Slashdot Mirror

S2 has about 14 solar masses, but it passes relatively close to the galaxy's central black hole (about 4x the distance from our sun to Neptune). Its orbital period is just 16 years despite having a semi-major axis about 970x that of the Earth (about 32x bigger than Neptune's orbit). The Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics put together an animation of the previous decade of observations (1992-2013). You can see how it whips around the black hole at closest approach.

The nature of Cosmic Rays which are everywhere in the vacuum of space, are mostly converted to particle showers at ground level. The comparison of high altitude radiation to the radiation emitted from a reactor is valid only to the extent that a Gray is a measure of radiation absorbed by flesh. Counts (scintillation counter) don't tell us much about the energy of the individual particles or how they transfer energy to flesh.

The only alternative to the US is Venezuela.

Do tell, what President Sanders would've done differently from El Presidente Chavez. I'm listening...

Do tell, what President Trump will do differently from Reichskanzler Hitler. I'm listening... See how stupid that sounded when you read it? That's how stupid your comment sounded to the rest of us.

Be sure not to compare US health to Europe

Do you have statistics for longevity — and differences in longevity — among Europeans? I'm listening...

It's a about ten years in the UK:
http://www.acegeography.com/re...
Seems to be rather similar in Germany:
https://www.mpg.de/9324818/reg...

I'll let you google the rest... it's not particularly complicated just search on the topic: regional variations in life expectancy <name of country>

"Primes are not random. Primes are determined."
Yes and no: from a revised version of Don Zagier's inaugural lecture at Bonn University on 5.May.1975 on "The First 50 Million Prime Numbers"
"... There are two facts about the distribution of prime numbers of which I hope to convince you so overwhelmingly that they will be permanently engraved in your hearts. The first is that, despite their simple definition and role as the building blocks of the natural numbers, the prime numbers belong to the most arbitrary and ornery objects studied by mathematicians: they grow like weeds among the natural numbers, seeming to obey no other law than that of chance, and nobody can predict where the next one will sprout. The second fact is even more astonishing, for it states just the opposite: that the prime numbers exhibit stunning regularity, that there are laws governing their behavior, and that they obey these laws with almost military precision. ..."
Note that both of Zagier's facts of the distribution of primes are in a way orthogonal to the primes being determined not random. It's surprising that probability can profitably be used on determined numbers, but it can. Search for Mark Kac and Paul Erdos and probabilistic number theory, or read this article on the Erdos-Kac Theorem.

There seem to be a gigantic particle accelerator somewhere close to the center of the Milky Way:

http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/pressreleases/2016/6
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7592/full/nature16976.html

I'll wager that the list of AOGCM models described here will accurately predict the temperature incline within their error bars, out to 2030.

Measure date: 23 January 2030

Terms: 10:1 (i.e. you'll give me 10:1 odds), $50 (US) down.

Caveats: Some agreed variation on the predicted concentration of CO2 over the testing period will render the wager null, since this a human variation, not a model one.

Getting energy out of a fusion reactor of similar design to this is simple (at least, in principle). Take a look at their FAQ, especially item 6.

So what are the conceptual ideas for taking the energy out from a fusion reactor?

They have a FAQ which includes an answer to your question.

So what are the conceptual ideas for taking the energy out from a fusion reactor?

They have a FAQ which includes an answer to your question.

Another vacuum tube technology with current applications and substantial advantages over semiconductor approaches to the same problems is the Thermionic Converter. This is a vacuum-tube technology heat engine that turns temperature differences into electric power - by boiling electrons off a hot electrode and collecting them, at a somewhat more negative voltage (like 0.5 to 1 volt), at a cooler electrode.

Semiconductor approaches such as the Peltier Cell tend to be limited in operating temperature due to the materials involved, and lose a major fraction of the available power to non-power-producing heat conduction from the hot to the cold side of the device. Thermionic converters, by contrast are vacuum devices, and inherently insulating (with the heat conducted almost entirely by the working electrons, where it is doing the generation, or parasitic infrared radiation, which can be reflected rater than absorbed at the cold side.) They work very well at temperatures of a couple thousand degrees, a good match to combustion, point-focused solar, and nuclear thermal sources.

Thermionic converters have been the subject to recent improvements, such as graphine electrodes. The power density limitation of space charge has been solved, by using a "control grid" to encourage to charge to move along from the emitter to the collector and magnetic fields to guide it (so it doesn't discharge the control grid and waste the power used to charge it).

Current thermionic technology can convert better than 30% of the available thermal energy to electrical power and achieves power densities in the ballpark of a kilowatt per 100 square cm (i.e. a disk about 4 1/2 inches in diameter). That's a reasonably respectable carnot engine. This makes it very useful for things like topping cycles in steam plants: You run it with the flame against the hot side so it is at the combustion temperature, and the "cold" side at the temperature of the superheated steam for your steam cycle. Rather than wasting the energy of that temperature drop (as you would with a pure steam cycle) you collect about a third of it as electricity.

It also beats the efficiency of currently available solar cell technology (and the 33.4% Shockleyâ"Queisser theoretical limit for single-junction cells), if you don't mind mounting it on a sun-tracker. Not only that, but you can capture the "waste heat" at a useful temperature without substantial impairment to the electrical generation or heat collection, and thus use the same surface area for both generation and solar heating. (Doing this with semiconductor solar cells doesn't work well, because they become far less efficient when running a couple tens of degrees above room temparature.)

There is an interesting discussion of Heisenberg's critical mass calculations here: https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.d...

Here is what they do:
1) Set up some null hypothesis of zero correlation between jogging and health, diet and health, etc (probably at least five per study).
2) Measure things until one of the outcomes reaches "statistical significance".
3) Misinterpret this statistical significance to be the probability their theory is true: jogging really does affect health.

Where is the science in that? Do not blame science.

And do not state the size of the effect.

Here is a nice article about exactly this, titled Mindless statistics

Chimpanzees are genetically closer to us that they are to the other great apes; gorillas and orangutans (not sure about bonobos). They're capable of experiencing degrees of emotional suffering and trauma that a comparable to humans. Therefore, to inflict such suffering on chimpanzees isn't that far removed from doing it to other humans. I'm not saying that chimpanzees should have equal rights to humans but, for our own sakes, we should require appropriately humane treatment of them. If you want to see just how close to us they are and also how they're different, check out the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the work of Michael Tomasello et al. http://www.eva.mpg.de/psycho/

Yes it was: http://www.mpe.mpg.de/6193469/...

At low metalicity there is a range of stellar mass where the star is completely disrupted. Look at slide 36 here: http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de...

Then read the German original here.

The question isn't whether "CO2 causes warming" but whether a change from 290 to 330 ppm in the troposphere can be the cause of a measurable change in the heat content of troposphere.

Well, we blew past 330 ppm in the 1960's and are now at 400 ppm. That causes a direct forcing (not including feedbacks) of 5.35*ln(400/280)W/m^2 or about 1.9 W/m^2. For comparison, the output from the sun fluctuates by as much as 1 W/m^2 every 11 years. CO2 is now causing a forcing that is double the increase in solar forcing - but the CO2 forcing is constant while the solar forcing only peaks once every 11 years.

I'm curious whether your undergraduate text explains why increased CO2 concentration in the stratosphere causes the stratosphere to loose heat.

Here is what the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry says: "Greenhouse gases (CO2, O3, CFC) absorb infra-red radiation from the surface of the Earth and trap the heat in the troposphere. If this absorption is really strong, the greenhouse gas blocks most of the outgoing infra-red radiation close to the Earth's surface. This means that only a small amount of outgoing infra-red radiation reaches carbon dioxide in the upper troposphere and the lower stratosphere. On the other hand, carbon dioxide emits heat radiation, which is lost from the stratosphere into space. In the stratosphere, this emission of heat becomes larger than the energy received from below by absorption and, as a result, there is a net energy loss from the stratosphere and a resulting cooling." - http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/e...

Quantum physics seems to be the ultimate proof that the universe is a simulation.

World record for simulation of classical physics: 10 billion particles
World record for simulation of quantum physics: 42 particles

If I had to run a simulation of an entire universe, I'd rather not make it quantum.

The flat (Mercator-projected) map of Luhman 16B is available here for download. Feel free to import it into whatever program or game you prefer!

The universe isn't a structure. By "structure" they mean "gravitationally-bound object". The universe is a conglomeration of objects that are not gravitationally-bound. Phrased another way, a "structure" is governed by a metric which is distinctly non-trivial but which you'd hope would be approximated by a Schwarzschild, whereas the universe as a whole is governed by a Robertson-Walker metric which is as trivial as one can get. Put it another way, a "structure" is virialised, while the universe very much is not.

(On a different note, this is why people asking why Earth isn't pulling itself apart as space expands have missed the point. Space itself is not expanding, even in the normal cosmological model. The space *between virialised structures* is, but in a manner of thinking, a "structure" is disconnected from the universal expansion and is now interacting with itself.)

Anyway, it sounds like quibbling with semantics, but the way they're using the word "structure" is a particular bit of cosmological jargon, by which definition the universe is definitely not a structure. Put it another way, if you look at the universe as a whole it becomes featureless - there are no structures. (In the model; whether this is true in reality is open to question, hence this kind of study.) If you look on a smaller scale, you see the emergence of structure. What looked smooth is now pretty lumpy and stringy. Each of those lumps and strings is what they're meaning as "structure".

http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/data_vis/ is a pretty good website for seeing this kind of difference.

Saarland University developed a reconfigurable camera add-on, the kaleidocam which can do 3D as well as many other things. It allows you to take a single picture that is split by the device into multiple images that appear on the sensor as an array of smaller images. Possible functions include:

• Multi-spectral imaging (including simulation of different white points and source lighting)
• Light field imaging (3D, focal length change, depth of field change)
• Polarised imaging (e.g. glass stress, pictures of smoke in natural light)

Of course, this requires a single shot using a fancy lens, whereas the Harvard technique needs two frames but "no unusual hardware or fancy lenses".

Dr. Gillessen's web page has additional information here - https://wiki.mpe.mpg.de/gascloud/FrontPage and the ESO website has an article as well thatexplains what is happening - http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1332/
JJW

I first heard about it at least 5 years ago, probably on RealClimate. It's not something I see a lot about but I've mentioned it a few times here on /. before.

I did a little searching and found this paper: "Stable isotope ratio mass spectrometry in global
climate change research" (Ghosh 2003)

It's kind of a review of the state of the art at the time and how it applies to climate research.

I hadn't heard of this Great Depression anomaly before. Of course Keeling didn't start keeping accurate records of CO2 until 1958, before that there were spotty measurements of CO2 back into the 1800's. I'm not sure mass spectrometry was well enough developed until maybe the 1980's to measure the isotope levels. So I wonder how they would have really accurate measurements of CO2 and the isotopic ratio from back in the 1930's. Maybe the had a good selection of preserved samples of the atmosphere to work with. Also, humans weren't using 1/10th of the fossil fuels back then that we use today. The CO2 level didn't even reach 320 ppm until around 1960 (from 280 ppm in 1830, it's nearing 400 ppm now) so the slope of the curve was much shallower. Also there may be some factors like the Dust Bowl reducing the uptake of CO2 by plants changes in the ocean/atmosphere flux of CO2 that compensated for the human reduction.

BTW, I discovered we really should be writing the isotopes as 12C & 13C or more properly with the 12 & 13 superscripted before the C. It looks like /. doesn't allow the "sup" tag. 12C.

It doesn't? I'm pretty sure that CO2 is distributed quite evenly around the globe

Incorrect. From http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/25h.html:

Therefore carbon dioxide increases first in the northern hemisphere and after that slowly finds its way to the south. The transport over the equator takes time, since mixing within one hemisphere is faster than mixing between the hemispheres. But we observe something else: The annual pattern of CO2 varies. In winter trees and other plants stop growing. They take up less CO2. At the same time humans begin to heat their houses and emit more CO2. Consequently we have the highest concentrations at the end of the heating period in May and about 5 ppm less CO2 after the end of the growing period in October. The two graphs clearly show both patterns.

Regardless, it's a red herring: the CO2 traps heat, but isn't generating the heat. Parts of the globe receive more solar radiation than others, and it hits the atmosphere at different angles. The atmosphere has different thicknesses at different latitudes. If heating were distributed evenly, we would not have a hot equatorial region and cold poles. CO2 doesn't change this; even if it were evenly distributed, areas that are hot because they get more solar radiation would be expected to retain heat more than colder areas which receive less.

That said, I'm not an atmospheric scientist. I'm sure someone with such a background could explain things in a more accurate way than I can.

Yaz

Is anyone actually recording the carbon isotope ratios in fossil fuels?

Yes.

From:

http://bgc.mpg.de/service/iso_gas_lab/publications/PG_WB_IJMS.pdf

In contrast, current annual fossil fuel burning amounts to about 6 Gt of carbon. About half of this amount is observed as an increase of the atmospheric CO2 concentration. The other half is sequestered by other compartments. Currently, both the oceans and the terrestrial system show a net uptake of carbon [6]. The oxygen and carbon isotopic compositions of individual components, in particular air-CO2 provide a potentially powerful tool towards quantifying the contribution of different components to ecosystem exchange. When this is used in conjunction with concentration or ïux measurements, further insight can be gained into the sources and sinks of CO2 in the ecosystem [7,8].

Plant photosynthesis discriminates against 13 C. In other words, plant carbon tends to have less 13 C than the CO2 from which it is formed (Fig. 1). This discrimination provides a tool for interpreting changes in 13C of atmospheric CO2

Also:

How do we know where the carbon comes form?

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-co2-increases-are-due-to-human-activities/

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/

My point is that you should read more scientific papers :) There are many scientists who do claim that the sun's output has had an effect on the recent warming.

http://www.mpg.de/495993/pressRelease20041028

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/solarcycle-primer.html

Where to start. First, go out at night - all those little dots in the sky ? They're called stars, and are all outside our solar system. (This has been known, depending on your point of view, for at least 400 years, and probably for 2 or more millennia.)

Second, it is pretty common for meteorites contain little inclusions of interstellar matter - organic matter, silica, and even (really tiny) diamonds. And, while we are at it, a certain fraction of the micro-meteors observed with radar (to get their orbits) turn out to be interstellar as well. (The fraction of interstellar micro-meteors suggests that there may be a few kg-sized interstellar meteorites waiting to be picked up out of the thousands in the Antarctic meteorite fields, which would be something.)

So, this is nice research, but it is only the first in its area, and it was silly of them to say "for the very first time."

There are suns orbiting this black hole. There's a diagram of them in the second link. Here's a direct link to the image: link

Here is another site we can try to destroy with the power of the force.

http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/mpa/institute/news_archives/news1112_fara/news1112_fara-en-print.html

It certainly encourages innovation, IMHO here (and no, I am not German but I do live and invent here).

I agree that this probably won't create a significant amount of ozone. However, regarding ozone not being a problem in the lower atmosphere, that's not what I've read. I've read the ozone can be found in harmful levels anywhere that smog is a problem (e.g California, New England, DC):

http://www.epa.gov/region1/airquality/
http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/23c.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/report-finds-that-washington-baltimore-among-smoggiest-cities-in-the-country/2011/09/21/gIQAYqv8kK_story.html

If you Google it, you can probably find a bunch more.

According to "everyone", climate science is 100% settled and there is no questioning it

You fabricate a complete bullshit misrepresentation in order to make skepticism look reasonable.

Obviously an entire scientific field isn't 100% settled, duh. Just go to the global warming Wikipedia page, climate models don't agree whether the low emission world results in a 1.5 to 1.9 C warming in the 21st century., or whether the high emission scenario results in a 3.4 to 6.1 C of warming. The intense debates about climate sensitivity, the role of polar ice sheets, heat storage of the oceans, etc. are very real, but pretty boring. They tend to only get reported in the mainstream press when denialist assholes twist them. For example, the german researchers saying the the sun has been burning more brightly and its influence on climate has been undervalued got mangled in an Investor's Business Daily editorial into the utter lie that "researchers at the Max Planck Institute report [this accounts]for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth’s temperature over the last 100 years."

What's missing from the scientific process is a scenario, model, theory, ANYTHING that doesn't predict warming. When scientific popularisers say "the debate is over", that is probably what they are referring to. Or maybe they're saying the greenhouse effect is based on basic physics that's not sensibly open to question, so increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases WILL lead to warming. Or maybe they're saying the only credible explanation for the observed warming in recent decades is the increase in anthropogenic greehouse gases. Just because people make vague low-content statement doesn't mean they're untrue.

There are some very specific statements in support of the 100% solid set in stone idea. From the 2010 report of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences and Engineering (the second one on climate change ordered by Republican bozos in Congress to delay action), Advancing the Science of Climate Change:

Some scientific conclusions or theories have been so thoroughly examined and tested, and supported by so many independent observations and results, that their likelihood of subsequently being found to be wrong is vanishingly small. Such conclusions and theories are then regarded as settled facts. This is the case for the conclusions that the Earth system is warming and that much of this warming is very likely due to human activities.

One thing I found misleading about the article is that it refers to the core as having 'the size of Jupiter' and 'the mass of Jupiter.'

Here's the correct Science Journal link and here is a better press release from the Max Planck Institute that clarifies:

For the newly discovered pulsar, known as PSR J1719-1438, the astronomers noticed that the arrival times of the pulses were systematically modulated and concluded that this is due to the gravitational pull of a small orbiting companion, a planet. These modulations can tell astronomers several more things about the companion. First, it orbits the pulsar in just two hours and ten minutes, and the distance between the two objects is 600,000 km - a little bit less than the radius of our Sun. Second, the companion is so close to the pulsar that if its diameter was any larger than 60,000 km (less than half the diameter of Jupiter) it would be ripped apart by the gravity of the pulsar.

So it appears that the article saying "size equivalent to Jupiter" (volume?) is wrong if the Max Planck Institute is correct in saying that its diameter has to be less than half the diameter of Jupiter.

here you go fuck head:

Increases in Longwave forcing inferred from Outward longwave
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html
Trends in Forcings
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/123222295/PDFSTART
Downward Longwave Radiation
http://landshape.org/enm/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/philipona2004-radiation.pdf
Downward Longwave Radiation
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD011800.shtml
29000 data sets, press release:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20080514/
29000 data sets
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2008/Rosenzweig_etal_1.html
Global Energy Imbalance:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2005/Hansen_etal_1.html
Isotopes:
http://www.bgc-jena.mpg.de/service/iso_gas_lab/publications/PG_WB_IJMS.pdf

Here they are, but I doubt you will try to understand them:

First you need to understand this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longwave_radiation

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/123222295/PDFSTART
http://landshape.org/enm/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/philipona2004-radiation.pdf
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD011800.shtml
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20080514/
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2008/Rosenzweig_etal_1.html
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2005/Hansen_etal_1.html
http://www.bgc-jena.mpg.de/service/iso_gas_lab/publications/PG_WB_IJMS.pdf

"The claim is that we need to live like hippies and give all our money to Al Gore and friends or THE ENTIRE EARTH WILL BE RUINED FOREVER."
no one claims that. Only people claiming that people claim that.

" But global warming isn't a scientific issue - it's a political issue, "
No, it's a scientific issue, what to do about it is a political issue.

" so you've picked your side (democrat) "
hahaha, now your boiling it down to the side of the Aisle?
democrats like:
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Jon Huntsman
  Olympia Snowe
Susan Collins
  Chris Smith
  Tim Pawlenty
Bob Inglis

oh, wait those are all republicans, my mistake.

In order to support their religious base, The POLITICAL stance of the republicans has been 'no global warming' however if yo look at many of them and there votes, you can see a different picture.
But hey, I actually pay attention to these details, and like researching what different representatives vote for,.
What I don't understand is people like you, who are provably wrong, that keep on spouting your lies. Why?

What, this?

http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentation/documentation/pressReleases/2010/pressRelease20100615/index.html

God says...
contentions States Creator soul brows pricked marked lest
evincing thoroughly hears unlooked region breakers calmly
five sufficient three discovered sharpsighted siege secrecies
stands Let reclaim forgetting falsely conceal mountains
witness

No one is doubting Global Warming.

That's simply not true. There's a large contingency of folks who are outright denying even the temp rises. They're typically the mindless followers of Beck & Limbaugh.

By "solar weather theory" are you referring to the false arguments that AGW is caused by cosmic rays and/or temps are increasing on other planets? If so, no problem. Here's 34 different scientific papers that refute each aspect of them. :)

So, you ready to change your business model now?

No one is doubting Global Warming.

That's simply not true. There's a large contingency of folks who are outright denying even the temp rises. They're typically the mindless followers of Beck & Limbaugh.

By "solar weather theory" are you referring to the false arguments that AGW is caused by cosmic rays and/or temps are increasing on other planets? If so, no problem. Here's 34 different scientific papers that refute each aspect of them. :)

So, you ready to change your business model now?

No one is doubting Global Warming.

That's simply not true. There's a large contingency of folks who are outright denying even the temp rises. They're typically the mindless followers of Beck & Limbaugh.

By "solar weather theory" are you referring to the false arguments that AGW is caused by cosmic rays and/or temps are increasing on other planets? If so, no problem. Here's 34 different scientific papers that refute each aspect of them. :)

So, you ready to change your business model now?

No one is doubting Global Warming.

That's simply not true. There's a large contingency of folks who are outright denying even the temp rises. They're typically the mindless followers of Beck & Limbaugh.

By "solar weather theory" are you referring to the false arguments that AGW is caused by cosmic rays and/or temps are increasing on other planets? If so, no problem. Here's 34 different scientific papers that refute each aspect of them. :)

So, you ready to change your business model now?

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from noise. I remembered hearing this in school so I searched and found this paper.

As I understand SETI has always been searching for narrowband signals in the past. But our technology is moving toward spread spectrum signals for more efficient use of bandwidth, making our transmissions appear more like noise to anyone who doesn't know the encoding scheme. Aliens could be doing/have done the same. So good luck, scientists!

http://www.ipp.mpg.de/ippcms/eng/presse/pi/05_06_pi.html

As science geekettes go, Dr. Hannelore Hämmerle is teh hawt!!!

Yes you are just like a child with their fingers in their ears and humming loudly.

Solar irradiance is stable and does not change on a large scale. There is a serious discrepancy between temperature increases and the lack of solar irradiance increases. So that lamp has little to do with it, because it's doing very little.

Please refer to actual solar irradiance readings from the Max Planck institute for further reading. Further more saying that your statement is a "fact" does not make it so, this is called a base assertion fallacy because it has no supporting evidence.

The source code for quite a few models is publicly available. Here are three: one, two, three. The last one even does development in a public repository (click "browse source" in the menu bar) and features quite detailed documentation.

I have located an even more recent paper, written by a scientist working for NOAA (a reputable scientific body), using NASA's own data, that shows that the lower stratosphere is not in fact cooling as the greenhouse models call for. Rather, it is warming. Which in turn means the greenhouse warming models are fundamentally flawed...

Interesting paper. Of course, it doesn't say (or even imply) that "greenhouse warming models are fundamentally flawed." The stratosphere cools as CO2 increases because the "emitting layer" moves higher into the troposphere, so it emits less long wave radiation because temperature decreases with altitude in the troposphere. Because that radiation normally warms the stratosphere, the stratosphere cools. But other factors can warm the stratosphere, like anthropogenic methane and water vapor. Also, increased ozone warms the stratosphere, which is why the paper you cited actually suggests that "the reversing trend may relate to a possible recovery of stratospheric ozone concentration."

In reality, global circulation models (GCMs) are validated in a more robust fashion than examining a single variable in a single paper. After running an initial condition ensemble to average away the weather, and a multi-model ensemble to average away non-systematic errors, GCM output is compared to paleoclimate reconstructions and instrumental records (though the mean climate can't be independently verified because of model "tuning"). The GCM response to forcing events such as volcanic eruptions can be compared to reality. The CO2 sensitivity implied by the GCM can be compared to independent estimates from the last deglaciation. Chapter 8 here is a good source for background information concerning climate models and their evaluation.

I could go on about this for hours, pointing out reams of data and studies that do not support the idea of man-caused global warming... but I have already made my point: the plain FACT is, nowhere near "all" our evidence points to man-caused global warming. There is a great deal of counter-evidence, and much of the evidence on the "pro" side is now under suspicion because of some questionable practices used.

Maybe you understand the physics behind these arguments better than I do, but the overwhelming majority of the evidence I've seen says that abrupt climate change is happening because of anthropogenic greenhouse gases like CO2. Considering that this conclusion has been subjected to extensive independent verification, I also don't see any reason to be concerned about any questionable practices that have been floating around the tabloids. The few stories that weren't complete nonsense simply showed that scientists are human-- that countering the never-ending deluge of misinformation from nonscientists is stressful enough that they need to vent to each other privately via email.

I can sympathize. If every one of these climate skeptics put as much energy into getting a graduate physics education as they do into reading crackpot blogs and hurling insults at me online, maybe I'd have more time to work on my actual research...

I'm going to ignore the rabid conspiracy theories you're presenting. As a scientist who sees a lot of evidence that our CO2 emissions are changing the climate, you'd probably just dismiss me as lying scum with a political agenda anyway.

But just in case someone else reads this, greenhouse warming models predict cooling and contraction of the stratosphere. The cooling is predicted to be strongest between altitudes of 40 and 50km.

The quick explanation is that greenhouse warming shifts the effective radiating layer of the planet to a lower altitude. As a result, the surface warms but the stratosphere cools. In fact, I consider this good evidence for the link between CO2 and increasing global temperatures. No other single cause warms the Earth from the surface like a greenhouse gas. (For example, an increase in solar illumination wouldn't have this effect.)

So if it warms, it's global warming. If it doesn't warm, it's well trained global warming.

Did I get that right?

I'm going to ignore the rabid conspiracy theories you're presenting. As a scientist who sees a lot of evidence that our CO2 emissions are changing the climate, you'd probably just dismiss me as lying scum with a political agenda anyway.

But just in case someone else reads this, greenhouse warming models predict cooling and contraction of the stratosphere. The cooling is predicted to be strongest between altitudes of 40 and 50km.

The quick explanation is that greenhouse warming shifts the effective radiating layer of the planet to a lower altitude. As a result, the surface warms but the stratosphere cools. In fact, I consider this good evidence for the link between CO2 and increasing global temperatures. No other single cause warms the Earth from the surface like a greenhouse gas. (For example, an increase in solar illumination wouldn't have this effect.)

Please read this paper if you have enough education to actually follow it.

As Bazilevskaya pointed out in papers published in 1991 and 2000, cosmic ray influx appears to have a relation to weather and cosmic ray influx is partly determined by the strength of the van Allen belt.

Please, don't call ignorant someone who points out a fact just because you never saw it on TV

There seems to be a huge gap between these kind of academic projects and the commercial available programs.

Indeed. Check out the work of Volker Blanz . He was producing amazing 3D models of celebrities from photographs a decade ago. Yet you can't get anything remotely that good today (I've used Facegen etc).