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Comments 1301 to 1350:

  1. At a glance - Do volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans?

    BaerbelW@3 Yes, I like the addition of the screenshot of fact and myth boxes. It gives the "At a glance" segment better context.

  2. It's cosmic rays

    sailingfree @120/121,
    The H. Svensmark input into AGW science has been in general seen as entirely overblown unless you are in denial about AGW when the idea that the sun plays a much bigger role than the climatology shows is usually seen as supportive of their denialism.

    Svensmark first published a cosmic ray climate effect back in 1997 demonstrating a remarkable fit between cosmic rays and global cloud cover. The fit proved to be spurious while experiment has demonstrated the causal link between cosmic rays and cloud formation to be very very weak. Undeterred by these setbacks, Svensmark has since been examining the detail of the cosmic ray/cloudiness relationship in an attempt to show there was a climatic effect after all.

    Part of this analysis by Svensmark homed-in on Forbush Decreases, a phenomenon identified back in the mid-1900s and today catalogued at an average rate of over 100 events per year. A relationship bewteen these Forbush Decreases and changes in cloud had been observed back in the 1990s.

    Svenmark first published on this phenomenon back in 2009. They used the most energetic Forbush Decreases (just 26 over 21 years) to produce a correlation between peak cloudiness and the Forbush Decrease strength (Fig 2- not entirely convincingly) and plotting the averages of cosmic ray evolution and average cloudiness evolution for the five most energetic Forbush Decrease events (Fig 1) although the reason for showing the averaging of these five alone is not evident to me in this paper.

    Svensmark et al (2021) which you ask about is simply Svensmark et al (2009) but using a correlation with the CERES radiation data. The CERES data restricts analysis to post-2000 events and now only the 13 most energetic events are analysed for the correlation (fig 2) with event evolutions averaged from (again) the five strongest events (fig 1), this apparently because there is too much "dominant meteorological noise" if more events are included, although I'm not sure that squares up with the effect being climactically significant.

    Of course, with the sun less active since SunSpotCycle 23, and thus presumably the cosmic rays increasing cloudiness which cools the climate, this would suggest that Svensmark's work would be implying amplification of the role of AGW rather than a diminution which denialists hope for. But such understanding may be a bit too involved for denialists to grasp.

  3. It's cosmic rays

    I interpret his 2021 paper to augment and solidify the fact that man made greenhouse gases are responsible for all of the increase in global temperature over the last half century. As I understand his argument, Increases in coronal mass injections cause more warming of the Earth. But the Sun has become less active over the last half century while the global temperatures increased and CO2 concentration increased . The  the graph in an earlier comment above is also in
    LINK
    Svensmark's work would predict lower temperatures, but global temperatures are in fact higher.

    Moderator Response:

    [RH] Link shortened

  4. At a glance - Do volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans?

    Note: I just added a screenshot of the fact and myth boxes at the top of the blog post to provide more context for the at-a-glance section. Do you think this is a useful addition to this weekly highlight of the most recently updated rebuttal? Please let us know either here in the comments or via the feedback form. Thanks!

  5. It's cosmic rays

    Can someone here can comment on a more recent Svensmark paper that seems to butress his agrgument?https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-99033-1 11 Oct 2021
    Svensmark

    On the other hand here is a newer paper with a 40 year data base:
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-30447-9

    Thanks in advance to someone more knowledgeable than I am.

    Moderator Response:

    [PS] Links activated. Please learn how to do this yourself in the comment editor.

  6. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

    Likeitwarm: "The green plate does not transfer any thermal energy to the source because the source is equal to or warmer than the second plate. Heat only flows in one direction, hot to cold, and is irreversible."

    Indeed. And in the green plate example, the energy flow from blue plate to green plate is 266.7, and the energy flow from the green plate to the blue plate is 133.35. The heat flow is the difference: 133.35 from the hotter (261.9K) blue plate to the cooler (220.2K) green plate. So heat flows from hot to cold as it should.

    "Heat flow is the difference in temperature between two objects": No, heat flow is the net energy flow, which should always go from hot to cold, and does in the green plate example.

    "Energy (radiation) can flow in any direction but will be essentially rejected by a warmer object": This is an imaginary principle. Black bodies absorb *all* photons, even from cooler objects. This does not break the 2nd law, because the energy flow from the warmer object back to the cooler one will always be greater.

    I'm curious: what do you think the solution to the green plate example is? (temperature of both plates) I don't think you can come up with an answer that doesn't break the laws of physics.

  7. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

    For convenience, here is the link to the SkS post "The Dynamics of the Green Plate Effect". It was linked in comment 1579, and in the Further Reading green box at the bottom of the OP, but those are not easily visible if you are reading this in the Recent Comments thread.

    Likeitwarm is showing obvious confusion.

    • Infinite feedback loops do not imply increased warming forever. The Dynamics of the Green Plate Effect post represents an infinite feedback system, but it is stable. (Comment 1580)
    • Radiation and thermal energy are not the same thing. (Comment 1581). The Green Plate example does the math for the radiation from the blue plate to the green plate, and from the green plate to the blue plate. Radiation energy is being transferred in both directions.
    • Radiation being "rejected by a warmer object due to not being the high enough frequency according to Planck" is nonsense. (Comment 1584) The Stefan-Boltzman law used in the Green Plate example is a direct derivation from Planck's law. Nothing in that example has any contradiction with Planck's law. Planck's law deals with emissions, not absorption - and "rejection" is a word that has nothing to do with energy transfer.

    If Likeitwarm does not agree with some part of the Green Plate example, then go to that thread to discuss it.

    ...and instead of hand waving, Likeitwarm should really do the math.

  8. At a glance - Do volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans?

    Good point, Evan. Takes a full-on Large Igneous Province episode to make any serious change - and fortunately those are tens of millions of years apart!

  9. At a glance - Do volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans?

    Another way to think about volcanoes is to look back at the record of the really big eruptions: the VEI7 and VEI8 eruptions. The ice-core data does not show any notable change in atmospheric CO2 concentrations associated with these large, infrequent eruptions. Rather, the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations is timed with the start of the industrial revolution, suggesting the cause of the recent rise is not volcanoes, but something associated with the industrial revolution.

    Plot of occurrence of VEI7 volcanoes overlayed on ice-core data of atmospheric CO2 concentration.

  10. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

    Likeitwarm @1581/1582,

    I assume the reference you make is to D. V. Schroeder (2000) 'An Introduction to Thermal Physics.' If read correctly, Schroeder is saying that it is entropy which is irreversable as it cannot decrease thermodynamically, pointing out in Section 2.6:- 

    If a physical process increases the total entropy of the universe, that process cannot happen in reverse since this would violate the second law of thermodynamics. Processes that create new entropy are therefore said to be irreversible. ... Perhaps the most important type of thermodynamic process is the flow of heat from a hot object to a cold one. We saw in Section 2.3 that this process occurs because the total multiplicity of the combined system thereby increases; hence the total entropy increases also, and heat flow is always irreversible.

    Note that such "heat flow" includes both the flow from a hot object to a cold object as well as the lesser flow from a cold object to a hot one, the two flows being quite evident in a radiative system (as they are also in Schroeder Section 2.3.)

  11. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

    Likeitwarm... "...but will be essentially rejected..."

    And how does this happen? Where does the energy go? Are you saying it disappears? Does it make a U-turn? 

    Consider the idea that "flow" could mean "net flow." Energy going both ways, but more flowing from the hotter object to the cooler object until the point they are in equilibrium.

    Moderator Response:

    [PS] Maybe another adherent of the "sentient photon" theory from a decade or so ago. Likeitwarm and others might like go back to "The Imaginary second law of thermodynamics" paying close attention to the Real Second Law of Thermodynamics section.

  12. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

    Energy (radiation) can flow in any direction but will be essentially rejected by a warmer object due to not being the high enough frequency according to Planck.  So backradiation from the atmosphere will not warm the warmer surface.  Heat flow is the difference in temperature between two objects.  If the surface is warmer, heat will not flow to the surface from the atmosphere.

    Moderator Response:

    [PS] You do understand that noone has ever suggested that the atmosphere is warming the surface? This is not conductive heat flow like Schroeder deals with. A photon is going to heat the surface and transfer energy, even if it is the sun. You simply are not understanding the green plate effect at all. Try again, read a text book on Radiative heat transfer (or some of the zillion comments in this thread by others trying this nonsense).

  13. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

    Likeitwarm :

    you sound confused about what is energy and what is heat.

  14. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

    That reference should have been (Schroeder - Thermal Physics)

  15. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

    The green plate does not transfer any thermal energy to the source because the source is equal to or warmer than the second plate.  Heat only flows in one direction, hot to cold, and is irreversible. (Schoeder - Thermal Dynamics)

  16. Patrick Brown's recycled hallucination of climate science

    Moderator. I couldn't remember the name of the thread on nuclear power, and I can't find it being mentioned in the list of climate myths or elswehere on the home page. It might be worth considering having a short list of selected climate  artilces below the list of climate myths, obviously including the nuclear page.

  17. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

    In reference to my original question,1529, I did some reading during which I had the following thought:

    If radiation from a cool object can make a warmer object warmer and the warmer object makes the cooler object warmer than it was and so on, we have an infinite feedback loop wherein all objects get so hot that they eventually disintegrate as all objects above absolute zero emit radiation.
    That be the effect if the GHE was correct.

    Moderator Response:

    [PS] " I did some reading during which I had the following thought:" Perhaps you could consider reading an actual textbook on radiative transfer instead of misreadings of how 2nd Law of thermodynamics works. Bob's link to the green plate effect explains it quite well.

  18. Climate change is destroying reefs, but the effects are more than ecological

    Cork

    "With all types of relationships, symbiotic but parasitic too. Most animals interact with the others."

    So true. For example we  have politicians dependent on campaign donations from fossil fuel interests and the corporates, and the fossil fuel interests and corporates tell polticians what they can do. "He who pays the piper calls the tune" (traditional proverb. The  phrase comes from the fable of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.) All slowing down progress with the climate mitigation. Glad you raised it.

  19. Climate's changed before

    i have question/comment about the Intermediate Conclusion to Myth #1,

    "To summarize, none of the mechanisms which facilitated previous climate change can explain the rapid rise in both CO2 and temperature observed over the past 150 years. However, human-released CO2 explains both!"

    Wouldn't it be clearer and more definitive to say, "... can explain neither the rapid rise in CO2 or temperature over the past 150 years."?

    The rise in temperature is 10 - 20 times faster than anyting observed before, e.g. warming after the last glacial age. LINK 

    The rise in CO2 is 10x faster than during the PETM and 100x faster than the last glacial age. 

    LINK 

    LINK

    Moderator Response:

    [RH] Links shortened and activated

  20. Climate change is destroying reefs, but the effects are more than ecological

    A large piece of coral is a interacting society like ours. With all types of relationships, symbiotic but parasitic too. Most animals interact with the others.

  21. Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

    Per Michael's remarks, it's certainly a curious thing that we continue vigorously debating nuclear power's role as a central player in energy supplies even as it's been outpaced by events. 

    Along the lines of trying to identify a signficant role for Newcomen steam engines— in the year 1900, when triple expansion steam engines were fully evolved. 

  22. Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

    I am responding to Cork here.

    At post 9 in the linked thread you said:

    "Converting Uranium only plants to thorium /uranium plants would reduce many of the issues"

    When I pointed out that it is impossible to substitute thorium into existing reactors you backpedeled and said at 11 

    "Maybe not today, maybe tomorrow"

    Maybe you should read more of the background on nuclear so that you don't propose more impossible solutions.  Why should I consider anything you say when you start off proposing impossible solutions and then change the goal posts when I call you out?  We don't need thorium reactors, we have wind and solar.

    Thorium does not accumulate in large economically recoverable reserves.  You would be better off trying to recover uranium from the ocean, another impossible task.

    I remember reading about cheap nuclear power designs in Scientific American when I was 15.  They sounded good.  All failed spectacularly.  I am now 65 and nuclear engineers can no longer fool me with their fantasies.

    In France their reactors are falling apart and they have to shut down during the hottest parts of the day when demand is highest.  "Always failing" describes it best.  They have not paid off the loans they took out to build their reactors 40 years ago.  If they were a private business they would have been bankrupt decades ago.

    Bill Gates claimed in 2006 that they would have running reactors in 2020.  17 years later they do not even have a design ready to submit to the regulators.  They gave up on their original design as hopeless and have a new design they hope will be complete someday in the distant future.

    Solar is the cheapest energy in the world with wind as its only compeditor.  Public money spent on nuclear is simply wasted.  That money should be spent installing solar and wind or buiding transmission lines to make the grid stronger. 

    China installed about 100 GW of solar capacity last year alone.  World nuclear capacity has been flat since 2000.  There is not enough nucear under construction to replace existing old plants as they retire.

    Nuclear is too expensive, takes too long to build and there is not enough uranium.

  23. Patrick Brown's recycled hallucination of climate science

    Nuclear is off topic here.  I have responded on topic here.

    Moderator Response:

    [PS] Thank you Michael. Was getting ready to intervene. Any discussions on nuclear energy belong on the thread that Michael has directed you to. That thread was created specifically to keep the nuclear "Godwin's law" out of other threads.

  24. Patrick Brown's recycled hallucination of climate science

    Heh. Is a variation of "Godwin's Law" that all discussions about climate mitigation converge on nuclear power?

    I like Philippe's circumspect synopsis. Maybe that's because my own perspective is shaped by being a Washington, USA resident. Washington's experience is a case study of the factors Philippe mentions, which I think hinge on our enduring optimism as a species. The more challenging a problem, the more our instinct to optimism is called into play.

    Here in Washington, long ago, the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPS) pursued an ambitious multi-plant nuclear generator construction program. It failed spectacularly, for all the reason Phillippe mentions. It came to be known as "WHOOPS," a mocking reference to the agency in charge. 

    Now, decades later, WPPS is renamed Energy Northwest and is once again pursuing nuclear power, full of optimism. Once again, our rose-tinted vision is being blasted by the harsh glare of implementation problems. See this item for "history doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes:" Small reactors at Hanford: Déjà vu all over again.

    For my part I feel as though fission power is uniquely unforgiving of human nature, starting with "here's the construction budget," continuing through "we grow bored and lazy with routine operation, and we're not good with long term institutional memory" while passing by greed and conflicted objectives in connection with "I want more for myself." Add to that a tendency to political instability at various levels over the span of time needing continuous perfection for safely handling nuclear generation assets. The results of ineluctable human nature in the case of this technology are in turn also uniquely unforgiving; we're not permitted or able to forget or ignore or ameliorate our mistakes in the same way as with our other artifacts.

    France's experience is the very best we can do, the result of a very particular relationship between the generation system and its harboring state, and rare stability. Chernobyl, Fukushima Daiichi and Zaporizhzhia have to be included in the spectrum of known outcomes and undeniable facts on the ground, as well as Washington's first failure and what appears to be evolving into its second.

    We consistently confuse good luck with skill. If we're OK in consensus with certain statistical rates of fiscal or physical or political disasters— good luck exhausted— then by all means let's use nuclear fission for power generation. But let's stop lying to ourselves about its characteristics when collided with human nature.  

    "This time will be different!" No. Our renewable energy of optimism fails to encompass that our species and our behaviors are constants even as we fiddle with the edges of nuclear physics to make it more friendly to our defects. The main engineering problem lies between our ears, and it's not likely we'll reach a state of perfection inside that confused space. 

  25. Philippe Chantreau at 04:34 AM on 18 September 2023
    Patrick Brown's recycled hallucination of climate science

    I come fron a country that has relied heavily on nuclear for 60 years, initially chosen to reduce dependence on foreign fossil fuels. Undeniable success has been reached in that pursuit and it has now the consequence of maintaining a lower per capita carbon footprint that many other industrialized nations. However, it was not without costs and difficulties.

    More recently, the building of nuclear plants has shown to inevitably happen over multiple times the time initially planned, and for a multiple of the cost (see Olkiluoto, adn Flamanville). That is a real problem.

    In the US, the other problem is the commercial structure of energy production. Nobody has the enormous amount of money to build these plants, certainly not without public based participation or guarantees. What I see amounts to private actors asking for public money to build rather pharaonic facilities, that they later expect to operate as if they were private properties. Not OK.

    There are other problems with nuclear relying on fission. Material availability and the very large delays to come online are 2 major ones. We'll see what happens to the plant being built by Gates in Wyoming.

    I believe that an all-out effort toward fusion is a much better way to look at the longer term future. In the meantime, all low hanging fruits should be picked, and I'm not sure nuclear costs, engineering challenges and delays place it in that category. Existing plants certainly should be exploited for everything they can give. 

  26. Patrick Brown's recycled hallucination of climate science

    International Atomic Energy Agency
    https://www.iaea.org › newscenter › news › thoriums-lon...

    Maybe not today, maybe tomorrow. 

    Moderator Response:

    [RH] Added link for readers' benefit (you can actually do this yourself, CORK)

  27. Skeptical Science New Research for Week #37 2023

     

    For those who are not watching the hurricane season in the Atlantic ocean, Tropical Storm Nigel formed today.  It is epxected to become a hurricane tomorrow.  It is not expected to threaten any land areas.

  28. Patrick Brown's recycled hallucination of climate science

    Cork:

    It is impossible to convert existing uranium plants to thorium.  Thorium plants have to be specifically designed to be breeder plants.  No comercial plants are breeder plants. Breeder plants are much more expensive and difficult to design and run than once through plants.  A thorium supporter here at SkS referred me to a design that used 5000 Kg of bomb grade uranium to start up.  What could possibly go wrong with that???

    There is not as much economically recoverable thorium in the Earth as you think.

    Nuclear supporters with fantasies of replacing uranium straight up with throium are completely uninformed about how nuclear plants work.  Why do you believe the propaganda you hear from individuals who are completely uninformed?

  29. Patrick Brown's recycled hallucination of climate science

    Converting Uranium only plants to thorium /uranium plants would reduce many of the issues. Thorium is widespread in vast volumes all over the planet and it cannot be used to make nuclear weapons.

    Anyhow, thanks for your comprehensive answer.  

  30. Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions

    Please note: the basic version of this rebuttal has been updated on September 17, 2023 and now includes an "at a glance“ section at the top. To learn more about these updates and how you can help with evaluating their effectiveness, please check out the accompanying blog post @ https://sks.to/at-a-glance

  31. Patrick Brown's recycled hallucination of climate science

    Cork@7.

    "Nevertheless, I opened the link to the Breakthrough Institute and all I found were articles promoting the reduction of greenhouses gasses emissions by expanding the use of Throrium/Uranium in pre-existing nuclear plants and other plants to be built in the emergent countries where no other option may be available."

    When I opened the link I found articles on multiple different power sources, food and agriculture, and more issues. Listed right on the opening pages and menu bar.

    The articles promoted nuclear power and mostly cricised wind and solar power judging by the titles. The articles leaned strongly towards free market solutions rather than governmnet lead solutions so there is a clear ideological leaning.

    Out of curiosity I googled The Breakthrough Institute:

    "Tucked away in the heart of liberal Berkeley is one of the most controversial organizations in the environmental movement: the Breakthrough Institute, known for advocating for nuclear energy and a pugilistic approach to disagreement."

    "The think tank’s critics, who include prominent advocates and researchers, decry the group as advancing right-wing ideas and say its policy proposals would delay action on climate change. But if the Breakthrough Institute’s leaders are to be believed, they are reformers with a 21st century strategy for solving the planet’s problems......"

    SF Chronical article

    "While sometimes functioning as shadow universities, think tanks have been exposed as quasi lobbying organizations, with little funding transparency. Recent research has also pointed out that think tanks suffer from a lack of intellectual rigor. A case in point is the Breakthrough Institute run by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, which describes itself as a "progressive think tank."

    "The Breakthrough Institute has a clear history as a contrarian outlet for information on climate change and regularly criticizes environmental groups. One writer describes them as a “program for hippie-punching your way to fame and fortune.” So it was not shocking to see their column last Wednesday in the New York Times criticizing a new documentary on climate change that was put together by award-winning journalists. In their article, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger state that the documentary will raise public skepticism about climate change because it uses scare tactics......"

    ethics.harvard.edu/blog/breakthrough-institutes-inconvenient-history-al-gore

    "Anyhow when I wrote "All hands on board! Each point of view should be heard. Teaming up will be the only answer." I meant that thorium/uranium are tools in the box and it may not be possible to do without them."

    Possibly. I have no objection to the use of nuclear power in principle. I'm somewhat energy agnostic as long as its clean, zero carbon energy (or close to it). Nuclear power is essentially clean zero carbon energy.

    That said, nuclear power is not looking like a big part of the climate solution.  Its too slow to build, its very expensive to build, its more expensive generation than wind and solar power (refer to an energy analysis like Lazard), and there are problems with waste disposal.

    Uranium is a finite resource and one of the less common minerals in the earths crust, and it cant be recycled like materials used in wind power turbines. Nuclear power is not liked by the general public in western countries due to the perceived danger (this may be overblown but perceptions are perceptions.)

    Its therefore unlikely generating companies or governmnets in western democracies would choose nuclear power right now. And its totally understandable. Its up to the nuclear industry to solve these problems. Nobody else can solve them.

    Personally I think we should push ahead with things like wind and solar power and perhaps nuclear power might eventually become part of the mix. Many countries have traditionally had a mixture of electricity generation. I suspect looking for the one perfect generating source is a delusion.

    Moderator Response:

    [RH] Shortened link

  32. We're coming out of the Little Ice Age

    Recommended supplemental article:

    What climate change deniers get totally wrong about the Little Ice Age

    What does a regional period of mid-millennial cooling have to do with today's climate disasters? Absolutely nothing

    by Matthew Rozsa, Science & Health, Salon, Aug 7, 2023

  33. Akasofu Proved Global Warming is Just a Recovery from the Little Ice Age

    Recommended supplemental article:

    What climate  change deniers get totally wrong about the Little Ice Age

    What does a regional period of mid-millennial cooling have to do with today's climate disasters? Absolutely nothing

    by Matthew Rozsa, Science & Health, Salon, Aug 7, 2023

  34. Patrick Brown's recycled hallucination of climate science

    Nigelj

    I do not know Mr Brown at all therefore I won't comment on his papers, opinions etc...

    Nevertheless, I opened the link to the Breakthrough Institute and all I found were articles promoting the reduction of greenhouses gasses emissions by expanding the use of Throrium/Uranium in pre-existing nuclear plants and other plants to be built in the emergent countries where no other option may be available.

    The articles mentionned at lenght the urgent climate issue and the absolute need to reduce to zero the emissions of GHG. 

    Are there 2 different Breakthrough Institute? Maybe I can't read english?

    Anyhow when I wrote "All hands on board! Each point of view should be heard. Teaming up will be the only answer." I meant that thorium/uranium are tools in the box and it may not be possible to do without them. 

    Now honest, I did not appreciate to be jumped at aggressively and I hope it is the last time. 

  35. Patrick Brown's recycled hallucination of climate science

    shoyemore

    "Was this a deliberate hoax by Brown or him just being petulant?"

    Browns main evidence free allegation appears to be journals like Nature only publish work that fits some warmist narrative. Brown is probably suffereing from petulance due to an over active imagination and paranoia that they are conspiring against sceptics.

    We are perhaps all susceptible to this pretulance and paranoia to some extent. For example if one of my comments posted on websites doesn't get published, I get suspicious of their motives. But when I reflect on the issue there is a good technical reason why the comment didn't get published. Brown "spat the dummy" in a big way and very publicly (NZ vernacular for petulance).

  36. Patrick Brown's recycled hallucination of climate science

    Good. You are hitting back hard against the denialists and cranks (metaphorically speaking). Best article this website has done in ages.

  37. Patrick Brown's recycled hallucination of climate science

    CORK

    "All hands on board! Each point of view should be heard. Teaming up will be the only answer."

    Not clear what you mean by this, but if you mean warmists should team up with denialists I think you are completely wrong. Any teaming up must be with people who accept the complete basics of climate science and the need for a robust mitigation response, or there is no point. Some things in life can legitamately involve compromise, but not scientitic truths, or the need for a strong mitigation response.

     

  38. Patrick Brown's recycled hallucination of climate science

    shoyemore... The whole thing, to me, sounds like a conclusion grasping for a rationalization where there was none. 

  39. John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist

    Sorry, should have included a link to the Media Bias chart. The publisher is selling some versions of it, but the interactive one at the link is free. I have no financial interest in the company.

  40. John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist

    sailingfree @17, blatant crap is pretty much all Epoch Times has to offer. I somehow got identified as a potential subscriber, so I keep getting free copies in the mail. On Adfontes Media's Media Bias chart, ET shows up far to the right on "Political Bias," and well down the vertical axis on "News Value and Reliability". One wonders just how much overlap there is among readers of ET and SkS.

  41. Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

    sekwisniewski:

    Sovacool et al. have since published a reply to the supposed refutation, pointing to serious flaws in said paper:

    Sovacool, B.K., Schmid, P., Stirling, A. et al. Reply to: Nuclear power and renewable energy are both associated with national decarbonization. Nat Energy 7, 30–31 (2022). [Link]

  42. Patrick Brown's recycled hallucination of climate science

    All hands on board! Each point of view should be heard. Teaming up will be the only answer. 

  43. John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist

    Good thoughts on the IPCC, but back on topic, Clauser:

    The recent article in Epoch Times is at https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/nobel-winner-refutes-climate-change-narrative-points-out-ignored-factor-5486267?cmt=1&cmt_id=bc9ade40-335a-4574-b934-27a8bb64dd4b

    It is depressing to me to see the spread of such blatant crap. To get really upset, see the comments there for a view into the minds of deniers.

    I hope that readers of skeptical science can add comment and replies to that article to help balance the propaganda and even get some deniers thinking of the real science.

  44. Patrick Brown's recycled hallucination of climate science

    Was this a deliberate hoax by Brown or him just being petulant?

  45. At a glance - Does cold weather disprove global warming?

     Just to address the point, consider another cold country with frozen seas about it - Sweden. According to this -

    "In the 1970s, three quarters of Swedish homes were heated with oil boilers. Today, electric-powered heat pumps have all but replaced oil in single-family homes (most multi-family homes rely on district heating). That has driven greenhouse gas emissions from oil heating of buildings down 95 per cent since 1990, according to the Swedish Energy Agency"

    The difference is Sweden's willingness to act. A carbon tax in 1990 and revised building codes certainly helping. The very common district heating schemes also use waste heat and wood waste as well as GSHP.

  46. One Planet Only Forever at 06:21 AM on 13 September 2023
    Exploring the feasibility of a new feature: Bunk of the Week

    I will submit a response using the form. But I want to share my initial 'thoughts open to discussion'.

    A good title is important. But a good description of the objective, the reason, for the actions is probably more important.

    My first thoughts for a Title and an 'Intro, objective, reason' for the Blog Post series is:

    This Week's (or Month's) Climate Science Non-sense: In pursuit of common-sense understanding of climate science matters.

    Developing a common sense (a common understanding or consensus understanding) requires an agreed common objective. Without an agreed 'common interest' objective a diversity of conflicting interests will interfere with the development of 'common sense'.

    The common sense objective regarding climate science should be pursuing increased awareness and improved understanding to reduce harmful human activities, especially by trying to reduce the harm of misleading marketing efforts.

    My suggested focus on 'common sense' is due to harmfully misleading populist political players claiming their group is 'The Common Sense Party' while they make non-sense claims that they hope will be popular. It seems to be driven by the non-sense belief that a belief that is more popular 'must be more reasonable and more justified'. More popular means more correct and therefore, by default, less harmful and well justified doesn't it?

  47. A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty

    MAR @ 65:

    You are trying to ell me that Pat Frank misread and misunderstood something? I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked.

    ...but you made me go back and read some of Bevington and Robinson again, to try to see what Pat Frank was looking at and why he thinks what he thinks. [I'll forgive you for doing that, this time.]

    The odd thing is that the section containing B&R's equation 4.22 is titled "Relative Uncertainties", and follows a section titled "Weighting the data - Nonuniform Uncertainties", and it is all dealing with looking at how to use statistics to determine "the most probably value" and its uncertainty. The everyday mean is "the most probably value" when all points have the same precision, but when they don't, B&R derive equations that account for that.

    The B&R section on Relative Uncertainties begins with the statement "It may be that the relative values of σi are known, but the absolute magnitudes are not". And then equation 4.21 is how to estimate a weighted mean, accounting for the ratio between uncertainties. They say (about equation 4.21) that "the result depends only on the relative weights and not on the absolute magnitudes".

    And, as you say, B&R then get to equation 4.22 for the "weighted average variance of the data" (not the mean), and equation 4.23 gives the expected 1/sqrt(N) relationship between the σ of the data and the σ of the mean. All this “weighted variance” stuff does not change that 1/sqrt(N) relationship.

    But then, as is usual, you try to figure out where the student went wrong and do they deserve part marks, and you realize that all this stuff in this section of B&R is talking about distributions of data where errors are happening randomly. B&R talk about systematic errors as a complication, but the equations presented do not account for that. Pat Frank keeps saying "it's not random, it's systematic". At which point you say "oh, you're looking at equations that don't deal with systematic error".

    And then you realize that Pat Frank's equations 4, 5, and 6 are not dealing with relative error - he has specific numbers he has claimed for the uncertainty of maximum and minimum temperature readings, and daily means. In equations 5 and 6 he is claiming that they carry on as constants ad infinitum regardless of averaging period. So you say "you're not looking at equations that should be used when you know the absolute variances".

    And then he switches horses and claims that those equations have nothing to do with uncertainty or precision or whatever. He says the 0.382C is not a distribution, etc.

    I only see two options:

    1. He really has not understood the material he has read, and is misusing what he sees, so his results are based on a misunderstanding.
    2. He knew what he wanted to see at the start, and has only read the references enough to find something that he thinks looks like what he wanted to begin with.

    Some time, over a few beers, I'll have to tell you what I really think.

  48. A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty

    Bob Loblaw @64,

    Having now examined the rabbit hole Frank used to hide the derivation of his equ 5 & 6, I can now say he is flat wrong as he has all along mis-read his reference  Bevington & Robinson (2003). (Mind, I'm not sure how he reckons to fit all that Case 3b nonsense into this reference.)

    Frank (2020) is saying his reference shows for his Case 3b that varmean = varnoise x (N/(N-1)) with wi=1, indicating the sample uncertainty is a simple average of all the measurement uncertainties vari. 

    This is a mis-reading of Bevington & Robinson (2003) equ 4.22, the error being that equ 4.22 yields the 'weighted average variance of the data', the varnom from which the individual measurement variances vari are scaled. With wi=1, there is no scaling so the varnom = vari. The actual variance of the mean varmean is given in equ 4.23 where varmean = varnom/N which then yields the division by N1/2 for the standard deviation.

  49. At a glance - Does cold weather disprove global warming?

    JacobsLadder... Just curious, is there some reason you believe that sustainable energy can't supply heating?

    Moderator Response:

    [DB] The sock puppet in question has recused itself from further participation here.

  50. At a glance - Does cold weather disprove global warming?

    My apologies, Moderator.     Figures from ieso.ca for 2022.

    Supplied electricity (not capacity) for Ontario Province ~

    Nuclear 78.8 TWh ; Hydro 38.0 TWh ; Wind 13.8 TWh

    Total equates to about 89% of produced electricity.

    Equivalent to 13 GW of continuous electricity yearlong.

    (  ~13 million small bar radiators of 1000 Watts each, used 24/7/365 )  

     

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