Cosmos - With Neil deGrasse Tyson

[gturner]

And yet again, we have post that ignores the vast majority of evidence ... all of which has already been presented to you and anyone else reading the thread.

Um, can you perhaps link back to where this evidence was linked? You've talked about overwhelming evidence but haven't really cited anything other than the IPCC summary for policymakers, which is itself pretty void of data.

And since this data clearly indicates overwhelming evidence for global warming over the period of centuries, any fluctuations of decades, is hardly enough to refute these conclusions - much less offer a "poison pill" for global warming (especially considering the fluctuations still demonstrate ongoing warming).

If global warming has been going on for centuries, it pretty much refutes the idea that CO2 emissions are the cause, since the climatologists conclude that they couldn't have played any major role in temperature variations until sometime after WW-II. So thanks!

Look, it's pretty clear to anyone who wants to objectively view the entire set of data, that global warming is real and it's happening right now.

Well no, it's not happening now or it would be showing up in the entire set of data as warming, which it hasn't done since 1998. Since then it's just shown up as warm, withing out the "ing."

Whether or not your posts engage with this reality is not something I can't control. And, unfortunately, it's pretty obvious what kind of pattern your posts present: make sweeping, sensationalist, often factually erroneous statements and, when pressed, offer only minimal support that ignores the rest of the data.

Project much?

You apparently don't even bother to look at the data, much less have the slightest clue that there a "rest of" it.

And if you would be so kind as to point to the factually inaccurate statement I made. So far I've backed up most anything I've said with hard data from the CRU at the UEA, but am willing to back it up with hard data from the NCDC, NASA, Berkley Earth, or any other organization, and I've backed up my statements about the internal workings of the IPCC with links to interviews with IPCC lead authors, while backing up another comment with a link to an interview with the 10th most cited scientist who is still alive and publishing, and who happens to be a climatologist.

That's clearly not science. Your posts are, however, welcome to join the legitimate scientific discussion ... whenever they objectively represent the totality of data, evidence and scientific conclusions.

And there's the problem. The warmists try to redefine science as a religion, ruling out any contradictory evidence, however sound and from whatever source, that questions their unscientifically absurd apocalyptic beliefs. This is something that many climatologists are unequivocal about denouncing, because science can't advance if anyone who deviates from the catechism put out by Earth First or Greenpeace is denounced as anti-science. That's how Nazi science worked, and that's how Lysenkoism worked. That's how all sorts of bizarre cults work. You're a charter member. You won't look at the science, you just propound at what you guess the science is, and do so without the slightest clue as to what the data shows, because you don't actually care about reality, you care about a wacko religious narrative about sin and pollution, one which probably involves the evil Koch brothers and BushCheneyHaliburton, along with something about polar bears and tree fairies.

Science really isn't for people like you, who ignore data, don't pay attention to what's going on, don't follow the literature, don't dig into the various models and papers, yet argue from complete ignorance about what the science is actually showing, blissfully unaware of what positions and opinions the climatologists are actually putting forth.

You have to read an analyze the actual papers. A few weeks ago I gave a pretty devastating critique of the flaws in the Neukom et al paper on that purported to be the first multi-proxy millennial Southern Hemisphere temperature study, which was none of that. It only had four proxies that gave good coverage for a thousand years, and it blended those with six other proxies, most of which were essentially random noise (showing no trend at all, ever, over a thousand years), and some of which were definitely not proxies for temperature, like a proxy for a local Antarctic ice sheet, which is definitely not a proxy for global temperature or we'd be screaming about the coming ice age, because the Antarctic ice extent is stubbornly backwards regarding the modern surface temperature record, and on top of that Antarctic ice extent shifts around, shrinking in one area as it expands in another. The Neukom paper's good proxies were from earlier studies in South America (Chile and Peru), and those cited studies found a big Medieval Warm Period. By mixing those good signals with lots of noise, and then statistically mixing the tiny number of good proxies with over a hundred proxies that didn't extend anywhere near as far back as a thousand years (most were post 1800 AD), Neukom was able to wish away the MWP in the Southern Hemisphere, despite having only evidence that strongly confirmed it, as stated explicitly in the papers he cited for his proxy data. Many top climatologists read my critique, due to where I was posting, so the new perspective on Neukom's paper is that it had some interesting insights about the disconnect between northern and southern hemisphere historical trends, but otherwise is deeply flawed.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Science really isn't for people like you, who ignore data, don't pay attention to what's going on, don't follow the literature, don't dig into the various models and papers, yet argue from complete ignorance about what the science is actually showing, blissfully unaware of what positions and opinions the climatologists are actually putting forth.

Where is this? In what posts did Ancient Mariner do this?

 

[Trekker4747]

Ugh. I have a headache.

...


It's not a TUMAH!

 

[Greylock Crescent]

You apparently don't even bother to look at the data, much less have the slightest clue that there a "rest of" it.

You won't look at the science, you just propound at what you guess the science is, and do so without the slightest clue as to what the data shows, because you don't actually care about reality, you care about a wacko religious narrative about sin and pollution, one which probably involves the evil Koch brothers and BushCheneyHaliburton, along with something about polar bears and tree fairies.

Science really isn't for people like you, who ignore data, don't pay attention to what's going on, don't follow the literature, don't dig into the various models and papers, yet argue from complete ignorance about what the science is actually showing, blissfully unaware of what positions and opinions the climatologists are actually putting forth.

So ... we're back to criticizing the poster and not the posts again?

Keep it classy, gturner.

You asked for a source, here it is. There's also this. Until your posts stop cherry-picking one data set, and instead incorporate that data set into the totality of climate change evidence and conclusions (let's just start with the IPCC report, since it's voluminous enough), then it's pretty safe to say your posts are thoroughly unscientific.

If you're looking for a "factually inaccurate statement", then look no further than, "the IPCC summary for policymakers, which is itself pretty void of data" - which you direct toward my my use of the SPM for the Physical Science Basis of the IPCC AR5. As a point of fact, it's fully supported by data which, as I've already shown upthread, is presented in almost the exact same manner as in the TS (which, itself, accurately represents the data in the individual chapters of the report).

Furthermore, upon further inspection, you cited sources criticizing the SPM for "Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability" (Working Group II) and "Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change" (Working Group III) - which are only now just being published - not the SPM for "The Physical Science Basis" (Working Group I) - which is the one I've used as a summation of the evidence.

Still, I invite anyone else to look at the SPM for the Physical Science Basis and determine whether or not they believe it's "pretty void of data."

That'll be a good indicator if one finds your posts to be factually accurate or, as I've contended all along, to be sensationalist, poorly sourced, and unscientific.

 

[gturner]

You linked to the AR5, but if you'd read it you wouldn't have been desperately arguing that there hasn't been a pause, because AR5 discusses the pause. Then you followed your AR5 link with an article saying that two non-climatologists have eliminated the pause by adjusting how Arctic data is handled, saying the Earth has been warming two and a half times faster than was thought by the alarmists at NASA GISS (Hansen), the UAE of Climategate fame, by Berkley Earth, and the NCDC which is so desperate to show warming that they dropped the 1920-1940 temperatures of many US states by over 2 C just this past March.

If your two independent scientists are right, all the other warmists are staggeringly incompetent and should turn in their thermometers. But that didn't happen because the paper didn't stand up to scrutiny, due to several serious flaws. For one, it relies on satellite data to fill in temperature data up to the poles. NASA, NOAA, the UAE and others don't even try to do that because the satellite data doesn't actually cover the poles (the satellites only fly up to 80 degrees latitude), so coverage is minimal, and they don't trust satellite readings taken over sea ice which has a complex microwave signature that throws off the reading. The next flaw is kriging across sea-ice/open ocean and land/ocean boundaries, because those don't often correlate in the ways that kriging requires if it is to produce useful results. There were some other problems with the paper, but those are even more technical than the kriging issue.

And of course the paper is in the same vein as several others that argue that the temperature has to be going up in some place where we're not measuring temperatures, like the Arctic, the deep deep ocean, or the bottom of my sock drawer. It's a variation of the argument about whether the light in your refrigerator stays on when you close the door.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

You linked to the AR5, but if you'd read it you wouldn't have been desperately arguing that there hasn't been a pause, because AR5 discusses the pause.

Another falsehood. I've never argued that there wasn't a "hiatus". I've merely pointed out the unscientific, sensationalist misrepresentation of the data - saying the earth is cooler, for example, and ignoring other data that demonstrates otherwise - contained in your posts. Your posts are free to discuss the "hiatus", but if they exclude all of the data contained in the AR5, as well as subsequent publications, they'll continue to be just as unscientific and sensationalist as the rest of the one I've just quoted.

 

[Trekker4747]

Isn't a 20-year "pause" or whatever in climatological change pretty much nothing? That's a nanosecond on a geological timescale.

 

[Christopher]

Isn't a 20-year "pause" or whatever in climatological change pretty much nothing? That's a nanosecond on a geological timescale.

Right. It's grasping at straws, and typical of the shortsightedness that keeps some people from recognizing the problem. The proof is in the pattern of warming over the centuries since the Industrial Revolution, an overall pattern that exceeds any warming trend for thousands of years (IIRC -- I admit I'm talking from memory here and don't have any specific figures to refer to). Of course there are going to be fluctuations on the scale of years or decades, but those don't disprove the overall trend.

 

[Trekker4747]

Isn't a 20-year "pause" or whatever in climatological change pretty much nothing? That's a nanosecond on a geological timescale.

Right. It's grasping at straws, and typical of the shortsightedness that keeps some people from recognizing the problem. The proof is in the pattern of warming over the centuries since the Industrial Revolution, an overall pattern that exceeds any warming trend for thousands of years (IIRC -- I admit I'm talking from memory here and don't have any specific figures to refer to). Of course there are going to be fluctuations on the scale of years or decades, but those don't disprove the overall trend.

It's like people who say, "So much for global warming!" whenever it gets slightly cool outside. Not realizing there's a difference between weather and climate.

Climate can be generally warming and it can STILL snow in May in the midwest (as it did here last year.)

Now, again, we can debate whether or not this climate change is being caused by humans, is happening naturally or is a combination of both (human activity speeding up the ice age ending) but climate change *is* happening. For better or worse.

But, hey, there was 20 years inside of an entire epoch where the temperature didn't fluctuate much so maybe everything is fine.

 

[Squiggy]

I still don't think Global Warming is a bad thing. Yeah, New York needs to invest in dams, but Sahara is turning green. One loses, one profits. Just because it's different doesn't mean it's bad.

The problem is the side that loses is the side where EVERYONE LIVES.

 

[Christopher]

It's like people who say, "So much for global warming!" whenever it gets slightly cool outside. Not realizing there's a difference between weather and climate.

Also not realizing that even winter weather is driven by atmospheric heat. I mean, where does snow come from? Moisture in clouds. Where did that moisture come from? It was evaporated somewhere else on the planet. What made it evaporate? Heat!

Global warming doesn't mean every place on the planet gets uniformly warm. It means the total amount of heat in the atmosphere, driving all of its weather patterns, is greater. And that means all weather, even winter weather, gets more intense and dangerous.

Now, again, we can debate whether or not this climate change is being caused by humans, is happening naturally or is a combination of both

Except the risks and benefits of the two sides of the debate are not equal. If we take action to minimize our impact on the environment and it turns out we had no impact, then we've lost nothing except some money and effort on making the changes (and as I've said, that investment can bring greater profits in the long run). But if we don't take action and it turns out we did need to, then we're totally and perpetually screwed. This is a case where the advantage of erring on the side of caution should be enormously clear. When it comes to threats to our very survival, it's always safer to assume they will happen than to assume they won't. That's why we wear seatbelts, why pilots wear parachutes and helmets, why insurance policies exist. Better to prepare for the worst and risk wasting a little effort than to do nothing and risk losing everything.

 

[Trekker4747]

It's like people who say, "So much for global warming!" whenever it gets slightly cool outside. Not realizing there's a difference between weather and climate.

Also not realizing that even winter weather is driven by atmospheric heat. I mean, where does snow come from? Moisture in clouds. Where did that moisture come from? It was evaporated somewhere else on the planet. What made it evaporate? Heat!

Global warming doesn't mean every place on the planet gets uniformly warm. It means the total amount of heat in the atmosphere, driving all of its weather patterns, is greater. And that means all weather, even winter weather, gets more intense and dangerous.

Now, again, we can debate whether or not this climate change is being caused by humans, is happening naturally or is a combination of both

Except the risks and benefits of the two sides of the debate are not equal. If we take action to minimize our impact on the environment and it turns out we had no impact, then we've lost nothing except some money and effort on making the changes (and as I've said, that investment can bring greater profits in the long run). But if we don't take action and it turns out we did need to, then we're totally and perpetually screwed. This is a case where the advantage of erring on the side of caution should be enormously clear. When it comes to threats to our very survival, it's always safer to assume they will happen than to assume they won't. That's why we wear seatbelts, why pilots wear parachutes and helmets, why insurance policies exist. Better to prepare for the worst and risk wasting a little effort than to do nothing and risk losing everything.

No, I agree, we should be doing something, anything, everything we can to limit our impact on the environment. I mean, yeah, maybe human behavior isn't completely impacting the environment but you can't tell me that not dumping toxic fumes into the air by the tons wouldn't be a good thing.

 

[publiusr]

As much as I agree that climate change is a serious problem, you are dramatically understating just how profound our technological and lifestyle changes would have to be in order to cut our carbon emissions to the levels necessary to stop, much less roll back, climate change.

Thus the resistance. Some of us also remember how The Population Bomb was nonsense. Of course, this is the cry wolf effect. Over-reach the point once and you are never believed again.

We aren't going to solve any problems cutting off our opposable thumbs and swearing off industry--the lack of which caused the dinosaur extinction...no space program.

And again, there's a reason it's called a "scientific consensus". Generally if 97% of scientists (or any kind of expert) agree on something, then it's a safe bet it can be trusted to be accurate. .

You have to be very careful with that. I wonder what the percentage was of folks who thought Walter and Luis Alvarez wrong on impact theory. Take the Channeled Scablands

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

I wonder if 97% of folks thought they were carved out by erosion over the long term...and that catastrophists were just some young earther creationists blinded by religion...which still can be a problem:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/30/james-lovelock-environmentalism-religion

You can find plenty of papers and articles online addressing every criticism that's been thrown at the consensus opinion.

Better. I think sailors talking about how the Northwest Passage is really opening up may convince folks where figures won't.

I would like to see results from the replacement of OCO and GLORY. Never launch anything on a Minotaur

Maybe human behavior isn't completely impacting the environment but you can't tell me that not dumping toxic fumes into the air by the tons wouldn't be a good thing.

We've got a forest of ICBMs, and I remember an Ars Technica blurb about how, if folks on the right have a problem admitting AGW, folks on the left need to give up their fear of atomic power. Go all atomic, and mandate electric cars at some point, and that is the single fastest way to reduce ppm below 350. Do it with F-35's budget. It will tick off both sides, but so be it.

 

[Trekker4747]

We've got a forest of ICBMs, and I remember an Ars Technica blurb about how, if folks on the right have a problem admitting AGW, folks on the left need to give up their fear of atomic power. Go all atomic, and mandate electric cars at some point, and that is the single fastest way to reduce ppm below 350. Do it with F-35's budget. It will tick off both sides, but so be it.

Oh, I agree. The left definitely needs to get over their fear(s) of atomic power.

 

[gturner]

There are also some big efficiency improvements we could make in conventional power plants, but they entail some technical risk and expense, and many of the utilities aren't in a position to risk such money because they're regulated as public services.

One is the Kalina cycle, which is a multi-fluid (ammonia and water) refinement of the Rankin cycle, which is used by standard steam plants. Rankin cycle efficiencies are typically thirty to thirty five percent, whereas the Kalina cycle might reach efficiencies of fifty percent or more. The basic way the Kalina cycle works is that the two fluids pick up heat across a broader temperature range (as they vaporize), then they run through a set of turbines until almost the point of condensation of one of the fluids (ammonia), which is then condensed out in a heat exchanger, releasing it's heat of vaporization to the steam, and then that steam is run through another set of turbines before being condensed, remixed with the ammonia, and recycled through the system.

Another improvement would be switching our Brayton cycle gas turbines to the Ericsson cycle, which was invented by the man who invented the Monitor of Civil War fame. In a conventional Brayton cycle (which is the cycle used by jet engines), the air is compressed adiabatically (without input or removal of heat), so its temperature rises dramatically. Then the air is heated and run through a turbine, where its pressure, and also its temperature, drops through each stage. In an approximated Ericsson cycle turbine the incoming air is cooled via a heat exchanger in between the compressor stages, so that it arrives at the combustor at approximately ambient temperature. Then it is heated and run through the turbines, but in between turbine stages it is again heated, so that compression and expansion happen almost isothermally, which gives the cycle the same potential efficiency as a Carnot or Stirling cycle. In 1979 the RAND corporation recommended that the US switch all of our Brayton cycle turbines (fired by oil and natural gas) over to the Ericsson cycle, which should produce efficiencies above 55 percent with materials common in the 1970's.

Not only could such changes reduce our CO2 emissions by a very large margin (perhaps 30 percent or so), but we'd have to use far less fuel for the same output, which means electricity prices would significantly drop, as would the price of fossil fuels because demand would also drop.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

Loved this week's episode. I've always been very interested in electricity, electromagnetism and so on. But I'd never really known much of Faraday's biography before, though. It was fascinating to see how much he accomplished in the later years of his life, despite diminishing health.

And what a fantastic way to connect the principles and methods of science to our modern society - especially considering Faraday's unlikely rise through a society that was less inclined to "upward mobility".

 

[Trekker4747]

gturner in 5... 4...

 

[Christopher]

I had a problem with this one, which is that it talked a lot about what Faraday invented or discovered, but never explained the how and why of it. How did he get the wire to move continuously when Davy couldn't? What properties of the glass brick enabled it to change the polarization of light, and for that matter, what is polarization and why does reflection cause it? Without including those explanations, what the episode showed might as well have been magic spells. The goal should be to make science clear and obvious to young viewers, not arbitrary and mysterious.

Also, looking at it as a writer, I find it structurally awkward that they didn't bring in Maxwell until the final minutes. It might've been better to parallel Faraday's and Maxwell's lives, one coming from poverty and the other from privilege, and follow those parallel paths until they finally converged at the climax. Which would've been a lovely metaphor for the way Faraday's and Maxwell's work revealed the unity of electricity and magnetism, two seemingly separate things that were actually one.

It was interesting how the narration stressed that Faraday was a fundamentalist Christian and was guided by his faith throughout his life. It gives the lie to the belief that science and religion are inimical forces, as well as the allegation that this show is positing some sort of conflict between the two (it's actually the show's critics who are doing that). Although personally I have a hard time understanding how fundamentalist religion (regardless of which religion it is) can be compatible with an open and inquisitive mind. Maybe the word had a different meaning then than it does now.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

Also, looking at it as a writer, I find it structurally awkward that they didn't bring in Maxwell until the final minutes. It might've been better to parallel Faraday's and Maxwell's lives, one coming from poverty and the other from privilege, and follow those parallel paths until they finally converged at the climax. Which would've been a lovely metaphor for the way Faraday's and Maxwell's work revealed the unity of electricity and magnetism, two seemingly separate things that were actually one.

Perhaps a bit like Kepler and Brahe in the original Cosmos - two individuals, from different worlds, needing each other to advance science? That certainly would have been a compelling approach.

 

[Trekker4747]

I had a problem with this one, which is that it talked a lot about what Faraday invented or discovered, but never explained the how and why of it. How did he get the wire to move continuously when Davy couldn't? What properties of the glass brick enabled it to change the polarization of light, and for that matter, what is polarization and why does reflection cause it? Without including those explanations, what the episode showed might as well have been magic spells. The goal should be to make science clear and obvious to young viewers, not arbitrary and mysterious.

Also, looking at it as a writer, I find it structurally awkward that they didn't bring in Maxwell until the final minutes. It might've been better to parallel Faraday's and Maxwell's lives, one coming from poverty and the other from privilege, and follow those parallel paths until they finally converged at the climax. Which would've been a lovely metaphor for the way Faraday's and Maxwell's work revealed the unity of electricity and magnetism, two seemingly separate things that were actually one.

It was interesting how the narration stressed that Faraday was a fundamentalist Christian and was guided by his faith throughout his life. It gives the lie to the belief that science and religion are inimical forces, as well as the allegation that this show is positing some sort of conflict between the two (it's actually the show's critics who are doing that). Although personally I have a hard time understanding how fundamentalist religion (regardless of which religion it is) can be compatible with an open and inquisitive mind. Maybe the word had a different meaning then than it does now.

Maybe Maxwell will be more focused on in a future episode? (If not this season then next?)

Having seen all of the aired episodes now between my DVR and OnDemand the anti-religion criticisms the show has taken. Sure, in many of the episodes they seem to almost "dismiss" religion to some degree and they're not talking about Creationism (rightfully as "everything was created by an unseen, powerful, being that there's no evidence he exists" has no place in science) but they do make it point to point out when these men of science came from religious backgrounds or were religious themselves. Just not so devoutly religious as many present-day Americans are where questioning God in any tiny way is just unthinkable.