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Jon Nelson
Boulder climber
Bellingham, WA
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Malemute wrote:
^ I studied IR (infrared) and Raman spectroscopy in university.
You are wrong.
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/greenhousegases/properties.html
...
That's nice that you studied those things. I suppose that is supposed to make you right?
The blanket analogy is, as I said, a wrong analogy. Sure, the gases and particles absorb some IR, but that absorption does not determine what they emit. What they emit, as you know, is determined by their temperature and their emissivity. And what you do not seem to know is that the temperature of the troposphere is determined by convection and thermodynamics.
Do you know why it is colder at higher elevations? Air that rises loses energy. Radiation has nothing to do with it. We model it accurately with only thermodynamics.
As I said, the 'greenhouse' misnomer is unfortunate. There is an effect, and it is indeed very large. But about the actual mechanism, be careful about believing what you see in these simplified diagrams.
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Al Barkamps
Social climber
Red Stick
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Moose, I don't agree with much that utilities have said in the past regarding solar generation, but on this, I agree. Rooftop solar generators (and others) get a "free ride" that others, especially the poor, help subsidize.
It's all well and good to feed your excess energy back into the grid and receive cash back for it, but the costs of your usage of that same grid get picked up by non-solar generators who must then pick up those added costs. This should end....another instance of greenwashing crappy energy policy that ends up costing poor people the most.
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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Al,
Making users of brown energy pay for their external costs is a GOOD thing.
For 100 years we have FAILED to charge emissions and pollution sources for the damage they create.
But that shifting generally doesn't fall onto the poor, since we subsidize utility bills for the poor in most states. And in California we have higher rates for higher usage brackets.
Washington state proposal Lots of details Here: https://yeson732.org/faq/
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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"the damage they create" is what we call modern life.
"the damage they create" is more than outweighed by greatly increased life expectancy, and infant mortality near zero.
"the damage they create" powers the machines that do things like harvest our food, wash our clothes, and vacuum our floors, freeing up time for us to do other things - like cure diseases and climb rocks.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Maybe it's the hypocrisy:
"Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself"
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Al Barkamps
Social climber
Red Stick
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For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself
But....but....So many people depend on him!
:)
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AP
Trad climber
Calgary
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Don't listen to Al Gore. Look at the data and listen to the scientists involved.
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EdwardT
Trad climber
Retired
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(Marrakech, 4 November 2016) – A big green light for faster, stronger climate action was switched on today as the Paris Climate Change Agreement entered into force, only three days before the start of this year’s UN Climate Change Conference in Marrakech.
“The Paris Agreement’s ambitious and essential goals are now a live reality for every government. From today, ever-increasing climate action becomes an accepted responsibility and a central part of the sustainable development plans of all countries,” said Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
“It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.” -James Hansen
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Banquo
climber
Amerricka
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"Truth" does not exist. This is what conspiracy theory nut jobs (CTNJ) don't understand. The scientific method does not seek and cannot find a single absolute truth. To have truth requires faith and religion is where you find that.
Faith did not get jumbo jets to fly. Science did. Science is about the practical and useful, not truth seeking.
Name one absolute truth. Will the sun come up tomorrow? Probably but there is some very tiny probability that it will not. That probability is very small and I personally will, for practical purposes, assume that the sun will come up tomorrow. A CSNJ might claim the sun won't come up someday and the government is hiding the "truth" from us.
What good science does is take all the available data and create a model that fits the data. The model is useful but may be flawed. As new and better data becomes available, the model may be refined or replaced. We should work with the best model that we have at any given time. At one time the earth was considered flat and that worked well enough. Then we found that round worked better so we went with that. Now it isn't exactly round so we have refined that model.
Scientific tools tell us how to calculate a trajectory to Mars. The tools are not exact (true) so along the way we still need to adjust the path.
The current best data and model is that human activity is warming the planet. A person who understands science will happily tell you that human influenced climate change is not a "truth" but it is what experts qualified in the field believe right now. Unless you are an expert qualified in the field, I don't care what your model for climate change is.
The black swan theory. A scientist goes out and looks at as many swans as he can find. This is 19th century England and he can't afford to randomize and sample the whole world population of swans but he looks at the ones he can find. This is the best science available to him at the time. He finds 1000 swans and they are all white. His theory is then that all swans are white (ASAW). He is quite smart and has an understanding of statistics and probability. He knows his sampling isn't perfect and that he hasn't seen all of the swans that there are. He can't claim ASAW is a "truth" but he can use ASAW as a useful approximation for his daily expectations. If he ever acquires reliable data about the existence of a black or pink swan, he will need to adjust his theory but ASAW may still be fine for his daily life.
The real problem is that most people decide what they want to believe and then set about justifying it while disregarding probability. Most people do not practice, do not understand or probably don't even know about objective, critical thinking.
Read "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics winner Daniel Kahneman.
Read Karl Popper for a different take on the scientific method.
The aptly named James Reason has written several books on human error that are worth reading.
After you have read those, get back to me and let me know what you think.
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WBraun
climber
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Banquo -- "Truth" does not exist.
Banquo -- Name one absolute truth.
Banquo -- "Truth" does not exist.
You made an absolute, you are a hypocrite .....
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Al Barkamps
Social climber
Red Stick
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That's far too much heady stuff for today's "post factual" society, Banquo. If this election cycle has proved anything it's that a very significant and influential segment of our population doesn't care about "facts" or "reason". Hell, even some here have "reasoned" their own twisted way into "facts" of their own making...all evidence to the contrary be damned.
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WBraun
climber
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The absolute fact is:
The further humanity's consciousness strays from nature the more the climate will change to make humanity suffer ......
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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I wouldn't laugh too hard, Moose, the Inuit are some of the smartest people I've known.
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WBraun
climber
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Yes ....
Modern scientists are puffed up with scientism and hypocrisy ......
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John M
climber
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I don't believe he is laughing at the idea the the inuit are incapable of schooling NASA.. It more just the picture of the little guy up against the big boys. At least thats they way I read moose. My moose tracker might be off. hahaha..
John M.. formerly known as moosie.
edit" he beat me too it.
oops. and I was wrong.. hmmm
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WBraun
climber
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Modern science brains are wobbling .....
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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I get that some people lack the education or the intellectual capacity to appreciate the beauty of mathematics, to feel the joy of creating an engineering project that performs as expected, to heal a sick person, the awesome power to give life where nature would have taken it, the deep satisfaction of examining a seemingly impossible and complex problem and breaking it down into smaller steps and through dogged persistence and application of the scientific method to find answers for the parts and assemble them into a whole, to take a spot of human ignorance and turn it into a spot of human insight.
I understand that for some people, these things being forever out of grasp, they grab onto what they can, which is faith that a higher power will make everything ok for them and their families.
What I don't get is why such people don't embrace scientists and engineers and physicians as their higher power, as people who overcome impossibilities to make life easier, healthier, etc. Why is our history filled with fear of the occult, persecution of witches, and in general the defilement of people that tangibly and demonstrably improve the lives of people around them?
Are people so petty that they are jealous of others having more power and ability than themselves? This was my experience of high school in an area where few went on to college. Or is it fear and insecurity that those with more power will squash them as inconsequential bugs? By believing in an elusive higher power outside the domain of a person with more power in this world, does it give a person more dignity or more power in this world? Maybe just more "peace of mind" is enough. But that peace of mind is expensive when it comes with a pride or egoism that forbids the acceptance of good and real things in this world. Fear of knowledge is a deeply anchored foundation of faith-based religions- don't eat the forbidden fruit. Lest ye be cast from the garden of Eden. Ignorance is bliss. So many people trying to find their way back to it.
Jody, why do you selectively use the parts of human knowledge that serve you well (optical lenses, transistor physics for light collection and data storage, and everything that makes the Internet possible) while spitting on the parts that don't give you a short-term gratification?
There is a difference between faith-based religion where nobody can prove any of it, and it is by definition a leap of faith, versus reason-based science where each piece can be logically demonstrated and proven through a set of previously established facts and experiments. The biggest trap many people seem to fall into is to confuse these two, because they don't understand any bit of science and it is all just as much a leap of faith for them. Just because you are ignorant (literally, IGNORING the data in front of you and the whole opportunity for education presented to you in school so you would be able to decipher fact from fiction and perform your own experiments or data validation to decide what is real)- I say again, just because you choose to be ignorant, does not mean that science requires a leap of faith. There are educated guesses based on observations, but the veracity of these increase or decrease with time based on logical tests and independent collections of observations that agree or disagree with the original hypothesis.
^^^^
That is what I wrote, but what will be perceived is "blab bla bla you're stupid bla bla bla" and the world keeps turning and half the world continues to benefit from the work of the people they spit on. Same as it ever was.
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