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MA Rodger at 20:37 PM on 20 September 20232nd 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.)
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Rob Honeycutt at 11:40 AM on 20 September 20232nd 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.
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Likeitwarm at 10:53 AM on 20 September 20232nd 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).
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Eclectic at 10:21 AM on 20 September 20232nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Likeitwarm :
you sound confused about what is energy and what is heat.
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Likeitwarm at 10:17 AM on 20 September 20232nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
That reference should have been (Schroeder - Thermal Physics)
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Likeitwarm at 10:10 AM on 20 September 20232nd 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)
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nigelj at 07:55 AM on 20 September 2023Patrick 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.
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Likeitwarm at 06:17 AM on 20 September 20232nd 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.
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nigelj at 06:01 AM on 20 September 2023Climate 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.
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Just Dean at 01:09 AM on 20 September 2023Climate'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.
Moderator Response:[RH] Links shortened and activated
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CORK at 20:42 PM on 19 September 2023Climate 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.
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Doug Bostrom at 04:06 AM on 19 September 2023Is 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.
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michael sweet at 21:24 PM on 18 September 2023Is 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.
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michael sweet at 21:00 PM on 18 September 2023Patrick 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.
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Doug Bostrom at 05:41 AM on 18 September 2023Patrick 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.
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Philippe Chantreau at 04:34 AM on 18 September 2023Patrick 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.
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CORK at 04:01 AM on 18 September 2023Patrick 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)
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michael sweet at 01:29 AM on 18 September 2023Skeptical 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.
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michael sweet at 00:06 AM on 18 September 2023Patrick 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?
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CORK at 23:49 PM on 17 September 2023Patrick 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.
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BaerbelW at 18:52 PM on 17 September 2023Human 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
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nigelj at 06:42 AM on 17 September 2023Patrick 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......"
"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
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John Hartz at 05:01 AM on 17 September 2023We'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
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John Hartz at 03:44 AM on 17 September 2023Akasofu 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
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CORK at 23:40 PM on 16 September 2023Patrick 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.
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nigelj at 07:03 AM on 16 September 2023Patrick 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).
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nigelj at 06:26 AM on 16 September 2023Patrick 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.
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nigelj at 06:24 AM on 16 September 2023Patrick 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.
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Rob Honeycutt at 05:08 AM on 16 September 2023Patrick 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.
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Mal Adapted at 04:41 AM on 16 September 2023John 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.
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Mal Adapted at 04:38 AM on 16 September 2023John 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.
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krautbernd at 02:19 AM on 16 September 2023Is 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]
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CORK at 00:14 AM on 16 September 2023Patrick 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.
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sailingfree at 22:38 PM on 15 September 2023John 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.
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shoyemore at 20:46 PM on 15 September 2023Patrick Brown's recycled hallucination of climate science
Was this a deliberate hoax by Brown or him just being petulant?
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scaddenp at 11:51 AM on 13 September 2023At 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.
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One Planet Only Forever at 06:21 AM on 13 September 2023Exploring 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?
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Bob Loblaw at 05:02 AM on 13 September 2023A 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:
- He really has not understood the material he has read, and is misusing what he sees, so his results are based on a misunderstanding.
- 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.
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MA Rodger at 03:02 AM on 13 September 2023A 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.
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Rob Honeycutt at 23:32 PM on 12 September 2023At 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.
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Eclectic at 20:54 PM on 12 September 2023At 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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Eclectic at 20:10 PM on 12 September 2023At a glance - Does cold weather disprove global warming?
JacobsLadder @1 :
And that ain't half of it ! You didn't mention north of the Great Lakes.
Each winter, nearly a million dead of cold in Ontario, but it's hushed up.
Owing to their electricity coming 89% from nuclear, hydro, and wind.
[ 2022 figures of supplied electricity ]
Moderator Response:[PS] Did you mean to supply a figure for supplied electricity? I don't think your sarcasm encourages useful discussion and his point was about heating not electricity.
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JacobsLadder at 19:09 PM on 12 September 2023At a glance - Does cold weather disprove global warming?
Regardless of what may be happening with the global average temperature, the simple fact is that millions of people, in particular those in the north-eastern and mid-western US have experienced record cold winters for years. Harbors on the Great Lakes have frozen over and there have been numerous deaths from hypothermia. The people in these regions have always relied on coal and natural gas to meet their energy needs. So-called "sustainable energy" is totally inadequate, and it would be dead wrong (pun intended!) to deprived these people of their needs through government actions to curtail fossil fuels. Unfortunately, our current "president" is trying to do just that to the American people, and we are not taking kindly to it!
Moderator Response:[PS] Politics is not permitted by the Comments Policy. Links to show that those regions are indeed experiencing record cold winters would also help discussion.
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Bob Loblaw at 12:14 PM on 12 September 2023A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
One more followup to MAR:
You quote Pat Frank as quoting Giever:
...an adjudged average noise variance must be assigned using physical reasoning...
This basically means that you should do what Spock did when calculating the return parameters in Star Trek IV, the Voyage Home.
Kirk: Mr. Spock, have you accounted for the variable mass of whales and water in your time re-entry program?
Spock: Mr. Scott cannot give me exact figures, Admiral, so... I will make a guess.
You can get a more useful discussion n the JCGM 100:2008 mentioned earlier in this thread. In section 4.3, where it discusses "Type B evaluation of standard uncertainty", it says:
4.3.1 For an estimate xi of an input quantity Xi that has not been obtained from repeated observations, the associated estimated variance u2(xi) or the standard uncertainty u(xi) is evaluated by scientific judgement based on all of the available information on the possible variability of Xi . The pool of information may include
- previous measurement data;
- experience with or general knowledge of the behaviour and properties of relevant materials and instruments;
- manufacturer's specifications;
- data provided in calibration and other certificates;
- uncertainties assigned to reference data taken from handbooks.
In other words, at some point you need to be allowed to make some sort of informed professional judgment.
In no way does it provide justification for Pat Frank's equations 5 and 6. The quote you provide from him is basically word salad that he has used to convince himself of his conclusion.
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Bob Loblaw at 11:46 AM on 12 September 2023A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
MAR:
If the only error or uncertainty is a single, fixed offset that applies to all readings, and there is never any variation at all from that fixed offset, then when adding two numbers with different offsets, the result should be as follows:
Ameas = Atrue + Aoffset
Bmeas = Btrue + Boffset
C = Ameas + Bmeas = Atrue +Btrue + Aoffset + Boffset
In which case you are just simply adding the offsets to get the error. And if you are then dividing the sum by N, the offsets also get divided by N. But you don't go through the gymnastics of squaring and then square-rooting. That is completely redundant. The offsets are not "combined in quadrature", as Pat Frank keep saying.
And if you are dealing with the situation where you are subtracting numbers, say, by calculating anomalies, then a fixed offset means:
D = Ameas - Bmeas = Atrue - Btrue + Aoffset - Boffset
..and now you need to compute the difference between the two offsets. And if the offset is so fixed that it is the same for both A and B, then you get the true result for D without having to have any idea at all what that offset is.
Just below equation 6, Pat Frank mentions anomalies, and correctly states that you calculate one by subtracting the monthly mean from the 30-year normal...
...but then he still adds the two offsets together instead of subtracting them. And he does it in the obfuscation of "quadrature".
The form of his equations 5 and 6 is an extreme obfuscation, and only is correct if there is nothing else that affects the errors. And Pat Frank keeps calling it an equation that extends equation 4 (daily uncertainty) into monthly and annual mean temperature uncertainties. He can never give an explanation of what makes equation 4 (as corrected) different from equations 5 and 6.
At PubPeer, he keeps going on about "intrinsic resolution" of liquid-in-glass thermometers, and in the paper he says this about the value coming out of equation 4:
This ±0.382C represents the field-conditions lower limit of visually-read resolution-limited 2σ uncertainty to be assigned to any global daily mean land-surface meteorological LiG air temperature.
So, is it fixed offset, or a 2σ uncertainty? Only he knows, it seems, and it depends entirely on what argument he is trying to make. Screaming "intrinsic resolution" at the top of his lungs is not a justification for assuming that LiG thermometers only ever have a constant offset with no variation. And fixed errors do not start with "±". Calling it a "±0.382C ... 2σ uncertainty" is the exact opposite of a fixed, unchanging offset.
The Pat Frank Uncertainty Principle seems to be a parallel universe to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. You can tell what he is saying, or what he means, but not both. Things are one thing until Pat Frank says they are something else completely different.
I can only conclude that he is so confused about the issue that he has compartmentalized many different aspects of it, and he can't see the conflicts in his positions. To paraphrase the words of a long-time commenter over at RC "Pat Frank and I have one thing in common. Neither of us has any idea what he is talking about".
Pat Frank's statistics are like Pa Kettle doing basic math. Internally self consistent (in his mind), but...
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RicardoB at 09:23 AM on 12 September 2023There is no consensus
Bob Loblaw @954 :
I would say Peterson has developed a rather high public profile well beyond Canada's frontiers, namely in the USA and all over Europe.
Also, Peterson is now on a "coverpage" article on Desmog.
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MA Rodger at 07:57 AM on 12 September 2023A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
Bob Loblaw @61,
I did say up-thread I wasn't going to burrow down into the rabbit holes of Frank's argument. So I haven't look into the references Frank uses to defend his equ 5 & 6. If he were honest about his methods, it should be him explaining why he is right and everybody else wrong. But I note for equ 5 & 6, he only "stands by them."
The nearest Frank comes to an explanation for his equ 5 & 6, for using the RMS for the uncertainty of the combined average of N uncertainties (rather than dividing by N1/2) is found in the first version of nonsense**, Frank (2010). [**Note this is Frank's temperature record nonsense not him climate model nonsense.]
Frank (2010) sets out four 'Cases' for combined uncertainties: 1, 2 3a and 3b. All but Case 3b are as you would expect with the RMS being divided by N1/2 and thus for large combinations, uncertainty will tend to negligable values. But Frank (2010) designates the combination of SAT data as Case 3b for which it says:-
"When sensor noise variances have not been measured and neither their stationarity nor their magnitudes are known, an adjudged average noise variance must be assigned using physical reasoning [see Gleser (1998), 'Assessing uncertainty in measurement' - for PDF download]".
I've not looked to see if the Gleser reference supports such an assertion but it doesn't sound unreasonable although perhaps for the individual variances rather than for the average of those variance.
But Frank then goes on to tell us:-
"For multiple sensors of unknown noise provenance, or for a time series from a single sensor of unknown and possibly irregular variance, an adjudged estimate of measurement noise variance is implicitly a simple average ... of the nominally unique ... noise variance(s) of the N measurements. The primed sigma [in the shown equation] indicates an adjudged estimate [not a standard varriance] and distinguishes Case 3b noise uncertainty from those of Cases 1-3a.
"In the case of an adjudged average noise uncertainty, each temperature measurement must be appended with the constant uncertainty estimate.
[For Case 3b] the mean of a series of N measurements [of t] is the usual Σ(ti)/N, but the average noise uncertainty in the measurement mean is [the RMS x N/(N-1)] [see Bevington & Robinson (2003) 'Data Reduction and Error Analysis for the Physical Sciences' 3rd edn, McGraw-Hill, Boston, p. 58, wi = 1 PDF], with one degree of freedom lost because the estimated noise variance in each measurement is an implied mean. Thus when calculating a measurement mean of temperatures appended with an adjudged constant average uncertainty, the uncertainty does not diminish as 1/N1/2. Under Case 3b, the lack of knowledge concerning the stationarity and true magnitudes of the measurement noise variances is properly reflected in a greater uncertainty in the measurement mean. The estimated average uncertainty in the measurement mean is not the mean of a normal distribution of variances, because under Case 3b the magnitude distribution of sensor variances is not known to be normal."I have not delved into the reference to see how it would support Frank's assertion. Well, not yet.
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genebrowne at 05:38 AM on 12 September 2023Exploring the feasibility of a new feature: Bunk of the Week
I think a bunk of the week would be good and maybe ease up on the other emails. There has been a few diversion tactics in the media I would like see debunked like Small Modular Rector's SMRs none have ever been completed and I can imagine the price of electricity would be thru the roof. Also have you guys heard the planet has greened 4% so co2 can't be that bad. And also thorium reactors are cheaper and we should all drive cars with nuclear batteries because you only have to replace them every10,000 years.
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Bob Loblaw at 00:52 AM on 12 September 2023A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
For what it is worth, this recent paper by Pat Frank has received a fair amount of discussion over at PubPeer. Here is the link to that discussion. Note that I have participated using a PubPeer-assigned anonymous user name (Camponotus mus).
Pat Frank did note at PubPeer that he had discovered the inconsistency in the published equation 4, mentioned in the OP here. He said that the calculation (0.382C) is correct, and that the equation should have been written with the 2 in the denominator outside the square root sign. This is what I said would be correct, in the OP. He stands by equations 5 and 6, though.
Equation 4 is not (as of today) corrected in the online version of the paper, or the downloadable PDF. There is a mention of this correction on the web page, if you look in the right margin and find the button labelled "Comment". There is no formal correction notice on the journal page, as far as I can see.
The rest of the PubPeer discussion exposes huge gaps in Pat Frank's understanding of propagation of error, uncertainty, and general statistics. Some of it repeats what I have presented here, but there is some new stuff, too. Warning: head vice required. If you go there, you assume all risks if Pat Frank's hagfishing is too much for you.
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Bob Loblaw at 00:30 AM on 12 September 2023There is no consensus
Jordan Peterson has developed a rather high public profile (at least, in Canada) on a variety of anti-science stances.
Desmog has a page on him and his climate change positions.
He used to be a professor in psychology at the University of Toronto. The body that licences clinical psychologists in Ontario has been looking at his, and has recommended that he take some training if he doesn't want to lose his licence to practise. Peterson has challenged that order in court, and lost. Details in this CBC news report.
