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Bob Loblaw at 00:34 AM on 26 March 2023Gas stoves pose health risks. Are gas furnaces and other appliances safe to use?
As a further examination of the ABBA music scenario I presented in comment #10, let's see if there is a statistical process that can discover the underlying relationships amongst the variables in the table I created.
Remember: David-acct has claimed in comment #9 that the data he presented in comment #7 indicates a "...complete lack of correlation of asthma rates and gas stove usage which renders the conclusion of that study very suspect. "
So, in comment #10 I created a similar data set, called it "ABBA Music" instead of asthma rates, and created an extra artificially-generated column ("Like ABBA music") that follows an exact model that explains all the variation in ABBA CD ownership. Basically, what I have done is created a model of the form:
Y = aX1 + bX2
where a and b are constants (with values of 0.1 and 0.5 respectively), X1 is gas stove use, and X2 is "Like Abba Music".
David-acct has said "Y is not correlated to X1", which is correct when you completely ignore that X2 is a factor. If we do a linear regression between Y and X1, we get a slope of -0.007, an intercept of 10.2, and an r2 of 0.03. But that analysis assumes that b = 0, which we know is incorrect. The regression result does not get the correct value of a = 0.1 with an intercept of 0.
Likewise, if we do a linear regression of Y vs. X2, we get a slope of 0.11, an intercept of 8.6, and an r2 of 0.30. A better fit, but still wrong. We should get a slope of 0.5 and an intercept of 0.
So, finally, we do multiple linear regression where we fit Y to both X1 and X2, and we find that a=0.1, b=0.5, the intercept is 0, and r2 = 1. This regression correctly identifies the effects of both X1 and X2.
Why does David-acct's analysis go wrong? In my synthetic ABBA music example, the values I used for "Like Abba music" are strongly (negatively) correlated with gas stove use: slope -0.21, intercept 20.3, and r2 = 0.84. David-acct's "no correlation" ignores confounding variables - other factors that vary from state to state and can affect asthma rates, and affect the validity of statistical testing.
And in my "synthetic" ABBA music example, the numbers I use for gas stove % are exactly the same as David'acct's values, and the numbers I use for ABBA CD ownserhip are the same as David-acct's adult asthma rates. If his analysis does not work for ABBA music, it will not work for asthma rates, either.
Moderator Response:[BL] Self-edit. The original comment text had "adjusted r2" values, not raw r2 values. Values corrected to raw r2 values, which are slightly higher (more positive).
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MA Rodger at 18:59 PM on 25 March 2023It's not urgent
PollutionMonster @26,
The quoting of Schellnhuber in that Scientific American article is a bit of an add-on and somewhat out of context. The article is based on analysis dating back to 2018 here & here (so a little dated now) and is really concerned with the net negative emissions required after we reach the net zero emissions. These net negatives are not much discussed in the political arena, as though we can ignore them. The same is true of the "carbon budget" also addressed by the article. But the 'budget' and the 'negatives' are significant in tackling AGW. The climate scanario SSP1-1.9 (which prevents AGW exceeding +1.5ºC warming, roughly) requires we halve our emissions by 2030 (and indeed to have made serious progress toward that halving by now) as part of keeping-to the 'budget', and following that for all our emissions post-2007 to be removed by the 'negative' policy post net-zero. So keeping to SSP1-1.9 would mean the 'negative' totals something like 1,000 billion t(CO2) [so over 20 years-worth of today's emissions] although the majority of that (perhaps two-thirds) would be post-2100.
The Schellnhuber quote is lacking a bit of context but is presumably predicated on the view that we could lose control of AGW and kick off some extreme tipping points: Schellnhuber has co-authored work on such outcomes. Myself, I would be worried by allowing AGW to get significantly beyond +1.5ºC warming as the effect could easily destroy the world political order and bring about that sub-billion human world population through conflict.
Humanity does need to rough out a workable global plan (or set of plans) for keeping AGW to sensible levels, the first step in identifying how bad the situation actually is. Without such planning, your attempted triage is not going to work.
So what would a plan look like? The world is going to be short of energy sources in years to come as renewables will be required to power the economy as well as those 'negatives' which will be potentially bigger than SSP1-1.9 because we are not cutting our emissions and running out of 'budget'. We need to quickly replace FF with renewables, so build a few tens-of-thousand sq mile of sunny places with solar, connect it to the developed world's power grid as well as using it for hydrogen/ammonia production. And get ready to start sucking those 'negatives' out the atmosphere and pumping them into saline aquifers which have the capacity to take ample amounts of CO2. So a plan would rough out what all that would look like in terms of costs and resources.
Arguing with deniers is required to demonstrate they are the lunatic denialists. They do still have enough influence to slow and even stop mitigation measures. In UK they are now doing just that.
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PollutionMonster at 15:38 PM on 25 March 2023It's not urgent
I am still not really sure how urgent global warming is. I read this article
"Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director emeritus of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, told reporters that the cascading effects could lead to a world capable of supporting just one billion human beings, down from 7.5 billion today." Scientific America
World capable of supporting one billion
The reason I ask is there is a lot of causes out there as well as my own personal problems. I am trying basically triage. When I get time I try to feed several causes as well as meet my own needs.
Other noteworthy causes, pro-vaccination, anti-racism, let alone charities like the ASPCA. I haven't even managed to donate blood, I get a physical reaction sometimes. Often authors will make the case that their cause is the most urgent and dire.
Is climate change so dire that we should drop everything else? I mean on some level maybe I should just search for a better paying job and buy an electric car to replace my gasoline car. As opposed to arguing with deniers. Thank you in advance.
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John Mason at 14:38 PM on 25 March 2023At a glance - What evidence is there for the hockey stick?
In all fairness to me, Nigel, this was an early piece and I did not take the contents of the pre-existing "green box" into account sufficiently! I'll sort it.
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Bob Loblaw at 12:03 PM on 25 March 2023Gas stoves pose health risks. Are gas furnaces and other appliances safe to use?
David -acct: I figured you would double-down on your misunderstanding.
The lack of correlation in the data you provided does not mean what you think it means. Let me show an example, using a made-up set of values and a fictitious cause-effect relationship. The advantage of this is that I can generate values from known mathematical relationships, then apply your statistical test, and see what happens.
We will start with your per-state values of gas stove use. We will then assume that the world works as follows:
- For some strange reason, every tenth gas stove purchase came with a free ABBA CD, so that 10% of the households that own gas stoves also own an ABBA CD that came from the stove purchase.
- But gas stove owners also might have bought ABBA CDs on their own. It turns out that a survey asked people if they liked ABBA music in each of those states, and if they had bought an ABBA CD to fill that desire. It turns out that in every state, 50% of the people that liked ABBA music had bought a CD. (The other 50% either listen to it on the radio, stream it, have MP3s, etc., or like it but don't listen to it on their own.)
- So, when you take a count of the number of ABBA CDs in houses with gas stoves, the total number of ABBA CDs comes from two sources - the gas stove purchase, and people that bought them on their own.
So, let's look at what the data table from this would look like:
State gas stove % Like ABBA music Total ABBA CD ownership maine 7 19.8 10.6 new york 62 6.6 9.5 Michigan 45 13 11 Missouri 27 13.2 9.3 Rhode Island 36 17 12.1 mississippi 17 14.4 8.9 georgia 35 11 9 pennsylvania 37 13 10.2 DC 62 8.4 10.4 Conn 27 15.8 10.6 California 70 4.6 9.3 nevada 60 7 9.5 Illinois 67 3.6 8.5 Alabama 18 14.4 9 Now remember, we made this data up - at least, I made up the numbers for the "like ABBA music part" - so we know the exact relationships: gas stove ownership causes 10% of those owners to own an ABBA CD, and people that like ABBA music have a 50% chance of owning an ABBA CD.
The final column is an exact match for your adult asthma rates. When we apply your correlation test, the correlation between gas stove use and ABBA CD ownership will be the same as your asthma rates - in spite of the fact that the data were generated using a model where there is a perfect relationship between owning a gas stove and an increased likelihood of owning an ABBA CD.
In your analysis, you have no idea how "other factors" vary from state to state, and you have no idea what the relationships are between those factors and asthma rates, so you cannot determine from your data whether gas stoves have an effect or not. You are missing the "Like ABBA music" column and how it affects total ABBA CD ownership, and you are drawing a very, very wrong conclusion about the effect of gas stove use.
You never bothered to read enough of the original paper to understand where they got their Odds Ratio of 1.34, did you?
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David-acct at 11:19 AM on 25 March 2023Gas stoves pose health risks. Are gas furnaces and other appliances safe to use?
Bob - that is not the claim that I made.
It was the study that made the claim that approx 12% of asthma cases where caused by gas stoves.
I only pointed out the complete lack of correlation of asthma rates and gas stove usage which renders the conclusion of that study very suspect.
Bob - its true that there are many factors that contribute to asthma - though keep in mind the PAF analysis used in this study only takes in the single factor -gas stove usage. As I detailed above, the correlation is non - existant. Further, the lack of correlation raises the question as to whether paf analysis is even appropriate for searching for causality of asthma and gas stove usage.
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Bob Loblaw at 11:04 AM on 25 March 2023Gas stoves pose health risks. Are gas furnaces and other appliances safe to use?
David-acct:
You just made a classic mistake again - assuming that gas stoves are the only cause of asthma.
Many other factors can cause asthma - for example, there are may other factors that influence air quality, and many other factors that influence health conditions that can correlate with asthma.
You need to properly account for all those other factors before you can start to say that you have data that reflects only the effect of gas stoves.
I think it is you that is making simple errors - errors in statistical modelling.
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Rob Honeycutt at 10:58 AM on 25 March 2023CO2 effect is saturated
Gootmud... The "CO2 saturation" claim is a red herring used by climate deniers to try and instill doubt about the science. Don't get stuck on whether the claims are technically accurate. Fundamentally, people rejecting climate science are mostly politically or ideologically motivated and are using this topic as a cudgule to further their goals.
The "saturation" of CO2 is a nuanced element of the science that is well understood and does not change the accepted position that human emissions of CO2 are precipitously warming the earth. I was offering the animated graphic I posted to help you understand why this is the case.
You can't get around the basic fact that energy in = energy out, and when you add more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere the surface must warm. Functionally, the effect is occurring up higher in the atmosphere where CO2 is not saturated. When you add more CO2, the point where that occurs rises and, again, the surface sees a corresponding warming (per my graphic).
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Bob Loblaw at 10:43 AM on 25 March 2023CO2 effect is saturated
Gootmud:
Don't play word games. It's the climate contrarians that make the claim that "the CO2 effect is saturated". You need to get the ones making that claim to explain what they mean.
In years of watching this (I've been studying climatology since the late 1970s, specialized in the subject for my PhD, and taught it at university for a number of years, and for over a decade made my living measuring climatologically-important radiation fluxes), I have yet to find a climate contrarian who can define it in a way that actually presents a real description of radiative transfer processes.
The people that make the claim pretty much always end up demonstrating a critical lack of understanding of how radiation transfer theory works. As you try to get them to define what they mean, it readily becomes apparent that they don't know what they are talking about.
There are several variations in the contrarian "CO2 is saturated" meme, and each goes wrong in a slightly different way. The term is rarely seen in proper radiation transfer discussions of climate, because the very few ways in which it is a meaningful term are ones that are not an issue for earth's climate - past or future.
The few climate contrarians that do understand radiation transfer theory do not make the "CO2 is saturated" claim - as you have discovered. They make other bad claims, but not the "CO2 is saturated" one.
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David-acct at 10:33 AM on 25 March 2023Gas stoves pose health risks. Are gas furnaces and other appliances safe to use?
Bob -You are correct , I inadvertantly misstated Pennsylvania instead of Illinois
I took a second look at the asthma rates for both adults and children by state and the gas stove use by state from the eia.gov
state - gas stove % - adult asthma rates - child asthma rates
maine - 7% - 10.6 - 8.0
new york 62% 9.5 - 8.2
Michigan - 45 - 11 - 8.4
Missouri - 27% - 9.3 - 8.9
Rhode Island 36% - 12.1- 9.5
mississippi - 17% - 8.9 - 9.6
georgia 35% - 9 - 9.8
pennsylvania 37% - 10.2- 11.5
DC 62% - 10.4 -11.7
Conn 27% - 10.6 - 11.8
California 70% - 9.3
nevada 60% 9.5
Illinois - 67% - 8.5 - 9.5
Alabama 18% - 9 - 12.3
As the data above shows, there is near zero correlation with asthma rates and gas stove use which should have raised red flags. NY has 9x the gas stove usage of Maine yet has near identical asthma rates which is a strong indication that gas stoves have little if any effect on asthma rates.
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Eclectic at 09:13 AM on 25 March 2023CO2 effect is saturated
Gootmud @694 ,
Exactly correct of you ~ "saturation" is a meaningless term.
Meaningless, at least, in this climate context.
The saturation argument is used by "fools and knaves".
Gootmud, you have not yet answered whether you are a native speaker of English. If you are not a native speaker, then I ought to explain the archaic phrase "fools and knaves".
Fools and Knaves does exactly describe those people using the saturation argument against AGW. ....And as this thread approaches 700 comments, perhaps we could amend the phrase, to read "fools and knaves and sealions".
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Gootmud at 08:04 AM on 25 March 2023CO2 effect is saturated
Bob @693, saturation is an effect, not a point. Again, if you think it's not happening but temperature response is still somehow logarithmic, one must ask what you mean by saturation?
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Bob Loblaw at 07:34 AM on 25 March 2023CO2 effect is saturated
Gootmud @ 692.
Yes, there are many contrarians that deny that CO2 will have any effect, and "it's saturated" is a common argument. You need to take the Morano quote in the context of his decades-long history of trying to dismiss human-caused climate change as a hoax.
Although the quote is a bit vague - not specifying at what level CO2 will saturate - that is the typical style of people like Morano. Leave enough in that is true, but then cascade into untruths or illogical "consequences".
You can read more about Morano over at DesmogBlog. You will not find anything that indicates that he holds a position remotely related to the actual science.
Where have you looked for people that say CO2 will not cause any warming because it's already saturated? As recently as comment 648 in this thread, we had someone making the claim. A little earlier in this thread, another person with another variant. And here. And there are still nearly 600 earlier comments I have not searched. Those links cover the past couple of years, and the comments started in 2009, so it's a small part of the collection.
Any saturation point with respect to CO2 will be at such high concentrations (many times current concentrations) that any use of the argument in the context of projections for the next 50-100 years is completely bogus.
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nigelj at 06:58 AM on 25 March 2023At a glance - What evidence is there for the hockey stick?
John Mason @4, I get that, but you gave the actors quite a lot of prominence by highlighting them at the top of the page on the hockey stick is broken myth. And I believe this is the right thing to do because the entire myth is about their claims. So its impossible not to give them prominence.
And its the first thing lay people read because its right at the top, so even if they haven't heard of these guys they know them now! But thats ok.
And its not playing the man to criticise their findings, or put them in context (other studies using different methods found the same results.)
Having correctly given them prominence at the top of the page, I believe you have to address what they say and why it lacks credibility in the at a glance section, or people will be confused. I was a bit confused. Of course it can be addressed briefly and expanded upon in the details, and further in the intermediate version.
Its just a formatting thing. The actual content was is good.
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Gootmud at 06:44 AM on 25 March 2023CO2 effect is saturated
Bob @691, I confess I haven't made it through the years of comments because I'm still stuck on the original article. I'm not sure it's relevant that contrarians are often difficult to pin down, because the author got to choose which contrarian and which claim to rebut. If it's not clear what that person meant by saturation or what its implications are, then that would seem to be a recipe for pages and pages of duplicative objections. Perhaps the article needs to be rewritten or retired?
Are there are contrarians out there who claim additional CO2 will cause zero warming due to saturation? I haven't run into them, and that's not quite what the Marc Morano quote says. In fact all the contrarians named in this corner of the thread seem to be saying the same thing as y'all, that temperature response drops off logarithmically and the radiative impact of doubling CO2 from current levels is a degree or so of warming.
I'm trying to pin down what if anything is in dispute, because everyone seems to be in violent agreement at least on this saturation point.
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Bob Loblaw at 04:29 AM on 25 March 2023CO2 effect is saturated
Gootmud @ 689:
Think about what Eclectic says @ 690, and ask yourself "what does 'saturation' mean exactly". It's very hard to define "no saturation" unless "saturation" is defined first.
..but to try to answer your question, nearly any time someone comes up with the argument "CO2 is saturated", it is usually in the context of a claim that adding more CO2 to the pre-industrial levels will have no effect. That is, any IR absorption effect that exists for CO2 below 280-300ppm has already "saturated", so raising CO2 to 400, 500, or 600ppm wil not cause any warming. As you are discovering with your reading, this simply is not true.
It is often difficult to get climate contrarians to define what they mean by "saturation". A common "argument" is that any IR radiation emitted from the surface will be absorbed by CO2 close to the surface in the wavelengths that CO2 absorbs strongly. They will then argue that since none of this IR ecapes directly to space already, adding more CO2 doesn't affect this. This argument totally ignores the fact that CO2 will also emit IR radiation - so you still see IR radiation at greater heights (that did not originate at the surface) - and that what happens between the surface and the height where absorption reaches "effectively zero" still matters and will change as CO2 is added.
This post on CO2 absorption and Beer's Law may help.
Although there are a lot of comments on this thread, you might benefit from taking a few pages and looking at them to see what arguments are made, and explanations of what is wrong with them. You will find that new people come and go, making the same wrong arguments over, and over, and over (and over, and over)...
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Eclectic at 02:55 AM on 25 March 2023CO2 effect is saturated
Gootmud @689 ,
it would be helpful if you could state whether (or not) the English language is your mother tongue. I mention that, because some of the faulty communication here may be simply a communication problem of the meanings of words (plus or minus their translated meanings).
Example : the word "saturated" has a range of meanings in English ~ ranging from the colloquial (or even hyperbolical) through the standard formal and through to the technical and through to the scientific. When we say "this garment is saturated" it means (formally) that the garment is so wet that it cannot get wetter. But that is not the meaning of the term saturated in relation here to CO2 levels.
The (roughly) logarithmic effect of rising CO2 means that there will be no actual halt to the warming effect of rising CO2 levels. Which is why the "CO2 doublings" is the mathematical concept used in climate science.
Science-deniers sometimes use "saturation" as an argument that more CO2 cannot have a harmful effect on Earth's climate ~ sometimes they do this out of ignorance, and sometimes they do this out of bad faith & a desire to deceive others (including deceiving themselves). And I am sure that sort of misunderstanding occurs too in languages other than English.
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Gootmud at 01:22 AM on 25 March 2023CO2 effect is saturated
Rob @687, as I said it's not clear to me what's in genuine dispute. To say the CO2 response is logarithmic means something is saturating, delivering less oomph with each additional unit. If you're saying it doesn't saturate, you're saying the response curve is not logarithmic but linear or concave, right? If not, what does "no saturation" mean exactly?
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Rob Honeycutt at 01:04 AM on 25 March 2023CO2 effect is saturated
Gootmud... Reading through that Happer paper is interesting in that they're essentially confirming the consensus position on man-made climate change is correct. Their climate sensitivity figure of 1.4K is the direct effect without water vapor feedback. The 2.9K is with WV feedback per M&W1967, and the 2.2K figure is with updated calculations for WV.
So, why is that 2.2K figure so much lower than the central estimates of ~2.9K/2xCO2? Well, there are other feedbacks that are not included in Happer's calculations, like ice sheet feedbacks.
This paper is a good demonstration that Happer knows the climte science is correct but he continues to speak out against it, ostensibly in order to instill doubt in the research.
Why? If you up for a little light reading, try Oreskes/Conway's The Merchants of Doubt. (Hint: it's not really about the science.)
It's also important to note, the warming we've seen over the past 60 years is largely in line with central estimates for climate sensitivity. We've increased CO2 by about 50% and we seem committed to around 1.5°C of warming. The numbers kind of work, unfortunately.
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Rob Honeycutt at 00:42 AM on 25 March 2023CO2 effect is saturated
Gootmud... I'm curious where you get the idea anyone thinks the GHE is linear. The GHE is logarithmic. That's why sensitivity is expressed as degrees per doubling of concentration.
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Bob Loblaw at 00:26 AM on 25 March 2023CO2 effect is saturated
Also note that the van Wijngaarden and Happer paper has previously been discussed here, starting at comment # 587:
https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php?p=24&t=676&&a=82#136341
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Bob Loblaw at 00:19 AM on 25 March 2023CO2 effect is saturated
Gootmud @ 680 - you said:
An excited CO2 molecule will lose its energy by bumping into an N2 or O2 molecule before it can radiate it away. Around the tropopause there's a laser effect, in which CO2 radiation stimulates other CO2 molecules to emit their own radiation, so more CO2 means more radiation transfer.
To expand on what MA Rodger says in comment 684, your first sentence is almost correct. Nearly all absorbed radiation energy will be lost thermally to surrounding molecules - but a very small proportion will be emitted as radiation again. As has been mentioned in previous comments here, there is a good description of the time constants involved at Eli Rabett's blog.
Your second sentence is not so correct. Nearly all energy that is used to emit radiation in the atmosphere comes from the reverse of your first sentence: CO2 or other greenhouse gas molecules gain energy by collision with other molecules. Again, most of that will be lost by thermal collisions with other molecules, but a small amount will be emitted as radiation. As the temperature rises, more thermal energy is transferred by collisions, and more will be emitted as radiation.
This dance between IR absorption, thermal collisions, and IR emission occurs at all levels in the atmosphere, not just the tropopause.. At each level, the exact quantities in each energy flow will depend on local temperature. You also get vertical energy transfer through convection. The overall temperature profile depends on a balance of all these energy flows.
All this is incorporated into climate models. It is not news.
The feedback question is important - distinguishing the "no feedbacks" response to doubling CO2 from the total response when proper feedbacks are included.
I suggest you read a previous comment of mine in this thread for more information and links to two relevant papers from the 1960s. (Like I said: this is not news.)
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MA Rodger at 18:41 PM on 24 March 2023CO2 effect is saturated
Gootmud @680,
Responding to the individual detail of your post not addressed so far:-
☻ The blanket analogy is not useful when the detailed mechanism of AGW is considered. The temperature of the air against the outer blanket will remain effectively constant when extra blankets are added. The emission-to-space altitude of the planet at the CO2 IR-emitting frequencies (and thus the temperature which dictates the level of emission-to-space) varies with the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 is well-mixed up to 50km and more.
☻ Convection is not a great player in cooling the planet. The atmospheric cells of the troposphere are responsible for the trade winds and if convection were significant, these would be premanently of super hurricane strength. It takes about two weeks for a packet of air to rise to the tropopause in these cells and potentially half the convection is seen in cyclones which are relatively rare events.
☻ Pretty-much all CO2 molecules excited by IR lose their excitation through collision. There are many many more CO2 molecules excited by collision and the level of IR-emission is thus determined by air temperature which sets the level of collision.
☻ Sympathetic emission from an excited CO2 molecule (your laser effect) occurs at all altitudes.
☻ The greenhouse effect from increased CO2 is not linear except when CO2 levels are very small. For higher levels, the relationship is rougly logarithmic. This the forcing resulting from CO2 levels increasing 200ppm to 400ppm would roughly equal that of 2,000ppm to 4,000ppm. There is actually a boost above that logarithmic relationship for high levels of CO2, beginning at ~1,500ppm, as an emissions frequency at around 10 microns begins to be significant. In this, you may find Zhong & Haig (2013) 'The Greenhouse Effect & Carbon Dioxide' a useful read.
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John Mason at 18:16 PM on 24 March 2023At a glance - What evidence is there for the hockey stick?
No need to apologide, Nigel. All feedback is good.
I'll take another look at this. For at-a-glance, however, I felt that few completely lay readers would have ever heard of McIntyre or McKitrick; however their role in this could be brough in for Further Details. Often it's a case of choice whether to play the man or the ball, and that's not always easy: you have to weigh up how much prominence to give the actors.
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Eclectic at 16:18 PM on 24 March 2023CO2 effect is saturated
Gootmud @680 ,
The explanation of "Greenhouse" by Rob Honeycutt @681 is basic and straightforward, if you stop to think it through. And yet a vast number of climate-science-deniers completely fail to understand the concept (most likely because they wish to stay in denial mode).
You are right that the eminent Dr Happer (et Wijngaarden) has re-invented the wheel, and finds that all the climate scientists are correct about the climate sensitivity of atmospheric CO2 as being (roughly) 1.2 degC for CO2 change alone, without feedbacks. Here, we definitely should trust the experts.
Strangely, most of the denizens at WattsUpWithThat blog (and similar) are giving out the impression that Happer has shown them (the denialists) to be right and all the climate scientists to be wrong. Very strange indeed. Perhaps they (the denialists) are not actually reading/understanding Happer's confirmation of previously-known climate science ~ I suspect they they are in sympathy with Happer's extremist wingnut politics (which he makes no effort to hide).
Probably they are using wishful thinking, in that they use the faulty paradigm : 'Happer is an eminent scientist and he is "one of us wingnuts" ~ and therefore the mainstream scientists must be wrong.' [~ Which does not compute.]
(B) Gootmud , I must beg you to tell more about this idea you present about a CO2 laser effect at the tropopause level. I have not heard of this before (unless it is something to do with a certain notorious Congresswoman who talks of Jewish Space Lasers ).
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Gootmud at 15:59 PM on 24 March 2023CO2 effect is saturated
Rob @681, yes, your chart motivated me to read the paper that goes through the physics in detail.
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Rob Honeycutt at 13:11 PM on 24 March 2023CO2 effect is saturated
Gootmud @680... Did you miss my explanation of the greenhouse effect before?
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Gootmud at 13:00 PM on 24 March 2023CO2 effect is saturated
We all intuit that the more blankets you put on the bed, the warmer you'll be, so the article's argument has an intuitive appeal. It has an embedded assumption, though, that the heat transfer up the atmosphere will stay constant.
The physics is more complicated. In the dense lower atmosphere, convection matters more and will change as temperature changes. An excited CO2 molecule will lose its energy by bumping into an N2 or O2 molecule before it can radiate it away. Around the tropopause there's a laser effect, in which CO2 radiation stimulates other CO2 molecules to emit their own radiation, so more CO2 means more radiation transfer. A somewhat arduous calculation of the physics by van Wijngaarten and Happer can be found at arxiv.org/pdf/2006.03098.pdf. They estimate doubling CO2 from 400 to 800 PPM would raise temperatures by 1.4C, in line with other published estimates.
In other words, the article's original statement is a strawman. Even a notorious climate denier like Will Happer agrees that there is a greenhouse effect, and more CO2 causes some warming. So what exactly is being debunked?
Moreover it's not clear what the SS authors believe to be the case instead. If 1.4C isn't the right number, what is--5.0C? Do you maintain there is no saturation effect at all, that the greenhouse response is linear, and we would see the same 5.0C going from 0 to 400 PPM, or 2000 to 2400? That would seem to be implied by the article's physical argument.
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nigelj at 07:52 AM on 24 March 2023At a glance - What evidence is there for the hockey stick?
BaerbelW @2.
Ok. I will clarify. The "at a glance" section for the basic hockey stick myth, and the information in the further details both didn't seem that great for the reasons I stated above. I now see I should have replied by the special google feedback form. Sorry about that.
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BaerbelW at 07:38 AM on 24 March 2023At a glance - What evidence is there for the hockey stick?
nigelj @1
Nigel - the actual rebuttal still has the fact and myth at the top of both the basic and intermediate versions. We didn't include these two boxes in the blog posts primarily intended to highlight the new "at a glance" sections and as reminders that we are interested in feedback about them.
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nigelj at 06:37 AM on 24 March 2023At a glance - What evidence is there for the hockey stick?
Regarding the basic version of the rebuttal to the hockey stick is broken myth. This stated the myth at the top about Professor McKitrick and Steve McIntyres scepticism about the hockey stick, followed by a rebuttal. But IMO the rebuttal was a little bit vague and wordy, and didnt clearly say why McKitrick and McIntryes work was not relevant, and it wasnt clear on the fact that new studies done using different techniques supported the shape of Manns original hockey strick (the key point surely). In contrast the intermediate rebuttal was excellent.
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Bob Loblaw at 05:09 AM on 24 March 2023Gas stoves pose health risks. Are gas furnaces and other appliances safe to use?
Also, note that the paper itself says:
In Illinois, for example, approximately 79.1% of households with children cook with gas, whereas in Florida, the figure is only 9.1%.
I think that when David-acct said Pennsylvania, he might have meant Illinois. The paper does not appear to give a figure for the number of households with children that have gas stoves. David-acct may be getting numbers from somewhere else?
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Bob Loblaw at 04:57 AM on 24 March 2023Gas stoves pose health risks. Are gas furnaces and other appliances safe to use?
I was going to wait and see if David-acct wanted to defend his calculations and claims of errors in the paper, but Michael has advanced the issue.
Looking at the original paper, they state in the abstract:
Effect sizes previously reported by meta-analyses for current asthma (Odds Ratio = 1.34, 95% Confidence Interval (CI) = 1.12–1.57) were utilized in the PAF estimations.
An Odds Ratio of 1.34 means that there is a 34% increase in the likelihood of getting asthma if a child is exposed to a gas stove (versus not). The Odds Ratio is the number that you need for RR, in their equation that calculates PAF:
PAF = {p × (RR − 1 )} / {p × ( RR − 1) + 1}
where p is the proportion of households with children exposed to gas stoves and RR is the relative risk of developing asthma given exposure to gas stoves.
When you stick in RR= 1.34 and appropriate values for p for Illinois and Florida (0.791 and 0.091), you get the PAF values in the paper (0.211 and 0.03 respectively).
So, I am not seeing any "simple math computational errors" in the paper.
Over to you, David-acct.
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michael sweet at 04:48 AM on 24 March 2023Gas stoves pose health risks. Are gas furnaces and other appliances safe to use?
My calculation is slightly off. The actual asthma rates due to gas stoves would be a little higher.
I never accept calculations by amateurs on line, even my own.
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michael sweet at 02:28 AM on 24 March 2023Gas stoves pose health risks. Are gas furnaces and other appliances safe to use?
David-Acct,
In post 1 You say:
"The second obvious weakness in the study are simple math computational errors. For example gas stove use in Pennsylvania is 79% while florida, the gas stove use is only 9%. The difference in the rate of asthma is approx 1% (8.5% vs 7.3%). If the 12% causation was a reasonable estimate, then the difference in asthma rates would be much larger. 6-10%."
Bob Loblaw shows that the paper actually says:
"We found that 12.7% (95% CI = 6.3–19.3%) of current childhood asthma in the US is attributable to gas stove use."
That would mean that gas stoves increase the asthma rate in Pennsylvania by about 8.5 x .127 x .79= 0.85% and Florida by about 7.3 x .127 x .09 = .079%. Your claim that " the difference in asthma rates would be much larger. 6-10%." is simply a gross computational error on your part. I note that Florida in general has cleaner air than Pennsylvania which probably accounts for the slightly higher asthma rate in Pennsylvania.
In general it is best to figure peer reviewed papers do not have computational errors unless someone who is qualified to make the claim has produced evidence first. The problem here is you have made a gross calculation error, not the peer reviewed paper.
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One Planet Only Forever at 06:35 AM on 23 March 2023Skeptical Science New Research for Week #11 2023
Regarding the perspective piece “Why focusing on “climate change denial” is counterproductive” by Christian Better and Felix Schulz:
Initial impressions may be that this perspective and the resulting recommendations are helpful. But some of the recommendations appear likely to be harmful from the perspective of pursuing Sustainable Development today for the benefit of Others, especially for the future of humanity.
The required actions will be divisive in most of the currently developed societies because those societies did not develop to be governed by learning about harm and aspiring to limit harm done and help others.
The required action is not ‘making sure that everyone is happy about how the required protection of Others from harm and the development of sustainable improvements occurs’. What is required is effective governing of the actions of all people, especially people who are motivated to resist learning what is ‘unsustainable and harmful and needs to be stopped’ like human climate impacts do.
The climate impact issue is not a case of limiting the harmfulness of developing behaviour. A lot of unsustainable and harmful activity has already become popular, profitable, desired and aspired to. The requirement is the ending of harmful popular and profitable harmful human activity and the related ‘denial of understanding that it needs to happen, and that everybody needs to fairly participate in ending the harm and repairing harm done’. It is not a choice. Self-govern responsibly, or be governed to limit harmfulness. Not allowing a person to be harmful, or harmfully misled into believing harmful misunderstandings, is not 'a harmful restriction of freedom.'
A related ‘hard reality’ is that ‘developing sustainable improvement requires thoughtful restriction of freedom based on the diligent pursuit of learning what is harmful and aggressively limiting the harm done and rapidly achieving reconciliation, and ideally full repair, of harm done’.
The developed reality is that people who would personally prefer to more slowly reduce their harmfulness will need to be disappointed. And some of the most powerful people will need to be the ‘most disappointed’. Individuals who want to benefit from increased harmfulness, except the desperate who are living less than basic decent lives, need to be disappointed even if they are middle class or lower status. The problem is primarily due to people who over-consume and whose ‘needed consumption to live a basic decent life’ is more harmful than it needs to be. And a related part of the problem is less harmful people developing an interest in being more harmful.
Attempting to avoid divisiveness, especially attempting to not disappoint individualists, is almost certain to result in more harm done. In the realm of climate change impacts it is likely to push things to a higher climate impact RCP than could would happen if the most harmful are the most disappointed (which is what should happen). It is also a pathway that makes it harder to develop sustainable improvements because ‘more harm needs to be dealt with’.
In addition, appeasing individualists has already resulted in the near certainty that the harm done to future generations by the current generation will exceed the robustly established 1.5 C limit (that probably should be 1.0 C but we are already well past that point). Those who benefited most from more harm done need to be responsible for the rapid removal of all that excess CO2. And individualists with personal prosperity and status interests are very unlikely to ‘choose’ to fairly participate in that unprofitable, but required, collective action.
The problem is ‘the harmful unsustainable beliefs and actions that have developed due to a failure to effectively collectively govern and limit human activity based on the pursuit of learning about what is unsustainable and harmful’. And part of the developed problem is the ‘development and promotion of positive perceptions of benefit’ governing over the need to learn about and limit harm done and make amends for harm done.
Poorly governed competition for popularity and profit created the problem. Continued freedom for individuals to evade learning to be less harmful and evade helping to repair damage done will result in more damage done, all justified by ‘Positive Perceptions of Benefits Obtained and other harmful misunderstandings’.
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Bob Loblaw at 03:56 AM on 23 March 2023Gas stoves pose health risks. Are gas furnaces and other appliances safe to use?
David-acct:
PAF is widely used in epidemiology, where controlled experiments are difficult (and run into ethics complications - you can't really select children from across the country and force them to live in houses with/without gas stoves and no other differences in their lives).
The paper you link to does not give a blanket condemnation of PAF studies - it just points out that there are issues that need to be considered. In the Introduction, it states (emphasis added):
"...in certain settings, the value of a population attributable fraction estimate may be questionable..."
...and in their conclusion, they state:
The assumptions underlying valid population attributable fraction estimation include the following...
...Such assumptions are often not justified. Those who present population attributable fractions have a duty to ensure that estimates are correctly computed and that their limited meaning is correctly communicated...
Do you dismiss PAF in its entirety? The reference you give does not, as far as I see.
As for the specific study mentioned in this OP - I presume that this is the link you are referring to - you make your own calculation comparison using a 12% value. When I read the paper, I see that it gives 12.7% as a national value. In the abstract, it states:
"We found that 12.7% (95% CI = 6.3–19.3%) of current childhood asthma in the US is attributable to gas stove use.
...and the same sentence appears in the results section, referring to figure 1. We also see in the conclusion:
In conclusion, 12.7% of current childhood asthma nationwide is attributed to gas stove use, which is similar to the childhood asthma burden attributed to secondhand smoke exposure.
But figure 1 of their paper also gives state-specific estimates of PAF. Pennsylvania's PAF is 13.5%, while Florida's PAF is only 3%. In their Materials and Methods section, they state (emphasis added):
...we used the summary statistics of the proportion of children exposed to gas cooking to generate distributions of proportions nationally and for each state for which we have data.
It looks to me like they have accounted for gas stove use, and calculated individual state PAFs, and Florida shows a low PAF for asthma attributable to gas stove use.
In your calculation, you seem to be assuming that gas stove use will be the only factor affecting asthma rates, which is clearly not what PAFs look at. The PAF of 3% for Florida suggests to me that this study is entirely consistent with most Florida asthma being due to other causes.
Why did you pick the 12.7% national rate, and exactly what do you think the "computational error" in the study is?
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Bart Vreeken at 21:31 PM on 22 March 2023The Big Picture
N R N P @168
Shall I have a try in answering your questions? I live in The Netherlands and here we have the same kind of discussions. Excuse me in advance for my English, it seems to be horrible.
A. Changing for the worse?
I hope we do agree that the earth is warming. It's an on going process and we (science) expect that it will go on for a much longer time. So it gives a lot of changes in the climate almost everywhere.A key point is that the continents and the oceans are warming in a different speed. The oceans are warming much slower. This has consequences. When the atmosphere warms up it can contain more water vapor. But the less warming ocean can't deliver enough water vapour to keep the more warming continents humid enough. As a result there is more risk for drought at many places.
An other thing is that the air whole circulation will change. It means that local climates can change more than the global average. Wet climates can turn to dry climates, but also the other way round. Our agriculture, infrastructure and houses are not (always) prepared for that.
As you know, a warmer climate makes the sea level rise. The warmer water in the ocean expands, the ice sheets and mountain glaciers are melting to a certain extent. This sea level rise will give a lot of problems in many coastal areas. Here in the Netherlands the protection against the sea is very well organized, we can manage the first one or one-and-a-halve meter in this century. When it gets more we have a problem, but we are already try to prepare for that. Other countries, including deltas in Asia and parts of the US are less protected and will have large problems before 2100. By the way, it's not only the sea level rise there. Many of these places have also subsidence of the land, but these two come together and the problems are coming much faster then without sea level rise.And then there is the unpredictable part. We don't know exactly how the ice sheets will react. Maybe there are mechanisms for a quick decline of parts of the ice sheets. In that case we have less time to prepare for it.
Of course, there can also be places where the climate gets better, or at least in a part of the year. And at least, we will need less fuel for warming the houses. (but more electricity for cooling in the summer.)An interesting point is the direct effect of the increasing CO2 level to the vegetation and the agriculture. Plants can grow faster with that. Remote sensing shows something like 'global greening'. But it's a mixture of natural response and increasing agriculture. The last thing is tricky when water recourses are limited. And as we have seen, the increasing risk for drought is a cause for concern by itself. Maybe you know the story of the Aral See?
Then your question B) changing because of human activities?
Yes, we can be sure about this. We could calculate the effect of increasing CO2 hundred years ago and it's just what happening. Other possible factors, like changing sun power don't have much effect, these changes are too small. The less known part is how the atmosphere reacts (water vapor, clouds), how the ocean circulation reacts, how ice sheets react in detail."C) why this time it is different than the changes that have taken place?"
The changes are going very fast now, and as I said, the houses, the infrastructure, the agriculture and the water supply are not prepared for these changes. And there is the risk for sudden, even faster changes (tipping points).Moderator Response:][BL Response to deleted comments snipped
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Eclectic at 19:25 PM on 22 March 2023The Big Picture
NoRightsNoProblems @165~168 ,
Thanks for the laugh. Even though it's old material.
If you get better educated, you would ask better questions.
Hint : science-denialists generally fail to get educated because they keep their minds open at the bottom, not at the top. That is why they keep asking the same questions over and over, for decade after decade. They never learn, because they don't wish to learn. [ My apologies for that untactful Home Truth. ]
Moderator Response:[BL] Response to deleted comments snipped.
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NoRightsNoProblem at 17:51 PM on 22 March 2023The Big Picture
Mr. Moderator- I find your tone to be:A) condescending,B) insulting,andC) lacking any attempt at satisfying my curiosity.I fully expect to be banned before I am educated. Not for anything I say, but because you cannot produce the evidence to justify your claims..if you want a fair fight, let's get it on.Moderator Response:[BL] Mission accomplished.
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One Planet Only Forever at 13:34 PM on 22 March 2023It's not bad
peppers @416,
A more extensive presentation of misunderstanding does not make it more reasonable or credible (no matter how many times you repeat it).
You continue to try to promote the belief that the only factor is the 'population growth'. You have even said many times that as soon as the population stops growing the human impact problem will stop getting worse.
Continuation of harmful activity will not stop when the population stops growing. It will not even stop when the population declines from its peak. But it can be reduced while the population grows.
The harm being done will stop when there is no longer any people getting away with obtaining personal benefit from actions that are unsustainable and harmful to Others. Non-human life and the future generations of humanity are the easiest to harm because they have no vote, no legal power, no marketing power. Mind you, people in other legal jurisdictions can also be easy to harm because they also lack powers to govern/limit the harm being done in Other jurisdictions (and leaders of harmful jurisdictions often fight, in misleading ways and with the promotion of misunderstandings, against having higher level governing parties limit their harmfulness).
In many previous comments on different SkS items you have also argued that if the different magnitudes of harmfulness is to be the basis for determining who is the major cause of the problem then larger populations of less harmful people 'are the more harmful problem'. In my comment @77 on the SkS item "The Big Picture", I have rationally refuted that resoundingly by explaining that that is like declaring that someone who is twice as harmful as everyone else 'is acceptable because 3 of those Other people are more harmful in total'.
To conclude I will point you to the following informative report: "Emissions Gap Report 2022: The Closing Window – Climate Crisis Calls for Rapid Transformation of Societies". It is the first of many informative documents pointed to be the SkS item "New reports spell out climate urgency, shortfalls, needed actions"
In my comment @4 on that SkS item I present a relevant point made in the "Emissions Gap Report 2022: ...". It points out the following regarding the most harmful people: "Super-emitters in the top 0.1 per cent (average 467 tCO2e/capita) and the top 0.01 per cent (2,531 tCO2e/capita) have seen the fastest growth in personal carbon footprints since 1990." and "... the bottom 50 per cent emit on average 1.6 tCO2e/capita".
That revises things. Your argument that 'only the number of people matters' would result in claiming that a person who is 2531/1.6=1581 times as harmful as the average person in half of the global population is 'acceptable because 1582 of the average in the least harmful 50% of the global population would be more harmful than that one person'.
The problem is, and always has been, the most harmful pursuers of personal benefit not being effectively governed/limited by Others. And the worst cases of that problem happens when the less harmful Others, but desire the benefits of being more harmful, are willing to be misled into supporting and excusing the most harmful misleaders.
It is possible, and essential for the future of humanity, for more people to learn to be less harmful and more helpful to Others, be part of the solution rather than be misled into being part of the problem. They just have to choose to learn to be less harmful and more helpful at making amends for harm done, especially if they benefited from the harm that was done. And once enough political groups have chosen to be less harmful and more helpful they have enough collective power they will be able to limit the harmfulness of the trouble-makers who persist at fighting against learning to be less harmful and more helpful.
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David-acct at 10:42 AM on 22 March 2023Gas stoves pose health risks. Are gas furnaces and other appliances safe to use?
The gas stove / asthma study uses a population attribution fraction (PAF) analysis. PAF analysis assumes causality based solely on correlation which is a very weak methodology. Below is a link to two articles describing the weakness of PAF (one of which is a PAF analysis with obesity, though the shortcomings in the PAF analysis are similar).
The second obvious weakness in the study are simple math computational errors. For example gas stove use in Pennsylvania is 79% while florida, the gas stove use is only 9%. The difference in the rate of asthma is approx 1% (8.5% vs 7.3%). If the 12% causation was a reasonable estimate, then the difference in asthma rates would be much larger. 6-10%.
What is disappointing is that this study has not only received tremendous fanfare, but has been embraced by groups that should have recognized the weaknesses and shortcomings in the conclusions.
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Bob Loblaw at 10:35 AM on 22 March 2023The Big Picture
Bart @ 147 says "As far as I know."
Yes Bart. We've seen you use this sort of ploy before. Stick some sort of qualifier on your statement so that you can avoid the logical implications of your claims.
For what it is worth, seeing you say "As far as I know" makes me think "yes, Bart knows so little". That makes you ignorant: "not knowing (a fact or facts), unaware (of something)". That can be changed by learning, but you show all signs of wanting to stick to your beliefs. That indicates willful ignorance. That is not a positive character trait.
Any idea that you present that you originated some form of graphical display of temperature data has been conclusively demonstrated to be false. That you continue this charade is a form of puffery (the act of puffing: an opinion or judgment, often made by the seller of property to a potential buyer, that is not made as a representation of fact.
@ 155, you say "was just my opinion". Wild guesses. Opinions. Whatever.
For someone who has demonstrated such a poor ability to express himself, or to recognize the context of material he reads and spouts quotes from, it's pretty rich to see you saying things like "Looks like you still don't understand the topic completely". You are in no position to be claiming any sort of intellectual or knowledge high ground.
You just keep digging yourself a deeper hole You really should take your own advice when you said "But let's stop the discussion".
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Rob Honeycutt at 10:22 AM on 22 March 2023The Big Picture
NoRightsNoProblem @161... On top of what the moderator points out is a poor debate approach, your "questions" are all straw men since no one says any of what you're stating.
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Rob Honeycutt at 10:19 AM on 22 March 2023The Big Picture
Bart @160... "The Netherlands benefit from the gravitational effects."
Please show me research that actually makes this claim rather than just your interpretation of a graph that disagrees with the statements made by the authors of the paper.
I'm honestly open to being convinced by the research, but the research is going to have to actually make claims (in words) that support your statement.
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NoRightsNoProblem at 08:20 AM on 22 March 2023The Big Picture
I feel like I just stepped on Mars.
Does the data confirm that we humans will be so restricted in our activities that life won't be worth living?
Please tell me why children as youg as FIVE are the target of your agenda.
Assuming that preventing a climate catastrophe is your goal, would you like to completely remove all
humans in pursuit of obtaining it?
Mr moderator— these are questions. Not statements. I do NOT agree with the "settled science," as science is NEVER settled. But if you forsee me causing a problem in my dissent, please--change my mind.
Moderator Response:[BL] We are quite familiar with the "Just asking questions" style of "debate". It will not get you far here, and it does not suggest that you are open to any ideas that might change your mind.
You should start by reading the comments policy.
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Bart Vreeken at 07:30 AM on 22 March 2023The Big Picture
NB a spelling check should help here. Sorry for that.
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Bart Vreeken at 07:28 AM on 22 March 2023The Big Picture
Hi Rob @158
When you're willing to read something wrong there is allways a possibility.
The Netherlands benefit from the gravitational effects. What gravitational effect? The gravitational effects of the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Becaurse of these effects we will only see some 12.5% (or even less) of the melting water coming here. That's better then 100%, so there is a benefit.
The KNMI calls this 'neglecteble' and I do agree with that. For they know what they are talking about.
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Rob Honeycutt at 06:58 AM on 22 March 2023The Big Picture
Bart... "Looks like you still don't understand the topic completely."
Is that another "opinion" of yours, make without doing even a minimal amount of research?
Previously, far up in this thread, you stated that the Netherlands "profits from" (I'm interpreting that to mean "benefits from") the gravitational effects of the melting Greenland ice sheet. The paper that you cited claimed the effect on the Netherlands was negligible over the previous decade, and makes no claims about projected effects.
Are you claiming the author of the paper you cited doesn't understand this topic completely?
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Rob Honeycutt at 06:53 AM on 22 March 2023The Big Picture
Bart... "But of course I can't oversee everything. I didn't research the complete Internet then."
Nor have I researched the complete internet. I merely spent 10-15 mins doing trying some very basic search terms and came up with all these examples. It's not that difficult.
And that's kind of the point. If you're going to insinuate that someone stole your idea, maybe it would be a good idea to make at least a minimal effort to check to see if your "opinion" is correct or not.
This is basic professional courtesy, Bart.
