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But I'll still be willing to listen to reasonable follow-up experiments instead of dismissing out of hand. So we get to Martin Tajmar and his claims (also not peer reviewed, but at least it's at a conference). Tajmar is not the guy I'd choose as the most reputable source. He has a history of claims about...creative physics from poor experimental setups. That is, he claims to observe new physics, but people have consistently had a hard time reproducing his results. Go ahead and google the guy.

I did, and appearantly it was Martin Tajmar himself, who found the flaw in his gravitational gyroscope thesis, and published it: FiberOpticGyroscope Measurements Close to Rotating Liquid Helium. So whatever you think about the guy, a superficial Google result seems to put him at least as honest. If he makes a mistake, he is able to admit it.

You were given plenty of information to find things on your own at whatever level is appropriate (even if the other AC got the 50 MW wrong, when it was 10 MW), but apparently you need to be spoon fed:

TFTR via Wikipedia

TFTR via PPPL's own website although it is very barren

A review paper on TFTR, which includes the example 10 MW fusion power shot 80539.

A more detailed paper on a 5 MW fusion power result

This all took 30 seconds to find with a google search for "TFTR fusion", would have all been covered if you looked at all at any summary of fusion history, whether on Wikipedia, or some place like PPPL. It takes far longer to create links to all of these than it does to find them.

It sounds like you are the type of person trying to use "Please provide a reference" as a roadblock, to shoot down others because they don't want to spend twice the effort it would have taken you to find things on your own to present them to you. You also provide no references to any of your claims. If you continue such tactics, you will only end up with a false sense of victory as people won't take the effort to spoon feed you when you were given more than enough information to find every reference you could possibly need (unless you have some sort of learning disability...).

Heck, you could have even just copy pasted the "Farnsworth fusor" name also already given to you and find anything from wikipedia level articles including discussion of high school level examples, to commercial products that involve almost a watt of fusion reactions as a neutron source.

So are you actually interested in learning and have any excuse why you could find this info (in less time than it would have taken to write your reply)? Or do you just want to bully people around and look like you are right with minimal effort...

You were given plenty of information to find things on your own at whatever level is appropriate (even if the other AC got the 50 MW wrong, when it was 10 MW), but apparently you need to be spoon fed:

TFTR via Wikipedia

TFTR via PPPL's own website although it is very barren

A review paper on TFTR, which includes the example 10 MW fusion power shot 80539.

A more detailed paper on a 5 MW fusion power result

This all took 30 seconds to find with a google search for "TFTR fusion", would have all been covered if you looked at all at any summary of fusion history, whether on Wikipedia, or some place like PPPL. It takes far longer to create links to all of these than it does to find them.

It sounds like you are the type of person trying to use "Please provide a reference" as a roadblock, to shoot down others because they don't want to spend twice the effort it would have taken you to find things on your own to present them to you. You also provide no references to any of your claims. If you continue such tactics, you will only end up with a false sense of victory as people won't take the effort to spoon feed you when you were given more than enough information to find every reference you could possibly need (unless you have some sort of learning disability...).

Heck, you could have even just copy pasted the "Farnsworth fusor" name also already given to you and find anything from wikipedia level articles including discussion of high school level examples, to commercial products that involve almost a watt of fusion reactions as a neutron source.

So are you actually interested in learning and have any excuse why you could find this info (in less time than it would have taken to write your reply)? Or do you just want to bully people around and look like you are right with minimal effort...

No that's a closely related problem of you not believing in scientific fact when you don't like the consequences. Also you've clearly never bothered to read any atmospheric science. Start here.

If all porous materials required high osmotic pressure, MIT woud never have suggested graphene as an alternative membrane in the first place. This paper cites drastically reduced pressure requirements with nanoporous graphene:
http://scitation.aip.org/conte...
The highest hurdle to production is not pressure, but manufacturability of the nanoporous graphene itself.

I finished them. But they did kinda feel longer than they needed to be.

How does that feel?

The Mars Trilogy does not dwell and it does not ramble. There is a larger portion of casual dialogue and thought than most other authors use, save Niven perhaps. The books span some 200 years' events, and some one or something is always on the move. There is very little useless dialogue, though the topic does wander at times. In sheer density of material covered these books are formidable. The ratio of human drama to hard science is pretty much equal to actual life, even among scientists. (Side read: Madam Curie tarnishes the reputation of her deceased husband! )

The weight and page-span of books being what it is from the moment you first pick them up... there seems to be the sentiment that there's some tipping point at which a criticism of total word-count becomes valid, even to where it is the only criticism offered.

I just do not understand this.

It seems to be borrowed from movies, where an arduous and perilous series of edits achieves the hour-and-a-half movie formula with maybe 5-15 minutes of throwaway cuts, so TV can stuff in more commercials. A three hour movie without intermission can be an arduous ordeal, as the aisles filled with people taking unsynchronized bathroom breaks and the expense of pop€orn and $oda approaches the down payment on a car. But these are social outings within time-slots. Books live in the personal elastic moment. The time we give them is the time it takes.

Perhaps there is a certain sense that at its ending, a book has 'wasted' [a tangible percentage of] your time. Its central theme undoubtedly kept your interest, but at a price. Perhaps it ends badly or dangly, the author's style changes abruptly (seen in works where the writer had set it aside and the publisher gives them a time ultimatum). Perhaps there are things or persons in it you just don't give a hoot about. This is natural.

As a young child I devoured the Hobbit and started into the Ring Trilogy and found myself enthralled with Frodo's quest, but started skimming it to sprint past the minutiae of politics and war. I felt a measure of guilt to do this, but I just wanted to wander in this new land, take in the sights and vistas, and be chased across Middle Earth. Then in my teens I spotted Tolkien on the shelf and experienced a dismissive sense of, "been there done read that". And another voice, the one that had supplied that wordless guilt years before, whispered, "actually... you haven't really" Upon which I dove into the four books again, this time the entire thing, and was left with a sense of wonder and discovery.

This been there done that seen that too long too boring too talky too thinky too rambly thing so often reflects the level of personal distraction, phase of life or judgmental sentiment of the moment. We change, and by re-reading familiar works over time, especially those we felt lukewarm about, we can gain a sense of how much we have changed. The stories set into books are like sundials of the mind --- as fixed and unvarying as stone. As our shadow drifts with the season, so do we glimpse our evolutions of thought and the added insight (and hopefully concentration and patience) that years may bring.

So books we have finished that were 'too long'...? Maybe we're just not mature or attentive enough to grasp them wholly. They deserve a second reading, some day. But not if they suck. Some books do suck.

Mars Trilogy does not suck.

Just what goes through my mind whenever I hear some one say, "that book went on too long". It takes awhile to go through all this, it's why people think I spend half my life just staring at the wall.

AGW is proven since centuries.

This is 2015. "Centuries" would mean it was proven by 1815. Sure you want to make that claim?

Do you recognize "AIP"? American Institute of Physics. They say here:

In the 19th century, scientists realized that gases in the atmosphere cause a "greenhouse effect" which affects the planet's temperature. These scientists were interested chiefly in the possibility that a lower level of carbon dioxide gas might explain the ice ages of the distant past.

So in the 1800's, scientists were not talking about global warming but that CO2 levels might have been responsible for the ice ages. Then:

At the turn of the century, Svante Arrhenius calculated that emissions from human industry might someday bring a global warming. Other scientists dismissed his idea as faulty.

Eight-five years after you claim AGW was proven, it was still a theory that wasn't close to universally accepted, much less proven.

In 1938, G.S. Callendar argued that the level of carbon dioxide was climbing and raising global temperature, but most scientists found his arguments implausible.

One hundred and twenty three years after you claim AGW was proven, most scientists didn't accept the arguments that unattributed CO2 sources were causing a warming. "Proof by consensus" is a double-edged sword, not to mention bad science.

In the early 1960s, C.D. Keeling measured the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: it was rising fast.

One hundred and forty-five years after the theory was proven, the first measurements of atmospheric CO2 were made.

Ironing the oceans might help eat some CO2, but even if all CO2 was converted into Cx + O2 the O2 level would not even increas by half a percent.

It would, however, prove fatal to a large amount of the flora on the planet. Starvation is as much a means of death as hyperoxygenation. Dead is dead.

Look for it in print, or something that quotes the print, and you'll see, but you don't have to - just think about my next point.

You mean like the CRC Handbook of Radiation Measurement and Protection that discusses potassium 40 levels in various foods, going back to at least the a version from the 1970s that I have? Or do you mean publications like journal articles, like this one that discuss measurement of potassium in food? I have a small collection of books discussing prospects of nuclear war from early cold war (50s and 60s), some of which mention bananas and other potassium foods, although don't give quantities, and the one that does give a quantity it is correct. How about giving some citations of print (and not internet posts) that get it wrong, instead of telling someone to prove a negative?

How do those "setting off alarms" comments make any sense when a banana emits far less radiation from potassium than a single human being (as pointed out by another poster)?

Bananas have an activity of about 120 Bq/kg, and the decay produce high energy betas and gammas mostly. For humans, it is about half this, 60 Bq/kg, from potassium (plus some C14, but the beta from that is weak enough most of it won't leave the body). It is more common to find large piles of bananas than people, but you can still find examples of using a scintillator and MCA to do gamma ray spectroscopy on a person as a lecture demonstration, usually requiring them to sit on the detector for the first half of the lecture to get a good, clear spectrum. And you can find discussion of detection of humans at border crossing radiation monitors due to radioisotopes, but otherwise material about using such monitoring portals only discusses bulk biological goods for K40, as even a bus carrying a football team isn't going to compare to the mass of material a truck full for produce or fertilizer will be carrying.

.. The experiment we were discussing was Spencer's radiation experiment. Not "global warming". You keep trying to apply my arguments about Spencer's challenge to the broader issue of global warming, aka "climate change", and it's not valid to do so. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-10-25]

CEASE misreprenting my position and my words. We had an agreement: when we discussed Spencer's "back radiation" experiment, I made it abundantly clear that we were discussion ONLY Spencer's experiment, not "greenhouse warming". .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-12-07]

How adorable. Once again, the whole reason Slayers dispute Spencer's experiment is because that implies greenhouse gases can't warm the surface:

.. the CO2-warming model rely on the concept of "back radiation", which physicists (not climate scientists) have proved to be impossible. I'm happy to leave actual climate science to climate scientists. But when THEIR models rely on a fundamental misunderstanding of physics, I'll take the physicists' word for it, thank you very much. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2012-07-05]

Actually, the rules aren't even well-known. The majority of CO2 warming models rely on a concept of "back radiation" that (according to physicists) does not even exist.. [Jane Q. Public, 2012-07-15]

.. I can show clearly, to someone with high school level math skills, that he was utterly, abjectly, and rather pathetically wrong, and the "Slayers", as he calls them, were right all along. Because, you see, as I know from experience, it isn't enough to show people the right way. At the same time it is necessary and desirable to show beyond doubt that "global warming alarmist" bullshit is just that: bullshit. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-10]

.. I stipulated before we got into that discussion that we were discussing ONLY Spencer's experiment, nothing else. You agreed to that condition. And now, you're violating it by extrapolating my comments to a completely different context. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-10-26]

I never agreed to pretend that Jane's Sky Dragon Slayer nonsense doesn't conflict with mainstream physicists' understanding of the greenhouse effect. Mainly because I couldn't imagine a Slayer resorting to such an absurd evasion, but also because I can't imagine agreeing to look the other way while he paralyzed his brain by simultaneously insisting that mainstream physicists agree with the Sky Dragon Slayers, while also somehow completely ignoring the National Academies of Science, the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics, the European Physi

questions is to what extent the impact of humans may be responsible.

No, this is fairly easily measurable; we're dwarfing natural processes. Aside from natural seasonal variation the biggest natural contributor to atmospheric CO2 is volcanic activity, and the rate at which we're releasing carbon is completely unprecedented. You can figure it as equivalent to 1-2 Yellowstone supervolcano eruptions every year, or two Pinatubos per day. (the article quotes from a paper that I belive is available online but I can't find it at the moment).

The models are well-defined on the lower limit due to the physics of radiation; 3.7 W/m^2 increase per doubling of CO2 is a straightforward result of the Stefan-Boltzmann Law. That is equivalent to about 1 degree C global temp, and no one is worried about that. The issue is that water vapor is a much stronger greenhouse gas and you may have noticed that there's quite a bit of it lying around. Furthermore, air can hold exponentially more water vapor as it heats up. There's a lot of variation possible in the feedback loops but negative feedback is really unlikely.

Personally, I find the most useful way to approach the subject is to take a look at the history of climate science. Thousands of scientists did not wake up one day and accept the movement of the continents, neither did they accept that humans could have any affect on the climate without strong proofs. The Discovery of Global Warming goes over the history of global warming and has useful insights into what exactly a climate model is, and how even one-dimensional models can still tell us useful things even if their long-term predictions are not all that accurate

For a more detailed look into the science, you might check out Science of Doom, but a textbook on atmospheric physics may be more useful. Unfortunately, beyond the basics it starts to get complicated in a real hurry; unless you really want to start diving through papers and textbooks you will probably be best served by the IPCC report.

I believe your cost estimates are greatly overestimated, but I did not actually address that subject. I don't really care what gets done or how much it costs, honestly, just that something happens. It's probably too late for my home to ever look the same again, but maybe yours will not be too badly affected. For more information about possible mitigation strategies, I would consult the IPCC report. However, you should know that your theory of no-feedbacks was the prevailing theory about seventy years ago, and it's taken a long time for scientists to come around to the idea that people/CO2 can affect the climate in a noticeable way; this did not happen without evidence. Everyone is hoping that we can find some physical system that lets us ignore atmospheric CO2 levels. Also, an increase in the global average does not imply an equal distribution of heat; temperatures in the Arctic have already warmed by 2 degrees C. There are a lot of other very visible changes, but I don't feel like going into them at the moment.

Simple models show that the CO2-water vapor feedback loop can lead to almost arbitrary temperatures; obviously that is not observed. Scientific predictions have their limitations, but my powers are even more limited; I know I do not have the decades of experience necessary to evaluate either the observations or the climate models. I would strongly advise against the application of "common sense" to massive chaotic system, however: getting the number of butterfly wing-flaps wrong could produce very unexpected weather conditions. To give an example, take a piece of Arctic tundra. You heat up the Earth, making the underlying permafrost melt. This releases a lot of carbon from sudden decomposition. The land then subsides and creates a swamp. Swamps are good at trapping carbon, but you've also changed the albedo so that the land absorbs more sunlight. Does this result in an overall warming effect, or cooling effect, and in what kind of time frame? The only thing that you can know about these sorts of problems without tons of research is that any simple answer is probably wrong.

Personally, I think that an appropriate first step might be to stop subsidizing oil and gas companies to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year. Another important step would be to change building standards so that heating and cooling are more efficient -- the cost of heating in an Alaskan winter is mind-blowing, just because it's cheaper for the construction company. Similarly, many homes are designed so that air conditioning is a necessity, rather than using passive cooling techniques. Hopefully electric cars will be able to compete on their own merits, but it would be nice to not subsidize auto manufacturers (the numbers I saw worked out to about $30 billion for the industry) to keep making internal combustion engines. Introducing some sort of carbon tax for manufacturers may or may not be a good idea -- I'm not an economist either, but I'm given to understand that markets are bad about pricing externalities -- but it may not even be necessary. It may be that if we stop giving handouts to massively polluting industries, green technologies will prove to be more efficient and competitive. If not, we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

You're pretty much the embodiment of this article. Because you don't like the solution, you are pretending like there isn't a problem. I can't tell you definitively if there will be a huge problem, but the best available science seems to point that way. However, you also seem to be listening to extremist rhetoric about possible solutions, and I am pretty sure that there are a lot of very reasonable things that would improve world regardless of whether there was a climate change issue, and might make a significant difference there as well.

In the 1950s, brave American scientists shunned by the climate establishment of the day discovered that the Earth was warming as a result of greenhouse gas emissions, leading to potentially devastating natural disasters that could destroy American agriculture and flood American cities. As a result, the country mobilized against the threat. Strong government action by the Bush administration outlawed the worst of these gases, and brilliant entrepreneurs were able to discover and manufacture new cleaner energy sources. As a result of these brave decisions, our emissions stabilized and are currently declining.

Unfortunately, even as we do our part, the authoritarian governments of Russia and China continue to industralize and militarize rapidly as part of their bid to challenge American supremacy. As a result, Communist China is now by far the world’s largest greenhouse gas producer, with the Russians close behind. Many analysts believe Putin secretly welcomes global warming as a way to gain access to frozen Siberian resources and weaken the more temperate United States at the same time. These countries blow off huge disgusting globs of toxic gas, which effortlessly cross American borders and disrupt the climate of the United States. Although we have asked them to stop several times, they refuse, perhaps egged on by major oil producers like Iran and Venezuela who have the most to gain by keeping the world dependent on the fossil fuels they produce and sell to prop up their dictatorships.

We need to take immediate action. While we cannot rule out the threat of military force, we should start by using our diplomatic muscle to push for firm action at top-level summits like the Kyoto Protocol. Second, we should fight back against the liberals who are trying to hold up this important work, from big government bureaucrats trying to regulate clean energy to celebrities accusing people who believe in global warming of being ‘racist’. Third, we need to continue working with American industries to set an example for the world by decreasing our own emissions in order to protect ourselves and our allies. Finally, we need to punish people and institutions who, instead of cleaning up their own carbon, try to parasitize off the rest of us and expect the federal government to do it for them.

Please join our brave men and women in uniform in pushing for an end to climate change now.

-- Five Case Studies on Politicization

... Would you all like to see his dumbass failure at trying to school me in thermodynamics? All you have to do is follow his comments back a ways. A long ways... because he kept making the same nonsense arguments, over, and over, and over again, even after he had been shown how wrong they were. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-10-22]

Jane keeps insisting that this Sky Dragon Slayer equation describes electrical heating power:

My energy conservation equation is this: electrical power in = (epsilon * sigma) * T^4 * area = radiant power out [Jane Q. Public, 2014-10-08]

Once again, that violates conservation of energy. Draw a boundary around the heat source:
power in = electrical heating power + radiative power in from the chamber walls
power out = radiative power out from the heat source

Jane's equation wrongly cancels "radiative power in" with a nonexistent term.

The BASIS of “greenhouse warming” -- back radiation -- has been SCIENTIFICALLY shown to be a load of hogwash. [Lonny Eachus, 2014-10-14]

No, Jane/Lonny Eachus's Slayer nonsense has been scientifically shown to violate conservation of energy. Unless, of course, Jane/Lonny can finally write down an energy conservation equation before wrongly "cancelling" terms?

It's fascinating that Jane/Lonny Eachus keeps insisting that mainstream physics is a hogwash dumbass failure. Jane/Lonny just needs to inform "dumbasses" like Prof. Brown, Dr. Joel Shore, physicists in the National Academies of Science, the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics, the European Physical Society, etc.

Jane/Lonny's Sky Dragon Slayer nonsense is so ridiculous that even prominent climate contrarians are rational enough to back away from the Slayers:

• Dr. Fred Singer finds it "surprising that this simplistic argument is used by physicists, and even by professors who teach thermodynamics. One can show them data of downwelling infrared radiation from CO2, water vapor, and clouds, which clearly impinge on the surface. But their minds are closed to any such evidence." The comments prove his point.
• Dr. Roy Spencer "clearly demonstrates that IR absorbing gases (greenhouse gases) reduce the Earth's ability to cool to outer space. No amount of obfuscation or strawman arguments in the comments section, below, will be able to get around this fact."
• Anthony Watts banned one of the original authors because of his nutty comments and later called the argument

Awww, baby doesn't understand atmospheric physics. How cute.

You should either check out ScienceOfDoom for an overview of CO2's effects on the atmosphere, or this site for a more historical view. No one wants AGW to exist, and it took quite a few decades of research to get to the point where most scientists agreed that humans could affect the climate at all, and still further decades to understand that we could have a large-ish effect. If you're a time-traveler from the 1800s, I can understand your ignorance. If not, you need a remedial science education, see above.

I haven't expended ANY energy to avoid writing anything down. I've written down the proper and necessary equations not just once but many times now. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-10-13]

Ironically, Jane's still trying hard to avoid writing down his energy conservation equation before wrongly "cancelling" terms. If he'd try to write down that equation just once, he might realize that the nonsensical equation he's written down many times isn't proper or necessary.

I don't need to write down a "conservation of energy equation" in regard to Spencer's experiment. I don't refuse to do it because I can't, as you have clearly implied. I refuse to do it because this is a dead issue. You were proved wrong weeks ago, and your demands for additional proof from me are just laughable. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-10-13]

If Jane actually could write down an energy conservation equation before wrongly "cancelling" terms, Jane would see that "radiative power from the walls" can't cancel out.

Once again, the only way Jane's final term could cancel with the radiative power in term "(e*s)*T4^4" to obtain Jane's final equation would be if "radiative power from chamber walls, re-emitted back out" equals "(e*s)*T4^4". But it's being emitted by the source, which is at temperature T1. If reflections confuse you, just remember that the gray body equation has to reduce to the black body equation where there aren't any reflections at all. In that case, all that power is being absorbed and re-emitted, not reflected.

If Jane would write down an energy conservation equation and think about it, he might realize that he's been endlessly crowing about "proving me wrong" using Sky Dragon Slayer nonsense that violates conservation of energy and/or the Stefan-Boltzmann law.

But since Jane's Slayer brainwashing is so thorough that he can't bring himself to write down that equation, Jane will probably keep endlessly crowing about "proving me wrong".

Ironically, if Jane's Slayer nonsense was right, Jane would also have "proven wrong" Prof. Brown, Dr. Joel Shore, the National Academies of Science, the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics, the European Physical Society, etc.

... YOU are the one going against "established" physics here. ... If you could actually show how the physics textbook idea of heat transfer was wrong, you would be world famous by now. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-10-06]

No, I'd have to get in line behind all those other physicists who agree that adding CO2 warms Earth's surface, which is equivalent to saying that enclosing a heat source warms it. This is probably the most fascinating part of Jane's delusion. Not only does Jane completely misunderstand fundamental physics, Jane seems to earnestly believe that his crackpot Slayer conspiracy theory represents "established" physics. Fascina

That's ridiculous, Jane. Notice that "net radiative power out" equals negative "net radiative power in". Since Jane seems to agree that "net radiative power out" is positive, "net radiative power in" can't be zero. It has to be negative, which just means more radiative power is flowing out than flowing in.

Now you've just gone off the deep end. And by "deep end" I mean the deep end of the pit full of BS you've dug yourself. Just no. Any spherical boundary you draw within this system has additional input: your vaunted electrical power. I'm amazed that you finally got so caught up in your own bullshit that you made a mistake quite THAT fundamental. Get stuffed, troll. For that and actually quite a pile of other reasons that have built up over time, I still don't believe you're a real physicist. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-10-12]

Electrical power isn't radiative power, so it wouldn't be included in net radiative power.

... I have written down all I need to write down to answer Spencer's challenge. I solved for the correct temperature, and showed your own answer to be utterly wrong. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-10-11]

Once again, Jane's solution halved the electrical heating power. Jane didn't notice this because he calculated net transfer incorrectly, which led him to the absurd conclusion that Jane was only off by about 0.1% when Jane was actually off by ~100%.

So Jane hasn't written down all he needs to give the correct answer to Spencer's challenge. To give the correct answer, Jane has to draw a boundary around the heat source:
power in = electrical heating power + radiative power in from chamber walls
power out = radiative power out from source

This is the same answer that Prof. Brown and Dr. Joel Shore tried to explain to Jane. It's also the same answer that underlies the positions taken by the National Academies of Science, the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics, and the European Physical Society, etc.

... YOU are the one going against "established" physics here. ... If you could actually show how the physics textbook idea of heat transfer was wrong, you would be world famous by now. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-10-06]

No, I'd have to get in line behind all those other physicists who agree that adding CO2 warms Earth's surface, which is equivalent to saying that enclosing a heat source warms it. This is probably the most fascinating part of Jane's delusion. Not only does Jane completely misunderstand fundamental physics, Jane seems to earnestly believe that his crackpot Slayer conspiracy theor

Not sure what you mean by few references...All these were on that page.

http://www.grida.no/publicatio...
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncli...
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/...
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs...
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/...
http://www.copenhagendiagnosis...
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/...
http://www.aip.org/history/cli...
http://www.aip.org/history/cli...
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/resea...
http://www.realclimate.org/ind...
http://www.realclimate.org/ind...
http://web.archive.org/web/201...

As for Dyson...two imporat words you dont find in his biography are "climate scientist".
In fact, he rather quite well falls into the science trope of the phsycist who insits on talking about things outside his realm of expertise.
(There's even an XKCD for that, though I am missing the link atm)

Not sure what you mean by few references...All these were on that page.

http://www.grida.no/publicatio...
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncli...
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/...
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs...
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/...
http://www.copenhagendiagnosis...
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/...
http://www.aip.org/history/cli...
http://www.aip.org/history/cli...
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/resea...
http://www.realclimate.org/ind...
http://www.realclimate.org/ind...
http://web.archive.org/web/201...

As for Dyson...two imporat words you dont find in his biography are "climate scientist".
In fact, he rather quite well falls into the science trope of the phsycist who insits on talking about things outside his realm of expertise.
(There's even an XKCD for that, though I am missing the link atm)

... These are just straw-man arguments, as usual. I have no argument with these other physicists. It was about Spencer's challenge and how YOU got it wrong, nothing more. Have you asked them, personally, about Spencer's experiment? (No, you haven't, or you would know you were wrong.) ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-25]

Does Jane have the memory of a goldfish? Of course Jane has argued with these other physicists. Jane personally asked Prof. Brown about Sky Dragon Slayerism, but wasn't able to "educate" him. Lonny Eachus personally asked Dr. Joel Shore about Sky Dragon Slayerism, but wasn't able to "educate" him. And now Jane/Lonny Eachus fantasizes that these physicists agree with his Sky Dragon Slayerism? Maybe Jane/Lonny Eachus should read those exchanges again, and notice that Prof. Brown and Dr. Shore told Jane/Lonny Eachus the same things I am. That's because Prof. Brown, Dr. Shore and I are simply reiterating elementary mainstream physics.

... Bringing up OTHER arguments like greenhouse gases won't win THAT argument for you. You have already lost it. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-25]

How bizarre. The whole reason Slayers deny that an enclosed source warms is because that implies greenhouse gases can't warm the surface:

.. the CO2-warming model rely on the concept of "back radiation", which physicists (not climate scientists) have proved to be impossible. I'm happy to leave actual climate science to climate scientists. But when THEIR models rely on a fundamental misunderstanding of physics, I'll take the physicists' word for it, thank you very much. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2012-07-05]

That's why Jane, Dr. Latour and the rest of the Slayers disagree with the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics, and the European Physical Society.

Again, how did we detect the 2.7K cosmic microwave background radiation with warmer detectors? How do uncooled IR detectors see cooler objects? Again, why is Venus hotter than Mercury?

If Sky Dragon Slayers could answer these questions without resorting to gray Oreos or basketball player gloves, physicists might take the Slayers more seriously.

.. Be a man for a change and admit it. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-15]

.. Be a man and admit the truth.. You've been owned, man. BE enough of a man to admit it. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-19]

... Time to act like a man and admit that you were wrong. ...

... I mean, didn't it send up a red flag when you took your answer and fed it back into standard heat transfer equations and it didn't balance? Oh, that's right... you didn't. But I did. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-24]

Completely backwards, as usual. I've already shown that my solution keeps electrical heating power constant. Once again, Jane's solution halved the electrical heating power. Jane didn't notice this because he calculated net transfer incorrectly, which led him to the absurd conclusion that Jane was only off by about 0.1% when Jane was actually off by ~100%.

... because ALL of the incoming cooler radiation is reflected or scattered, and no NET amount is absorbed... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-24]

Good grief, Jane. How did the Sky Dragon Slayers brainwash you into endlessly regurgitating this nonsense? Once again, radiation is absorbed by any surface with absorptivity > 0. Jane's either hopelessly confused about the very term "NET" which he keeps capitalizing, or Jane/Lonny Eachus has betrayed humanity by deliberately spreading civilization-paralyzing misinformation.

Again, how do Slayers think we detected the 2.7K cosmic microwave background radiation with warmer detectors? How do Slayers think uncooled IR detectors see cooler objects? Again, why do Slayers think Venus is hotter than Mercury?

... I'm not arguing with you now and I'm not going to again. You're either a fool or a liar, and I do not care which. I have already proved it and I intend to publish that for the world to see. Along with textbook explanations and diagrams showing exactly where and how you went wrong. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-24]

Again, Jane/Lonny Eachus actually means that he intends to show where mainstream physics "went wrong" according to the Sky Dragon Slayers. There are many ignorant, stupid physicists that Jane/Lonny Eachus needs to educate: Prof. Brown, Dr. Joel Shore, the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics, and the European Physical Society, etc.

.. Be a man for a change and admit it. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-15]

.. Be a man and admit the truth.. You've been owned, man. BE enough of a man to admit it. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-19]

.

.. By the Stefan-Boltzmann radiation law, the chamber walls add no net power in. It just goes right back out through your boundary again. How many times must I explain this to you? .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-23]

If radiation enters the boundary and goes right back out, we need to account for it entering and exiting. That's why there are separate terms for "power in" and "power out". For instance:

There is no net "radiative power in" from cooler to hotter. It's against the second law of thermodynamics, and it violates the S-B radiation law: (e * s) * (Ta^4 - Tb^4). [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-23]

That's exactly the equation Jane should be using to calculate electrical heating power! It has separate terms for "power in" and "power out" so it can describe power entering and exiting a boundary. If Jane would use that equation, he'd honestly be only saying there is no net "radiative power in" from cooler to hotter.

Instead, Jane insists that electrical heating power = (e * s) * (Ta^4). Jane's ridiculous equation doesn't just say there is no net "radiative power in" from cooler to hotter. Jane's wrongly saying the source absorbs no radiative power at all.

There is nothing more to say. You have been proved wrong. You can write books about your nonsense "physics", and it won't make your bullshit theory any more correct. .. The textbooks all say you're wrong. Goodbye. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-23]

So Jane refuses to retract his absurd claim that view factors vary as the radius ratio, which violates conservation of energy. A cynic might have expected as much, given how Jane flagrantly violates conservation of energy by incoherently ignoring radiative power passing in through a boundary around the heat source.

.. I honestly -- and I mean that: honestly -- don't believe you could be this stupid and possess a degree in physics. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-15]

.. I only replied on the off-chance that you really were ignorant and could be educated. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-20]

Jane's campaign of educating ignorant, stupid physicists about physics has only just begun. Jane still needs to educate Prof. Brown and Lonny Eachus still needs to educate Dr. Joel Shore.

Then, Jane/Lonny Eachus needs to educate the "ignorant" and "stupid" American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics, and the European Physical Society.

.. the CO2-warming model rely on the concept of "back radiation", which physicists (not climate scientists) have proved to be impossible. I'm happy to leave actual climate science to climate scientists. But when THEIR models rely on a fundamental misunderstanding of physics, I'll take the physicists' word for it, thank you very much. ..

... It is the engineering textbook answer. Claiming it is nonsense does not make it so. It was your own model that violated conservation of energy. But to see why, it's easiest to solve the general case first, then look at a specific case. I told you I had reasons to solve the general case first. ... Well, then, I guess you do admit defeat. It doesn't take much time to obtain a textbook on the subject (you were given references 2 years ago and it's not that hard to find others) ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-01]

No, the PSI Sky Dragon Slayers told you it's the engineering textbook answer. I showed you MIT's final expression which reduces to my Eq. 1 for blackbodies, and is consistent with these equations and Eq. 1 in Goodman 1957. Physicists and engineers have been using thermodynamics for decades in the real world that contradicts Dr. Latour's Slayer nonsense.

That's why Jane, Dr. Latour and the rest of the Slayers disagree with the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics, and the European Physical Society.

... I am disputing that given reasonable chosen dimensions it is anywhere near an intractable problem. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-01]

I never said the problem is intractable. Just that it's more complicated than the spherically symmetric problem. Again, do you dispute that equilibrium temperatures for a non-enclosing plate would vary across the plate surfaces rather than being simple numbers like with a spherically symmetric fully enclosing plate?

Maybe I should explain that. Consider Dr. Spencer's first illustration. Presumably the heated plate at "150F" has finite conductivity, so its lack of spherical symmetry means that its corners will be cooler than the plate's side's midpoints. That's because the corners are closer to the cold chamber walls than those midpoints.

An integral over the heated plate's surface might average to "150F" but (unlike a spherically symmetric plate) it can't have that temperature everywhere as long as it has finite conductivity. But at least the single heated plate has bilateral symmetry; the left and right hand side midpoints have the same temperature.

Adding a cool plate removes even that bilateral symmetry. The left hand side's midpoint warms the least because it's still radiating to the 0F chamber walls. The right hand side's midpoint warms the most because it's now radiating to the (initially) 100F cold plate.

Since enclosing a spherically symmetric plate warms it from 150F to ~233.8F for area ratios similar to Earth's, the right hand side's midpoint won't warm past ~233.8F. But it has to warm to conserve energy because at equilibrium power in = power out.

I can't be more specific without programming a finite element model. But Dr. Latour never even allowed for the heated plate's temperature to be different on each side. As long as we're only considering materials with finite conductivity, this would only be poss

You can't. You just think you can because you over-estimate your abilities. I encourage you to do an internet search for the relevant research. There was a slashdot story about it ~ 5 years ago.

I did do an Internet search, and in fact found plenty of research that indicates humans and other mammals can in fact localize sound in the vertical plane (i.e. whether it comes from in front of behind of you). Of course, it doesn't work for all sounds, but the capability is there.

A large body of scientists who are PHYSICISTS agree with me. A large body of scientists who are CLIMATE RESEARCHERS disagree. ... which group should I listen to? The ones whose SPECIALTY it is, or the tyros? Go learn a little humility yourself. Like for example learning to admit when you're wrong. [Jane Q. Public, 2013-05-30]

I showed Jane statements from the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics, and the European Physical Society. Spoiler alert: mainstream physicists don't agree with the Slayers.

Maybe Jane doesn't actually take the physicists' word for it?

... None of your citations even mention Latour, much less try to refute him. You are just making your usual straw-man arguments again. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-08-04]

All those professional physics societies agree that our CO2 emissions are causing warming, which Dr. Latour and the Slayers deny. Jane's claimed that physicists are "the experts" when it comes to physics, and that Jane "takes the physicists' word for it." I'm skeptical.

... To the best of my knowledge -- and I have been following the issue -- not one physicist has even attempted to refute LaTour's analysis, while a number of physicists have backed him up. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2013-05-30]

rgbatduke is Prof. Brown, a physicist who'd refuted Dr. Latour's analysis directly to Jane, but as usual Jane just doubled down. On a Slayer blog post about Prof. Brown, Lonny Eachus even repeated Jane's arguments to physicist Joel Shore, who refuted Lonny.

Maybe Jane/Lonny Eachus doesn't actually take the physicists' word for it?

... As for your heating the walls, the argument all along has been about something that is warmed from a cooler state to equilibrium. Whether your point about heating the walls is correct or not isn't part of it. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-08-04]

Of course it is. The heated plate reaches equilibrium at 150F with the chamber walls at 0F, then the chamber walls are warmed to 149F and the heated plate warms from a cooler state to a warmer equilibrium. This is a simple way to see that Slayer claims like these are wrong:

... Do you understand the second law of thermodynamics? Do you understand that it is not possible for a cooler body to increase the heat of a warmer body via infrared radiation? ... [Jane Q. Public, 2013-05-27]

... An object that is radiating at a certain black-body temperature WILL NOT absorb a less-energetic photon from an outside source. This is am extremely well-known corollary of the Secon

Yeah, the models may suck, but you're allowing yourself to be ignorant of the actual science.

The direct forcing effect of a doubling of CO2 is much easier to calculate than the total forcing. It's usually given as 3.7 W/m^2, or something like 1 degree C globally. Beyond that, predictions vary, but given that water is omnipresent and that water vapor is a much more effective greenhouse gas, the tiny effect of CO2 is expected to be amplified by feedback effects. Weart gives a good overview of the history of climate science, including the observations and calculations that led scientists to reject the hypothesis that humans could not affect the climate on a large scale. Or, you could pull out a book on atmospheric physics; knowing the absorption spectrum of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere will let you calculate a lot of things for yourself, and the equations aren't too unmanageable.

TFA should have mentioned that Simons has given large amounts of money to Brookhaven National Labs to keep the RHIC running.

Quit repeating yourself, it's dull.

AGW could be falsified in a number of different ways, but why don't you disengage your oral-rectal interface and actually learn something about atmospheric science. You can't just bitch about a theory you don't like, you have to account for the observations it explains in some other manner.

There's a lot of good information that can be found on this site, and ScienceOfDoom has a pretty good (with some exceptions) eight-part series on why CO2 is an issue. Finally, you could actually read the IPCC reports. Understand that we're working from 200 years of observations, and that the properties of CO2 are extremely well known. We know very specifically what wavelengths of radiation it absorbs under various conditions. We can also measure this in the atmosphere directly. It is completely inarguable that a higher partial pressure of carbon dioxide will result in heat retention through absorption of outgoing long-wave radiation. However, if you wanted to try to disprove that, you could start postulating magic fairy dust, or a conspiracy of scientists. Those would be easiest. Next best bet would be that CO2 doesn't behave the way it is measured to behave both in the lab and via satellite. It could be that it only absorbs OLR when someone is looking. Lastly you could accept that CO2 does cause warming but find some other phenomenon which would offset this, and may I say good luck on that one. I am sure that you know enough to know that getting rid of excess heat in space is a problem; we have that problem on a planetary scale.

The AGW theory is the result of, as said, about 200 years of observations. But if you wanted to stick your fingers into the wounds, then head to the Arctic; it's melting like gangbusters. We are rapidly heading towards a future where large icefields will not exist. However, do note that while the fundamentals of CO2-related forcing in the matter of climate change are not in doubt, the effects of a more energetic atmosphere are difficult to predict. It's not an intractable problem, and it's relatively easy to get a ballpark estimate by modeling the atmosphere as a column of air, which is why we're talking about single-digit changes in global temperature per doubling of CO2 as opposed to an order of magnitude more or less.

You have a cognitive bias which is leading you to ignore or reject observations. If you accept the evidence for relativity, or quantum physics, or evolution, or plate tectonics, or the germ theory of disease, or stellar evolution, then you should either accept the scientific basis for AGW or find a better argument. Proceed from the evidence to your hypothesis and not the other way around. If you do not know the evidence, then you are unqualified to discuss it.

Anon for moderation.

That's why you have Wikipedia...which will tell you that aneutronic fusion needs much higher temperatures, in addition, at least fifty times the density-time of D-T fusion, and generates three orders of magnitude lower power density.

In their paper in Physics of Plasmas they report having achieved the density and temparature necessary for aneutronic (hydrogen-boron) fusion. The new electrode will enable them to demonstrate a reaction which creates more energy than is required to trigger it - not a finished device, but one which will demonstrate its practicality and attach the funding necessary to commercialise it.

For more detail, an interview with the project founder can be found on the Future and You podcast here.

You mean like the overall long-term increase in Antarctic ice mass, despite breakups in the Western sheet?

False. Antarctic land ice mass is decreasing, and reliable estimates of Antarctic sea ice volume (or mass) aren't available.

Even if you meant to refer to Antarctic sea ice extent (not mass), you already ignored me when I told you that this is consistent with Manabe et al. 1991 page 811: " sea surface temperature hardly changes and sea ice slightly increases near the Antarctic Continent in response to the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide."

But maybe you'll listen to the National Academy of Sciences, if you honestly don't think the National Academy of Sciences is "alarmist". Again, their recent report is educational. They address Antarctic sea ice in question 12.

The gradual, long-term non-warming that has occurred over the last 15-17 years, depending on who you ask?

Jane and Lonny Eacus have repeatedly ignored me whenever I've told you that there's been no statistically significant change in the surface warming rate. But if you honestly doesn't think the NAS is alarmist, you might learn something from their answers to questions 9 and 10. This point is particularly relevant: "More than 90% of the heat added to Earth is absorbed by the oceans and penetrates only slowly into deep water. A faster rate of heat penetration into the deeper ocean will slow the warming seen at the surface and in the atmosphere, but by itself will not change the long-term warming that will occur from a given amount of CO2."

I agree: science is a wonderful thing. You can appear to "prove" almost anything you want if you restrict your study to relatively isolated phenomena, and ignore the bigger picture.

No, that's not science the way it's practiced by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the American Meteorological Society, the American Statistical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Federation of American Scientists, the American Quaternary Association, the American Society of Agronomy, the

You mean like the overall long-term increase in Antarctic ice mass, despite breakups in the Western sheet?

False. Antarctic land ice mass is decreasing, and reliable estimates of Antarctic sea ice volume (or mass) aren't available.

Even if you meant to refer to Antarctic sea ice extent (not mass), you already ignored me when I told you that this is consistent with Manabe et al. 1991 page 811: " sea surface temperature hardly changes and sea ice slightly increases near the Antarctic Continent in response to the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide."

But maybe you'll listen to the National Academy of Sciences, if you honestly don't think the National Academy of Sciences is "alarmist". Again, their recent report is educational. They address Antarctic sea ice in question 12.

The gradual, long-term non-warming that has occurred over the last 15-17 years, depending on who you ask?

Jane and Lonny Eacus have repeatedly ignored me whenever I've told you that there's been no statistically significant change in the surface warming rate. But if you honestly doesn't think the NAS is alarmist, you might learn something from their answers to questions 9 and 10. This point is particularly relevant: "More than 90% of the heat added to Earth is absorbed by the oceans and penetrates only slowly into deep water. A faster rate of heat penetration into the deeper ocean will slow the warming seen at the surface and in the atmosphere, but by itself will not change the long-term warming that will occur from a given amount of CO2."

I agree: science is a wonderful thing. You can appear to "prove" almost anything you want if you restrict your study to relatively isolated phenomena, and ignore the bigger picture.

No, that's not science the way it's practiced by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the American Meteorological Society, the American Statistical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Federation of American Scientists, the American Quaternary Association, the American Society of Agronomy, the

You should really study some atmospheric science. It takes a while to understand all of the fundamentals involved, but it's pretty indisputable that CO2 absorbs outgoing long-wave radiation, and the effects of moving this CO2-rich zone further into the upper atmosphere are easily calculable, at least to the point where one can say with certainty that an increased partial pressure of CO2 must lead to a higher-energy system. It's really depressing knowledge, honestly.

I didn't account for the internal heat in either planet. I'm not sure how much that would affect the model, but in either case it would push toward more greenhouse.

Temperature is lower at higher altitudes simply because it is at lower pressure. It will be the same on whatever planet you want to look at. Looking at the temperature that high up is just misdirection. Obviously if you're higher than most of the atmosphere, the atmosphere won't affect you as much. The light isn't passing through as much CO2 from those altitudes, so it isn't affected as much it.

Condensing both of our conversations into one:
A very simple climate model is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...

An overview of what's included in the models and why is here: http://www.aip.org/history/cli...

Please don't feel bad about imposing. If I can show just one person the light it will be worth it.

One model of the Earth's atmosphere is to assume that Earth is a perfect blackbody with no atmosphere. This tells you that, if Earth perfectly absorbed light, the global temperature should be about 279 K, or 6 degrees C. Factoring in an albedo of about 30% (as measured by satellites), however, gets us down to a chilly -18 degrees C. The difference between that and the observed surface temperature is almost entirely due to the 'greenhouse' effect of our atmosphere.

Now, this may come as a shock, but we can't actually calculate every effect of everything on the planet. It's not going to happen soon, either. So climate scientists have been working on successive approximations, essentially. One way to simplify the problem is to consider the atmosphere as a column of air extending from the surface; you can divide this up into layers with various compositions and physical properties, and there are certain radiative transfer equations that would allow you to get a pretty good idea of how exactly the atmosphere acts to trap heat. Somewhere fairly early into these calculations you would start to worry about CO2.

Water vapor absorbs the greatest amount of outgoing long-wave radiation, but we have these huge deposits of liquid water pretty much everywhere and can't do much about that. However, increasing the global partial pressure of CO2 seems to be well within our abilities. Arrhenius was the first to calculate that a doubling of CO2 would raise the surface temperature by several degrees, but here's a basic history of climate models.

What people mean when they say "the science is settled" is that CO2 traps heat in a specific way, which has been observed both in the lab and in situ, and measured to an exacting standard. The effects and degree of that warming are not known to that same degree of accuracy, but people have been working on better estimates for about a century now. Models may change or they may be updated, but the parts that indicate that we are warming are relatively simple, very well-studied, and unlikely to change. No one wants our understanding of CO2-induced forcing to be true, and there has been a great deal of effort trying to disprove it over the last century or so.

You seem to be stupid. Science for you is an answer machine, which can be right or wrong. The truth is that there is no "right", there is only "least wrong". I sympathize if a world of uncertainties seems disturbing, but keep in mind that "least wrong" is often a very, very, very good approximation of "right". In the cases of evolution and climate science, we've been refining the approximations for quite a while now -- hence, "settled science".

Wasn't that Reagan's administration? His administration forced the UN to create the IPCC mostly political reasons. http://www.aip.org/history/cli...

Here are some statistics to show that, as pertains the Arctic, the Earth is measurably warming. I can tell you offhand that annual temperatures in Alaska have warmed by 3 degrees in the last century, and winter temperatures by 6 degrees. Southeastern Alaska is characterized by stable temperatures throughout the year, heavy precipitation, and a gradual transition from getting most of that as rain vs snow as one goes further north. Thus the warming is shall we say particularly noticeable to costal inhabitants. Another good measure of long-term climactic changes is the extent of permafrost.[pdf] Much of the ground in Alaska, and practically all the ground above the Arctic Circle is permanently frozen. Ice being less dense than water, if you happen to melt it, you create a subsidence and potentially a small lake. Either way, it's extremely disruptive to what little vegetation (or structures) there are that can survive on top of permafrost and hence easy to observe. Other good measures are the many glaciers, which I am told take thousands of years to form. 98% of all glaciers in Alaska are in retreat, and I mean visibly, over the last two decades. I lived in a fairly glacier-heavy area, and every successive spring brought more bare rock where once there was towering ice. The most dramatic of these was Columbia, of course, and I'm told that is not strongly linked to climate changes, but nine miles of ice melting in two decades is really an incredible pace.

I've recently been probing my ignorance of atmospheric science. I've found a couple fairly informative resources, including this more general introduction to the maths, and a more thorough examination of carbon dioxide's role as a greenhouse gas. It really doesn't take a great deal of learning to see that, aside from the observed warming trend, a higher partial pressure of carbon dioxide must result in increased heat transfer to the Earth's surface. There's really nowhere else for it to go. What happens from there is obviously a complex topic, but as you say, the glass jar experiments show pretty clearly that CO2 absorbs long-wave outgoing radiation. Where else do you imagine the heat goes?

If CO2 and water vapor did not cause the Earth to warm then liquid water would not exist on the Earth's surface. Any child can verify that CO2 absorbs radiation in a certain band with nothing more than a thermometer and glass container. A spectroscope would prove this to anyone's satisfaction. Any difference between incoming radiation and outgoing radiation must necessarily be measured as heat. If you increase the partial pressure (with regard to nitrogen and h20) of CO2 in any closed system then it will absorb more radiation in certain spectra that, again, your spectroscope can tell you.

Liquid water covers 70% of the globe, and with little provocation it will undergo a phase change to a gaseous state. The atmosphere can be considered to be saturated with water vapor, more or less beyond our ability to control. However, we can and have released gigatonnes of another substance, which happens to selectively absorb outgoing long-wave radiation. We have already increased the partial pressure of this gas in the atmosphere considerably and show no signs of stopping. Further information on radiative transfer in the atmosphere may be found here, including a history of discoveries related to the matter. Assuming that you're not fool enough to argue a physical phenomenon that again, can be detected by anyone, and measured with the simplest of laboratory equipment, one can ask what method of heat transfer you imagine would suffice to remove this excess heat?

The degree of warming, of course, is a complicated matter, and well beyond your ability to describe. However, you could probably, as also detailed on the aforementioned website, use a single-layer model to get an order-of-magnitude of the change. For more accurate calculations, you may consult the model and data from Mann et al, or read the IPCC summary. Or you could listen to your betters instead of people who are trying to confuse the scientific matter with political shit. The science is descriptive, not prescriptive -- argue about taxes and international policy all you like, but it has nothing to do with observations of the global carbon cycle and human effects on the latter.

For instance, it is observed that the Arctic, where I happen to live, is melting like gangbusters. We are losing on the order of a hundred cubic kilometers of glacial ice annually just in Alaska. Maybe you haven't noticed the warming where you live, but here's a big fuck you from someone whose life has been directly affected. You want your industry back? I want my glaciers back, and they were here first. More to the point, permafrost temperatures have been rising steadily, and perhaps you don't know what that is, or what it looks like when it melts, but I can assure you we will not be worrying about the emissions of the third world at that point.

Let's build a model of the Earth's atmosphere.

First let's model the Earth as a point particle with perfect blackbody characteristics. Taking into account the received radiation from the sun, that should get us a global temperature of ~6 degrees C.

But wait, we know the Earth isn't a perfect blackbody, so we'll factor in an albedo of ~ .3 and get a global temperature of -18 degrees C.

This isn't a very good model so far, is it? Well, let's model the atmosphere as a layered column of gases, then. Oh hey, funny thing. It looks like if you increase the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, it heats up, and then the atmosphere can hold more CO2, leading to arbitrarily large temperatures. That can't be right. Let's revise the model...

That brings us to the beginnings of the 20th Century in terms of atmospheric modeling. You can read more about subsequent steps in this textbook, or perhaps this one. I can particularly recommend the former as it is brief and a good introduction to the problems associated with e.g. where in the atmosphere CO2 is concentrated, and its peculiar vibrational modes.

All of Science is to some degree wrong. Congratulations on your discovery of this fact. The question is, how wrong? And with these models we try to estimate that. We would all dearly like for there not to be such thing as the greenhouse effect right about now, believe you me. However, since it is trivial to show that an atmosphere with a greater proportion of CO2 will retain more solar radiation, and this has been known since the early 19th Century, we're not holding out much hope for that hypothesis. Wrong we may be, but that wrong we are surely not. I don't know where in your fathomless depths of ignorance and hubris you find the means to dispute apparent fact, but keep in mind that when many others' opinions differ from yours, it's unlikely to be a conspiracy.

This post brought to you by the Anthropogenic Global Warming Conspiracy. Get your membership card today!

Absolutely, it's also not just about our proximity to the sun, it is also about cycles of sun activity....

http://www.universetoday.com/103803/solar-cycle-24-on-track-to-be-the-weakest-in-100-years/
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/images/solar_irradiance.jpg

One of the reasons why climate scientists are off in their predictions is that the sun has been behaving in an odd way and the whole planet for the last few years has been getting far less energy from the sun that it normally does. The fact that the planet has remained in a warming trend during this period only backs up climatologists claims that we're in deep sh*t.

Climate science should be studied, it's fundamentally important to everyone on the planet. Hackus = TROLL

Here's the actual paper's paywall. All the paper claims is that "A maximum of 36.8% of the incident power from a 900âMHz signal is experimentally rectified by an array of metamaterial unit cells." So they built a rectenna with a waveguide.

Rectennas have been around for decades, and 82% efficiency (DC watts out / microwave watts into antenna) has been achieved. So 37% is nothing to be excited about.

If you hook up two long wires or plates to a diode, any RF in the vicinity will produce some DC across the diode. This is the principle behind "crystal radios". The problem is that you need big antennas to get much power from ambient RF.

Richard F Post has a lot of interesting things to say on the subject, and was one of the scientists behind the magnetic mirror experiment at LLNL, that was mothballed before it ever started due to budget cuts..

A small clarification: Richard F. Post is an actual person: http://www.aip.org/history/acap/biographies/bio.jsp?postr

So, despite appearances, the above post is NOT "F. Post" troll. I'm actually a bit disappointed.

I am not a climate scientist, but I am open to explanations of why any or all of the above sources are not correct.

Of course I hope global warming is overrated, because the world is still dumping CO2 into the atmosphere. If the consequences really will be dire, we will find out.

You could start with Ray Pierrehumbert's textbook.

That has a slightly idiosyncratic selection of topics, though; so you should follow up with another textbook, perhaps this.

Of course there will still be gaps in your knowledge after that. But there are many more textbooks...and you'll be in a position to identify the gaps by then.

If you're not prepared to put in any work, then Spencer Weart's web site has some easy reading.

to give permission to third parties to republish print versions of the Article or a translation thereof, or excerpts therefrom, without obtaining permission from AIP Publishing LLC, provided the Publisher-prepared version is not used for this purpose, the Article is not published in another conference proceedings or journal, and the third party does not charge a fee.

In other words, as long as you're not using the corrections you get back from AIP's peer review process, you can put your article anywhere that doesn't charge a fee and isn't a journal. The agreement goes on to EXPLICITLY grant you the right to the journal-edited version on your own personal webpage or on arXiv.

Just to be clear -- you are arguing that human agriculture starting at a small scale in a few places was the cause of the end of the last ice age?

We know correlation != causation but it's really hard to imagine someone arguing that the causation there goes in the other direction, which is the "reverse" that you refer to.

The Ice Ages are caused by perturbations in the Earth's orbit AND only occur if the general temperature of the Earth is low enough. We still had the same perturbations during the warm dinosaur ages.

Based on the orbit, the next ice Age should have been starting 8-10,000 years ago. It didn't.
Now don't go getting your knickers in a knot by saying early humans couldn't have put out enough CO2 to stop an Ice Age without first understanding that all the other Ice Ages started from a minor change in orientation and albedo and a slightly longer snow cover from year to year.

The Am. Inst. of Physics has a nice set of articles about the actual science. http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm

Minus an atmosphere, and assuming .3 albedo (based on satellite measurements), the Earth would be about -18 degrees C (255 K). The average surface temperature of the Earth is currently around 14.5 degrees C. The atmosphere traps enough heat energy to take the entire globe from deep freeze to balmy. Geothermal and tidal heating account for pretty negligible amounts of heating.

So, two points: one, the amount of energy involved is rather large, and a small percentage change is going to have a huge effect. Secondly, heating the atmosphere changes its content. The atmosphere is more or less saturated with water vapor, and any increase in temperatures increases the amount of water that it can contain. We can't do anything about how much water is on the planet, for reasons that should be obvious. On the other hand, we're really great at making CO2. A naive calculation would indicate that you can increase temperatures almost arbitrarily by adding CO2, in fact.

Oh hey look there's a textbook that has this same objection explained in detail. Apparently your objection was addressed in the 1950s. Whoops.

You've confused the total with the excess. The total amount in the atmosphere, oceans, and biogeochemical cycles doesn't vary much, or very fast -- except for the last century during which there's been an extremely rapid rate of increase from fossil fuel burning. See http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm

As he says there:
"If you want basic facts about climate change, or detailed current technical information, you might do better using the links page. But if you want to use history to really understand it all..." -- read http://www.aip.org/history/climate/

Among other things you learn why logic and common sense didn't solve the puzzles in the detail needed; computers made it possible.

You've confused the total with the excess. The total amount in the atmosphere, oceans, and biogeochemical cycles doesn't vary much, or very fast -- except for the last century during which there's been an extremely rapid rate of increase from fossil fuel burning. See http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm

As he says there:
"If you want basic facts about climate change, or detailed current technical information, you might do better using the links page. But if you want to use history to really understand it all..." -- read http://www.aip.org/history/climate/

Among other things you learn why logic and common sense didn't solve the puzzles in the detail needed; computers made it possible.

Four things. First, Professor Ray Stalker is indeed a credit to Australia and I look forward to his continued success.

Second, the article is about the successful test of a US Air Force test vehicle. They are entitled to celebrate their success.

Third, your history is a bit off.

Scramjets integrate air and space

Scramjets have a long and active development history in the United States. On the basis of theoretical studies started in the 1940s, the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and NASA began developing scramjet engines in the late 1950s. Since then, many hydrogenand hydrocarbon-fueled engine programs have helped scramjet technology evolve to its current state. The most influential of these efforts was NASA’s National Aerospace Plane (NASP) program, established in 1986 to develop a vehicle with speed greater than Mach 15 and horizontal takeoff and landing capabilities. The program ended in 1993, but the original NASP engine design, significantly modified by NASA, provided the foundation for the power plant used during the X-43A’s recent flight.

Fourth, you diminish yourself when you associate yourself with Alex Belits' bile filled, historically illiterate, diatribes.

First of all, if a point fails, the houses connected to it lose power, that is all. the rest of the grid is unaffected. Usually another endpoint gets reconfigured to support that block then.

If that point is a switching station then a lot more people will be effected. A blackout that effected most of the east coast of the US was traced back to the failure of one small relay that started a cascade failure. A similar failure was caused by the unscheduled shutdown of a power plant. You really need to have a better understanding what a point of failure is.

Frequencies never change. In europe they are at 50Hz fixed and in the USA at 60. If the frequency would change the grid would break down pretty fast.

Again, you need to do more research before posting. Did you even look at the meter I linked? Did you read the explanation?

I don't get your point about Minnesota and solar plants

Minnesota needs electricity. We are trying to use wind and solar power. It is not a great solar or wind place. Where will they get electricity? It will have to come from further away. AC does not travel long distances very well.

The largest synchronous grid is this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continental_Europe [wikipedia.org] far more than 10.000 miles ...

Sure, if you laid every power line from end to end but the distance that electricity travels from it's source to its sink is nowhere near that. Electricity is produced close to where it is used.

With voltages in the million volt range the loss over 5000km is perhaps 8% or so ... you can google for that or do the math your self.

If you are only calculate resistive loss and ignore capacitive and inductive loss.
Take a look at this chart. Notice how capacity goes down as distance gets larger. At least read Wikipedia and educate yourself about the issues of long distance AC transmission. Here's a quote;

As of 1980, the longest cost-effective distance for DC electricity was determined to be 7,000 km (4,300 mi). For AC it was 4,000 km (2,500 mi), though all transmission lines in use today are substantially shorter.

Think about why the lines are shorter and you may understand

1. More switches equals more points of failure. More transmission line equals more points of failure and more complex routing of power. Combined that equals more instability. Take a look at this graph and notice the number of abnormal re-routing and frequency fluctuations that is already growing. It is not going to get better in the future with a more complex system.
2. Sure it works now but what happens when the demand doubles and we have to move power longer distances? Sure solar power is great but if we have to move the power from Texas to New York? AC is not going to cut it. Take a look at this chart notice how the capacity drops as the distances get larger? There is only so much generation capacity near our population centers causing us to have to draw power from further away. AC does not go far enough in many instances.

1. More switches equals more points of failure. More transmission line equals more points of failure and more complex routing of power. Combined that equals more instability. Take a look at this graph and notice the number of abnormal re-routing and frequency fluctuations that is already growing. It is not going to get better in the future with a more complex system.
2. Sure it works now but what happens when the demand doubles and we have to move power longer distances? Sure solar power is great but if we have to move the power from Texas to New York? AC is not going to cut it. Take a look at this chart notice how the capacity drops as the distances get larger? There is only so much generation capacity near our population centers causing us to have to draw power from further away. AC does not go far enough in many instances.