Re: OT: Post Turtle

This is, as you can easily confirm, sci.electronics.design, and I design electronics. Lots of it. If you really want to argue about climatology, go do it with experts on climatology, on some other group.

The pressure broadening issue here was that a certain idler told me I was stupid because I am skeptical about AGW, and cited my ignorance of pressure broadening as an example. So what I'm trying to figure out is how PB is a contributor to AGW, any more than it has been a heat trapper for the last billion years or three. If manmade CO2 isn't increasing atmospheric pressure, PB seems to not be an amplifier.

My position on AGW is

1. It's not quantified by any real science

1. It's not demonstrably happening; the hockey stick was a hoax.

2. If it is happening, it's not necessarily bad

1. If it's bad, we're not going to do anything about it

2. It has no discernable effect on electronic design

1. Why worry? We can do things to lessen human misery, things that with little doubt do work, so we should do them. And I do.

Do you guys ever design electronics?

John

I'm not an idler from choice, and I didn't call you stupid - I do call you ignorant, and your ignorance does extend to the point of not appreciating how little you know. This isn't a sensible way to behave, but it is a mistake that any number of people who score well on IQ tests do seem prone to make.

Only if you ignore the point that CO2 and H2O are more effective at pressure broadening than non-polar gases like oxygen and nitrogen.

Which reflects your ignorance of the real science involved.

The hockey stick looked nicer than it should have done - Mann's misused a well-known and well established technique to get graphs that looked prettier than they should have done. The recent warming is appreciable and highly likely to be due to anthropogenic global warming.

Within rather narrow limits. Any signifcant warming will create considerable problems. Runaway warming seems to have caused global extinctions in the geological past, and if we manage to warm up any significant deposits of methane hydrates we could get into that kind of situation.

Germany and Denmark are already putting a lot of money into wind energy and solar cells, and the rest of Europe isn't all that far behind. Both technologies seem to be well on the way to becoming economically competitive with fossil-fuel-fired electricity generation, even discounting the current rapid rise in the price of oil.

Since Dubbya's election was bought and paid for by the oil industry, the US is a little behind the game, but there is some action at the state level. George Monbiot's "Heat" spells out the economic adjustments we'd need to make to stop increasing the CO2 levels in the atmosphere - they aren't dramatic.

As long as we can keep on doing it.

To some extent this is re-arranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic; worthy in itself, but distinctly short term thinking.

When I get the chance.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen (but in Sydney at the moment)

I suppose you could hide behind the denotation of "proven" in your statement, "Whether CO2 causes warming is still not proven," back on the 17th. Nothing in science is ever proven for all time, as logically it isn't possible to know what the future will bring.

But I tend to see that kind of statement as rather provocative, John. From as far back as the 1820's to 1860's, scientists have known not only about the possibility but that some specific gases including H2O and CO2 do have global warming effects. Although the modern understanding is like night and day to those times (atomic theory, subatomic particles, quantum mechanics and electrodynamics, etc.), if anything your statement is very much like someone saying "Whether the Earth is roughly spherical or entirely flat is still not proven," in the modern context. Both are equally misleading, if not entirely silly to make so boldly. One can stand pat claiming that absolute proof is not had, of course. But it is equally senseless to take either position. Yet you take one of them and it looks just as dogmatic and dead wrong to me as the other would have. That you don't see why only goes to show your ignorance on the subject. Nothing else.

Frankly, if you are just remaining "skeptical" then I've no idea why you write that way. Unless you just like wearing your ignorance on this topic on your sleeves. The information isn't hard to find and with someone having your experience in electronics design and sensor physics, I'd imagine that a few bits of science understanding and a differential equation or two wouldn't be a road block to you, if you weren't really just looking for a fight.

Elsewhere, you wrote, "If pressure broadening increases global warming, the atmospheric pressure must be increasing." Yesterday, was it? Do you seriously imagine that it makes any sense at all? Your logic is horribly flawed on its face and if you knew much about the subject you'd cringe from making such an error. It's as bad as saying, "If dogs bark, then cats cover their ears." One might find some distant sense in it, in a vague way. But it's not at all sound reasoning. I'd expect better than that from someone as imaginative and smart.

There is no question whatsoever that you are ignorant about AGW or GW, generally. This doesn't make you stupid or dull. I like reading some of what you write here and I learn from you here and there -- enough to be worth the time.

But some of your statements on the subject are just asking for a punch in the arm.

I cited a very specific place, which details in exact and quantitative terms the hows and wherefores of pressure broadening in connection with global warming. There are more than a few salient points on that topic alone, each of which are categorized under "pressure broadening" but where there are interesting and distinct facets which are important to treat separately. If you are seriously "trying to figure out" these details, please read the text in the regions I mentioned and hopefully a little beyond there. I could try and put my own words to it, but why should you take my word on anything? Better to get it from someone who can put equations to the theory and where they can show you how those equations yield the conclusions, when deduced properly with specifics related to the Earth.

(as though you are in a position to have a position on it)

Which is a conclusion by fiat that can only be made by someone nearly completely ignorant of the modern state of the science.

Wrong. And again, a statement which obviously could only be made by someone comprehensively informed on the subject and we already know you are not. If you would dare to pull your head out of the ground for a moment and study a little, you'd come to a different conclusion. But you won't and you won't.

No. But like a lot of science papers, the original publication had some flaws which did NOT materially impact the broad conclusions of the paper but where some of the details needed repair. Wasn't the first such paper and it won't be the last. But it was not a hoax -- that denotes lying with the intent to deceive and that was not the case here.

Hiding in the word, "necessarily," John? A poison released in your city's water supply isn't "necessarily bad." Who knows? It just might happen to cure cancer at the levels present.

It is happening and it spells out "rapid change." Some species cannot migrate fast enough. For example, trees take quite some time to move to a similarly comfortable locality. Animals have feet and can migrate, though it's not as easy for them as you may imagine it. In any case, it's going to give meaning to "may you live in interesting times."

Well, there I'm pretty much with you... at least, until it is way too late to make the transitions much easier than very much harder.

hehe. Okay. I almost agree. But it did have an effect, at least indirectly. Small molecule CFCs were used in large baths to clean circuit boards "back in the day." These molecules were doing two things -- drastically shifting the equilibrium balance in the ozone layer AND significantly contributing to global warming, as well.

Well, there is no point worrying for worrying's sake. And if you do what you feel you can anyway then I'm fine with that. I just don't feel that some of your comments here and elsewhere are wisely made and they certainly show some difficulties you have with applying sound logic or understanding your own limitations in the scope of your knowledge about the world. There is nothing inherently wrong with having such limitations... we all do. It's just a blemish on your otherwise excellent contributions that you would say dogmatic things about a subject you are rather ignorant about and seem to be unwilling to change.

Yes. But in my case I'm ignorant enough about electronics design that I learn some important new ways to think about it, reading this group, despite all the noise here.

Jon

OK, answer this:

How many gallons of gasoline do you personally use, per year, to move your body around? Include cars, lawn mowers, any motorized vehicle. If you share with other riders, make the appropriate adjustments.

How much does your household spend, per year, on energy utilities... gas, oil, electricity, coal, whatever you use? How many people share that energy?

How many miles do you fly per year?

Do you have a private plane or boat or RV or other non-transport vehicle? How much gas do they use?

How much do you personally contribute (not through taxes, but through choice) to helping feed/medicate/educate impoverished people in other countries?

John

On Sat, 21 Jun 2008 08:17:04 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

I see. You imagine that by finding fault in me you might, in any way, remedy your own staunch exhibition of a lack of sound judgment when speaking as though you have some authority on something you know so little about?

I'll give you some of your red meat to go chew on. But before I deal with that misguided attempt, let me say this. I sincerely took you at your word where you wrote, "We can do things to lessen human misery, things that with little doubt do work, so we should do them. And I do," and granted you that without any question or hint of one. I would say about the same for myself and would hope that you'd accept that, as well. Your misdirection here is sad, mostly because it is pretentious, emotionally defensive, and avoids dealing with your own well-exhibited errors here. Instead of dealing with what you've been called to account for saying, you choose instead to see if there is something to be found in order to put the other on the defensive. Oh, well.

Like I said, I'll give you some red meat to attack. Not because it helps you remedy your own errors here. Only because I've been lucky and the answers might satisfy some curiosities.

I work entirely at home. I grow almost ALL of the food we eat here on this property. Most of that is by hand labor, but I do use the occasional power tool. I have free ranged chickens on the property for that side of the diet, too. We use a well for our water supply and it is electrically powered, but costs very little to run. I have NO air conditioners and for heat I have a central oil heater, which I use very rarely. Space heating is not used -- we use sweaters and blankets. No beds in the house, at all. Just sleep where we want to. I'm lucky enough to live in a rather moderate climate so the winters aren't that cold and the summers aren't that hot... yet. Most winters do not get much below 40F (which is t-shirt weather as far as I'm concerned) and most summers rarely reach 100F even for a few days. Currently, I'm hauling out some cold storage (about 200 sq ft of it) from a hillside so that I can retire some of my refrigeration requirements, as well. Eggs for example, in cold storage and placed in water glass, will keep for a very long time -- 5-6 months. I import wheat and sugar, a few spices, and some cheese. I may get a goat or two and make the cheese here, though, perhaps starting this year. I also buy tools, of course, and some wood supplies and nails, and a few construction items like that. I build my own structures, including barns, without hiring any help to do it. I have two vehicles, used perhaps once every two weeks or so, for travel to town. I keep two because we may be using one for a rare drive to a store when my daughter may then have a grand mal seizure and breaks something serious (she has broken her radius and ulna clean through before, for example) requiring a hospital visit, so it is necessary to have up to two transportation options available. We have five members in the family here -- two legally, permanently disabled.

I fly exactly zero miles each year. I gave up a very high paying job with Lockheed, in fact, which required regular travel. I have a pilot's license, long since, but I haven't flown in decades. I very much LOVE flying, though. And it is a personal sacrifice that you've just reminded me about that makes me a little sad for the loss. I very much did enjoy it.

But you are also asking the wrong person, John, if you are trying to make some point. I also spend about 500-600 hours a year in volunteer activities and I contribute about 30% of my remaining income after taxes to those organizations I personally contribute time to, as well. During the Reagan administration, I was personally involved in transporting (it was a 'train' of sorts) people from El Salvador to Canada and my involvement both with the poor around the world as well as here in the US has continued, since. I have two disabled children besides, which I take care of and one of them needs constant, daily care. On top of that, I work to make a living and bring in cash from elsewhere just like you do.

None of this has anything to do with the price of tea in China, John.

It appears to me to be nothing more than some feigned (and terribly misguided) attempt on your part to find some "chink" in my armor to attack and it has absolutely nothing to do with the issues at hand, which are your grossly negligent comments about something you are almost entirely ignorant about and your inability to apply sound reasoning and good judgment. The science is being done by real scientists and if you are truly interested in understanding the impacts of pressure broadening in the context of Earth's global warming situation and the impacts humans are having, then you will accept and read the volume I posted a link towards, yesterday. It's there to be had, if you just look. I even pointed you towards the pages to read more closely.

In any case, I've little to apologize for. I spend a significant part of my life choosing, without coercion, to contribute back for the accident of fortune for having been born in the US. All of next week, in fact, from Monday through Friday, from about 8AM till 7PM each day, will be spent in yet another of these volunteer activities.

Okay. I've indulged most of your little distraction. Now let's get back to your exhibited lack of sound judgment when speaking as though you have some authority on something you know so little about. It's one thing to be ignorant about a topic -- we all are on most of them. It's quite another to exhibit openly such a lack of sound judgment and in the same breath disparage entire fields of knowledge you have no place to speak about.

Two sayings come to mind here. A famous one, "Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." And one I made up a decade ago, "Having an equal right to an opinion isn't the same as having a right to an equal opinion." I very much enjoy reading your comments both here and in .basics, because you have definitely helped me better understand things in electronics design and I'm a better person for all of that. Thanks. Sincerely. But it's obvious that climate science is mostly outside your field of experience and knowledge and I think you know better than to speak so brazenly when you know so little about it. It's my hope that you will either choose to get better informed (and I can refer you to working scientists in the field willing to help you gain a foothold, provide free copies of important papers, or point you towards significant textbooks) or else, at least, will treat other serious professionals who are actively working in science as you'd like to be treated yourself, were the shoe on the other foot.

I have changed almost everything our family does that I can manage to change without placing us at serious risk. But what is your point? It wouldn't matter in the least if I hadn't. The science would be just the same and your behavior just as egregious.

Jon

I'm not attacking anyone. I was just interested to see if you are a theorist or a practitioner when it comes to AGW. Sounds like you are not a big part of the problem.

Egregious? Because I'm skeptical about the state of climate science? I'm skeptical about any science that's not verified by experiment and has a history of fudging data. Egregious because I ask for numbers about pressure broadening as a contributor to GW, and don't get them?

So, given that man dumps, say, 100 PPM additional CO2 into the air, how much does that increase IR retention by water vapor?

I keep discussing facts, or disputing what other people consider to be facts, and some people, yourself included, respond with personal insults. Big deal.

John

Projection.

If you understood the science just a little better, you'd understand that climate science - like paleontology - isn't verified by experiment, but by comparison with the historical record (which keeps on expanding as we find new ways to find out about the past). Your complaints about "fudging the data" basically represent your lack of understanding of the objections to Mann's "hockey stick" - which wasn't about "fudging the data" but about a bad technique for presenting the data.

Yes. Because it's irrelevant to your comprehension of what is going on. The information is almost certainly out there somewhere, but there is a limit to the work that can be put in to answer every last dumb newbie question.

Not entirely accurate - you don't do well on facts, and concentrate your attention on what you perceive to be absent facts, which are easier targets.

You have been known to post the occasional personal insult yourself. I don't like being referred to as an idler, or being told that I choose not to work. I've obviously made choices in the past which - it is now obvious - make it difficult for me to get work now, but I certainly haven't stopped looking for work.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen (but in Sydney at the moment, and will be for the next three months)

When people ask me a series of question as you did, in fast order like that, it is almost always because they are looking for something personal to go after as though that makes a hill of beans of a difference in terms of the science, itself. As I said, I've been lucky. I've been lucky to have been born in the US, lucky to have been born in probably the very best rain forest of the world -- western Oregon. And just plain lucky in terms of moving from a childhood of working in the fields to survive to a fantastic acreage with a huge, 5000 sq ft home, thousands of sq ft of auxiliary structures, and probably some of the best soils around that can exist somewhat above (about 800' above sea level) the surrounding area so that floods cannot possibly come close to reaching me. Every single day of my life when I walk out on my land, I feel such a deep sense of fortune that I cannot possibly have deserved. It humbles one, profoundly, and I cannot but want to share some of what I've been lucky enough to fall into. Nothing brings that home quicker than helping a mother and her child, who escaped by pretending to be dead under the bleeding bodies of her other children and family, find a safer place to survive. If seeing the stark contrasts of fortune like that can't get through to someone, nothing ever will.

There is little possibility for one individual to be a "big" part of the problem. Not for most of us who have little control over others, anyway. So I cannot imagine how I could be a _big_ part of it. But I also don't think it matters what you think about me on that point. Most of us will try and be good people, I think, and few know the details of how we feel we must live our lives. Very few are in a position to judge either you or me, on that score. So I sincerely felt your questions, the chain of them in a kind of slam, bam, thank you ma'am way, couldn't possibly bear on anything regarding the science. My behavior has nothing to do with science knowledge and in any case it's only a very few of us who may completely control our lives on the basis of Spock-like impersonal, unemotional, and dry logic. So many things impinge and our skills to cope are limited in their own ways. There is no judgment about the science to be had by that investigation.

You say you were just interested. I still see no legitimate reason why, unless you just like to delve into personal lives.

No, that's a silly strawman, John. I carefully focused on exactly why and I quoted you, as well, to help make the point clearer to you. Somehow, it still seems to escape you. Worse for you, you did me the great favor of compounding your errors in one of your own replies. I find it striking that you would now pretend to not understand what I was dressing you down over. I think you know exactly what I'm talking about. Being "skeptical" is decidedly not the reason. And you know it isn't.

The calculations for a human like me to do in reasonable time, like many, involve a number of simplifying assumptions. Which of those would you even understand, let alone accept from me? I might instead choose to modify a parameter in a model and then tell you what I got from that... but would you believe any of it from me or anyone else?

No. I don't believe you would accept anything from anyone here. If for no other reason because it is also quite obvious that you don't respect pretty much anyone else in physics or chemistry dealing with the theories and figures.

Which pretty much leaves you with taking on the job, yourself. No problem. I think my link should be a great help to you, John. A lot of it is right there for you.

However, it's my conclusion that you aren't being honest with yourself or anyone else and you don't care to be, either. And there is the real problem.

It's in the theories and models, as well. In fact, I think I gave a link to a page that directly deals with a broader understanding of the interactions. No single human sits down to do the exact calculations, though. The global climate models do the reasonable thing -- they break up the atmosphere into a 3D system -- perhaps hundreds of layers and each layer divided into thousands of grid areas. Scientists program the computers using carefully crafted code for both speed and to reduce the accumulation of floating point errors and they apply best practices regarding what is theoretically known together with data that has been empirically measured and analyzed carefully. Then they don't just assume things work. They verify, every chance they get. When Pinatubo erupted, they used it to test the models in the early 1990's. Etc. First principles physics are used to compute cloud formation in small, isolated areas of the globe (since it isn't possible to do, globally, with current compute capacities of the entire Earth combined) and these calculations are then compared with actual observations. Differences are examined for reasonableness with expected errors and the process never ends.

I know you don't really care. If I were to quote you an exact number (should I be a God, for example, and could produce it for you exactly), you would just ignore it, anyway. You have no intent to find out for yourself and you really don't care about the question. Not sincerely. You only care to ask it, rhetorically. So why should anyone seriously struggle hard just for your entertainment?

I think if you were to seriously engage yourself to bridge a part of the gap, you'd find people willing to help you put the pieces together.

Cripes, I've no idea why I have to explain all this to you, John. It feels like talking to a child, really, and I know you aren't one. If someone were to show up here in sci.electronics.design and tell everyone here that they don't know squat about electronics, that everything in the books is wrong, that nothing in them has been proven to be true at all, and that it's all a hoax... and then had the balls after all that to dare ask for "how many millivolts will the base- emitter of a BJT rise if the drain current of a FET elsewhere in the circuit is forced to increase by 10 milliamps?" What would you expect the reaction to be? Polite compliance? Perhaps some help with refining the question better? Or... "go take a flying leap?"

I think I can guess.

Beyond what is manifest from your own comments here, I've tried to refrain from saying anything overly personal. Part of the reason is that I respect you and it would be unnatural for me to feel like insulting you. You help a lot of people with your time and do it sincerely. That is very kind and generous. So why would I just insult you? I've no motive for that.

What I've addressed is your own statements, not who you are. I'd appreciate it if you'd stop accusing scientists of hoaxes and making false statements on the science facts of a subject you know very little about. But if you don't, I don't see any reason to apologize for sometimes saying something about your egregious behavior or to stop pointing it out, on occasion when I've a moment to care one way or another.

To make this abundantly clear, you don't seem to be able to discuss the facts of global warming, at all, John. If someone told you that a BJT works like exactly like a faucet does, insisted that anyone that said it worked at all like the Ebers-Moll model or any further refinements provided by physicists was part of a devious hoax, and clearly didn't even know what the Ebers-Moll model was and hadn't read any of the science with an attempt to understand any of it, what would you say?

I think, if you were able to constrain yourself and be overly polite about it, you'd try and get them to at least read a bit before telling everyone they were wrong. And I don't think you'd accept the "I'm just being skeptical" as an excuse for their ignorant and offensive behavior telling physicists who actually studied the subject of BJTs that they are wrong and pulling a hoax, when they haven't even bothered to seriously engage the subject first.

Oh, well. That's probably all I've time to say for a bit on it. I've got my volunteer work looming next week, and I'm still out berming cold storage and digging drainage on the acreage here, so probably won't have a lot more time to encourage you to see yourself more clearly. I like who you are and I like the time you spend encouraging imagination and helping others when you think you have something to say. Those are the parts of you I like and I probably wouldn't go as far as I did yesterday and today, if I didn't respect that side of you and have some hope that you can see just how thoroughly unsound you are being on this topic.

So there it is. Best wishes and, again, my very sincere thanks to you for your help to others in .basics. No matter what you say or do on this topic, nothing will take that away from you.

Jon

The history is that I expressed skepticism about the GW models, and Sloman told me that I was ignorant of pressure broadening.

So now I ask him to give me some rough numbers. Seems he's unable to do so; looks like he's as ignorant as I am, but he's the physical chemist. I suspect he likes to drop technical terms, like some people like to drop names of people they don't actually know.

But my post-provoke ratio [1] here is ballpark 30:1. You guys sure get worked up easy.

John

[1] how many lines of rant I can provoke with a few lines of original posting.

You claimed that pressure broadening was insane, which isn't quite the same thing.

No. I'm ignorant at an appreciably higher level. And I'm not so much unable as unwilling - I think I could see how I might be able to do it, but it would be a great deal of work for a thoroughly unappreciative audience.

like some people

A comforting delusion, but not true - I'm concious of the limits of my knowledge and tend to specify when I think I'm getting out of my depth.

Your postings on the subject of global warming aren't exactly original

- you could have poached most of your misapprehensions from Eeyore or got them at first hand from "The Great Global Warming Swindle".

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

What you wrote was, "It's insane in the context of AGW." Now, are you trying to tell me this is "skepticism?" No, John. That's not skepticism. It might be that you just don't like Bill and anything he says you take an opposite position. Perhaps. But that's between you two. However, your statement, no matter what motivated you to write it, goes far beyond just a distaste for Bill. It makes a clear claim about the facts. Facts you obviously no nothing at all about.

That you cannot see your own behavior here, is what is so remarkable to me. It's like a huge blind spot. You really need to sit down and think for a moment and stop pointing fingers everywhere else, trying to find problems in other people when the real problem here is right at home and very close to you.

John, this is physics you are talking about. This isn't some hippy environmentalist trying to protect a polar bear. It's very well understood physics based upon theory developed well before anyone was much caring at all about global warming or there were any measurements of human injection of CO2 to indicate a rise, even. You aren't being skeptical of some hippy. You are saying that the very fundamentals of atomic and molecular physics are wrong.

Global warming models may be developed to pull together a lot of details, some of which are less well understood. But John, if you wanted to pick your battles, you certainly wouldn't pick one of the most thoroughly studied and well understood components that they use and then say that's all wrong and "insane in the context of AGW." The application of physical theory, the very incorporation of well- understood radiation and molecular physics of gases (probably one of the more studied areas around) occurs with the guidance and continual criticism of those who know the field well and are physicists active in the fields and with continual verification and testing by ongoing, independent studies that will continue until long after I'm dead and gone.

But the point isn't whether or not the physicists are getting their code written correctly in the models. The point is that you don't have a clue of your own about the subject and yet you are willing to set everything aside and unequivocally make statements about which you cannot possibly know and have no business making with authority.

I know you know better. But when I point you to a free textbook on the subject where you can actually study the impacts in a quantitative way, using equations developed right in front of your eyes with sound physics long since well understood, you try and defend yourself by shying away from your earlier statement and claiming 'skepticism' was involved?? That statement looked a hell of a lot different than skepticism, to me, John. It was a bald-faced claim of fact. Fact you clearly know little about, too.

I almost consider what you are doing here the equivalent of lying. It treads very, very close, at least.

He may be ignorant of the exact details. His knowledge, or lack of it, does not in any way bear on your statement about pressure broadening; "It's insane in the context of AGW." That statement stands independently, by itself, and Bill's ignorance or knowledge cannot affect it in any way.

All you are really discovering here is that some physical chemists who were busy elsewhere may not fully apprehend the details that other physicists and physical chemists actively working in THIS FIELD and trying to apply well understood physical theories by deducing them into the specifics mandated by Earth's unique atmosphere. Gee! What a new insight that is... not.

That's no reason to make an independent claim about applied physical theory about which you are essentially ignorant.

Okay. On that note I will bow to you. Like I said before, I'm so very glad you offer some of your time and thinking to others and nothing can take that away from you. People like you and Tim Wescott and Joerg and Phil Hobbs and many other good folks here (or here at times beforehand) who also care about others and try and provide a few clues along the way are heroes. Thanks.

As you earlier pointed out, we humans probably won't deal with the situation until it burns our noses. That's a social/psychological and educational, as well as practical, barrier of sorts and I admit it is going to be difficult to ascend. Maybe, it won't even happen. But engineers and scientists literally build and shape societies. So it goes doubly important for them to grab clues and lead where possible.

You have earned the respect of others and what you say carries weight, even if you don't imagine it does. Your opinion is "more equal." But with that also comes a burden to care about your own opinion. I hope you will return the honor granted by others by continuing to care well about what you say in public.

This case was an easy one. You are blindly going after what is probably one of the better understood parts of climate science. Pressure broadening gained serious notice as early as WW II, in fact. There are plenty of better places to chase down unknown errors, but this isn't one of them. It's just as though you were faced with the problem of sneaking into a bank to steal money and had decided to go through the front door. Kind of a Darwin Award thing, you know?

Jon

I apologize. This should have said, "Facts you obviously know little about." I over-reached.

Jon

Also, obviously, something he knows nothing about. But he brought it up. Based on the curves I've seen, I doubt that adding another 100 PPM of CO2 will have an insignificant effect - 1 PPM maybe - on the thermal IR absorption of H2O or O2 or N2. If anybody has better numbers, let's see them.

What's your estimate?

I don't need to do anything; I'm perfectly happy.

But point fingers? Find problems in others? Bizarre things to say, if you will permit this exception.

Equally bizarre. We're talking planetary climate, not particle physics.

Write a letter to the moderator and complain.

It was a bald-faced claim of skepticism.

Skepticism is lying? In what church?

He is ineffectual, I'll give you that.

Science has a rich history of concensus that later proved to be dead wrong. The paradigm breaker is always experiment.

"Dealing" with GW, especially if it's not real, could kill millions of innocents; it probably has already, with the price of tortillas sacrificed to the obscene idea of burning corn in SUVs, and buying votes in the process. This should not be done as a political fad.

Sorry, this is just a newsgroup.

Lighten up. And if you find any numbers on the PB thing, post them.

John

Don't matter: it's just a newsgroup.

John

You had asked, "given that man dumps, say, 100 PPM additional CO2 into the air, how much does that increase IR retention by water vapor?" but for the life of me I cannot see why you feel the question is meaningful. You'd need to explain better what you are looking to achieve, because frankly the question itself shows a profound ignorance of the subject.

Suppose someone wrote here, "Please give me a schematic for a 5V power supply I want," I've a hunch I'd see all manner of asking for more information about the application and very little by way of a schematic. That is, if anyone were to control themselves long enough to be polite about it.

You should know, without me telling you, that 100ppm of CO2 change is, to put it in the local lingo, a large signal change. Understanding the large signal behavior also may tell you very little about what you really may want to know, even if you were to get a number. And of course, even were I to make a set of assumptions for you, I still cannot tell from your question whether you want to know what happens when there is a 100ppm delta of CO2 from 280ppm to 380ppm as has already occurred in the last century, roughly speaking, or from 388ppm at the current global average value and towards 488ppm some time into the future. And to provide any kind of meaningful answer I'd need to know a lot more about "your application." You know that as well as anyone does, John.

If you disclose your application sufficiently so that a meaningful answer can be developed for you, I might be tempted to pass it on to an active scientist in the field. You could do it yourself, too, if you wanted. I could provide a name or two for you to write to, if you are serious about learning.

The very question you asked is so very badly formed I'm honestly not sure anyone would care to spend time educating you on it, though. It shows just how far away you are from understanding anything someone might say. If you'd read some of the links I provided, skipping over the free volume even, you'd see some of the quandary because, frankly, they discuss some of the details enough there that you'd see your own error in your phrasing. How does one assign the responsibility of a net IR retention, X to H2O and Y to CO2, in regions where they both absorb and emit? It's much easier where their bands are distinct. But they overlap significantly in the 2.5 micron band and out getting close to 15 microns and longer, as well. What's your criteria? What kind of answer would be meaningful to you? This is just an example of many other related questions, before either you or someone else is really ready to struggle together on this.

Like I said before, I don't believe you are asking the question in anything but a disingenuous way. But if you really do have a serious, honest question somewhere in here then I'm sure you will find people willing to help you gain some useful answers.

Sometimes, the best answer for someone is one that is targeted at their level of understanding. To a 2nd grader child asking about "why is grass green," you would provide an appropriately leveled answer, such as "because grass is a plant and plants are mostly green." For a

2nd grader, that is usually all they can handle. For a high school student, you might provide a more detailed answer; "there is a lens-shaped organelle contained in the cytoplasm of plant cells called chloroplasts, which have stacks of disks called grana which house chlorophyll and are the central sites for photosynthesis in plants." For someone a little further along, one might go into more detail, including the manner by which both reddish and bluish light are each used by plants. And further still, into the quantum mechanical means by which photosynthesis achieves such a high efficiency.

For a question such as yours, coming from you at your level of grasp of the issues, it's enough to say that H2O levels in the atmosphere are a short-lived response function to longer term net greenhouse warming, part of which is due to CO2, and that H2O tends to amplify the effects of adding additional CO2. For more discussion about H2O and CO2 at a very broad brush level, see:

There is a section there called "WATER VAPOR" that you might jump towards, if you want.

Jon

So, you don't know any more than Sloman about pressure broadening as it may/may not affect AGW. Somehow I'm not surprised.

John

u

Not true. but John doesn't know enough to realise how silly his claim is.

nother 100 PPM

Guesswork, from somebody who doesn't know what he's guessing about.

Granting that Jonathan Kirwan and I haven't come up with anything yet, this is a pretty safe debating trick.

That really is a truly ignorant response. Infrared spectroscopy is quantum mechanics in action. One of my heroes - H.S. Johnson of Berkeley - corrected the infra-red absorbtion spectral assignments of boron trichloride on the basis that his measurements of the heat capacity of the gas were incompatible with the published assignments. That's a famous victory of physical chemistry over chemical physics, and depended on someone working out the partition function of boron trichloride (which involves all the degrees of freedom of the moelcule, including the vibrational and rotational modes - the infra- red and microwave spectra) to get to it's entropy.

He doesn't have to. You've made it obvious to the group exactly how little you know about physics and how much you think you know that ain't so.

ou

Actually, a bald-faced admission of ignorance.

The point is that your skepticism is ill-founded. A more reasonable man would demonstrate a better appreciation of the boundaries of his knowledge.

Unnecessary personal insult - if true in the narrow sense that I can't influence your passion for making a fool of yourself by championing truly silly ideas,

t

The paradigm breaker is always external evidence - in the observational sciences, like astromony and paleology, experiments aren't available, but elaborate observing tools serve much the same function.

Some of the current food price crisis reflect crop failures here and there, which may have been caused by the global warming we've had so far. It isn't all diverting corn to making ethanol, and putting the brakes on AGW may in fact what we ought to be doing to prevent further food shortages.

Not dealing with AGW could kill the entire human race, which is an even bigger downside. We'd have to let the global temperature get high enough to decompose a lot of methane hydrates - how hot this would be is an open question - but (as I've mentioned before) the geological record shows a couple of carbon isotope ratio spikes that look very much as if they correspond to episodes of runaway global warming driven by the self-feeding thermal decompostion of methane hydrate deposits, and they are associated with global extinctions and periods of rapid species diversification (which is to say, the extinction of a lot of species that had tied up all the ecological niches before the ecology went haywire).

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

You were the one making the unequivocal claims about a subject you know little about and have no place commenting on, John. All I did was provide you with a specific and quantitative discussion by those who do know the subject well by which you could remedy your failure here. What I know or don't is completely irrelevant to your own ignorance on the subject and the terrible dishonor you do yourself by speaking well beyond your grasp.

But I'm glad to see you admit that you had no business speaking as you did, by way of being completely unable to elucidate any knowledge on the subject of AGW of your own. We can finally close this out -- in time for my upcoming volunteer work next week.

I will still enjoy your contributions on subjects where you have learned something.

Jon