Interesting/promising measurements at CERN

Thre's certainly no shortage of science.

The real climate crisis will be the next ice age.

None of which you seems to understand.

Which seems to be a long way off. Once the climate scientists started to get a decent grip on the way that the earth flips from an ice age to an interglacial it became obvious that it wasn't going to flip out of an interglacial if the atmospheric CO2 level was above about 400 ppm.

A bit more digging suggested that this interglacial would probably have been one of the longer ones, even if we hadn't started digging up fossil carbon and burning it as fuel.

We probably should lay off doing that now, so we've still got some left to burn the next time we need it.

The fossil carbon extraction industry - who pay for the climate change denial propaganda that gullible twits like you seem to fall for - wouldn't like that. They want to keep on getting their dividends right now.

Their antinuclear propaganda is a lot more efficient and likely has already had a much larger impact on being unable to stop the rise of CO2 concentration, the first derivative is the really worrying part. I don't know if we can get that one to 0 or negative if we stop burning stuff altogether; but having some petrol supply left intact is a good idea.

Dimiter

I know SSRL folks from back then. One of my study partners did his degree with Piero Pianetta over there. He's currently the beam time czar at Brookhaven, iirc.

But that has squat to do with litho (see above).

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

6000ppm by weight is close enough to 4000ppm molar to be probably the same data in different units. [...]

I have trouble believing that. CO2 is reactive! It's not going to hang around! Also, *if* CO2 would be stable enough to hang around for centuries, we wouldn't be seeing yearly periodic variations. The bandwidth wouldn't be there.

Jeroen Belleman

Not really, maybe it's slightly more reactive than water. It's not reactive like oxygen gas. It doesn't react with much in nature, it will react with some metals but they aren't natural.

Where's it going?

Huh? Are you saying that because we can measure it accurately it's not changing?

CO2 will readily dissolve in water. It's acidic and will form carbonates from oxides and hydroxides. Plants and algae use it for photosynthesis and animals use it to make shells.

No, if you look at the CO2 concentration from the Mauna Loa Observatory, for example, there are yearly variations of about 8 ppm superimposed on a trend of about +3ppm/year. If the concentration can drop by 8ppm in just 6 months, something must be consuming that CO2 at a fair rate! Yes, of course the rate of production is higher still.

The time constant for consumption of CO2 is clearly shorter than a century.

Jeroen Belleman

Northern hemisphere photosynthesis during the northern hemisphere summer. There's currently quite a lot more land surface north of the equator than there is south of it, and land plants soak up CO2 in summer.

The ice core data suggests that the time constant is about 800 years. When the planet flips between an ice age and interglacial you get a lag between CO2 levels and average temperature (which you can get from the deuterium content of the ice in the ice core) and it seems to be about 800 years.

is less specific, so my 800 year figure may have been corrected since I ran into it.

It's weakly acidic, and will react with alkaline substances if there are any around, mostly there aren't, the oceans can't hold an infinite amount. dissolving it in water does not make it go away, it's a reversable reaction.

These are forced reactions not spontaneous, because it's mostly inert. This is why it's used in fire-extinguishers.

Are you claiming that the Mauna Loa Observatory is somehow instantaneously sampling the whole atmosphere?

Could it not just be that seasonal variations are caused by the seasons. The Mauna Loa Observatory is not sampling all points on the globe, just what the winds bring it.

Determined how?

Berlinsky suggests that the number of fundamental particles is limited only by the funding available to discover them.

What should we pursue, elegance or truth?

He would think that , and you'd be silly enough - and ignorant enough - to take him seriously.

There's an excellent reason for wanting your theory to be beautiful - it makes it easier to sell - but it is merely an incidental advantage.

That's where presentation skills come into it.

Both, obviously, but truth is a lot more important, as should be obvious even to John Larkin.

See T. Dorigo here

1% chance of being true, is his guess. GH

Oh I know the data are shaky and may well turn out to be just a fluke at these stats. The spectra I have been looking at waiting for the peak of interest (mainly to see what resolution my MCA has achieved after this or that) are countless. If I could have a look at their spectrum (never checked if I could get it) I would know at a glance how convincing the result is. Nonetheless the article talked of something interesting so I posted it, time (and work on the collider...) will tell. At least they are just waiting for the stats, not like the guys who had "measured" neutrinos at speeds faster than light... before they discovered a dangling cable from the NIM bin or something.

Dimiter

So he's an expert on evolutionary biology *and* particle physics. Damn! How many Noble Prizes does this guy have in his attic, anyway?

-- john, KE5FX

Yes. But he mostly asks awkward questions.

It is possible that there are an unlimited number of fundamental particles, which is one of his points. Being a philosopher, he seldom makes a single point.

Damn!

Lots of books at least. Contrarians don't get Nobel prizes.

They do, but only after they have convinced other people.