you should be able to understand that this might not be evidnece
of sound judgement.

You argue from faith: blind faith, sight unseen, in people you don't
know, their measurements, their adjustments, their understanding of
the processes, their integrity, and their code.  All these are
necessary.

In a large number of different people who are publishing comparing the
results they get from a range of different models. This sort of
process seems to work well in a lot of different areas of science, and
there doesn't seem to be any reason to suppose that it isn't working
in climatorlogy.

I've seen the code I critique; you say it's pure, though you've never
looked.  That's faith.

I didn't say ot was pure. I said I didn't trust your judgement.

I argue from knowledge, confirmed and supported by an expert with
impeccable recommendations from someone I know, trust, and respect.

And your 22nd November report of what they had said was fatuous
nonsense. There are several possible explanations for this, and none
of them leave you with any kind of credibility.

I've linked to the code zillions of times before.  Here's a starting
vector:http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/ipcc/model_documentation/ipcc_model_documen...

I'm glad to see that you can still use Google. A zillion is a
conveniently unspecific number.

From there you can get descriptions of each model, FROM its AUTHORS,
see the obvious limitations in summary form, and access source code
where it's available.

And yet - on the 22nd November - you claimed that climate models
decline into chaos just as fast as weather models. All that expertise
and you still manged to jam your foot firmly into your mouth.

Or look at how well the climate models predicted the current cooling
transient--they didn't.  In fact they predicted more and more heat and
hurricanes, didn't they?  And we were supposed to brace ourselves for
those, to spend money and prepare, but they never came.  The models
were wrong.

The models aren't precise, and they aren't designed to to produce
accurate predictions over periods of a few years. They failed to
predict the current slowing in the rate of global warming because
didn't allow for the movement in the ocean circulation that the Argo
project is only now beginning to telling us about.

You'll notice that I pointed that shortcoming out years ago, here?

In another post which has mysteriously vanished from the archives?

And you, with no knowledge, denied it.

The excursion away from the smooth and continuous heating strawman
prediction that James Arthur is trying to set up is small, of the

You're leaping to a conclusion.  I never said or intended that.

But it is part of the usual denialist package on this subject.
Granting the crap that you post, your "expertise" seems more likely to
come from a web-site funded by Exxon-Mobil than from www-
pcmdi.llnl.gov.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Nov 27, 9:58 am, John Larkin
<jjSNIPlar...@highTHISlandtechnology.com> wrote:

On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 07:03:38 -0800 (PST),Bill Sloman





bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Nov 26, 7:11 pm, John Larkin
jjSNIPlar...@highTHISlandtechnology.com> wrote:
On Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:58:48 -0800 (PST),Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Nov 24, 4:00 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:37:56 -0800 (PST), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Nov 23, 9:43 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On Nov 23, 1:10 pm, krw <k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Nov 22, 8:44 pm,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Nov 22, 8:07 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

These guys want to replace confirmation by experiment with proof by
correlation.  Which they're in a unique position to ensure.

Astronomy has had to struggle with exactly the same problem.. I presume
you also are going to rip down all the observatories and insist that
the sun really does go around the earth.

Astronomy is easily confirmed, repeatably, to high accuracy, by
multiple observers around the world.

Climatrology can't predict a decade-long cooling trend even once it's
begun, nor can it explain it.

Climatology can't "predict" history, yet some idiots want to use it to
control everyone.  Politicians (are) like that.

Climatology predicts history fine with a little bit of curve-fitting.
Climatrology, like astrology (or maybe let's call it climatrollogy),
looks into the future.

Oooo, "climastrology"--even better.

That's a keeper.

A genuine James Arthur pratfall. Not a collectible as all that - he
makes a fool of himself a little too often, and the market is getting
saturated.

I've known James for years, well before any encounters on SED. He's
funny, cheerful, an excellent electronics designer, a good cook, and
has a great singing voice. I have never known him to be a fool about
anything. But I ski faster than he does. Lots faster.

You are the group buffoon/churl/pain slut. I can't imagine why you
post here.

You've made it clear that you don't enjoy having your errors
corrected, and you probably think that it would be a nice idea to save
other people from similar discomfort, but you shoudl keep in mind that
looking like an idiot on sci.electronics.design can be a lot cheaper
than making a fool of yourself in front of paying customers.

Oh, you've finally noticed that this is an electronics design group.
Given that, what do you think matters here?

How are you doing in front of paying customers?

Haven't seen many recently.

When it comes to anthropogenic global warming, you have posted enough
buffoon level-nonsense here that your endorsement of James as a non-
fool isn't entirely definitive.

All I've said about AGW is that there is reason to be skeptical. I'm
pleased that the majority of the population of the world is
increasingly in agreement with me. I'm thinking the joy ride is just
about over.

What you've actually done has been to pick denialist rubbish fron
Exxon-Mobil funded web-sites and regurgitate it here. Exxon-Mobil will
be congratulating themselves on having spent their propaganada money
on skilled practitioners.

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/exxon_report.pdf

IIRR it has been some time since we had to remind you that climate
models weren't the same as weather models and were constructed in such
a way that they weren't susceptible to the butterfly effect.

It's been some time since you posted anything interesting or useful
about electronic design. Last thing I remember is your perplexity that
a simple oscillator simulation refused to squegg.

That seems to reflect a weakness of the Gummel-Poon model. I'm working
on it.

It would have been nice if you'd passed the message on to James. If
you had, he'd now look less like a buffoon, and I'd have saved some of
the time I put in on educating the barely educatable.

Hilarious. Why is it that useless, incompetant, and unemployed
"progressives" think that they are able to "educate" people who are
none of the above.

James Arthur certainly isn't competent to comment on climate change.
He managed to put his foot back in his mouth again this evening. He
might have done better if he had read the paragraph of text directly
below the numbers he'd grabbed to support his half-baked argument.

But you think that he is useful, competent and employed ... and that
you own judgement is entirely sound.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Nov 27, 8:19 am, Jan Panteltje <pNaonStpealm...@yahoo.com> wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 27 Nov 2009 06:49:43 -0800 (PST)) it happenedBill Sloman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote in
3f869c70-b173-4649-9b49-dc9171049...@l13g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>:

On Nov 27, 3:44 am, Jan Panteltje <pNaonStpealm...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On a sunny day (Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:33:39 -0800 (PST)) it happened Bill S> >loman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote in
c66059e5-cc29-4007-8344-3abc11935...@d10g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>:

Jan's point - in context - is that Exxon-Mobil should get a free pass
to continue to extract and burn fossil carbon because it's
predecessors helped to set up the infra-structure that currently
sustains us, but will evnetually bring us down if we keep on burning
fossil carbon at the current rate.

That is not accurate, for the nth time I stated many times we should move> > towards nuclear power.
But it will not be anytime soon nuke power can replace all our energy sou> >rces, so Exxon & friends
will be with us for a long time with oil.

Windmills and solar power installations are currently more popular,

Windmills are an unreliable energy source, no wind for some time and no energy AT ALL.

Any single windmill is unrliable in this sense. Build enough of them
over a sufficiently large geographical area and hook them up to grid,
and the statistics are a lot more attractive.

You need an energy storage system, several experiments are being done, but
an energy storage system that can bridge weeks for example, is not currently possible
in an economic way.

Weeks?

And the same green nut cases that vote for 'clean' energy vote against windmills because of 'horizon pollution',
and because those kill birds, and .. and .. ?

Too true. And they get upset about CO2 being sequestered under thier
beds.

Solar power in the Netherlands is a big joke, as it has now been raining and cloudy for weeks,
so nothing would work.

Direct sunlight is a lot better scattered light, but you still get
useful power if the sun is up.

I tried a solar panel myself, and you are lucky if it can power a transistor radio, at low volume that is.
It would not even charge my nicads (long time ago).

A larger solar panel with a better dc-to-dc inverter might have done
better.

There is a plan for solar power in the Sahara desert, but that is future talk,
political instability makes it sort of difficult to guarantee the electricity will make it all the way here
that is not counting transport losses.

Happily, the Germans are more enthusiastic about the idea than you
are.

And *STILL* that does not run your cars, your building machines, ships, what not.
So that is bull.

It wouldn't run the car I've got at the moment, but it can run a car
and a building machine. Ships are trickier, and aircraft very tricky
indeed. But we do need to keep on emitting some carbon dioxide to
stave off the next ice age, so we may be able to work somethig out.

can deliver power a lot sooner, and don't generate nasty radioactive
waste that we still haven't worked out how to deal with after fifty
years of running nuclear power stations.

Shoot it into the sun, and store it under Nijmegen of course.
Make nice small RTGs with it, everybody one for in the car and in the house.

Shooting it into the sun might not be a good idea - we've only got one
sun, and an unexpected interactions could make life difficult or
impossible.

It would be nice if you did not start every post with "You know nothing I> > know everything',
although that is your religion, no need to push that on anyone OK?

It would be nice if you learned a bit more, so that I didn't have to
start every reply I make to one of your posts by pointing out what you
have got wrong.

I have a bit wider view then your old university mailing letter, or wherever you
get that crap from, Al Gores radio show, or the local pub.

At lot of what I post comes from "Physics Today", and "New Scientist"
and I fill in gaps by digging around on the web. Melbourne
University's mailings are perfectly useless.

Your "wider view" seems to pick up a great deal of utter nonsense.
You'd be well advised to become a little more discriminating.

What you need to learn is see the difference between political manipulation of the masses and real science.

Since you don't seem to notice when you a regurgitating Exxon-Mobil's
denialist propaganda, I'd say that you've got some learning of your
own to do before you start lecturing other people about "political
manipulation".

<snip>

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Don Klipstein]

In <b7319000-c534-44c4-a264-5ee56b939d74@e27g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote in part:

Cast aside your irrelevant bile and consider: we're in a 10-
year cooling trend.

HadCRUT-3 by year for the most recent 10 full years, from Hadley Centre:

1999: .339
2000: .360
2001: .381
2002: .401
2003: .418
2004: .424
2005: .420
2006: .404
2007: .383
2008: .360

UAH TLT V. 5.2, average of 12 monthly figures:

1999: .041
2000: .036
2001: .201
2002: .289
2003: .277
2004: .195
2005: .314
2006: .263
2007: .284
2008: .050

I would not go so far as to call this a 10 year cooling trend.

- Don Klipstein (don@misty.com)

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Nov 28, 4:35 am, John Fields <jfie...@austininstruments.com> wrote:

On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:43:51 -0800 (PST),Bill Sloman

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

Your scepticism is nether humble nor yours. You pick up neatly
packaged chunks of scepticism from your frieindly neighbourhood
denialist propaganda machine and regurgitate them here.
Jahred Diamond's
book "Collapse" makes it pretty clear that the leaders of a failing
society will have their attention firmly fixed on maintaining their
status within that society - in your case, your status as a successful
businessman - right up to the point where it starts collapsing around
their ears.

---
Seems to me that your accusation that Larkin here regurgitates
propaganda he's picked up elsewhere is PKB.

John, you really don't have to remind us that you can't tell the
difference between peer-reviewed scientific publications and the kind
of rubbish that denialist web-sites spread around. Get yourself a
scientific education and you might be able to do better.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:00:10 -0800 (PST)) it happened Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in
<79cb352b-afb2-456a-bf0d-3c38393e5b7b@b15g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>:

Windmills are an unreliable energy source, no wind for some time and no e=
nergy AT ALL.

Any single windmill is unrliable in this sense. Build enough of them
over a sufficiently large geographical area and hook them up to grid,
and the statistics are a lot more attractive.

You need an energy storage system, several experiments are being done, bu=
t
an energy storage system that can bridge weeks for example, is not curren=
tly possible
in an economic way.

Weeks?

Yes weeks.

And the same green nut cases that vote for 'clean' energy vote against wi=
ndmills because of 'horizon pollution',
and because those kill birds, and .. and .. ?

Too true. And they get upset about CO2 being sequestered under thier
beds.

Personally I never voted against windmills, I quit the political party the moment they did that.
But I also know windmills will not provide all our power needs.
They are also noisy, I know, I can hear them here, other then you in Nijmegen hidden deep in the city.
Chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, all night long.

Solar power in the Netherlands is a big joke, as it has now been raining =
and cloudy for weeks,
so nothing would work.

Direct sunlight is a lot better scattered light, but you still get
useful power if the sun is up.

Define 'Useful power', lemme guess: 1W / m^2?

I tried a solar panel myself, and you are lucky if it can power a transis=
tor radio, at low volume that is.
It would not even charge my nicads (long time ago).

A larger solar panel with a better dc-to-dc inverter might have done
better.

Yea, like a whole football field, and a converter designed by Bill Slowman.

There is a plan for solar power in the Sahara desert, but that is future =
talk,
political instability makes it sort of difficult to guarantee the electri=
city will make it all the way here
that is not counting transport losses.

Happily, the Germans are more enthusiastic about the idea than you
are.

Actually it is an international project, but enthusiasm alone does not really do anything.

And *STILL* that does not run your cars, your building machines, ships, w=
hat not.
So that is bull.

It wouldn't run the car I've got at the moment, but it can run a car
and a building machine. Ships are trickier, and aircraft very tricky
indeed. But we do need to keep on emitting some carbon dioxide to
stave off the next ice age, so we may be able to work something out.

See, here you do it again, and show your big mis-conception:
'stave off the next ice age'.
Forget it, it will come!
No matter what you do.
http://www.world-mysteries.com/alignments/mpl_al3b.htm
http://www.sci.ccny.cuny.edu/~stan/d_clim.pdf

Shoot it into the sun, and store it under Nijmegen of course.
Make nice small RTGs with it, everybody one for in the car and in the hou=
se.

Shooting it into the sun might not be a good idea - we've only got one
sun, and an unexpected interactions could make life difficult or
impossible.

Next loony concept revealed:
Do you know the mass of the sun?
You clearly suffer from a lack of grasp of the size of nature, and nature's forces!

Really Bill, you make no longer sense, and are here for the sake of the discussion only.
That does explain why you cannot change viewpoint, as it would end all reactions of people
pointing out your errors.
Let's talk about other things OK?

BTW thank you for praising my language abilities, calling me 'bilingual',
in fact I speak German, French, Dutch, English, and a little Portuguese.
And learning some more.
You living in the Netherlands so long, I would have expected you to speak Dutch too.
Many Dutch also speak English....

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:05:35 -0800 (PST)) it happened Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in
<dc44176d-0d2d-43b4-b9b5-a498b93c3f3f@e27g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>:

John, you really don't have to remind us that you can't tell the
difference between peer-reviewed scientific publications and the kind
of rubbish that denialist web-sites spread around. Get yourself a
scientific education and you might be able to do better.

I will take John's understanding of science anytime over yours.

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:05:35 -0800 (PST)) it happened Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in
<dc44176d-0d2d-43b4-b9b5-a498b93c3f3f@e27g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>:

John, you really don't have to remind us that you can't tell the
difference between peer-reviewed scientific publications and the kind
of rubbish that denialist web-sites spread around. Get yourself a
scientific education and you might be able to do better.

I will take John's understanding of science anytime over yours.

And, on top of that, just found in a Usenet newsgroup:

From: "Eric Gisin" <ericg@nospammail.net>
Newsgroups: alt.global-warming,alt.politics.libertarian,sci.geo.meteorology,sci.physics,uk.politics.environment
Subject: Mann to be investigated by Penn State University review
Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2009 19:20:27 -0800
Message-ID: <hespbh$aat$1@news.eternal-september.org>

Mann to be investigated by Penn State University review
28 11 2009

This statement was released by Penn State here. Oddly, while mentioning the NAS report, there is no
mention of the Congressional commissioned Wegman report, which you can see here full report (PDF).
Or for a quick read the fact-sheet (PDF).

University Reviewing Recent Reports on Climate Information
Professor Michael Mann is a highly regarded member of the Penn State faculty conducting research on
climate change. Professor Mann's research papers have been published in well respected
peer-reviewed scientific journals.

In November 2005, Representative Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) requested that the National Academy of
Sciences (NAS) convene a panel of independent experts to investigate Professor Mann's seminal 1999
reconstruction of the global surface temperature over the past 1,000 years. The resulting 2006
report of the NAS panel (http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676) concluded that Mann's
results were sound and has been subsequently supported by an array of evidence that includes
additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions.

In recent days a lengthy file of emails has been made public. Some of the questions raised through
those emails may have been addressed already by the NAS investigation but others may not have been
considered. The University is looking into this matter further, following a well defined policy
used in such cases. No public discussion of the matter will occur while the University is reviewing
the concerns that have been raised.

h/t Joe D'Aleo



http://www.examiner.com/x-28973-Essex-County-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m11d28-Penn-State-to-investigate-Michael-Mannor-whitewash-him

Penn State to investigate Michael Mann--or whitewash him

November 28, 8:02 PMEssex County Conservative ExaminerTerry Hurlbut
Dr. Michael E. Mann, famed originator of the "Hockey Stick" graph, is now officially under
investigation by his current employer, Penn State University. But Penn State's own press release
raises an immediate question of how thorough that investigation will be.

Anthony Watts, of WattsUpWithThat, reported today that Penn State had issued this press release
announcing its intention to review Dr. Mann's work in order to "address" certain "question" and
"concerns" that have been "raised" by the recent exposure of the CRU archive. Watts' report was
noted by Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters.org.

In its press release, Penn State referred to a report, titled Surface Temperature Reconstructions
for the Last 2000 Years, by the Board of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, National Academy of
Sciences. This report, made at the request of then-Representative Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY),
essentially concluded that Mann's hockey-stick results were "sound."


Climatic Research Unit (Photo courtesy CRU)However, as Watts points out in his entry, the NAS
report was not the only report on Mann's work. Another report, commissioned by Representative Joe
Barton (R-TX-6) and written by Edward J. Wegman, of George Mason University, and his associates,
reached the opposite conclusion: that Mann's work was unsound. More than that, the Wegman committee
raised questions about the conduct of climate science generally that anticipate, in nearly every
particular, the questionable research methods revealed in the CRU Archive.

The Penn State press release admits that the CRU Archive and its contents "raise" various
"questions" and "concerns" that were not the subjects of the NAS report. What those concerns are,
Penn State refuses to state. Possibly they include Mann's guilty knowledge of, or participation in,
the willful destruction of data that might be subject to a Freedom of Information request, either
in the UK or in the USA. E-mail file 1212073451.txt contains the most damaging information in this
regard:

Mike:

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?

Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

By "AR4" Dr. Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit, means the Fourth Assessment Report
of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Mann's contemptuous attitude toward the committee formerly chaired by Rep. Barton has already been
discussed. However, the more important question is why Penn State chose to ignore the Wegman
report. That report raises a number of concerns of its own about the then-current (and
still-current) state of climate science. Specifically, Wegman et al., charged that the "Hockey
Stick" is the product of improper statistical treatment of the data and for that reason alone was
not valid. Furthermore, Wegman et al., stated that Mann et al. had formed an "inner circle" and
refused to interact with the general community of statisticians (who might be expected to have an
opinion on their treatment of the data), and that Mann and other principal investigators had a
habit of "review[ing] one another's work" and "reus[ing] the same data sets." This, said the Wegman
committee, meant that the work of Mann and other investigators might not be as independent as they
pretended.

In fact, as the CRU Archive plainly shows, Mann, Jones, and the other investigators named in the
CRU Archive have never changed their practices since the time that the Wegman Committee sat.

That the NAS report should never have mentioned any of the concerns raised by the Wegman report,
calls into question the quality of the work of the NAS, especially since the Wegman report has now
been more than vindicated. And that Penn State should have ignored the Wegman report raises a
question of how objective Penn State's academic reviewers intend to be.

(The Wegman Report is hardly a forgotten piece of criticism. It bore mention on examiner.com as
recently as October, a scant six weeks before the CRU Archive story broke.)

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Nov 28, 1:27 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

Malcolm Moore  wrote:
dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
snip old material

You have to grant me some leeway here because Bill's a fuzzy writer.
He works by implication and innuendo, so I had to infer that

I don't have to grant you anything.

No, you don't.

This saga shows you're the proven fuzzy writer.

I think I've been extremely clear.  Excruciatingly, tediously,
tiringly so, in this post-mortem.

I understood Jan.  You didn't.  So, if you don't understand me at
least I'm in good company.

Bill stated a fact--a fact unrelated to Jan's point, you contend
below--without explaining what he thought it proved, or how it
related.  That's fuzzy writing.

Bill could've said "The fact that France gets 80% of its electrical
power from nuclear plants proves XYZ."  That would've been clear
writing.

Clear perhaps, but also prolix.

snip

But Jan and I took it as a wrong answer to Jan's claim, that the very
infrastructure we're using was built on fossil fuel.

Since Jan's claim - that the infrastructure we now use was built with
energy derived by burning fossil carbon - has zero relevance to the
question of whether we should continue to generate the bulk of our
energy by burning fossil fuel - I was not all that interested in
addressing Jan's claim.

There was no answer because there was no question. Bill made a correct
claim in response to Jan's correct claim.

And there we have it.

Stating a new, unrelated fact is not a response, that's talking past
someone.  If Bill meant his claim as a related response, it was
wrong.  If he meant it as a new, interesting fact, it was non-
responsive.

Bill explains later that he meant it as a response, which is how I
treated it.

Either way, it leaves a misleading notion w.r.t. the extent of
France's independence from fossil fuels.

Which is totally irrelevant to the important question, which is where
we can and should get our energy in the future.

I thought it interesting that even France is so dependent on fossil
fuels.  Even more than 82% (of total energy), if they use coal.

The way things are is only interesting in as far as it dictates the
route we follow towards the way things ought to be - or, in the
context of anthropogenic global warming the way things need to be, if
we don't want to have to set aside our interest in generating energy
in favour of frantic efforts to grow enough food.

Jan, of course, ignores this line of thought on the basis that
anthropogenic global warming isn't happening, claiming that the people
who worry about it want us to stop using energy at all (over an above
what we get from food) and rehouse ourselves into unheated grass huts.
This is a remarkably flagrant strawman but he seems very attached to
it.

Your own approach is less extravagant - you don't actively deny
anthropogenic global warming, but claim that its progression is too
unpredictable to justify any serious investment in cutting down our
CO2 emissions.

You don't actually specify how precise a prediction would be needed to
justify such an investment, but since you seem to think that the past
ten years of relatively limited warming should have been predicted
back in the 1990's, you do seem to think that a precison of a tenth of
a degree or so is necessary, which isn't actually a rational
requirement.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[John Fields]

On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:55:50 -0800 (PST), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Nov 28, 3:58 am, John Fields <jfie...@austininstruments.com> wrote:
On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:38:11 -0800 (PST),Bill Sloman





bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Nov 27, 2:44 am, John Fields <jfie...@austininstruments.com> wrote:
On Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:18:18 -0800 (PST),Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Nov 26, 7:35 pm, Jan Panteltje <pNaonStpealm...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:07:13 -0800 (PST)) it happenedBill Sloman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote in
6e3552a1-ae05-4a2c-835f-9f245f6d0...@m25g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>:

Without the [fossile] energy companies there would be no media, no energy=
,
as your car does not run on electricity (yet).
Without those machines, used to build cities, roads, transport goods, the=
re would be no civilisation
and not even internet, and no printing material, no paper, some paper man=
ufacturers have their own power plants.

And if we keep on digging up fossil carbon and burning it, all these
nice things will go away again.

Been there.
Now wake up from your green dreams.

An ironic appeal, since it comes from someone who clearly doesn't know
what he is talking about.

mm, why do you say that of everybody except your comic book scientists?

I don't say it about everybody, but there are a number of people who
post here on subjects that they know very little about, and they quite
often post total nonsense.

---
Like about being able to extract energy from a varying magnetic field
surrounding a conductor by wrapping a solenoid around the conductor?

Joel Koltner was making a joke. The smiley should have told you that.

---
He wasn't making a joke, he was being humorous in his presentation, you
wretch.

But, whether he was making a joke or not is immaterial, since I _proved_
my point by experimentation and presented the data and method for anyone
who cared to replicate the experiment to do so.

Few people are so lacking in a sense of proportion that they'd bother.

---
You really are no scientist are you?

The point of doing the experiment and presenting the method, the data
gathered, and the conclusion reached was to allow the experiment to be
replicated so that the veracity of the conclusion could be ascertained.

You, however much data is presented to prove you wrong, refuse to
acknowledge the data or your error(s) and prefer invective to
investigation.
---

snipped the rest of the rant

---
Of course... cast it in an unfavorable light and ignore it.

Just one of your ways of not having to come to terms with "inconvenient
truths."

This, from Joerg, puts it nicely:


"I have the feeling you will not accept any proof and will try to find
all sorts of excuses and hair in the soup. What's next? Their language
wasn't Norwegian enough anymore so they don't count?"

JF

 

[John Fields]

On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:59:33 -0800 (PST), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Nov 28, 4:19 pm, John Fields <jfie...@austininstruments.com> wrote:
On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 10:44:15 -0800 (PST),Bill Sloman





bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Nov 28, 4:44 am, John Fields <jfie...@austininstruments.com> wrote:
On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:07:11 -0800 (PST),Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Nov 26, 8:33 pm, John Fields <jfie...@austininstruments.com> wrote:
On Thu, 26 Nov 2009 09:36:14 -0800 (PST),Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
It is a pity that I got it wrong. Peer review would probably have
prevented this.

James Arthur happens to be wrong - his concurrence doesn't create a
concensus, which in practice is confined to the opinions of people who
know what they are talking about.

---
Then nothing you post would lead to the creation of a consensus.

Certainly not to a concensus of which you'd form a part.

---
I'd certainly keep it from becoming a consensus by showing you up for
the fraud you are.

There you go again. I'm not a fraud, but you are too ignorant and dumb
to get to grips with the evidnece that makes this obvious to the
better equipped.

---
As is typical with frauds, instead of honestly addressing the issues
causing contention, trying to resolve them amicably, and taking your
lumps when you deserve them, you resort to invective in order to try to
silence your critics.

John Fields has learned the word 'amicable". It is sad that he shows
no evidence of knowing what it means.

---
Really?

I get along quite well with almost everybody here, while you, with your
neverending pomposity and penchant for using deception to foment discord
seem to have trouble getting along with _anybody_.
---

snipped the usual rubbish

---
Of course...

Pretend what you can't counter is worthless.


JF

 

[John Fields]

On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:31:39 -0800 (PST), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On Nov 27, 9:58 am, John Larkin
jjSNIPlar...@highTHISlandtechnology.com> wrote:

Hilarious. Why is it that useless, incompetant, and unemployed
"progressives" think that they are able to "educate" people who are
none of the above.

James Arthur certainly isn't competent to comment on climate change.
He managed to put his foot back in his mouth again this evening. He
might have done better if he had read the paragraph of text directly
below the numbers he'd grabbed to support his half-baked argument.

But you think that he is useful, competent and employed ... and that
you own judgement is entirely sound.

---
It sure seems to be!

After all, this _is_ an electronics group and, rather less than between
the lines, he was calling _you_ useless, incompetent, and unemployed,
which is spot on.

JF

 

[John Fields]

On Sun, 29 Nov 2009 13:10:09 GMT, Jan Panteltje
<pNaonStpealmtje@yahoo.com> wrote:

On a sunny day (Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:05:35 -0800 (PST)) it happened Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in
dc44176d-0d2d-43b4-b9b5-a498b93c3f3f@e27g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>:

John, you really don't have to remind us that you can't tell the
difference between peer-reviewed scientific publications and the kind
of rubbish that denialist web-sites spread around. Get yourself a
scientific education and you might be able to do better.

I will take John's understanding of science anytime over yours.

---
That's very kind; thank you!

JF

 

[Joerg]

Jon Kirwan wrote:

On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:49:13 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

Jon Kirwan wrote:

[...]

There is an increased hydrologic cycle. In some cases, precipitation
(in terms of annual averages) may not even change, but the
distribution over the year may.

For example, in my area (which, by the way, is where Andrew Fountain
is .. or was .. located... who is a primary contact regarding Mt.
Shasta's glaciers), the precipitation is remaining similar on an
annual basis, but is shifting away from summer/fall precipitation
(which used to be a near constant complaint I'd hear from California
transplants) and towards winter/spring. Larger annual amplitude,
similar average value. It does have a real impact, though. We will
have to create more summer-time storage to supply the 1.5 million
people who depend upon the glaciers now for their fresh water supply
during late summer. Glaciers, normally quite decently sized here in
Portland and northward, are receding quite rapidly. We've lost almost
50% of the mass balance at Mt. Hood, for example, and expect to see it
reach zero in the late summertime perhaps in 30 years or so if the
current rate remains unchanged. The reasons why these mountains are
losing them faster than some areas is largely understood -- they are
neither insulated by lots of rock, nor highly reflective by being
completely free of rock; instead, they have the right mix of loose
gravel and dirt on them for higher melt rates. We've had a few unique
_slides_ that took out important roadways in the last few years, as
well. (As you can see, I can cherry-pick data, too.

I am not disputing that. As I wrote in my reply to Bill, there are
glaciers in Europe that are going almost totally bare. What the
warmingists don't seem to grasp or sometimes deny tooth and nail is that
this is quite normal.

I don't buy this, at all. Sorry.

Yes, the world has been warmer. Yes, glaciers have been much less in
abundance. Yes, oceans have been much higher. Etc., etc.

None of this means these are directions we want to head. ...

I do, because I do not like winters

... Nor does it
say there isn't an historically unique rate of change in evidence
today. Nor does it say humans aren't having a pervasive impact that
contributes strongly to both the sign (+ or -) and the magnitude of
recent rates.

You are right. But there is also no proof that humans do.

You simply are placing yourself against what the current state of
science theory and result says. And that's not a very smart place to
put yourself unless you are in a position to claim a comprehensive
exposure to it. The scientists active in these areas make it their
business.

You've done nothing to convince me that you are in a better position
to be able to say "this is quite normal," Joerg. It may sting a
little to realize that I would take their word over yours. But in
this case, I do. It's as basic as that.

Ok, I accept your opinion. But on the same token I have not been
convinced that this is not normal. I would have hoped that there'd be
some link about that increased hydrologic cycle, like an article from
reputable scientists and none that use "tricks".

Here's some quotes from last week's report:

"Has global warming recently slowed down or paused?

"No. There is no indication in the data of a slowdown or pause in the
human-caused climatic warming trend. The observed global temperature
changes are entirely consistent with the climatic warming trend of
~0.2 °C per decade predicted by IPCC, plus superimposed short-term
variability (see Figure 4). The latter has always been – and will
always be – present in the climate system. Most of these short-term
variations are due to internal oscillations like El Nińo – Southern
Oscillation, solar variability (predominantly the 11-year Schwabe
cycle) and volcanic eruptions (which, like Pinatubo in 1991, can cause
a cooling lasting a few years).

See the first sentence there? It's quite typical in such reports. They
assume they _know_ it's human cause while IMHO they do not.

"If one looks at periods of ten years or shorter, such short-term
variations can more than outweigh the anthropogenic global warming
trend. For example, El Nińo events typically come with global-mean
temperature changes of up to 0.2 °C over a few years, and the solar
cycle with warming or cooling of 0.1 °C over five years (Lean and Rind
2008). However, neither El Nińo, nor solar activity or volcanic
eruptions make a significant contribution to longer-term climate
trends. For good reason the IPCC has chosen 25 years as the shortest
trend line they show in the global temperature records, and over this
time period the observed trend agrees very well with the expected
anthropogenic warming.

"Nevertheless global cooling has not occurred even over the past ten
years, contrary to claims promoted by lobby groups and picked up in
some media. In the NASA global temperature data, the past ten 10-year
trends (i.e. 1990-1999, 1991-2000 and so on) have all been between
0.17 and 0.34 °C warming per decade, close to or above the expected
anthropogenic trend, with the most recent one (1999-2008) equal to
0.19 °C per decade. The Hadley Center data most recently show smaller
warming trends (0.11 °C per decade for 1999-2008) primarily due to the
fact that this data set is not fully global but leaves out the Arctic,
which has warmed particularly strongly in recent years.

Better get in line for the coming winter clothes sales

http://www.cobybeck.com/illconsidered/images/hadcrut-jan08.png


[ snipped the IPCC article quote]


Jon, I assume you know by know that I (and a lot of other) don't give
much of a hoot what the IPCC writes. Let alone believe it.

A few thousand years ago they wear also iceless or
nearly iceless, as evidence by the findings of ancient weaponry, shoes,
coins, and the typical litter that unfortunately always happens along
major thoroughfares. They must have lacked an "Adopt-a-Highway" program
back then ;-)

Since they found Roman coins there the last warm period without ice on
the glacier cannot have been be that long ago:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7580294.stm


That aside, some places, due to the increased cycle will experience
increases and some decreases. The total global precipitation will
slightly increase.

From the Copenhagen Diagnosis, recently released:

"Post IPCC AR4 research has also found that rains become
more intense in already-rainy areas as atmospheric water vapor
content increases (Pall et al. 2007; Wentz et al. 2007; Allan
and Soden 2008). These conclusions strengthen those of earlier
studies and are expected from considerations of atmospheric
thermodynamics. However, recent changes have occurred faster
than predicted by some climate models, raising the possibility
that future changes will be more severe than predicted.

"...

"In addition to the increases in heavy precipitation, there have
also been observed increases in drought since the 1970s
(Sheffield and Wood 2008), consistent with the decreases in
mean precipitation over land in some latitude bands that have
been attributed to anthropogenic climate change (Zhang et al.
2007).

"The intensification of the global hydrological cycle with
anthropogenic climate change is expected to lead to further
increases in precipitation extremes, both increases in very
heavy precipitation in wet areas and increases in drought in dry
areas. While precise figures cannot yet be given, current studies
suggest that heavy precipitation rates may increase by 5% - 10%
per °C of warming, similar to the rate of increase of atmospheric
water vapor."

See above: cannot be proven, current studies suggest. All assumptions.

On a separate topic, I thought you might be interested in the GLIMS
numbers for the glaciers on Mt. Shasta:

(Unnamed, I think) G237813E41427N 1950-07-01 58849
G237815E41410N 1950-07-01 58850
Konwakiton Glacier G237805E41400N 1950-07-01 58851
Watkins Glacier G237821E41403N 1950-07-01 58852
Whitney Glacier G237787E41415N 1950-07-01 58853
G237804E41420N 1950-07-01 58854
Bolam Glacier G237799E41421N 1950-07-01 58855
G237803E41424N 1950-07-01 58856
G237813E41422N 1950-07-01 58857
Hotlum Glacier G237814E41418N 1950-07-01 58858
G237818E41416N 1950-07-01 58859

You can use those to secure data on those from the GLIMS dataset. Not
that it probably matters. But there it is because I wasted my time
looking for them. Oh, well.
Thanks, but right now I have to first find some inductors for an EMI
case

hehe. Well, I wasted my time already. So there.

All I got there was "view database", didn't go to a database. Then "view
catalog", and only the name of scientists came up. What does it say?
That the Shasta glaciers shrink?

No pun intended but so far this discussio took the usual route of deviation:

a. Notion that a particular glacier grows.

b. Answer that this is due to increased precipitation.

c. I bring link where the precip data is in there since 1948, such trend
not obvious at all.

d. Deviation to other things, no proof that my assumption "c" is clearly
wrong (and it might be).

Here in Northern California people look at their water bills, they see
drought rates being charged more and more often. Warmingists predicted
we'd be swamped with precipitation by now. Didn't happen.

Then they look at their heating bills. Amounts of required fuel rising,
for example we went from 2 cords to 4 cords. So it ain't getting warmer.
We would never again buy a house with a pool around here.

This is a middle class neighborhood with a fairly high percentage of
engineers, so you'd normally assume people with a pretty level head.
Nearly all now think that AGW is just one gigantic ruse to raise taxes
in one way or another. Again, this is not me ranting, it's what we hear
from the people. Meaning voters

None of that changes anything about what I said. Climate is averages
and I think you _know_ this.

If you said, "the average voltage, at 1Hz bandwidth, at this node is 4
volts" and I responded by using a high bandwidth tool and pointing out
a 5 nanosecond spike at 8V and said, "no, it's 8V", you'd know I was
being disingenuous. And you'd be right.
And that 8V spike could be the root cause why a chip always fails so
you'd have made a valid and concerning observation
Not the point when talking about averages, is it?

If you are interested in access to specific details, you might read:

http://nsidc.org/glims/

However, if scarfing through a database is a pain, an informed summary
of the circumstances of mountain glaciers around the world can be had
from: Cogley, J. G., 2009, "Geodetic and direct mass-balance
measurements: comparison and joint analysis," Annals of Glaciology 50,
96-100. I can get you a copy, if you intend to read it.
I know that most glaciers are receding for a while now.
Accepted.

That has
happened in the past as well, and then they grew again. What I harbor
doubts about is that this is human-caused. These doubt haven't exactly
been reduced after the revelations of emails lately.
Understood. It is the __attribution__ that you are questioning. In
many cases, it's worth keeping that in view. Not __everything__ in
the world is 100% due to humans.
True. But the question is whether it's 90%, 50%, or maybe only 2%. That
where warmingists are often making shaky assumptions.

Of course that's an important question. It's been answered, to a
sufficient degree to be useful.

I have some serious doubts about that. Especially after the recent email
revelations.

As you said, climate is averages, but we must look much, much farther
than just 50, 100 or 150 years. As has been discussed here before, there
has for example been homesteading and farming in areas of Greenland that
are now under a thick layer of ice. Of course that is an inconvenient
truth for warmingists. Bill might claim that Exxon-Mobil has gone there
in the dead of night, drilled holes, dropped some Viking tools and
artefacts down those holes and then poured water back into them
Those cases have been addressed in the literature. I've read a few
and felt those I saw were reasoned as well as my ignorance allowed me
to determine and didn't overstate or understate the cases. I can
track down more and we can read them together, if you are interested
in reading more comprehensively on these specifics. At that point,
I'd probably take what you said afterwards as a much more serious
criticism.
Thing is, there's tons and tons of other cases. I mean, guys like old
Oetzi was for sure not doing a glacier hike just for the fun of it. He
was probably hunting on fertile grounds that were ice-free, and then
from what archaeologists have determined killed if not murdered up there.
[...]

In other words, you don't want to spend the time needed to gain a
comprehensive view. I can accept that. But realize what it means as
far as my taking your opinion on any of this.

My feeling here is that climate science is huge. Really huge. No one
masters all of it. But if you can't even be bothered to take a point
you are making -- not something someone else decides to say or write,
but something you decide on your own is true enough that you are
willing to place yourself in a position of making claims about it --
and follow through with even that single thing long enough to find out
where it takes you when you gain a fuller view of even that tiny
corner of things....

All I did is point out some things that happened in the past. Such as
mostly ice free passage ways that existed not too long ago, a few
thousand years, and that existed for a long time. Things that scientists
and also Bill constantly try to brush aside, things that are proven.

Well, why should I care, then?

Yeah. It takes work. So what? Spend it, or don't. But if you
don't, even in cases where you feel comfortable talking strongly about
it... then it undermines (to me) what you say. You either care about
your opinion or you don't. And if you don't, why should I? (On this
subject, obviously. On many others, I'm all ears.)

Just like nearly all other people, I have to rely on work by scientists
because I either can't do it, don't want to do it or simply don't have
the time to do it. It is the same in business where micro-management
spells doom. You have to trust others or you go under together with the
whole company. Because you haven't done it all by yourself does not mean
you can't have and voice an opinion.

When looking at the behavior of a substantial number of climate
scientists over the last few years I found lots of red flags. The latest
emails are by far the biggest. IMHO a respectable scientists never ever
thinks that way, let alone write it. I find that highly unprofessional
and it has now thoroughly undermined whatever trust was left for me in
their scientific "evidence". Sorry, but that's the way I see it.

What I do not want is hip-shot actions such as CO2 taxes or dangerous
and untested stuff like CO2 sequestration underneath areas where people
live, all based on science that I now highly question. And believe me, I
am not alone, the number of people around here that believe the IPCC has
dwindled drastically.

What is much more important for me is what each and every one of us is
_personally_ doing to reduce their carbon, smog and other footprints. I
am ready to go to the mat about that at any time.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:31:39 -0800 (PST), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

It's been some time since you posted anything interesting or useful
about electronic design. Last thing I remember is your perplexity that
a simple oscillator simulation refused to squegg.

That seems to reflect a weakness of the Gummel-Poon model. I'm working
on it.

But you used mosfets.

John

 

[Joerg]

Bill Sloman wrote:

On Nov 28, 4:25 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:
On Nov 28, 12:54 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:
On Nov 27, 5:46 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:
On Nov 27, 2:17 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Jon Kirwan wrote:
On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:43:33 -0800, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid
wrote:
Jon Kirwan wrote:
On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:03:28 -0800, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid
wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:
On Nov 25, 12:09 pm, Jan Panteltje <pNaonStpealm...@yahoo.com> wrote:
[...]
As you said, climate is averages, but we must look much, much farther
than just 50, 100 or 150 years. As has been discussed here before, there
has for example been homesteading and farming in areas of Greenland that
are now under a thick layer of ice.

Except that they aren't.

And neither the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period were
particularly dramatic temperature excursions. Denialists do claim that
the existence of these small and local excursions proves that the
warming that we are seeing at the moment isn't anthropogenic, but the
logic doesn't really hold up.

To make the argument work you have to claim - and prove - that CO2
isn't a greenhouse gas, or that the measured concentrations in the
atmosphere aren't higher than they have been for 650,000 years (as
recorded in the ice core data) and probably for the last 20 million
years (if you trust the geological data).

No, warmingists have to prove that CO2 _is_ causing trouble for us.

Worrying about the exact fate of Viking settlement is a rather foolish
distraction, though your claim that the former settlements are now
under a thick layer of ice - when most of them aren't and never have
been - does sugggest that you aren't too careful with your facts, nor
presumably are you all that careful about where you get them.

No, it means that you didn't even look at my links.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

 

[Joerg]

Bill Sloman wrote:

On Nov 24, 6:03 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:
On Nov 24, 3:28 am, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:
On Nov 22, 11:04 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:
On Nov 22, 5:14 am, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:14:04 -0800 (PST),Bill Sloman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On Nov 22, 12:00 am, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
[...]
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/com...
" The other paper by MM is just garbage – as you knew. De Freitas
again. Pielke is also losing all credibility as well by replying to
the mad Finn as well – frequently as I see it. I can’t see either of
these papers being in the next IPCC report. K and I will keep them out
somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature
is ! "
Obviously not intended for publication, but why would you ever think
that because scientists are obliged to publish sober and rational
arguments, they aren't emotionally involved in their work?
Because they respect the scientific method? Because they honor truth?
There's no contradiction between emotional involvement and respecting
the scientific method.
Did you really read John's quote? Quote of quote: "K and I will keep
them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review
literature is ! "
If this was truly said then I have lost all respect for those guys. Any
and all. But they have already lost much of it a long time ago, at least
in this neighborhood (which is full of engineers).
There are "peer-reviewed" journals around whose editors have been
known to publish denialist propaganda of zero academic merit without
sending it out for review.
Ahm, didn't he write "even if _we_ have to redefine what the peer-review
literature is" ? Note the word "we" in there.
As long as there wasn't money to be made out of publishing pseudo-
academic articles, the scientific community could afford to be pretty
relaxed about what constituted a peer-reviewed journal. Exxon-Mobil
and similar organisations with a large financial interest in denying
anthrpogenic global warming have created a situation where tighter
definitions are desirable.
Yeah, the usual conspiracy theory. I think the notion of the whole AGW
scheme being a gravy train has more credibility than that. At least
that's what people around my neighborhood are thinking.
With a lot of help from denialist propaganda. It is a bit odd that the
denialist propaganda machine hasn't got reports of IPCC members
driving around in Lamborginis while living in the lap of luxury. If
they had traded their academic integrity for a mess of pottage you'd
expect other academics in related fields to have noticed some change
in their life-style.
Presumably this kind of evidence is a little too hard to fake.
All one has to do is look at Al Gore, his mansions and all. Living
green. Yeah, right.

He was rich long before he was active against global warming, even
though his book "Earth in the Balance" dates back to 1992.

A preacher that doesn't live by his teachings? We oughta, coulda,
shoulda, but not me?

Sourcewatch gets its data from Exxon-Mobil's published accounts, which
provide rather better evidence than the kinds of conspiracy theories
with which Ravinghorde regales us.
Got a link the _proves_ that Exxon tries to fudge science here? Similar
to those embarrassing email?

This is the usual reference

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/sep/20/oilandpetrol.business

which reports the British Royal Society's letter to Exxon-Mobil

So? Quote "In a letter earlier this month to Esso, the UK arm of
ExxonMobil, the Royal Society cites its own survey which found that
ExxonMobil last year distributed $2.9m to 39 groups that the society
says misrepresent the science of climate change"

That is propaganda in my eyes. If the IPCC says that others
"misrepresent" the science that doesn't mean a thing to me anymore. At
least not right now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial

Quote "... sent letters that "attack the UN's panel as 'resistant to
reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that
are poorly supported by the analytical work'"

Remember the recently leaked emails? If that isn't enough proof of
"resistant to reasonable criticism" of scientists to you then I can't
help you.

is more comprehensive, and

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/global_warming_contrarians/exxonmobil-report-smoke.html

points to a very comprehensive report by the Union of Concerned
Scientists (UCS).

Ah yes, the usual witch hunt. By a "union of concerned scientists".

I've asked for _proof_ where Exxon _fudged_ science. Sorry, but you did
not deliver that.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.