More respian developer insanity

The skills that are need for climate science are in the fields of statistics, mathematical modelling and computer science, with a rather low level of physics.

In fact all the physics there is boils down to 'carbon dioxide in a laboratory absorbs infra red radiation' .

The predictions that are derived from that one fairly well accepted hypothesis are wildly extravagant and feature notional entities that have been shown not to exist.

Robert Brown is simply saying 'boys, it ain't that simple' .

He is in a similar position to me when someone claims that 'in five years time solar panels and windmills and lithium batteries will produce five times per unit what they do now .' And I know that the laws of physics actually preclude that. But to announce it cannot happen is met with 'they said bumblebees couldn't fly either' or 'human progress is limitless' or some other ArtStudent™ type statement.

In short science it seems is no longer a matter of theories based on fact, it is a matter of pure opinion.

If I choose to be a disabled black woman, don't dare tell me I am healthy white and male, you transphobic racist.

He wasn't and, if you read his books, you'd know that he didn't pronounce outside his specialities. The Challenger Crash? He demonstrated a phenomenon (inelastic rubber seals at low temperature) that an engineer had shown him because he could do so without being dumped on from a great height while the engineer could not. What I'm saying is that ferromagnetism != climate science and that as a sometime physical inorganic chemist with most experience in X-ray crystallography and Mossbauer spectrography, I wouldn't ever have expected anybody to believe anything I said about, e.g. organometallic chemistry or protein synthesis. I might have asked questions about those subjects but would never have pronounced opinions about them. So I reserve the right to apply the same rules as I follow to anybody else pronouncing about things outside their speciality.

That seems perfectly reasonable - but I expect that you would recognise poor lab technique in the work of a chemist in a different field to yours if the lab techniques were similar to those you use.

In this case he appears to be well versed in the techniques of mathematical modelling with a strong grasp of the complexity of the problem and the relative complexity of the climate and the models being used. He also makes good points about the historical record showing conditions much worse than this - but I do accept that we didn't have to live through those times and they may not have been much fun.

The models are massive oversimplifications of the problem, they can't be anything else. If we dedicated every CPU on the planet to running a single fully detailed model we might model every aspect of the climate over a second per century of run time - if we could build the model and if we had the data (we can't and we don't). The models being used are crude, simplified approximations but then so is the ideal gas equation or Newtonian mechanics but both can be used to give good enough predictions in many cases.

The real question is whether or not the current climate models are good enough to give good predictions in and around the current conditions. They certainly don't model the details and they have a lot of knobs to tweak which doesn't inspire confidence but might be what's needed. I honestly don't know but I don't care because I want us weaned off oil/gas/coal, I like clean air and water and I don't care what we have to tell each other to make it happen or how many (potentially) wrong paths we follow as long as we get there before we starve/freeze/bake.

Fortunately there is absolutely no danger of anyone being able to prove the current models wrong or proving that human actions are not the major driving force so there's no real danger of an about turn and going back to smog and acid rain.

All this is largely the point I was trying to make. The models are vast simplifications, and if we can't prove them wrong (that is, inapplicable to the real world), we can't prove them right, either. AFAIK, we don't even know the range of conditions to which these models might apply. So we are left with people's opinions, which is never a good place for science to be.

I don't know about the ideal gas equation (in terms of its limitations), but Newtonian mechanics works extremely well.

The current models have already been proven wrong in terms of real science.

The real situation of the science is this (i) there appears to have been modest warming for about 25 yearas followed by fairly stable temperatures. (ii) there is nothing anomalous in this warming at all, in geological timescale terms. (iii) there is no correlation between this *at statistically significant* levels and CO2 rise.

That is the real science. The rest is politics and marketing. And fudged data.

I'd just like to point out that CO2 is a known greenhouse gas and that the amount of it in the atmosphere is rising, and has been, at an increasing rate, since roughly the mid-Victorian era. This is not a computer extrapolation but an actual physical measurement, and one that is continuously monitored from a station at the top of one of the Hawaiian volcanoes.

Being close to phase changes and chemical reactions tend to mess it up terribly.

It works very poorly in regions of high gravitational pull (Neutron stars, black holes ...), at high relative speeds and at very small scales (eg. tunnel diodes).

Whatever that means precisely, the atmosphere does not behave in any way like a greenhouse.

This is true.

However it has also been at far higher levels than it currently is. There have been times when CO2 levels rise and temperatures fall and vice-versa.

The relationship (if any) between CO2 and temperature is what is being modelled. The connection between those models and reality is what is in dispute.

OK. Where it becomes non-linear, in other words. Just like weather and climate.

Yeah, I know that. See the precession of Mercury for the most significant effect in the Solar System. But even there you have to wait years for the effect to be noticeable, and I suspect NASA is happy to use Newton for any spacecraft. Fortunately there are no neutron stars or black holes near.

And at very small scales, given that gravity is 10 power 40 or so times weaker than other forces, no wonder it's ignorable at small scale.

Nicely expressed.

Indeed, but since roughly 1800 the average temperature in the UK does in fact correlate quite well with increases in CO2. Note, no climate models are needed to see this correlation. See Figure 2 in

which shows pretty good correlation, but also note the the text points out that if you only look at a short time period, (Figure 1 on that page covers less than a decade) than weather variation dominates and there is little visible correlation between the two data sets.

Also note that these two data sets are measurements and that there is no climate model involved.

For temperature trends from 20,000BC - 2016, see

On his wiki page it does say engineer but also that his degree is a BS in physics. By trade he was a NASA software and robotics engineer for a while, maybe that's why? I thought engineer was a protected title in the US but no idea what the requirements are.

What do you mean by "protected title"?

That not anyone can call themselves that, enforceable by fine or time. Isn't it? That would make sense in the US, the third world christo-fascist libertarian shithole country that it is.

Figure 2 is the longest period shown 1964-2008, which follows the period of steady temperature fall from roughly 1940-1970.

One of the finest examples of correlation is the long term one that Al Gore used - but on close inspection the temperature curve leads the CO2 curve by 800 years.

Yet it only covers short time periods. For climate long means tens of thousands to millions of years. Look at the frequency if ice ages and interglacials for example.

No just data selection.

I've seen them criticised heavily - but then I've seen everything in this field criticised heavily.

Reserved for train drivers?

I've seen it suggested that "climate" per se does not actually exist: and that weather conditions are just fractal in nature. I'm not arguing this one either way.

I do remember a museum (m. of London possibly, IDR) that had two displays - one about recent global warming ("man made" of course), and one showing the vastly higher temperatures in the past. Seemed ironic.

And of course in any case, correlation !=> causation. I suspect you could correlate recent "climate" changes with increases in the South Atlantic magnetic anomaly, for example. Cause/effect/unrelated??

But GPS requires general relativistic corrections for time in order to function. A quick check suggests that GPS satellites advance about

AFAIK, that does not exost in any English-speaking country. BICBW.