Catholicism and Climate Change

[JasonSB]

Yeppers!! “To Walk” is to change velocity by acceleration.

OK, so you don’t know the difference between velocity and acceleration.

“To walk at exactly 4 km/h” means to change position at a constant velocity of 4 km/h. If the velocity is constant then there is no acceleration, as acceleration is nothing more and nothing less than the time derivative of velocity. The time derivative of a constant is zero.

Care to disprove it?

Sure – it’s disproved by the very fact that I said “to walk at exactly 4 km/h”. How the person came to be walking at exactly 4 km/h is beyond the scope of the original example. The fact is that there is nothing stopping them from walking at exactly 4 km/h for the duration of the example and if they are walking at exactly 4 km/h then there is no acceleration by definition.

If they were to stop walking or to walk at a speed other than exactly 4 km/h then there would have to be an acceleration. But there wasn’t.

None of this actually matters, of course, which is why my later example incorporated acceleration in an attempt to bypass this pointless discussion. It’s a shame you completely ignored it and instead chose to argue basic physics – possibly because it’s the only thing you thought you understood, which is also a shame, because it’s wrong, but I guess it helps me prove my point.

The above statement, that I answered, is not an argument of relativity. It is a statement of kinetic energy impossibility, as we know it.

No. The only reason it is impossible is because of Relativity. Without Relativity kinetic energy does not tend to infinity as the speed of light is approached. It’s a consequence of Relativity.

I should also point out that the kinetic energy you are talking about is observer-dependent. From the point of view of an observer in an inertial reference frame where the object is at rest (e.g. the train), its kinetic energy is zero. It can accelerate in that reference frame perfectly normally. It’s only an outside observer travelling at a different speed who will see differently and it’s really a consequence of time dilation.

It is false, because of one thing.
It is a matter of kinetic energy which goes to infinity at the speed of light, and can never be reached by acceleration, as we know it, now.

No. It is most certainly not impossible for the passenger to walk forwards in the train at 4 km/h as stated in my original problem. Even if we start walking as part of the problem, so that there is an acceleration at the beginning, it makes no difference – the passenger can still walk from the rear to the front of the train at 4 km/h even while the train is travelling at 2 km/h below the speed of light.

What is false is the conclusion that if the train is travelling at 2 km/h below the speed of light and the passenger is walking 4 km/h faster than the train then the passenger must be travelling 2 km/h above the speed of light. They are not. They are actually travelling barely more than 2 km/h below the speed of light while at the same time they are walking 4 km/h faster than the train.

Objects of mass can not accelerate at the speed of light.

Let alone, “2km/h above the speed of light”… remember infinity ].

No need to argue relativity in your above statement. No need for outside observers. It makes no difference what they observe.

Brilliant.

It’s pretty obvious you don’t know anything about Relativity. You’re relying on a result of Relativity that you must have heard from somewhere (that you apparently don’t even know is a result of Relativity) to claim that something’s impossible but you’re completely missing the point of why. There is nothing stopping the passenger from walking from the back of the train to the front no matter how fast it’s going. They never exceed the speed of light no matter what reference frame you use.

It’s also pretty obvious that my hypothetical example of how not being able to explain a scientific theory to you does not mean anything about the correctness of that theory actually turns out to be a pretty good real-life example, too.

I thought you were a “scientist”?

Oh, I am. That doesn’t mean I can explain complicated scientific theories to people unequipped to understand them, and that doesn’t mean those theories are wrong. Which was kind of my point.

 

[JasonSB]

I didn’t say anything because my friend John, doesn’t present himself as a “scientist”.

Is that so?

Guess what Jason. I’m a scientist too.

You even responded to it!

It is a wondrous and dangerous position when you chose to present yourself as an authoritarian figure and make an appeal to authority fallacy in logic.

Complete and utter rubbish.

Firstly, as I have repeatedly said, the fact that I am a scientist has nothing to do with my arguments. Have you even once seen me say “You should believe me because I’m a scientist”? No. The only appeals to authority I have made have been to actual authorities like peer-reviewed scientific publications and summaries of those like the IPCC reports, and as I have repeatedly said, that’s not a fallacy.

Secondly, the very idea that you are now pretending that claiming to be a scientist is an attempt to claim authority when it is clear your attitude towards climate scientists throughout this entire discussion has been to ridicule and denigrate them is beyond reason. What possible reason could I have for thinking that it would give me any benefit to claim I’m a scientist in this forum? It was a passing remark in the context of explaining my motives for posting here when you were encouraging me to go elsewhere. Nothing more, nothing less. Would you have me lie?

And I haven’t missed your repeated insinuations that I am lying about being a scientist in almost every post since then. You are very quick to “warn” others about breaching rules but you seem to have no qualms about repeated and blatant ad hominem attacks on those you disagree with without regard to the effect it has on the tone of the discussion. I have repeatedly overlooked them and tried to focus on the issues at hand rather than respond in kind but it is clear to me that some people behave very differently in practice to what they preach.

That is why you, as an authoritarian figure, that you chose to present yourself as, have little room for “oppsies” committed, as that authoritarian figure

I can’t believe you can say these things with a straight face. Oh, wait – you didn’t. Even you know it’s so obviously rubbish that it’s actually funny.

 

[JasonSB]

There is a moral side to the environment that is rarely mentioned, and I think it’s something the Catholic Church would be doing a great service to focus on.

If our personal impact to the environment is due to our laziness, sloth, attachment to things, vanity, greed, then the Church should help us to recognize these sorts of weaknesses.

The Church shouldn’t get wrapped up in the global power point of the environment, but should instead focus at the individual moral point.

If I throw the oil down the storm drain because I am lazy and don’t want to exert the effort to dispose of it properly, that’s a moral issue the Church should remind me about.

If I am vane, and try to acquire a car every year in order to feel popular, that’s a moral issue that could lead to other problems.

If I drive in small ways the demand for all sorts of exotic foods because I like their taste and think that I deserve these, maybe there’s a deeper moral weakness in me.

If I am too lazy to take care of my tools and let them rust and then simply go purchase more tools, then there’s a problem.

And if all such habits set others off to live in the same way…

I completely agree.

This is the moral problem that needs to be surfaced to Catholics, not the nonsense about Global Warming and power politics, and “sending messages” and earth worship, and forced compliance and removal of freedom…a Totalitarian approach to the environment for instance.

This is where we part ways. Global Warming is not nonsense, it’s no different to any of the other ways in which we impact on the environment, whether due to our laziness, sloth, attachment to things, vanity, or greed.

If those moral shortcomings cause us to release more greenhouse gasses, and those extra greenhouse gasses cause global warming, and that global warming causes not only environmental damage but also human suffering, then how is it any different to the other issues?

I don’t know why you equate this with “power politics”, “sending messages”, “earth worship”, or “forced compliance and removal of freedom”.

The important question is whether our release of greenhouse gasses is going to cause environmental damage and human suffering and, if so, how much? So far all of the evidence overwhelmingly says “Yes” and “Quite a lot”. Nobody has been able to show that the answer is “No” or “Nothing to worry about”.

I don’t see why we can’t address a simple question like that without denigrating those who are providing the answers. Attacking the messager because the message they are giving will highlight our laziness, sloth, attachment to things, vanity, or greed is not altogether surprising, but it’s not something to be proud of, either.

 

[JasonSB]

This is one of the major reasons I do not take seriously the claims made by the AGW crowd.

Yes, as you’ve already said. Apparently you missed my response the first time around. Perhaps you’ll listen to someone else instead:

Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard

The belief that we can significantly replace conventional power plants with “renewable” sources is a fantasy.

Then you won’t have any trouble coming up with the facts and figures to support that, will you? I don’t recall you pointing out any flaws in the figures I provided before, just an objection to the amount of land required, which is not only actually pretty modest compared to the amount of land we use for other things, it’s also often in areas that are currently unused.

If CO2 emissions are really causing global warming, and if that warming is really going to cause significant problems, then the only viable solution is to replace conventional power plants with nuclear plants.

Nuclear power will certainly help, but it can’t solve the problem by itself. Why do you think it can? Do you have solutions to the various obstacles to a massive increase in nuclear capability that I’m not aware of?

If someone is not pushing for the nuclear solution he is not serious about AGW, and if the people who say they believe in AGW demonstrate that they don’t take their arguments seriously then I see no reason why I should take them seriously either.

Then since I included nuclear power as part of the solution (as does the Skeptical Science link above) I assume you are now going to say that those of us who believe in AGW are to be taken seriously?

What I don’t understand is why you didn’t state that you are taking my arguments seriously when I mentioned nuclear power before? Sure, I said there were problems that meant it couldn’t be the solution – in fact, nothing can – but I definitely agreed that it was part of the solution, and if you look around you’ll see many people saying the same thing. Why are you pretending that we are not?

Do you know what I find hard to take seriously? People who claim that they have doubts about whether a problem is real based on what others propose as solutions. If everyone agreed that the only viable solution right now was a massive rollout of nuclear power, why would that make a difference to whether the problem is real or not? They usually aren’t even the same people! The people working on the problem are often no more knowledgeable about solutions than anyone else, so why you would connect the quality of their work with what solutions other people come up with is beyond me.

 

[Edward_H]

I completely agree.

This is where we part ways. Global Warming is not nonsense, it’s no different to any of the other ways in which we impact on the environment, whether due to our laziness, sloth, attachment to things, vanity, or greed.

If those moral shortcomings cause us to release more greenhouse gasses, and those extra greenhouse gasses cause global warming, and that global warming causes not only environmental damage but also human suffering, then how is it any different to the other issues?

I don’t know why you equate this with “power politics”, “sending messages”, “earth worship”, or “forced compliance and removal of freedom”.

The important question is whether our release of greenhouse gasses is going to cause environmental damage and human suffering and, if so, how much? So far all of the evidence overwhelmingly says “Yes” and “Quite a lot”. Nobody has been able to show that the answer is “No” or “Nothing to worry about”.

I don’t see why we can’t address a simple question like that without denigrating those who are providing the answers. Attacking the messager because the message they are giving will highlight our laziness, sloth, attachment to things, vanity, or greed is not altogether surprising, but it’s not something to be proud of, either.

Global warming due to man’s activity is unarguably an equivocal concept at this point. We should encourage scientists to pursue their research in truth. This hasn’t been happening. The huge influx of government research dollars and the lack of integrity of some scientists has clouded findings.

We can’t even explain definitively the set of causes which has led to bad science (e.g., lapses in integrity, suppression of evidence, ill-gotten research grants, etc.), let alone the purported scientific findings that have resulted from the compromised scientists!!

The Church should perhaps fund some carefully monitored research in Catholic universities, and this might help apostolate among all scientists, to see truth being pursued with great and self-less ardor, done with charity and humility.

No?

 

[kimmielittle]

OK, so you don’t know the difference between velocity and acceleration.

“To walk at exactly 4 km/h” means to change position at a constant velocity of 4 km/h. If the velocity is constant then there is no acceleration,

Once again, it seems your reading comprehension is having a setback the key words here are “TO” and “WALK”. The word “TO” is not passive. It requires an act, or action, or application.

“TO WALK” is dependent upon maintaining an amount of force to gain velocity and as we know it, requires all humans that walk, to maintain that force, or they decelerate the velocity from forward / directional momentum.

Walking requires force for each step attempted, which accelerates the object of mass, forward / directionally.

Ceasing that force ceases velocity of the persons body. It is not a constant.

Applying that force / energy to an object of mass, is to accelerate it.

Sure – it’s disproved by the very fact that I said “to walk at exactly 4 km/h”. How the person came to be walking at exactly 4 km/h is beyond the scope of the original example. The fact is that there is nothing stopping them from walking at exactly 4 km/h for the duration of the example and if they are walking at exactly 4 km/h then there is no acceleration by definition.

“Walking” is kinetic energy at work. It requires an act of force / energy for each step. Appying that force, or energy, is the act of accelerating the object of mass.

The act of “WALKING” is an application of force kinetic energy ] needed to accelerate to maintain any velocity constant.

Try “WALKING” without applying force / energy - stop applying that force / energy and you decelerate - velocity would not be constant.

Once again, It is a matter of kinetic energy which goes to infinity at the speed of light, and can never be reached by acceleration, as we know it, now.

Objects of mass can not accelerate at the speed of light.

It doesn’t matter how you try to wrap the problem.

 

[kimmielittle]

Is that so?

You even responded to it!

Once again, you seem to not comprehend what he did say…and injected your subjective speculation.

Here is a hint…that remark was sarcasm. His whole post went on to state his observations in nature and of earth.

Complete and utter rubbish.

Really? Then why even state that you are a scientist? No matter what you say…it was received as to bolster your views. THAT is an appeal to authority.

The only appeals to authority I have made have been to actual authorities like peer-reviewed scientific publications and summaries of those like the IPCC reports, and as I have repeatedly said, that’s not a fallacy.

It certainly is! According to you, we are to trust reports from IPCC etc. When they are mired in defects, that the public that funds them and their actions and claims, finds questionable.

Secondly, the very idea that you are now pretending that claiming to be a scientist is an attempt to claim authority when it is clear your attitude towards climate scientists throughout this entire discussion has been to ridicule and denigrate them is beyond reason.

Once again, AGW scientists have become politicized - authoritarian figures. To whom much is given - much is owed. They have made this choice.

However, I have never seen more ad hominems, come from anyone here, in the quality that you present. So, when you accuse me of ridicule and denigration - You a “scientist” are held to a higher standard.

What possible reason could I have for thinking that it would give me any benefit to claim I’m a scientist in this forum?

Dono

It was a passing remark in the context of explaining my motives for posting here when you were encouraging me to go elsewhere.

I believe it came up before I asked if you would address the link - but if you say so.

And I haven’t missed your repeated insinuations that I am lying about being a scientist in almost every post since then.

Once again, wrong. I am calling your hand when a “scientist” uses such as subjective speculation, etc, instead of facts.

You are very quick to “warn” others about breaching rules but you seem to have no qualms about repeated and blatant ad hominem attacks on those you disagree with without regard to the effect it has on the tone of the discussion.

Oh, give me a break - look at your posts, not only to me here, they drip of such as catty, snide remarks. One of my first responses to you here, pointed that out.

I have repeatedly overlooked them and tried to focus on the issues at hand rather than respond in kind but it is clear to me that some people behave very differently in practice to what they preach.

Oh?

 

[Ender]

Then since I included nuclear power as part of the solution (as does the Skeptical Science link above) I assume you are now going to say that those of us who believe in AGW are to be taken seriously?

Not exactly. The Skeptical Science link calls for replacing 700 GW of coal power with nuclear, but also calls for replacing 2000 GW each with solar and wind. That’s laughable, but the biofuels projection is even more ludicrous for precisely the reason John21652 mentioned: it requires gargantuan amounts of farmland and takes at least as much energy to produce as you get back from it. We have already seen what happened to food prices when the US started (subsidizing) corn conversion to ethanol. Use one sixth of the world’s crop land for fuel? This isn’t even laughable, it’s lunacy.

I did like the proposal that cars should average 60mpg instead of the current 30. Of course, with current technology that can probably be accomplished only if we drove motorcycles with sidecars but it’s good to be optimistic. I was less impressed with the suggestion that we should halve the number of miles we drive each year, which, when these “wedges” don’t deliver, will be followed with proposals that we set our air conditioners to 85 in the summer and our heaters to 65 in the winter, give up beef, sell our SUVs, and eat our pets.

What I don’t understand is why you didn’t state that you are taking my arguments seriously when I mentioned nuclear power before? Sure, I said there were problems that meant it couldn’t be the solution – in fact, nothing can – but I definitely agreed that it was part of the solution, and if you look around you’ll see many people saying the same thing. Why are you pretending that we are not?

A nod toward nuclear is useful but is merely a fig leaf, an island of sanity in a sea of fantasy.

Do you know what I find hard to take seriously? People who claim that they have doubts about whether a problem is real based on what others propose as solutions. If everyone agreed that the only viable solution right now was a massive rollout of nuclear power, why would that make a difference to whether the problem is real or not?

If you discovered that you might have cancer, would you make massive changes in your life style? If you don’t have the cancer, changes are unnecessary and if you do have it, making changes that don’t alleviate it are irrelevant. I liken implementing the changes proposed by the Skeptical Science blog to spending your life savings to receive laetrile treatments for cancer.

Ender

 

[John21652]

**From **icecap.us/images/uploads/50millionclimaterefugeesby2010.pdf

UN Day for Disaster Reduction: Weds. Oct. 12
EMBARGO: 6 p.m. GMT, Tues. Oct. 11, 2005
Contacts: Terry Collins, Toronto +1-416-538-8712; +1-416-878-8712 (m), terrycollins@rogers.com
Ilona Roberts, Bonn, +49 (0) 228 4228-5502, roberts@ehs.unu.edu
** Naoko Yano, Tokyo, **+81-3-3499-2811, Yano@hq.unu.edu

UNU-EHS Director Janos Bogardi and other experts are available for advance interviews Mon-Tues. Oct. 10-11. Please use contacts above to schedule a time.

As Ranks of “Environmental Refugees” Swell Worldwide, Calls Grow for Better Definition, Recognition, Support

Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of ‘refugee’.

In a statement to mark the UN Day for Disaster Reduction (October 12), UNU’s Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) in Bonn says such problems as sea level rise, expanding deserts and catastrophic weather-induced flooding have already contributed to large permanent migrations and could eventually displace hundreds of millions.

Read more on the web site at icecap.us/images/uploads/50millionclimaterefugeesby2010.pdf

Maybe someone should ring Terry, Ilona and Naoko and ask to speak to an expert and find out what’s going on.

Sorta makes you wonder how they go about forecasting the weather, doesn’t it?!

 

[JasonSB]

Global warming due to man’s activity is unarguably an equivocal concept at this point.

It most certainly is arguable, because I’m arguing that it is unequivocal. There are mountains of evidence including direct measurements that our release of greenhouse gasses is enhancing the greenhouse effect and warming the globe. There is no evidence to the contrary.

We should encourage scientists to pursue their research in truth.

I’ve never met a scientist who does not. Have you?

This hasn’t been happening.

Then you shouldn’t have any problem proving that. Here’s the link of direct empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming that I presented before: skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-global-warming.htm

Each piece of evidence there is traced to a publication in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, so you can see who was responsible for it. Who was lying? Was it Wang? Harries? Evans? Griggs? Chen? Murphy? Domingues? Surely if you are going to call these people liars you must have evidence of how they fabricated their results, right?

The huge influx of government research dollars and the lack of integrity of some scientists has clouded findings.

Really? Which results are wrong? Who’s integrity is lacking? And how does “the huge influx of government research dollars” cloud findings when “skeptical” scientists themselves have publicly stated that they have no problem accessing research funding (therefore funding is not tied to whether you are pro- or anti-AGW) and researchers don’t actually get the money themselves (therefore funding does not enrich the researchers personally).

You must have missed these links from one of my earlier posts on this topic:

profmandia.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/taking-the-money-for-granted-%E2%80%93-part-i/

profmandia.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/taking-the-money-for-granted-%E2%80%93-part-ii/

Why not contrast that to Pat Michaels asking power companies to give him money so he can advocate their position? Or the ExxonMobil-funded think tank American Enterprise Institute offering $10,000 to each IPCC scientist if they would simply write a paper undermining AGW? How can you overlook blatant and obvious attempts to corrupt science like this while claiming it’s actually the other side doing it?

Now, a company like ExxonMobil certainly has the resources to conduct scientific research if it so chose. After all, the entire budget of NASA’s GISS is less than the cost of ExxonMobil’s CEO alone! And it certainly has the motive to conduct scientific research to discredit AGW, as is well known.

Yet they do not. Why is that? Why would the largest oil company in the world, one of the most profitable companies in the world, with a clear desire to prevent action on climate change, not invest a tiny fraction of their annual profits on doing basic science to prove that AGW is wrong?

The only possible answer is because they can’t. The science isn’t wrong. Funding PR campaigns to convince people that the science is uncertain is what you do when you know you can’t actually demonstrate that the science is wrong. It’s not a coincidence that not only the tactics but the people and companies doing the PR are the same as was used by the tobacco industry to delay action on cigarette smoking.

We can’t even explain definitively the set of causes which has led to bad science (e.g., lapses in integrity, suppression of evidence, ill-gotten research grants, etc.), let alone the purported scientific findings that have resulted from the compromised scientists!!

Has it ever occurred to you that the reason you can’t explain it is because it isn’t true? Rather than putting the cart before the horse, how about demonstrating the lapses in integrity, the suppression of evidence, and the ill-gotten research grants?

The Church should perhaps fund some carefully monitored research in Catholic universities, and this might help apostolate among all scientists, to see truth being pursued with great and self-less ardor, done with charity and humility.

I think it would be great if the Church did that (doesn’t it already?), but I have no doubt that if the Church were to announce findings consistent with the current findings it wouldn’t convince those who are determined not to accept the truth. They would still find a way to argue that the Pope is saying “black” when he says “white” and still find a way to smear the scientists with no evidence that their work is actually wrong.

 

[JasonSB]

Once again, it seems your reading comprehension is having a setback

Nice.

You know what would be great? If, one day, it ever occurred to you that you could actually be wrong. That when someone disagrees with you, it doesn’t automatically mean that they are an idiot and don’t understand what you are saying, especially when they are saying things to you that you clearly don’t understand yourself. Either (a) they really are talking gibberish, or (b) they are actually saying something sensible but you are the one who doesn’t understand it.

the key words here are “TO” and “WALK”. The word “TO” is not passive. It requires an act, or action, or application.

Apparently you are unfamiliar with the standard devices used in these kinds of physics thought experiments.

The key words were, as I said, “exactly 4 km/h”. How do I know? Because I said them.

“To walk” is merely scaffolding, just as the train itself is. They are merely there to paint a picture for the thought experiment. They are not intended to be part of the experiment. If you’re worried about the walking aspect, why not worry about the wheels on the train itself? The top of the wheel is going just as fast forwards relative to the train as the bottom of the wheel is going backwards, so if the train is going at c - 1 m/s how fast is the top of the wheel going? What about the G-forces on the wheels going that fast? Or the wind resistance? All of these things are obviously outside of the actual thought experiment and are properly ignored because they detract from the actual question at hand. Worried about those details? Use a rocket in space instead. Worried about the actual mechanics of walking? Fine, imagine the person was ice-skating instead. It’s not the point.

What’s really ironic about all of this is that it doesn’t make any difference.

I already changed the problem to avoid this ridiculous discussion when I said the passenger accelerated from 0 m/s to 2 m/s. I can change it further: the passenger hops, skips, jumps, waltzes, and boogies down the length of the train, speeding up and slowing down as they see fit. They can even sprint as fast as they can if they want. Does it make any difference?

No.

The reason it doesn’t make any difference is not because objects of mass can’t go faster than the speed of light. They never do go faster than the speed of light, no matter how fast they run and no matter how close to the speed of light the train is going.

As I have said many, many times now, the reason the original statement was wrong was because it added two quantities that can’t simply be added. One was the speed of the train in some inertial reference frame. The other was the speed of the passenger in the train’s inertial reference frame. You can’t simply add speeds measured in two different reference frames that are at motion with respect to one other. You have to do a Lorentz transformation first to bring the two values into a common reference frame. Then you can add them, and when you do that, the result is always less than c.

Once again, It is a matter of kinetic energy which goes to infinity at the speed of light, and can never be reached by acceleration, as we know it, now.

Let me ask you once again: If I am sitting on a train (or spaceship, or whatever) that is travelling at 1 m/s below the speed of light, is there anything to stop me from getting up and walking, jogging, running, or skipping from the back of the train to the front?

If you say I cannot because kinetic energy goes to infinity at the speed of light then you are wrong because I never go at the speed of light so it is besides the point.

You are making the exact same type of mistake that I was using in my original example to Ender. The only difference is that instead of thinking the example refutes Relativity, you think the passenger can’t walk to the front of the train in the first place. In both instances the reason for the mistake is because you are trying to add two numbers that can’t simply be added. The passenger never accelerates to the speed of light no matter how fast they walk, run, or dance down the aisle.

Objects of mass can not accelerate at the speed of light.

True, but completely irrelevant because nobody is accelerating at the speed of light in the problem as described.

 

[John21652]

It most certainly is arguable, because I’m arguing that it is unequivocal. There are mountains of evidence including direct measurements that our release of greenhouse gasses is enhancing the greenhouse effect and warming the globe. There is no evidence to the contrary.

Jason, how do you explain the graph on this page -

geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif

 

[JasonSB]

Once again, you seem to not comprehend what he did say…and injected your subjective speculation.

Now I’m being criticised of “injecting subjective speculation” for taking someone’s comment at face value? I knew you played fast and loose with your accusations in the past but this is just ridiculous.

Here is a hint…that remark was sarcasm. His whole post went on to state his observations in nature and of earth.

Well, in that case I apologise for believing what he said. I checked his profile and it says he majored in Philosophy and Anthropology; since Anthropology is a social science I actually thought that’s what he meant; I even refrained from making a comment about “soft sciences” because it seemed unnecessarily antagonistic and instead focussed on the flaws in his arguments. I didn’t know he was actually being sarcastic.

I wonder how many other times I’ve accepted something you or others have said here when the truth was actually the opposite?

Really? Then why even state that you are a scientist?

Because it directly explained my motives for posting here instead of WUWT or RC.

Why is that so hard for you to understand? Here it is, once again:

“Instead I choose to post here – a place where most scientists wouldn’t bother posting. I am a scientist, and I have always been proud of the modern Catholic stance towards science, defending Catholicism against fellow scientists as being the most “rational” religion, so I was disconcerted when I saw exactly the same kind of thinking on this thread that I only previously associated with American Evangelical Christians.”

So I choose to post here because:

(a) Most scientists wouldn’t bother posting here.

(b) I felt there was a need to inject some facts into the discussion because I was appalled at what I saw here and how it conflicted with my own notion of the Catholic attitude towards science that I had spent my life defending against other scientists.

That’s it. If I had any idea at how big a deal you would make of that single sentence I would have censored myself and never mentioned a word of it. Is that what you want? You want people to lie, either directly or by omission, in order to avoid ridiculous and long-winded discussions about what they “meant” by their comments? Is that the point of these tiresome exchanges?

I am in a unique position to know what the point of saying that was, so don’t try to argue with me about what I was trying to say. If you want to fabricate motives in order to try to justify your own beliefs rather than actually discuss the facts then there’s nothing I can do about that other than point out when you are wrong.

No matter what you say…it was received as to bolster your views. THAT is an appeal to authority.

So how you perceive something determines what is true no matter what I say?

Not only is speed relative, but now, apparently, so is truth. I can make an innocent statement that is not an appeal to authority and, at the same time, if you receive it differently then it is an appeal to authority. I had no idea.

I still can’t figure out how you can “receive” it the way you do. It came up on page 50 of a 58 page discussion – a bit late to be “useful”, I would have thought – and was talking about my motives. I’m not even a climate scientist and have never claimed to be, so how on earth can it be an appeal to authority on this topic? None of my arguments in this thread depend in any way on who I am. That is the precise opposite of an appeal to authority.

 

[JasonSB]

It certainly is! According to you, we are to trust reports from IPCC etc. When they are mired in defects, that the public that funds them and their actions and claims, finds questionable.

How many “defects” have you found in the WG1 report? You know, the one that actually establishes the science? Oh, that’s right – none.

The only actual defect you’ve shown in the report was in WG2 where it contradicted WG1 and WG1 was correct!

Now, since the IPCC report is merely a synthesis of the actual science, put together mostly by volunteers I might add, if the IPCC report is “defective” then either it incorrectly summarises the science or the science itself is defective. Where is your evidence for either?

Just out of curiosity: if the following scientific organisations that endorse the consensus position that “most of the global warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities” are not an authority on science according to kimmielittle, then just who is an authority on science according to you?

American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Astronomical Society
American Chemical Society
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Physics
American Meteorological Society
American Physical Society
Australian Coral Reef Society
Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO
British Antarctic Survey
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Environmental Protection Agency
European Federation of Geologists
European Geosciences Union
Federation of American Scientists
Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies
Geological Society of America
Geological Society of Australia
International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA)
International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
National Center for Atmospheric Research
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Royal Meteorological Societ
Royal Society of the UK

Once again, AGW scientists have become politicized - authoritarian figures.

Self-evidently false. Does the IPCC report say “Global warming is real – trust us, we’re scientists?” No. It clearly spells out the evidence in the scientific literature so everyone can see for themselves why the IPCC report reaches the conclusions it does.

That’s the opposite of what you claim.

To whom much is given - much is owed. They have made this choice.

It’s easy to make baseless accusations, isn’t it? I asked Edward, so now let me ask you:

Each piece of evidence there is traced to a publication in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, so you can see who was responsible for it. Who was lying? Was it Wang? Harries? Evans? Griggs? Chen? Murphy? Domingues? Surely if you are going to call these people liars you must have evidence of how they fabricated their results, right?

 

[JasonSB]

However, I have never seen more ad hominems, come from anyone here, in the quality that you present.

I suspect not, since most of the “ad hominems” you claim to see are not. As I said before, any attempt I make to support the science you dismiss as an appeal to authority and any attempt I make to point out the flaws in an argument against the science you dismiss as an ad hominem. Those words don’t mean what you seem to think they mean.

So, when you accuse me of ridicule and denigration - You a “scientist” are held to a higher standard.

So you are saying it is perfectly OK for you to ridicule and denigrate others but not OK for those arguing with you? I must have overlooked that when I was looking at the rules. Perhaps you could point out to me where it says you are exempted.

Dono

Of course not. That’s because there isn’t any benefit. To admit I’m a scientist who disagrees with you is to invite ridicule. (Strangely, to claim to be a scientist to agrees with you resuls in :clapping:, regardless of the merit or lack thereof of the post in question. Your judgement is based purely on whether the person agrees with you or not.)

I believe it came up before I asked if you would address the link - but if you say so.

Why not just check? I certainly don’t recall making the admission before then, and you responded immediately with “It is, a stupidly put, appeal to authority. IMO. One fallacy in logic, I wouldn’t expect that a scientist would make ”. (Actually, I don’t know what the smiley on the end of that sentence is supposed to mean. You put them everywhere but smileys aren’t a get-out-of-jail-free card that allows you to be as malicious as you want and then pretend you were “just kidding”.)

Once again, wrong. I am calling your hand when a “scientist” uses such as subjective speculation, etc, instead of facts.

Even if I ignore the fact that your assessment of whether it’s “subjective speculation” rather than “facts” is almost always flawed, that claim is hard to believe. But even if you aren’t intending the repeated snide remarks to be not-so-subtle attempts to indicate you don’t believe me without actually calling me a liar I would still appreciate it if you stopped.

Finding a way to express yourself that doesn’t require a smiley on the end of every sentence to avoid “misconceptions” might help raise the tone as well.

Oh, give me a break - look at your posts, not only to me here, they drip of such as catty, snide remarks. One of my first responses to you here, pointed that out.

And it was wrong. 99% of the time my tone has simply been direct and forthright, with occasional lapses when you’ve provoked me enough. Almost every time you have made outrageous claims about what I said or what I meant when I said it I have really struggled to see how on earth someone of good will could possibly interpret it the way you do. Meanwhile, you seem completely oblivious to how offensive your rants and accusations really are, as if adding smiley faces somehow make it perfectly acceptable.

Oh?

Yes.

 

[JasonSB]

Jason, how do you explain the graph on this page -

geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif

I assume you mean the broader picture rather than the details, namely the fact that CO2 levels were much higher in the past yet temperature wasn’t astronomical. (The graph is too heavily smoothed to talk details.)

The simple answer is that the sun is hotter now than it was before (increasing ~10% per billion years). Temperature is a product of all forcings, and so in the past, a lot more CO2 was needed to achieve those temperatures because the forcing from the sun was less.

In about a billion years from now the sun will be so hot that the surface of the Earth will be too hot for liquid water to exist.

skepticalscience.com/CO2-was-higher-in-late-Ordovician.htm

skepticalscience.com/co2-higher-in-past.htm

Did you watch the Richard Alley video I linked to before? It’s an excellent discussion of precisely this issue. agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml

The really interesting question is why is the temperature so stable on that graph? It could, in principle, swing around a lot more wildly than it has, so that really is quite a narrow range for it to remain within. Richard Alley explains why, and I’ve discussed it before in this thread:

When the temperature is too low, ice forms, preventing CO2 from breaking down the rocks, increasing CO2 concentrations as the carbonate rocks are subducted due to plate techtonics and CO2 is released into the atmosphere by the resulting volcanoes. Therefore, even if the sun is too weak, Earth will still get warm eventually because the CO2 concentrations will rise enough to ensure it.

When the temperature is too high, lots of rocks are exposed to the air (because the ice sheets and glaciers retreat), increasing the rate of weathering, bringing the CO2 levels back down again. Therefore, if it gets too hot, CO2 levels eventually drop, cooling things down again.

As he explains, CO2 is the thermostat controlling global climate that has ensured a reasonable climate on Earth for most of that time despite the changes of the sun.

The only problem with this from our point of view is the timescales involved. The Earth will eventually recover from our CO2 emissions and temperatures will eventually get back down to normal (until the sun gets too hot, anyway), but if it takes 10 million years for that to happen then it’s not exactly useful for us. Extremely serious mass extinctions in the past, for example, have been precisely because CO2 levels suddenly increased in a very short time (due to a sudden increase in volcanism).

Oh, and just to avoid confusion, the warming over the last 50 years or so is not because of the slowly rising output of the sun. That’s a much longer-term phenomenon.

 

[JasonSB]

Not exactly. The Skeptical Science link calls for replacing 700 GW of coal power with nuclear, but also calls for replacing 2000 GW each with solar and wind.

You misunderstand.

The article is describing how much of each option would equate with one “stabilisation wedge”, where “a wedge represents an activity that reduces emissions to the atmosphere that starts at zero today and increases linearly until it accounts for 1 GtC/year of reduced carbon emissions in 50 years.” You need to implement seven such wedges to stabilise CO2 levels at 500 ppm by 2050. They identified fifteen possible and pratical options.

700 GW of nuclear power would be one wedge. If you think we could install twice as much nuclear as that, then that would be two wedges and you only have to identify five more to achieve the total of seven. Three times? Even better.

Wind and solar need 2000 GW of installed capacity rather than 700 GW for the simple reason that wind and solar do not achieve the 90% capacity factor that nuclear achieves.

That means you need 700 GW of nuclear power to displace 700 GW of coal, but you need 2000 GW of wind or solar power to displace the same 700 GW of coal.

It’s as simple as that.

That’s laughable,

Is it really? 2000 GW of nominal wind capacity added linearly over 50 years is 40 GW/year. In 2009 there was 36.7 GW of nominal wind capacity added. We’re talking about a marginal increase over what we are already installing. Considering the rate of adding wind capacity increased by 35% from 2008 to 2009, why is another 9% increase that is then held constant for the next 50 years so laughable?

PV is a long way further back but it seems to be picking up a lot of steam now the prices have come down as well. PV has the advantage that it doesn’t need to achieve grid parity pricing, it only needs to be competitive with retail prices because it displaces consumption at the end user’s site.

That article also didn’t mention concentrated solar thermal, which I personally think is the #1 option going forward. But even if you don’t think solar will scale up, wind is a no-brainer.

but the biofuels projection is even more ludicrous for precisely the reason John21652 mentioned: it requires gargantuan amounts of farmland and takes at least as much energy to produce as you get back from it. We have already seen what happened to food prices when the US started (subsidizing) corn conversion to ethanol. Use one sixth of the world’s crop land for fuel? This isn’t even laughable, it’s lunacy.

I agree. Biofuels are two orders of magnitude less productive per unit of land than solar thermal and they take up valuable farmland rather than desert. It is not one of the seven wedges I would choose out of the 15 options, and the fact that Bush spent so much money on that instead of something like solar thermal is appalling.

I did like the proposal that cars should average 60mpg instead of the current 30. Of course, with current technology that can probably be accomplished only if we drove motorcycles with sidecars but it’s good to be optimistic.

The Prius is already at 50 mpg. IIRC simply electrifying the vehicle fleet would achieve equivalent CO2 output as an average 60 mpg petrol car even using fossil fuel power stations. Remember that we’re talking a linear change over 50 years, so the average mpg of the entire vehicle fleet needs to increase from 30 mpg to 60 mpg over that time. We don’t need to replace the entire vehicle fleet with hybrids tomorrow.

I was less impressed with the suggestion that we should halve the number of miles we drive each year,

That’s an alternative wedge that achieves the same outcome as increasing the fuel economy to 60 mpg. In other words, you get the same effect if everyone drives the same distance but we double the economy or if we have the same economy but everyone drives half the distance.

Reducing the reliance on cars – improving public transport systems, for example – can certainly be part of the solution.

A nod toward nuclear is useful but is merely a fig leaf, an island of sanity in a sea of fantasy.

It’s not a nod – it’s a simple statement about how much nuclear would be required for one wedge. You think nuclear capacity could be trippled? Excellent, that’s three wedges already. If we can improve fuel economy by 100% over the next 50 years (remembering that the current Prius is already nearly there), improve building efficiency, keep adding wind power at 9% higher than the same rate we have already been adding it, and implement the forest management policies, and we’re there! Don’t like one of my choices? Fine, substitute another you think is more palatable. Carbon Capture and Storage? Solar? Improved power plant efficiency? I didn’t use any of those.

What about the McKinsey studies that show not only that solving the problem is not only technically feasible, the first chunk of changes actually save money?

ww1.mckinsey.com/clientservice/sustainability/service.asp

ww1.mckinsey.com/clientservice/sustainability/Costcurves.asp

ww1.mckinsey.com/clientservice/sustainability/pathways_low_carbon_economy.asp

I’d be interested in hearing your definition of “sanity” and “fantasy” one day, though.

 

[JasonSB]

If you discovered that you might have cancer, would you make massive changes in your life style? If you don’t have the cancer, changes are unnecessary and if you do have it, making changes that don’t alleviate it are irrelevant. I liken implementing the changes proposed by the Skeptical Science blog to spending your life savings to receive laetrile treatments for cancer.

A far better analogy would be going to your doctor and having him tell you that if you keep smoking 10 packs of cigarettes a day there’s a good change you’re going to get lung cancer, in addition to the decrease in fitness and other health impacts you’re already experiencing.

If you start to cut back on the cigarettes – and even give them up altogether – then not only will you reduce the risk of lung cancer (cf. catastrophic global warming), you’ll also get the other health benefits that go along with it (cf. reduced reliance on Middle-Eastern oil and the problems that go with that; reduced pollution; more energy independence; etc.) as well as actually save you money (as many of the carbon-reduction strategies actually do).

 

[Ender]

The Prius is already at 50 mpg. IIRC simply electrifying the vehicle fleet would achieve equivalent CO2 output as an average 60 mpg petrol car even using fossil fuel power stations.

This is only partly true. A brand new Prius will achieve about 50 mpg, but over time, as the batteries wear out, the mileage drops considerably. A close friend had a Prius and sold it after three years because the mileage had come down more than he thought appropriate and he didn’t want to pay for (very) expensive new batteries. I think this is a cautionary tale about buying into the new technologies: a lot more is promised than will be delivered.

What about the McKinsey studies that show not only that solving the problem is not only technically feasible, the first chunk of changes actually save money?

This is the part that seems least likely. If this is true, why aren’t people making those changes? I am more than willing to believe that people will do what is in their own best interests and if they see an opportunity to save money they will leap at it. So - why aren’t they? It is easy and safe to claim changes will save money when it is someone else’s money at risk but it appears that the people who are risking their own money are unconvinced.

I’d be interested in hearing your definition of “sanity” and “fantasy” one day, though.

Fantasy: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help. Trust me.”
Sanity: “I’m from Missouri, show me.”

Ender

 

[kimmielittle]

IMO. We owe a debt of thanks to our resident scientist here for providing an opportunity to **prove ** an answer to a problem, can be solved correctly - using entirely different avenues.

THAT is objective science!

My answer was correct…my avenue rules of kenitec energy ] was correct And applies to the original stated problem - but it WASN’T solved the way our scientist wished me to solve it.

The lesson as I see it, is in ** interpretation and definition **. Poorly defined problems - leads to different interpretations.

One can arrive at ROME using entirety different roads.

I don’t think this is the lesson JasonSB wished for us to see, however. Or he would have pointed this out himself.

Authoritative science has little regard for differences of interpretations, IMO