Paper: CO2 is a very weak greenhouse gas.

[Doug1029]

11 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

And yes, I'm a Proud Republican, I actually plant trees as opposed to hugging them. I don't take off work to protest and trash up the streets and spray urine on people who have different opinions than I do. I think people should be treated equal as opposed to giving certain races special treatment (because that is actually true racism). I believe the Government should be responsible with Money as opposed to constantly wanting more hard earned Americans dollars in Taxes. I'm well read enough to know that Socialism and Communism are pipe dreams that do not lead to Utopias but lead to pain, suffering, and death! I could continue to go on and on but I'm actually getting disgusted simply thinking about roughly half the population wanting to go that route AGAIN!!!

I'm an ex-forester who has probably planted around 30,000 trees.  How many did you say you planted?

I was also an inventory forester and technician.  That involves measuring tree diameter at a height of 54 inches.  This is done with a diameter tape.  I have probably hugged around 100,000 trees.

I have never been to an environmental protest, but I have attended a number of Arbor Day events.

 

As I liberal, I believe government should work for ALL people, not just wealthy elites.  I believe that all races need to be placed on an equal footing and none should get special treatment because they are a different color, or have more money.

Government responsible with tax payer money?  Have you read any part of that tax bill the Republicans are trying to foist off on us?  Your taxes will be going up by record amounts over the next few years - all to make the rich, richer.

I, too, am well enough read to realize that capitalism doesn't work any better than communism or socialism.  The collapse of 2008 came about because the banks built a house-of-cards with bad loans and the oil companies (think:  Exxon) used Katrina as an excuse to jack up prices, kicking out the bottom card.

Each economic system depends on intelligent and responsible people to operate it.  Those seem to be in short supply, here as elsewhere.  You can't permanently spend more than you take in, but government, through its power to levy taxes, can, if it's careful, spend itself rich.

You should read up on why the Soviet collective farms failed.  The only people who knew how to farm were farmers.  So the Soviets forced them to run the farms they had formerly owned, taking their crops without leaving enough revenue to keep the farm going.  The farmers saw the futility of it and simply quit working.  It could have worked had the state guaranteed sufficient income to the farmers.  But that's what happens when the administrators don't know what they're doing, substituting ideology for knowledge.

The US had a system of price supports to keep the same thing from happening here, but Congress saw price supports as that evil thing:  SOCIALISM.  So we came up with another way of accomplishing the same thing.  Under the Conservation Reserve, the government rents cropland and fallows it, thus reducing the amount of grain being grown.  We accomplish the same thing, but we make it look like capitalism instead of socialism.  It's all cosmetics.

We also mandate a maximum amount of grain that each farmer can sell, based on what he has historically sold.  That grain never reaches the market, so it doesn't count as CAPITALISM.  Instead, many farmers grow the grain and feed it to cattle or hogs, then sell the cattle and hogs which are not production-controlled.  Again, nothing but semantics.

Socialism works if properly run.  Capitalism works, if properly run.  China calls what it's doing "free-market communism."  Russia is better described as a criminal enterprise - very similar to capitalism during the Great Depression.

Here in the US we have communism (government ownership of capital) in the form of the Post Office and Tennessee Valley Authority.  We have socialism in the form of employee-owned companies like Davey Tree Experts.  And we have capitalism in the form of all those heating and electrical contractors who run their own businesses.  We also have monopoly capitalism - the thing that most-threatens the other systems.  It's not capitalism that's the bad thing:  it's monopoly - and the mistaken notion that to support capitalism, you have to give every big business everything it wants (That endaners capitalism by restricting competition.).

Any insurance company with the word "mutual" in its name is owned by its policy holders - that's collectivization.  And that is what insurance - of any kind - is all about.

Arguing whether capitalism or socialism is better only exposes the speaker's ignorance of both systems.

Doug

[Doug1029]

24 minutes ago, lost_shaman said:

Well then a logical person might rightly conclude that it was not CO2 that was the driver of these warming periods correct? 

 

Correct.  CO2 is not the only thing that affects climate.

Doug

[Doug1029]

12 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

Oh my!!! Doug you are so full of it in this post! First Cold kills more people than heat by far!  Cold is 20 times more deadly than heat.

Cold is more deadly than heat.  But if we start getting more high temps as a result of climate change, that could also change.

 

12 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

Death Valley? Where has anywhere become uninhabitable due to heat since the industrial revolution?

BTW, I live ~30 miles from Altus, Ok. On the Texas side of the Border thank God. I can tell you it is almost always consistently cooler in Altus than here on the Texas side of the River. 

I was thinking of most of the Sahara where an area larger than France has no inhabitants due primarily to drought/heat.  One could say much the same thing about the Empty Quarter.

In order to live in Death Valley, one must bring supplies from elsewhere.  And most of the time, Death Valley is a lot cooler.  But even so, heat kills people there.  You might be interested in knowing that Dave Legeno, the actor who played the werewolf Fenrir Greyback in the Harry Potter series, died of heat in Death Valley (http://www.eonline.com/news/559049/dave-legeno-dies-at-age-50-harry-potter-actor-s-body-found-in-death-valley-california).  Every year there are newspaper accounts of people dying from the heat there.  The average summer temperature is often above 100 degrees.  

 

Oklahoma has you tied in the temperature records.  Seymour, TX posted 120 degrees on August 12, 1936.  Quanan, TX recorded 119 degrees the same day; McKinney, TX - 118 degrees on August 10; Mount Pleasant - 118; Clarendon, TX 117 on August 12, 1936; Graham, TX 117 on August 11; Memphis, TX 117 on August 13.  Do you live in any of these?

If I were looking for record high temps in Oklahoma or Texas, I would also check out July, 1837.  But records from then are few and far between, so it is hard to be sure.  I don't think they reached the same temps as 1936, but who knows?  It was 99 years between these two sets of high temps.  Both were century-level events.  We are expecting another drought in the 2030s.  Good chance we'll be seeing new all-time records then.

 

In 1936, few people had air conditioning.  People survived these temperatures only because they were of short duration.  After August 13, 1936 temps have never gone that high again.  It cooled down at night.  After Clarendon's high of 117, it dropped to 71 degrees that night.  Nobody has compiled death records to see if more people than normal died during the heat wave.  There's a research project for you.  It is SUSTAINED high temperature that kills.

Global warming does not seem to affect the record highs - but those are century-level events and the current temperature excursion began in 1976, so we don't have sufficient records to say.  But:  the temperature distributions are becoming increasingly skewed toward the higher temps.  In other words:  higher temps are becoming more sustained.

In the US, particularly in Texas and Oklahoma, nearly everybody has air conditioners.  But in most of the world, even the hot places, people don't.  And that's where you'll see deaths from high temps.

Doug

[Doug1029]

On 12/7/2017 at 10:23 PM, Tatetopa said:

Maybe Doug.  But maybe not.  At 25mpg It would be efficient for any number of small businessmen that would use it for more than driving back and forth to work and hauling the occasional load of gravel or compost.  Maybe it will replace a 15mpg pickup.  That's a lot of maybes though, and not a good deed on my part since the buyer was not determined by me.  Cheers.

 

Well you know, I did buy a solar charger for camping.  

Just do what you can.  You're doing a better job than I am.

Wind is replacing coal in the US, mostly because coal is too expensive and wind is cheap.  Trump thinks he's helping those wealthy developers in Utah by opening National Monuments to coal mining.  He's helping them go bankrupt.  They still have to get that coal to where it is going to be burned, or burn it right there and export the electricity, which will have to be sold at about 1.5 times the cost of wind power.  It's going to be an uphill battle.

There will be court challenges to Trump's decision and whether or not they win, they will delay the start of mining until well after Trump is out of office.  Even if leases have already been sold, local governments, the National Monuments and BLM, whose lands the mining companies will have to cross, can impose obstacles - such as weight limits on county roads, low speed limits for trucks, no new roads or rail lines, no power line rights-of-way, etc.  The idea is to buy time until Trump is out of office and his decisions can be reversed.

Trump's actions were made to impress his base (like L_S) and not with a real hope of putting in a new mine or creating jobs.

Doug

[Doug1029]

6 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

As for the Paper I cited in the OP, it does not say " temperature rise decelerates as CO2 level increases". What it actually says is that CO2's thermal contribution drops off logarithmically as the CO2 levels rise. Those are two completely different things and you are confusing them to the point of frustration. Take couple of hours and contemplate what you are misunderstanding here.

If downward forcing increases as CO2 level rises, then that is exactly what you are saying.

Doug

P.S.:  Has yet to be observed in the real world.

Doug

Edited December 9, 2017 by Doug1029

[Doug1029]

2 hours ago, Derek Willis said:

Earlier I was going to say that Doug will wriggle out of this on a technicality, i.e. that approaching boiling point is not the same as boiling point. But I thought, nah, he is more worthy than that. How wrong I was ...

We are approaching the boiling point right now, but we'll never get there.

I'm starting to think that Hansen had that detail wrong.  The climate constant is not a constant:  it seems to be following an ASYMPTOTIC curve.  For LS' benefit:  take and ordinary logarithmic curve and subtract it from a constant.  What you get is an asymptotic curve.  There is a logarithm inside the asymptotic equation.  Could this be what is confusing LS?

Also, we should be seeing the result of pollution control efforts in Keeling's curve pretty soon.  If CO2 control efforts are becoming effective, that curve should start to turn down, turning the logarithm into a logistic.  Hasn't happened yet, but...

Doug

[Doug1029]

14 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

As CO2 in the Atmosphere increases Plants become more drought resistent, even when the IPCC tells us there should be more rainfall and higher humidity. Both of those things should be a boon for out civilization that will need more and more Food crops as populations are trending ever upwards.

As CO2 in the atmosphere increases, plants become more susceptible to insect and disease attack, too.  CO2 results in more leafy growth and less seed growth.  That means more spinach and less bread, more fiber and fewer calories.

BTW, how do you plan to replace the land lost to desertification and the resulting loss in agricultural production that accompanies it?  Canada and Russia will benefit, but the US and most of the rest of the world will lose.

Doug

[lost_shaman]

8 minutes ago, Doug1o29 said:

I'm an ex-forester who has probably planted around 30,000 trees. 

I know you did not plant those in southwestern Oklahoma or Northwestern Texas.

 

11 minutes ago, Doug1o29 said:

This is done with a diameter tape.  I have probably hugged around 100,000 trees.

I can wrap a string around a tree too! You know what I meant.

 

14 minutes ago, Doug1o29 said:

I have never been to an environmental protest, but I have attended a number of Arbor Day events.

Well I'm glad to hear that your one of the few Democrats that says you do trash up your events when you

 

17 minutes ago, Doug1o29 said:

As I liberal, I believe government should work for ALL people, not just wealthy elites.  I believe that all races need to be placed on an equal footing and none should get special treatment because they are a different color, or have more money.

I don't believe that you feel that way. Would you really vote for a merit based system for college admission as opposed to the race based preference system we have now?

 

26 minutes ago, Doug1o29 said:

Government responsible with tax payer money?  Have you read any part of that tax bill the Republicans are trying to foist off on us?  Your taxes will be going up by record amounts over the next few years - all to make the rich, richer.

Please try to join the reset of us in the real world Doug. Have you so easily forgotten how President Obama promised that the Middle class would see a $2,500 dollar reduction on yearly Healthcare spending?  ( I actually lost my healthcare and now I certainly cant afford to buy any)

But here the Republicans and President Trump are going to lower the highest Corporate Tax rate on the planet to 20% which  will give the USA a level playing field with all other countries.

41 minutes ago, Doug1o29 said:

I, too, am well enough read to realize that capitalism doesn't work any better than communism or socialism.  The collapse of 2008 came about because the banks built a house-of-cards with bad loans and the oil companies (think:  Exxon) used Katrina as an excuse to jack up prices, kicking out the bottom card.

My god man I don' think you've read anything about socialism or Communism! 

[Derek Willis]

17 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

We are approaching the boiling point right now, but we'll never get there.

In August you said: While earth will never become another Venus, it can still approach the boiling point. There's enough carbon available to do that.

You were saying this in relation to the alarmist claims that Earth could become another Venus.

I think any sensible person would assume your statement meant that the Earth could approach a temperature close to 100 degrees C (i.e. the boiling point of water).

You are now wriggling by saying you meant any increase in temperature approaches 100 degrees C. So, for example, an increase from 20 degrees C to 25 degrees C is "approaching" 100 degrees C. Yes, strictly speaking that is the case. But that is not what you meant.

Hence, your more recent statement - I never said the oceans would boil. There isn't enough available carbon on Earth to make enough CO2 to warm the planet that much - is a direct contradiction of your previous statement.

You are also reduced to misrepresenting the mathematical nature of asymptotes. For example, Newton's Law of Cooling involves a log function. So, mathematically, the time taken for a material to fall from a higher temperature to the ambient temperature is infinite. But in reality the time is finite. If climate change science is based on this sort of "trickery", then it is no wonder there are skeptics.

This is why I have serious doubts about climate change science. I am all for reducing/ending the use of fossil fuels because (a) they are going to run out in any case, (b) they are polluting, and (c) they might be contributing to the Earth's increase in temperature. But what I see is not science. What I see is people who have bought into a belief, and will wriggle about to preserve their "faith".

[Doug1029]

18 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

I know you did not plant those in southwestern Oklahoma or Northwestern Texas.

Correct.  Ohio, Kentucky and Colorado.  Tree planting is not my job here, but we get twice the annual rainfall that we got in Colorado.  The Crosstimbers is not a high-quality forest, so people don't have the incentive to plant trees here.  But it is not technically very difficult.

Doug

[Doug1029]

18 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

I can wrap a string around a tree too! You know what I meant.

Congratulations.  Do you have a reason to do it?

Doug

[Doug1029]

18 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

Well I'm glad to hear that your one of the few Democrats that says you do trash up your events when you

I am not a Democrat, at least, not anymore.

By ignoring working people and just assuming they would vote Democrat the Dems really screwed up both the country and their chances in the last election.  Clinton never once visited Wisconsin and wonders why she lost it.  And reading her book, one comes to see that she still doesn't get it.

I'm a Socialist.  But here in Oklahoma (think:  deep red) that is about as useless as being a Democrat.  So I'm now a registered Republican in the hopes that I can get decent people to run in the primaries as Republicans and throw the lunatics out.

Doug

[Doug1029]

19 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

I don't believe that you feel that way. Would you really vote for a merit based system for college admission as opposed to the race based preference system we have now?

State universities are required to admit anybody who graduates from a state high school.  Theoretically, that makes them merit-based.  Private universities can do whatever they want.

Universities usually seek to add variety to their student bodies to broaden the experience of their students.  Working side-by-side with students from other places and other cultures is part of the educational process.  That works to the benefit of regular students, as well as minority students.

Unfortunately, many students from American high schools, especially here in Oklahoma, are not ready to do college-level work and must take remedial courses to teach them what they should have learned in high school.  That adds another year or two to expenses and people who wouldn't work in high school don't usually work in college, either, and manage to flunk out in one or two semesters.

By not adequately educating students in high school and grade school and by not funding college students adequately, we are losing a great deal of the potential our universities offer.  But foreign students are stepping in to fell the vacuum.  They either come from wealthy families who can pay the bills without government aid, or they come from countries like Nepal that lack our educational system and so pay for their students to attend foreign universities.

I have co-authored three papers with a Nepalese student and two with a Brazilian student.  These were people I shared office space with.  The Nepalese student is now a researcher at the University of New Mexico and the other went back to Brazil.  And I'm still co-authoring papers with the Nepalese guy.  Working together adds perspective and knowledge that is otherwise not available.

Way back when I was working on my Masters, I sat beside an Iraqi student in class.  He was an officer in the Iraqi army and had been sent to the US to learn about remote sensing.  Gulf War I started while we were taking that class and he got his summons to report for duty.  This he ignored, but that meant he lost his Iraqi army funding.  He was able to get a research grant and stay in the US.  He has since retired and lives near Oklahoma City.  So we got the expert services of an Iraqi officer, mostly paid for by Iraq.

A lot of foreign students stay in the US after they graduate.  They fill jobs that there are no qualified Americans to take.  And their families or home countries pay for it.  Today that Iraqi officer would not be allowed into the country.  There are other sides to the immigration issue that Trmp isn't paying any attention to.

 

Rather than whine about minority students being admitted to colleges, we need to prepare students at the high school level to do college work.  Then there would be no problem.

Doug

Edited December 10, 2017 by Doug1029

[Doug1029]

19 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

Please try to join the reset of us in the real world Doug. Have you so easily forgotten how President Obama promised that the Middle class would see a $2,500 dollar reduction on yearly Healthcare spending?  ( I actually lost my healthcare and now I certainly cant afford to buy any)

You can blame politics for that.  In order to get the plan through Congress at all, some compromises had to be made.  Conservatives demanded that state governors have the opportunity to opt out of expanded Medicare.  Red state governors did so, driving their states' insurance costs through the roof.  That happened in both Oklahoma and Texas.  You can blame Obamacare's failure in both states on the stupidity of our respective governors.  And now Trump has exercised executive privilege and impounded the funds for expanded Medicare, thus destroying the program in blue states, as well.  That's malfeance of office.

And do you remember Trump's promise to replace Obamacare with a better system?  Has he done it?

 

I'm sorry you lost your healthcare, but if you voted for conservatives and Trump, that's what you voted for.  Trump, for a change, told the truth about what he was planning.  He warned us before the election that he wanted to repeal Obamacare.  Conservative voters thought that was a good idea, not realizing that he was talking about repealing THEIR health care (A lot of people didn't realize that Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act are the same thing.).  Next election (if there is one), read the fine print.

Doug

 

Edited December 10, 2017 by Doug1029

[Doug1029]

19 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

My god man I don' think you've read anything about socialism or Communism! 

Socialism is working in many of the northern European countries.  Democratically elected governments with socialist economies.

No economic system on earth works perfectly.  Capitalism evolves into oligarchy evolves into monopoly.  The only way to protect capitalism is to stop the evolution and that means regulation.  And that means business is going to cry about the government becoming SOCIALIST.

What is the difference between capitalism in its extreme form and communism in its extreme form?  There isn't any - except maybe the name:  the People's Republic of America is the same thing as USA Incorporated.

Socialism does not equal dictatorship - that's conservative propaganda.  But to dictators "communism" offers an excuse to grab everything for themselves, just as wealthy elites in America are now doing with this tax reform bill.  Because they call themselves "socialists," "communists" or "capitalists" doesn't mean they are those things.

My grandparents (both sides) were Wobblies.  My wife's grandmother was a Wobbly (Wobbly=International Wage Workers).  I have not forgotten my roots.

Doug

P.S.:  My daughter spent six months in Russia at Zelenograd.  Zelenograd is a suburb of Moscow.  It's where the front lines were during WWII; the town is full of memorials to "how we stopped the Germans."  She studied Cold War history and Economic Systems.  The Russians say the same things about us that we say about them.  Neither side trusts the other and for exactly the same reasons.  Maybe if we just learned to talk to each other...

BTW:  Putin's dissertation was about how to use oil as a weapon in geopolitics.  He's doing exactly what he said he's do.  Maybe our "leaders" should read it.

Doug

Edited December 10, 2017 by Doug1029

[Doug1029]

6 hours ago, Derek Willis said:

In August you said: While earth will never become another Venus, it can still approach the boiling point. There's enough carbon available to do that.

You were saying this in relation to the alarmist claims that Earth could become another Venus.

I think any sensible person would assume your statement meant that the Earth could approach a temperature close to 100 degrees C (i.e. the boiling point of water).

You are now wriggling by saying you meant any increase in temperature approaches 100 degrees C. So, for example, an increase from 20 degrees C to 25 degrees C is "approaching" 100 degrees C. Yes, strictly speaking that is the case. But that is not what you meant.

Hence, your more recent statement - I never said the oceans would boil. There isn't enough available carbon on Earth to make enough CO2 to warm the planet that much - is a direct contradiction of your previous statement.

You are also reduced to misrepresenting the mathematical nature of asymptotes. For example, Newton's Law of Cooling involves a log function. So, mathematically, the time taken for a material to fall from a higher temperature to the ambient temperature is infinite. But in reality the time is finite. If climate change science is based on this sort of "trickery", then it is no wonder there are skeptics.

This is why I have serious doubts about climate change science. I am all for reducing/ending the use of fossil fuels because (a) they are going to run out in any case, (b) they are polluting, and (c) they might be contributing to the Earth's increase in temperature. But what I see is not science. What I see is people who have bought into a belief, and will wriggle about to preserve their "faith".

Since I wrote that bit in August, I have come to have doubts about it.  In case you missed it, I have said a number of times since August that the climate constant isn't constant.  The climate constant is the amount that temperatures would increase if CO2 concentration doubled.  If the climate constant isn't constant, then any predictions made using it are in doubt.  I took my information from James Hansen's "Storms of My Grandchildren."  That was published in 2005.  Things seem to have changed since then.  I admit I have not kept up like I should.  I would now say that we can expect further, devastating warming, but how high the temps will get, I don't know.  The consensus seems to be that under current rates of increase by 2400, atmospheric carbon will reach 1800 ppm.  What that means for temps, I don't know, but using Christy's equation, temps would rise about 6 degrees C.  Even that will still cause major damage to the earth's ecosystems.  Boiling seas or no, we're still not off the hook.

Regarding asymptotes:  the real world has natural variation.  Try to make actual measurements of a cooling material, then fit them to Newton's Law of Cooling.  You will not get a perfect fit.  That is how real-life things manage to cross an asymptote.  Besides, a model, any model, is an AVERAGE and does not represent the extreme values that might be generated.

So I am no longer saying how hot it might get, or when.  But I note that there are some unanswered questions if we accept Christy's model as correct:

1.  If the model is correct, why does Venus have such a high temperature?  Even an atmosphere of pure CO2 wouldn't raise temperatures that much.

2.  Why have earth's temperatures not followed Christy's model in the past?

I just had a thought how this could be tested.  I'll get back to you.

Doug

P.S.:  I said I'd get back.  I just ran a little test of Christy's equation using real-world data.

I arbitrarily selected the years 1880, 1940 and 2000.  I looked at atmsopheric CO2 concentrations on that ice core chart LS presented above.  Then I looked up the global temperature anomalies for the same years.  Here they are:

Year     CO2     Temp     Forcing

1880    290.8     -19        257.66

1940    311.3       13       257.95

2000    369.64     41       258.68

The ratio between temperature and forcing for the 1880 to 1940 interval is 1.1075 degrees per watt.  Apply that to the 1940 to 2000 interval and you get a global temperature increase of 0.81 degrees; the actual increase was 0.28 degrees.  Draw your own conclusions.

One could get a much better idea of the variability of this result by using a series of shorter intervals, for example, put in a data point for each decade.  But I'll leave that up to you.

Doug

Edited December 10, 2017 by Doug1029

[Derek Willis]

2 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

Since I wrote that bit in August, I have come to have doubts about it.  In case you missed it, I have said a number of times since August that the climate constant isn't constant.  The climate constant is the amount that temperatures would increase if CO2 concentration doubled.  If the climate constant isn't constant, then any predictions made using it are in doubt.  I took my information from James Hansen's "Storms of My Grandchildren."  That was published in 2005.  Things seem to have changed since then.  I admit I have not kept up like I should.  I would now say that we can expect further, devastating warming, but how high the temps will get, I don't know.  The consensus seems to be that under current rates of increase by 2400, atmospheric carbon will reach 1800 ppm.  What that means for temps, I don't know, but using Christy's equation, temps would rise about 6 degrees C.  Even that will still cause major damage to the earth's ecosystems.  Boiling seas or no, we're still not off the hook.

Regarding asymptotes:  the real world has natural variation.  Try to make actual measurements of a cooling material, then fit them to Newton's Law of Cooling.  You will not get a perfect fit.  That is how real-life things manage to cross an asymptote.  Besides, a model, any model, is an AVERAGE and does not represent the extreme values that might be generated.

So I am no longer saying how hot it might get, or when.  But I note that there are some unanswered questions if we accept Christy's model as correct:

1.  If the model is correct, why does Venus have such a high temperature?  Even an atmosphere of pure CO2 wouldn't raise temperatures that much.

2.  Why have earth's temperatures not followed Christy's model in the past?

I just had a thought how this could be tested.  I'll get back to you.

Doug

P.S.:  I said I'd get back.  I just ran a little test of Christy's equation using real-world data.

I arbitrarily selected the years 1880, 1940 and 2000.  I looked at atmsopheric CO2 concentrations on that ice core chart LS presented above.  Then I looked up the global temperature anomalies for the same years.  Here they are:

Year     CO2     Temp     Forcing

1880    290.8     -19        257.66

1940    311.3       13       257.95

2000    369.64     41       258.68

The ratio between temperature and forcing for the 1880 to 1940 interval is 1.1075 degrees per watt.  Apply that to the 1940 to 2000 interval and you get a global temperature increase of 0.81 degrees; the actual increase was 0.28 degrees.  Draw your own conclusions.

One could get a much better idea of the variability of this result by using a series of shorter intervals, for example, put in a data point for each decade.  But I'll leave that up to you.

Doug

I have to say I don't have a great deal of interest in the details of climate change science. The underlying physics is sound - at least for relatively simple systems. What I am suspicious of is the application of the basic equations to more complex systems. Climate change science reminds me of economics. All those professors with their models and predictions. However, there are so many variables - and some with unpredictable sensitivities - that making accurate forecasts is essentially impossible. That is the nature of higher order differential equations; and the compromises made by climate change modelers to represent the equations with algorithms seem shrouded in mystery. I sometimes listen to those economic professors who now claim they all predicted the crash of 2007/8 - but strangely didn't say anything at the time. I have the same feelings towards climate change predictions. Especially so when a constant isn't, well, constant. What kind of "science" is that? The fact that you can change you opinion so markedly in a few months seems to me to indicate it is a science based on shifting sands.

[lost_shaman]

5 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

Congratulations.  Do you have a reason to do it?

If I want to know the diameter of a tree without drilling a hole straight through it. 

[lost_shaman]

5 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

I am not a Democrat, at least, not anymore.

By ignoring working people and just assuming they would vote Democrat the Dems really screwed up both the country and their chances in the last election.  Clinton never once visited Wisconsin and wonders why she lost it.  And reading her book, one comes to see that she still doesn't get it.

I'm a Socialist.  But here in Oklahoma (think:  deep red) that is about as useless as being a Democrat.  So I'm now a registered Republican in the hopes that I can get decent people to run in the primaries as Republicans and throw the lunatics out.

I agree with everything you just said except the "I'm a Socialist." statement. You do not actually know that they ( the Socialists ) are the "lunatics" too that you want to throw out? 

Two words,... Cognitive dissonance.

[lost_shaman]

5 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

State universities are required to admit anybody who graduates from a state high school.  Theoretically, that makes them merit-based.  Private universities can do whatever they want.

So you are saying Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc... Can be racist in admissions if they so choose because they are "Private"? 

I think you are full of it completely!!! For example Yale receives more Federal money than any other College!

[Doug1029]

24 minutes ago, Derek Willis said:

I have to say I don't have a great deal of interest in the details of climate change science. The underlying physics is sound - at least for relatively simple systems. What I am suspicious of is the application of the basic equations to more complex systems. Climate change science reminds me of economics. All those professors with their models and predictions. However, there are so many variables - and some with unpredictable sensitivities - that making accurate forecasts is essentially impossible. That is the nature of higher order differential equations; and the compromises made by climate change modelers to represent the equations with algorithms seem shrouded in mystery. I sometimes listen to those economic professors who now claim they all predicted the crash of 2007/8 - but strangely didn't say anything at the time. I have the same feelings towards climate change predictions. Especially so when a constant isn't, well, constant. What kind of "science" is that? The fact that you can change you opinion so markedly in a few months seems to me to indicate it is a science based on shifting sands.

I am not a modeler.  My work mostly looks at past situations.  My contributions to date have included an ice storm signature in tree rings.  I can detect the signature of a three-hour ice storm that happened 180 years ago.  I have an idea of how to measure actual temperatures and precipitations for selected storms using false rings in eastern red-cedar.  Just now I'm working on the phenology of post oaks vs. eastern red-cedar to see if I can figure out how eastern red-cedar manages to out-compete post oak.  I can read past climate changes in tree rings and can see temperature rise in them.  But this is all in the past.  I can tell you what the climate did yesterday, or 300 years ago, but not tomorrow.  I have to leave that to others.

So if you'd like to talk about tree rings - that is what I'd rather do, anyway.

Doug

[Doug1029]

23 minutes ago, lost_shaman said:

If I want to know the diameter of a tree without drilling a hole straight through it. 

You could use a tape, or a caliper, or a dendrometer (There are two types.).  But what do you do when the tree is not round?

Doug

[Doug1029]

17 minutes ago, lost_shaman said:

I agree with everything you just said except the "I'm a Socialist." statement. You do not actually know that they ( the Socialists ) are the "lunatics" too that you want to throw out? 

Two words,... Cognitive dissonance.

Oklahoma is mostly run by Republicans - both houses and the governor's office.  They have put in some really crazy bills.  For example, we charge oil companies a 2% depletion tax while most other states charge 7%.  And we don't have enough money to fund our schools.  Even the President of Chesapeake Oil says we need to raise that - oil company people live here, too.  They have kids and they like to drive on good roads and they can't do that if oil companies don't pay taxes.

Oklahoma propaganda says what a great place this state is for business, but we've lost at least three high-tech businesses to Colorado because of the abysmal condition of our schools.  If you want high-tech people (who have the money to pay the taxes and support local business), you need to provide the amenities they want.  The lunatics in the legislature don't understand that - and I don't really care what party they're in; they have to go.

Doug

[Doug1029]

29 minutes ago, lost_shaman said:

So you are saying Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc... Can be racist in admissions if they so choose because they are "Private"? 

I think you are full of it completely!!! For example Yale receives more Federal money than any other College!

The private school I am most familiar with is the University of Tulsa.  They do all sorts of things that public schools can't - beer on campus, for example.  Birth control prescriptions through the university health services, etc.  There was quite a hubbub when a local radio station found out about that, but the Board of Regents is not responsible to the governor, legislature or anybody else.  The only people they really have to listen to is their donors.  They told the governor to go jump...

And Oral Roberts University (private) is about as racist as they come.  No minorities.

Private schools are not restricted in who they admit and don't.  If they accept Federal money, there may be strings attached.  If there are strings, they can decide whether to accept the money with the strings, or do without it.  Public universities don't have that luxury - usually.

Yes.  Private schools can be as "racist" in admissions as they like.

Doug

P.S.:  Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado is a public university and has ten full-scholarship slots reserved for Indians (feather - not dot).  Indians only.  If there are no Indian applicants, those slots remain vacant.

That was the result of a compromise with the Southern Ute Tribe whose land the university uses for a bull test center.  If the university wants to use the tribe's land, that is the price.

Doug

Edited December 10, 2017 by Doug1029

[lost_shaman]

5 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

Universities usually seek to add variety to their student bodies to broaden the experience of their students.  Working side-by-side with students from other places and other cultures is part of the educational process.  That works to the benefit of regular students, as well as minority students.

 

Well again "adding variety" is not Merit based. It may sound good but is it really "good"?  Wouldn't we all be better off if the Asians that are better at Math get admitted to Math on merit as opposed to rejecting more Asians to admit minorities that are not as adept in that subject simply for the feel good notion of "diversity"? 

 

5 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

Unfortunately, many students from American high schools, especially here in Oklahoma, are not ready to do college-level work and must take remedial courses to teach them what they should have learned in high school.  That adds another year or two to expenses and people who wouldn't work in high school don't usually work in college, either, and manage to flunk out in one or two semesters.

And why is that? Those kids born in that region of the country are inferior? 

Or is it more likely that Oklahoma has a very poor School system, which a poor curiculum, and there is very little incintive for young intellectuals to become poorly paid Teachers?

5 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

I have co-authored three papers with a Nepalese student and two with a Brazilian student.  These were people I shared office space with.  The Nepalese student is now a researcher at the University of New Mexico and the other went back to Brazil.  And I'm still co-authoring papers with the Nepalese guy.  Working together adds perspective and knowledge that is otherwise not available.

I have no problem with that. I'd simply prefer that we in the USA invest more in our own people. Would you disagree?

 

5 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

Way back when I was working on my Masters, I sat beside an Iraqi student in class.  He was an officer in the Iraqi army and had been sent to the US to learn about remote sensing.  Gulf War I started while we were taking that class and he got his summons to report for duty.  This he ignored, but that meant he lost his Iraqi army funding.  He was able to get a research grant and stay in the US.  He has since retired and lives near Oklahoma City.  So we got the expert services of an Iraqi officer, mostly paid for by Iraq.

Cool story bro. Honestly it's just a single anecdote that means nothing on it's own.

 

6 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

A lot of foreign students stay in the US after they graduate.  They fill jobs that there are no qualified Americans to take. 

What if we spent all that money on Americans? Or are you suggesting Americans are intellectually inferior?