"But it is flawed logic.... If the output from the sun decreases (as has been measured), then something must change about the earth's climate - if the sun is responsible for the current warming"
Yes, it is flawed logic... on YOUR part.
REPEAT... for the 4th or 5th time:
If you supply an input that a system can cope with, such as a pot of water on the stove with the burner turned to Low, then the system will maintain that temperature, and follow the temperature of the burner as it is turned up or down within a certain range. (With a lag or delay: it takes time to absorb or bleed off that heat.)
If, however, you turn the burner up past the point at which the system can shed heat, then that input will cause the system (whether pot of water or the Earth) to continue to heat up, regardless of whether the control is set to High or Medium High, or somewhere in between. The RATE at which it increases might vary (again with delay), but WHETHER it continues to get hotter is not in question.
The RATE at which it warms might change, but changes in the input (as long as they are above that level) will NOT affect WHETHER it warms or not. It is going to get warmer. If you start with your control on High, and turn it down to Medium High, the water is still going to get warmer. This is very elementary physics. No matter where you turn the knob -- as long as it remains above that threshold -- the water will continue to get warmer.
And it is very difficult to determine just what your rate of warming will be by measuring only the warming itself, when other factors are also changing, like the amount of thermal insulation wrapped around the pot (which might be very roughly analogized to El Nino or La Nina events).
So no, your argument about thermodynamics is simply incorrect. There is a point above which STEADY -- or even decreasing -- input to an isolated system will result in continued rise of temperature. And this is fully in keeping with all the laws of thermodynamics.
I have explained this many times now, in different ways, and there are plenty of other sources that might explain it to you better than I, if you would bother to look them up. Your failure to understand this simple principle of PHYSICS is not a fault on my part.
If the output from the sun decreases (as has been measured), then something must change about the earth's climate - if the sun is responsible for the current warming. Either the rate of warming must decrease (possibly stay positive or maybe go negative) or the mass or specific heat must change.
No. As I have just explained AGAIN, this is a generalization that does not hold for all circumstances. It is ONLY true when the system in question has the ability to shed heat at approximately the same rate as the input. You are arguing derivative when the value in question is actually an integral. Shame. You should know better.
"Thanks for the link to biocab.org. An, umm, interesting site with, umm, fascinating ideas:)."
NOW who is arguing about data? I repeat: I have not been disputing the data at all, including your own sources. I have only been disputing the interpretation of that data. You are attempting to shoot the messenger: the graphs on that page use data from independent sources; I have not claimed that biocab's conclusions about it are valid.
Bert64 is correct and that was my point. Copyright legislation is not a "contract" or "license" in any sense of either term. Some people today do seem to get them confused, but their confusion does not reality make.
"However, the content of the book (subject to copyright) is *NOT* owned by you, only licensed to you. "
No, this is a fine point but that is still not correct. You DO own the content, as well. You are just restricted by law from doing certain things with it.
Buying a book is not a "contract" between you and the author, and copyright law does not constitute a "license". You are simply enjoined from engaging in infringing activity.
"No. This is wrong and it makes no physical sense... There is absolutely no way for this to occur without a similarly increasing forcing behind it. "
It is not wrong, and it follows very well-understood -- elementary, really -- physics. It actually makes perfect sense. Apologies, but I have explained this concept 2 different ways to you in clear English. I don't know how else to explain it so that it makes sense to you. But your failure to understand my examples does not equate to a failure of understanding on my part.
"There are other problems with your logic. For example, the changes in insolation (energy from the sun) are measured (or known by proxy prior to measurements)."
Really? What sources are you looking at? Certainly not this one.
Regardless, this quote from your article: "This is a very straightforward and easy to understand formula - the larger the change in solar irradiance, the larger the energy imbalance it causes, and thus the larger the radiative forcing." is precisely the idea that is refuted by the stove example. The idea that input must change in order to cause an energy imbalance is ludicrous, from the standpoint of physics. I repeat: if that were so, your stove burner turned onto "high" might never boil your water; in order to do that (according to the logic just quoted from that article), you would have to constantly turn the knob up. And obviously that is not true.
"Despite your flawed logic, it really is well known that the sun isn't causing the current warming."
I have 3 things to say about that: First, the logic is not flawed, in fact it is extremely elementary. But: second, here you are arguing with me about whether the sun is the cause of warming, and I stated earlier here at least 3 times that that isn't what I was saying! Do you have reading comprehension issues? I was talking about someone else's logic, not about what actual causes are. And I repeated it just for your benefit. But apparently it didn't sink into your skull anyway.
I could very easily argue with you about that if you like, but it's off-topic. I wasn't discussing actual causes, only why someone else's argument was invalid.
The third thing I have to say about that statement is: bullshit. It isn't "well known" at all. In fact it is very much still a hot topic of debate (no pun intended). See for example Latour's No, Virginia rebuttal to Spencer's attempt to explain physics. The fact is that so far, some "climate scientists" have made some real blunders when it comes to the actual physics of their warming models.
Now, I will state her for the fourth time that I am not claiming that the sun is the cause of the warming. But I do claim that contrary to your assertion, it is not "settled science" or something on which everyone agrees.
"... but in the case of greenhouse gases, we have well known physics that indicate causation. "
Except that you don't. How many of the CO2 models rely on the concept of "back radiation" to explain the radiative forcings? There's a bit of a problem with that: "back radiation" is physically impossible. Again see that link to the article by Latour (a physicist) who shows very clearly exactly why that is so.
And that is just ONE of the problems with the "climate science".
""Skeptics" have been unable to show any other process that: (1) Can account for the current warming, and (2) Can prevent the increased CO2 levels from acting in ways they are known to act."
Wow. What a bundle of unwarranted assumptions. (1) "climate scientists" have not been able to account for the warming, either, in ways that actually obey the laws o
"lol ok fine, no doubt you are right, and Ruby is much more popular than any metric we can think of indicates."
That isn't what I was saying at all. What I was saying is that it all depends on what you mean by "popular".
"Legacy languages" (like Perl, and even Java to some extent) remain popular for a long time for several reasons, among those reasons the sheer size of the established code base. I mean, sheesh... there is still a demand, although a small one, for COBOL programmers, and that was the first "high-level language" ever invented!
I'm not saying that Ruby is more popular than the charts indicate. What I was claiming were basically 2 different things entirely: (1) there is a reason for the popularity of some of the other languages that has nothing to do with how popular they are with NEW programmers (which means they are actually in slow decline), and (2) scripting languages like Ruby will become more popular if and when compilers for them reach a certain level of maturity.
"Answer this then: Do you think the water will get hotter faster with the burner turned up, or turned down a bit. Because that's what's happened to the earth. The sun is putting out constant energy (actually slightly decreasing - see http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm [skepticalscience.com] ) and yet the earth is getting hotter faster than before. This is not physically possible if the sun is causing the warming."
I have already explained this. Apparently you didn't get my analogy. Let me explain again, using a graph from your own source. See figure 1.
Notice how, according to the graph, the solar output has increased pretty much steadily since just after 1880 (sure, there are cycles, but the trend has been upward). Now, let's just suppose -- hypothetically -- that the level of solar activity right around 1935 marks the "tipping point", at which the input exceeds the rate at which the earth can cool. In that case, the temperature will continue to increase as long as the input remains above that level. It doesn't matter whether the input goes down; the earth will continue to get warmer as long as the input is above that fixed level.
So even though solar activity has decreased recently, the input is still above the level at which warming will continue to increase. Just like the stove example I gave.
Now don't misunderstand me: I am NOT saying that is the cause of the warming. I make no such claim. This is just a hypothetical example.
What I am saying is that the fact that temperatures have deviated from the sun cycles is not necessarily evidence of man-caused warming. As I have showed, as a logical argument it has a huge hole in it. There CAN BE other explanations.
"You've indicated by your response that you don't really have any knowledge of climate science or, for that matter, science in general."
Haha. Did you even look at the link I supplied? On the contrary, I know a great deal about this subject; I have been studying it for years. And I have a very good science education. On the contrary: YOU showed by YOUR response that you did not understand my stove analogy.
"If you don't mind my asking, how do you come up with the confidence to dispute actual measured data when you have so little knowledge?"
Because you have it wrong: I was not disputing any data at all. In fact I just made the same analogy using data that YOU linked to. I was disputing only some people's interpretation of the cause behind the data, not the data itself. Those are two very different things. How do you have the confidence to question my explanation (which in fact is not my own idea at all: see the link I gave above), when you didn't understand what I was saying?
"When I truly don't understand something (as is the case with you and climate science), I generally back off and ask questions until I do understand."
But you didn't, did you? You misinterpreted my statements, put your own spin on them, then claimed that as a result, I must be ignorant. You are asking NOW, but only after you already said I must be full of sh*t. That doesn't sound like unbiased questioning to me.
"But you don't seem to feel that's necessary. Why is that?"
Because the statements I make here on the subject are actually well-researched, and I can back them up. Once again, see the link I supplied above, which you obviously did not bother to look at before you chose to basically call me a fool.
But just so I am not misunderstood, let me repeat for a third time: I am not saying something like the stove analogy is the cause of the warming. I am saying that the opposite argument (that the sun could not be the cause, simply because the temperature has not recently followed the solar decrease), is based on flawed logic. Once again: the fact that you may not be turning up the stove control all the time does not mean you can't make the water warmer.
That's a bit off-topic, though. We were discussing whether a serviceable electrical ground can be made using the water pipes. For many years, that all by itself met the requirements of construction code. Not for a long time now, in most places... but it does work.
As for lightning strikes: remember that OP was talking about a house that had no ground at all. Just about any ground is still going to be better than none.
Lightning can do some strange things, though. Some years ago, 2 workers were putting up a metal shed in my sister's back yard, which has a concrete retaining wall. A storm started up. Lightning hit a tree near the wall, went down to the ground, then shot out the side of the retaining wall, across about a 12-foot air gap, and zapped the 2 workers, who had to be run to the hospital. One was seriously injured.
You can have more than one ground, but they must be bonded together at the service panel so no potential develops between them.
In fact, one state where I lived a few years ago required at least 2 six-foot ground spikes to meet code, and required the pipes to be grounded as well if the building was plumbed.
"Because software is "Intellectual property", so you don't own the software once you bought a copy: you are only allowed to use it. (yes, I know, copyright infringement is not theft for this very same reason...)."
Wrong on both counts.
A book is intellectual property, too, but if you buy it you own it. The idea that you are just using it (or "licensing" it) is pretty much unique to the software industry, and has between little and nothing to do with the fact that it is "intellectual property".
I should qualify my comment about your last bit, though. While the fact that it isn't theft is related to the intellectual property concept, I suppose, but only indirectly. The more direct reason they are distinct in law is because when you steal something from somebody, you deprive them of the thing stolen. They no longer have use of that thing. Not so with software, music, books or patents. Therefore it cannot be "theft".
"Sure, except to use the software you agreed to the EULA where Adobe disclaimed themselves against any such defects. Good luck with that."
They might in fact have good luck with that. The fact that something in the EULA doesn't make it law. Or even valid.
For example, some states have laws saying that if you sell a product intended for a particular purpose, there is an implied warranty that the product is fit for that purpose... no matter what kind of disclaimer the seller puts on it.
Don't mistake EULAs and Limited Warranties for law. Corporate lawyers don't necessarily put valid stuff in there. On the contrary: what they include are things they'd like you to believe, and that they HOPE they can convince a judge of, if it ever goes to court. And in some cases they even include stuff that they KNOW won't stand up in court.
"Either that or you think the Earth is going to keep getting hotter until it reaches the temperature of the sun, which is ludicrously stupid."
I never stated or implied any such thing.
The point here is that the sun is just coming out of a period in which more than one of its major cycles coincided, which has been a larger-than-normal input. When you combine that with the incidences of El Nino events, it is not so surprising that we have continued to warm. Here is an example.
However, I was not here to try to prove that this is the explanation. Rather, what I was pointing out is that the counterargument (it must be human because it hasn't followed recent solar variation) is based on flawed logic.
"There's solar, but that's been pretty constant (perhaps slightly decreasing) for decades now, so it's not really doing too much."
Hahaha.This is one of my most favorite bogus arguments, because it's so easy to show how bogus it really is.
Turn a surface burner on your stove to medium-high. Then put a pan half-full of water on it. LEAVE IT for a while. Guess what? The water continues to get hotter, even though you haven't turned the heat up. If you let it get near boiling, then turn it down just a minor notch or two (as the sun has turned down, just a bit), guess what? The water continues to get hotter.
The argument that the temperature variation has deviated from solar activity for a while, is exactly the same. If the input was enough to warm the earth significantly, it can CONTINUE to warm the earth, even if the input is reduced somewhat.
The idea that the temperature must follow the sun no matter what the input happens to be is just bizarre. Just as with a stove: if you turn it to just warm, then the water will stay warm, and will follow the burner temperature up and down. But once you get to the tipping point of putting more heat into the system than can be bled off, the temperature will continue to rise as long as the input is higher than that point... even if the input is significantly lower than the year before. As long as it remains higher than that point, in other words, you can actually continuously turn the control DOWN, and the water will still continue to get hotter.
"The IPCC and NAS both claim greater than 50% of the variation is human caused, the natural part has a very slight downward trend over the last century, the upward AGW signal dominates the historical trend, it even obscures the significant cooling signal coming from sulphurous smog."
Great. But I'm not arguing with you about that. At least here and now. But it has next to nothing to do with what I was saying. Apples and oranges. THIS is what I was saying:
The fact that any AGW climate signal has been small in relation to the noise (natural variation) is one of the most very fundamental aspects of the science, and therefore of the whole problem. If you do not recognize at least that much, you have no place arguing about science at all.
Seriously. You are parading your utter ignorance here for all to see. Others can be forgiven, but YOU came here to argue.
So if you want to argue, go back and do your homework. You obviously haven't a clue about what I was saying.
"Forget what's posted on blogs and social sites, go browse the wealth of material provided by the IPCC, or NAS, or the Royal society, or CSIRO, or NASA, or NOAA, or WMO or any other reputable and independent scientific institution, even the WP page on AGW is informative for this purpose."
Or not.
Before we go about talking about how "independent" these sources are, we should look a little closer at the facts. And among those facts, you will find that the majority of research papers supporting the AGW concept have shared either data or methodology with the folks at Hadley Centre and CRU. And yes, that includes NASA, and NOAA, and very definitely the IPCC.
The fact is that the "climate science" community is very small, close, and insular. You will find that most researchers have either co-authored papers, or referenced each others' papers in their own papers. It is a very incestuous field.
In any case, one must be careful about willy-nilly tossing about words like "independent". Due to its small size, globally climate science researchers are scarcely independent at all, compared to most disciplines.
"Humans releases more gas then can be absorbed in the same time period as the release."
Yes, we know that. Nobody I know of is disputing that. It's not even part of the debate. But by itself it doesn't mean anything. The question is: what are the consequences?
As for "cycles", though, we don't know that much about them yet, for one thing. And for another, the "cycle" you are referring to are sun cycles, and the fact that the temperature has deviated from following those cycles in the last few decades, which is true, can also be very misleading. Especially considering all the BS that is said about it.
So I do not disagree with your facts. I may, however, disagree with you about what they actually mean, if you want to get in a discussion about that.
"Yes, we know WUWT fans such as yourself place a low value on "understanding the actual science", so much so that you haven't even bothered to link to the graph your banging on about. I can't prove you're an astroturfer, but I see this particular debating tactic as inconclusive evidence for the affirmative."
I am not a "fan" of any site, pro or con. And you can take your personal remarks and stuff them. Further, I wasn't commenting about any particular graph, but in fact the majority of them in regard to AGW... if they contain any error margin information at all. And if you really know much of anything about AGW, then you already know this. I don't see you trying to refute it. You'd rather cast aspersions on my personally. But then, we already knew that.
"I can't prove you're an astroturfer, but I see this particular debating tactic as inconclusive evidence for the affirmative."
You can't prove I'm an astroturfer because I'm not an astroturfer. It doesn't get any simpler than that.
And I can't prove you're a vindictive asshole with an axe to grind in regard to me, either. But then, I really don't need to. I'll let others decide just how obvious that is.
"Acting like it should just be obvious, either way, doesn't make it a fact."
I'm not acting, and anybody who can read a graph can see that it is a fact, even if they don't understand the actual science. Just look at the changes versus the "error bars".
"and if you do it wrong, your bathroom faucet will shock the shit right out of you!"
That's certainly true. But there are few excuses today for getting it wrong. House wiring is ridiculously simple, if one bothers to learn the basics. I have wired several homes myself. Not genius material at all.
You are only reinforcing the point I already made: it is not the ground spike that is the major issue here. It is all the other work that is necessary. Also, you are talking about the requirements of code. I specifically stated that a water-pipe-only ground probably does not meet code in most places today.
"Sure, we can try different methodologies. Here we see that Ruby comes behind PHP, Javascript and Perl on the normalized comparison."
Not really. First, it's a Web survey of discussions, not a measure of how popular these languages are in actual use. One might infer a relationship, but it ain't necessarily so, and even if there is one, who knows how strong that correlation is?
Second, being a web survey, web-oriented languages (like JavaScript; a rather glaring example) are over-represented. Perl (another good example) is a legacy language that was very popular in its day, although it is almost universally rejected (with a good deal of disgust) by new programmers today in favor of more modern scripts. Perl is in fact an excellent example of my second point.
"Well, I think there's little disagreement that a "large" fraction is human caused, although obviously some small fraction is natural variation."
I don't know whether this is disingenuous or you just don't understand.
The whole reason there even exists controversy about this in the first place, is that the signal is very small in relation to the noise: any human-caused differences are so small in relation to the natural variations that it has been nearly impossible to detect (if, indeed, it has actually been detected).
"some small fraction is natural..." is not the real situation at all. The problem is the opposite: the vast majority of it is natural. Any scientist, even the staunchest AGW supporter, will admit that if he/she has any pretension to honesty at all.
Slashdot Mirror
"But it is flawed logic. ... If the output from the sun decreases (as has been measured), then something must change about the earth's climate - if the sun is responsible for the current warming"
Yes, it is flawed logic... on YOUR part.
REPEAT... for the 4th or 5th time: If you supply an input that a system can cope with, such as a pot of water on the stove with the burner turned to Low, then the system will maintain that temperature, and follow the temperature of the burner as it is turned up or down within a certain range. (With a lag or delay: it takes time to absorb or bleed off that heat.)
If, however, you turn the burner up past the point at which the system can shed heat, then that input will cause the system (whether pot of water or the Earth) to continue to heat up, regardless of whether the control is set to High or Medium High, or somewhere in between. The RATE at which it increases might vary (again with delay), but WHETHER it continues to get hotter is not in question.
The RATE at which it warms might change, but changes in the input (as long as they are above that level) will NOT affect WHETHER it warms or not. It is going to get warmer. If you start with your control on High, and turn it down to Medium High, the water is still going to get warmer. This is very elementary physics. No matter where you turn the knob -- as long as it remains above that threshold -- the water will continue to get warmer.
And it is very difficult to determine just what your rate of warming will be by measuring only the warming itself, when other factors are also changing, like the amount of thermal insulation wrapped around the pot (which might be very roughly analogized to El Nino or La Nina events).
So no, your argument about thermodynamics is simply incorrect. There is a point above which STEADY -- or even decreasing -- input to an isolated system will result in continued rise of temperature. And this is fully in keeping with all the laws of thermodynamics.
I have explained this many times now, in different ways, and there are plenty of other sources that might explain it to you better than I, if you would bother to look them up. Your failure to understand this simple principle of PHYSICS is not a fault on my part.
If the output from the sun decreases (as has been measured), then something must change about the earth's climate - if the sun is responsible for the current warming. Either the rate of warming must decrease (possibly stay positive or maybe go negative) or the mass or specific heat must change.
No. As I have just explained AGAIN, this is a generalization that does not hold for all circumstances. It is ONLY true when the system in question has the ability to shed heat at approximately the same rate as the input. You are arguing derivative when the value in question is actually an integral. Shame. You should know better.
"Thanks for the link to biocab.org. An, umm, interesting site with, umm, fascinating ideas :)."
NOW who is arguing about data? I repeat: I have not been disputing the data at all, including your own sources. I have only been disputing the interpretation of that data. You are attempting to shoot the messenger: the graphs on that page use data from independent sources; I have not claimed that biocab's conclusions about it are valid.
"See my reply above. I truly don't say 'copyright law is a contract', but I do argue that 'the copyright notice is as good a contract as an EULA'."
Wow. Just wow. Dude, your weird speculations do not equal law. Period.
Bert64 is correct and that was my point. Copyright legislation is not a "contract" or "license" in any sense of either term. Some people today do seem to get them confused, but their confusion does not reality make.
"However, the content of the book (subject to copyright) is *NOT* owned by you, only licensed to you. "
No, this is a fine point but that is still not correct. You DO own the content, as well. You are just restricted by law from doing certain things with it.
Buying a book is not a "contract" between you and the author, and copyright law does not constitute a "license". You are simply enjoined from engaging in infringing activity.
That was supposed to be Kool-Aid, but Kook-Aid is probably just as appropriate.
I am a fairly frequent visitor to skepticalscience.com.
I am, however, not much of a Kook-Aid drinker.
If YOU would like to learn something about the science, maybe you should read some of the articles linked to in the comments there.
"No. This is wrong and it makes no physical sense... There is absolutely no way for this to occur without a similarly increasing forcing behind it. "
It is not wrong, and it follows very well-understood -- elementary, really -- physics. It actually makes perfect sense. Apologies, but I have explained this concept 2 different ways to you in clear English. I don't know how else to explain it so that it makes sense to you. But your failure to understand my examples does not equate to a failure of understanding on my part.
"There are other problems with your logic. For example, the changes in insolation (energy from the sun) are measured (or known by proxy prior to measurements)."
Really? What sources are you looking at? Certainly not this one.
Regardless, this quote from your article: "This is a very straightforward and easy to understand formula - the larger the change in solar irradiance, the larger the energy imbalance it causes, and thus the larger the radiative forcing." is precisely the idea that is refuted by the stove example. The idea that input must change in order to cause an energy imbalance is ludicrous, from the standpoint of physics. I repeat: if that were so, your stove burner turned onto "high" might never boil your water; in order to do that (according to the logic just quoted from that article), you would have to constantly turn the knob up. And obviously that is not true.
"Despite your flawed logic, it really is well known that the sun isn't causing the current warming."
I have 3 things to say about that: First, the logic is not flawed, in fact it is extremely elementary. But: second, here you are arguing with me about whether the sun is the cause of warming, and I stated earlier here at least 3 times that that isn't what I was saying! Do you have reading comprehension issues? I was talking about someone else's logic, not about what actual causes are. And I repeated it just for your benefit. But apparently it didn't sink into your skull anyway.
I could very easily argue with you about that if you like, but it's off-topic. I wasn't discussing actual causes, only why someone else's argument was invalid.
The third thing I have to say about that statement is: bullshit. It isn't "well known" at all. In fact it is very much still a hot topic of debate (no pun intended). See for example Latour's No, Virginia rebuttal to Spencer's attempt to explain physics. The fact is that so far, some "climate scientists" have made some real blunders when it comes to the actual physics of their warming models.
Now, I will state her for the fourth time that I am not claiming that the sun is the cause of the warming. But I do claim that contrary to your assertion, it is not "settled science" or something on which everyone agrees.
"... but in the case of greenhouse gases, we have well known physics that indicate causation. "
Except that you don't. How many of the CO2 models rely on the concept of "back radiation" to explain the radiative forcings? There's a bit of a problem with that: "back radiation" is physically impossible. Again see that link to the article by Latour (a physicist) who shows very clearly exactly why that is so.
And that is just ONE of the problems with the "climate science".
""Skeptics" have been unable to show any other process that: (1) Can account for the current warming, and (2) Can prevent the increased CO2 levels from acting in ways they are known to act."
Wow. What a bundle of unwarranted assumptions. (1) "climate scientists" have not been able to account for the warming, either, in ways that actually obey the laws o
"lol ok fine, no doubt you are right, and Ruby is much more popular than any metric we can think of indicates."
That isn't what I was saying at all. What I was saying is that it all depends on what you mean by "popular".
"Legacy languages" (like Perl, and even Java to some extent) remain popular for a long time for several reasons, among those reasons the sheer size of the established code base. I mean, sheesh... there is still a demand, although a small one, for COBOL programmers, and that was the first "high-level language" ever invented!
I'm not saying that Ruby is more popular than the charts indicate. What I was claiming were basically 2 different things entirely: (1) there is a reason for the popularity of some of the other languages that has nothing to do with how popular they are with NEW programmers (which means they are actually in slow decline), and (2) scripting languages like Ruby will become more popular if and when compilers for them reach a certain level of maturity.
"Answer this then: Do you think the water will get hotter faster with the burner turned up, or turned down a bit. Because that's what's happened to the earth. The sun is putting out constant energy (actually slightly decreasing - see http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm [skepticalscience.com] ) and yet the earth is getting hotter faster than before. This is not physically possible if the sun is causing the warming."
I have already explained this. Apparently you didn't get my analogy. Let me explain again, using a graph from your own source. See figure 1.
Notice how, according to the graph, the solar output has increased pretty much steadily since just after 1880 (sure, there are cycles, but the trend has been upward). Now, let's just suppose -- hypothetically -- that the level of solar activity right around 1935 marks the "tipping point", at which the input exceeds the rate at which the earth can cool. In that case, the temperature will continue to increase as long as the input remains above that level. It doesn't matter whether the input goes down; the earth will continue to get warmer as long as the input is above that fixed level.
So even though solar activity has decreased recently, the input is still above the level at which warming will continue to increase. Just like the stove example I gave.
Now don't misunderstand me: I am NOT saying that is the cause of the warming. I make no such claim. This is just a hypothetical example.
What I am saying is that the fact that temperatures have deviated from the sun cycles is not necessarily evidence of man-caused warming. As I have showed, as a logical argument it has a huge hole in it. There CAN BE other explanations.
"You've indicated by your response that you don't really have any knowledge of climate science or, for that matter, science in general."
Haha. Did you even look at the link I supplied? On the contrary, I know a great deal about this subject; I have been studying it for years. And I have a very good science education. On the contrary: YOU showed by YOUR response that you did not understand my stove analogy.
"If you don't mind my asking, how do you come up with the confidence to dispute actual measured data when you have so little knowledge?"
Because you have it wrong: I was not disputing any data at all. In fact I just made the same analogy using data that YOU linked to. I was disputing only some people's interpretation of the cause behind the data, not the data itself. Those are two very different things. How do you have the confidence to question my explanation (which in fact is not my own idea at all: see the link I gave above), when you didn't understand what I was saying?
"When I truly don't understand something (as is the case with you and climate science), I generally back off and ask questions until I do understand."
But you didn't, did you? You misinterpreted my statements, put your own spin on them, then claimed that as a result, I must be ignorant. You are asking NOW, but only after you already said I must be full of sh*t. That doesn't sound like unbiased questioning to me.
"But you don't seem to feel that's necessary. Why is that?"
Because the statements I make here on the subject are actually well-researched, and I can back them up. Once again, see the link I supplied above, which you obviously did not bother to look at before you chose to basically call me a fool.
But just so I am not misunderstood, let me repeat for a third time: I am not saying something like the stove analogy is the cause of the warming. I am saying that the opposite argument (that the sun could not be the cause, simply because the temperature has not recently followed the solar decrease), is based on flawed logic. Once again: the fact that you may not be turning up the stove control all the time does not mean you can't make the water warmer.
That's a bit off-topic, though. We were discussing whether a serviceable electrical ground can be made using the water pipes. For many years, that all by itself met the requirements of construction code. Not for a long time now, in most places... but it does work.
As for lightning strikes: remember that OP was talking about a house that had no ground at all. Just about any ground is still going to be better than none.
Lightning can do some strange things, though. Some years ago, 2 workers were putting up a metal shed in my sister's back yard, which has a concrete retaining wall. A storm started up. Lightning hit a tree near the wall, went down to the ground, then shot out the side of the retaining wall, across about a 12-foot air gap, and zapped the 2 workers, who had to be run to the hospital. One was seriously injured.
You can have more than one ground, but they must be bonded together at the service panel so no potential develops between them.
In fact, one state where I lived a few years ago required at least 2 six-foot ground spikes to meet code, and required the pipes to be grounded as well if the building was plumbed.
"Because software is "Intellectual property", so you don't own the software once you bought a copy: you are only allowed to use it. (yes, I know, copyright infringement is not theft for this very same reason...)."
Wrong on both counts.
A book is intellectual property, too, but if you buy it you own it. The idea that you are just using it (or "licensing" it) is pretty much unique to the software industry, and has between little and nothing to do with the fact that it is "intellectual property".
I should qualify my comment about your last bit, though. While the fact that it isn't theft is related to the intellectual property concept, I suppose, but only indirectly. The more direct reason they are distinct in law is because when you steal something from somebody, you deprive them of the thing stolen. They no longer have use of that thing. Not so with software, music, books or patents. Therefore it cannot be "theft".
"Sure, except to use the software you agreed to the EULA where Adobe disclaimed themselves against any such defects. Good luck with that."
They might in fact have good luck with that. The fact that something in the EULA doesn't make it law. Or even valid.
For example, some states have laws saying that if you sell a product intended for a particular purpose, there is an implied warranty that the product is fit for that purpose... no matter what kind of disclaimer the seller puts on it.
Don't mistake EULAs and Limited Warranties for law. Corporate lawyers don't necessarily put valid stuff in there. On the contrary: what they include are things they'd like you to believe, and that they HOPE they can convince a judge of, if it ever goes to court. And in some cases they even include stuff that they KNOW won't stand up in court.
For some reason that link did not show up.
Here it is again.
"Either that or you think the Earth is going to keep getting hotter until it reaches the temperature of the sun, which is ludicrously stupid."
I never stated or implied any such thing.
The point here is that the sun is just coming out of a period in which more than one of its major cycles coincided, which has been a larger-than-normal input. When you combine that with the incidences of El Nino events, it is not so surprising that we have continued to warm. Here is an example.
However, I was not here to try to prove that this is the explanation. Rather, what I was pointing out is that the counterargument (it must be human because it hasn't followed recent solar variation) is based on flawed logic.
"There's solar, but that's been pretty constant (perhaps slightly decreasing) for decades now, so it's not really doing too much."
Hahaha.This is one of my most favorite bogus arguments, because it's so easy to show how bogus it really is.
Turn a surface burner on your stove to medium-high. Then put a pan half-full of water on it. LEAVE IT for a while. Guess what? The water continues to get hotter, even though you haven't turned the heat up. If you let it get near boiling, then turn it down just a minor notch or two (as the sun has turned down, just a bit), guess what? The water continues to get hotter.
The argument that the temperature variation has deviated from solar activity for a while, is exactly the same. If the input was enough to warm the earth significantly, it can CONTINUE to warm the earth, even if the input is reduced somewhat.
The idea that the temperature must follow the sun no matter what the input happens to be is just bizarre. Just as with a stove: if you turn it to just warm, then the water will stay warm, and will follow the burner temperature up and down. But once you get to the tipping point of putting more heat into the system than can be bled off, the temperature will continue to rise as long as the input is higher than that point... even if the input is significantly lower than the year before. As long as it remains higher than that point, in other words, you can actually continuously turn the control DOWN, and the water will still continue to get hotter.
"The IPCC and NAS both claim greater than 50% of the variation is human caused, the natural part has a very slight downward trend over the last century, the upward AGW signal dominates the historical trend, it even obscures the significant cooling signal coming from sulphurous smog."
Great. But I'm not arguing with you about that. At least here and now. But it has next to nothing to do with what I was saying. Apples and oranges. THIS is what I was saying:
The fact that any AGW climate signal has been small in relation to the noise (natural variation) is one of the most very fundamental aspects of the science, and therefore of the whole problem. If you do not recognize at least that much, you have no place arguing about science at all.
Seriously. You are parading your utter ignorance here for all to see. Others can be forgiven, but YOU came here to argue.
So if you want to argue, go back and do your homework. You obviously haven't a clue about what I was saying.
"Forget what's posted on blogs and social sites, go browse the wealth of material provided by the IPCC, or NAS, or the Royal society, or CSIRO, or NASA, or NOAA, or WMO or any other reputable and independent scientific institution, even the WP page on AGW is informative for this purpose."
Or not.
Before we go about talking about how "independent" these sources are, we should look a little closer at the facts. And among those facts, you will find that the majority of research papers supporting the AGW concept have shared either data or methodology with the folks at Hadley Centre and CRU. And yes, that includes NASA, and NOAA, and very definitely the IPCC.
The fact is that the "climate science" community is very small, close, and insular. You will find that most researchers have either co-authored papers, or referenced each others' papers in their own papers. It is a very incestuous field.
In any case, one must be careful about willy-nilly tossing about words like "independent". Due to its small size, globally climate science researchers are scarcely independent at all, compared to most disciplines.
"Humans releases more gas then can be absorbed in the same time period as the release."
Yes, we know that. Nobody I know of is disputing that. It's not even part of the debate. But by itself it doesn't mean anything. The question is: what are the consequences?
As for "cycles", though, we don't know that much about them yet, for one thing. And for another, the "cycle" you are referring to are sun cycles, and the fact that the temperature has deviated from following those cycles in the last few decades, which is true, can also be very misleading. Especially considering all the BS that is said about it.
So I do not disagree with your facts. I may, however, disagree with you about what they actually mean, if you want to get in a discussion about that.
"Yes, we know WUWT fans such as yourself place a low value on "understanding the actual science", so much so that you haven't even bothered to link to the graph your banging on about. I can't prove you're an astroturfer, but I see this particular debating tactic as inconclusive evidence for the affirmative."
I am not a "fan" of any site, pro or con. And you can take your personal remarks and stuff them. Further, I wasn't commenting about any particular graph, but in fact the majority of them in regard to AGW... if they contain any error margin information at all. And if you really know much of anything about AGW, then you already know this. I don't see you trying to refute it. You'd rather cast aspersions on my personally. But then, we already knew that.
"I can't prove you're an astroturfer, but I see this particular debating tactic as inconclusive evidence for the affirmative."
You can't prove I'm an astroturfer because I'm not an astroturfer. It doesn't get any simpler than that.
And I can't prove you're a vindictive asshole with an axe to grind in regard to me, either. But then, I really don't need to. I'll let others decide just how obvious that is.
"Acting like it should just be obvious, either way, doesn't make it a fact."
I'm not acting, and anybody who can read a graph can see that it is a fact, even if they don't understand the actual science. Just look at the changes versus the "error bars".
"and if you do it wrong, your bathroom faucet will shock the shit right out of you!"
That's certainly true. But there are few excuses today for getting it wrong. House wiring is ridiculously simple, if one bothers to learn the basics. I have wired several homes myself. Not genius material at all.
You are only reinforcing the point I already made: it is not the ground spike that is the major issue here. It is all the other work that is necessary. Also, you are talking about the requirements of code. I specifically stated that a water-pipe-only ground probably does not meet code in most places today.
"Sure, we can try different methodologies. Here we see that Ruby comes behind PHP, Javascript and Perl on the normalized comparison."
Not really. First, it's a Web survey of discussions, not a measure of how popular these languages are in actual use. One might infer a relationship, but it ain't necessarily so, and even if there is one, who knows how strong that correlation is?
Second, being a web survey, web-oriented languages (like JavaScript; a rather glaring example) are over-represented. Perl (another good example) is a legacy language that was very popular in its day, although it is almost universally rejected (with a good deal of disgust) by new programmers today in favor of more modern scripts. Perl is in fact an excellent example of my second point.
"Well, I think there's little disagreement that a "large" fraction is human caused, although obviously some small fraction is natural variation."
I don't know whether this is disingenuous or you just don't understand.
The whole reason there even exists controversy about this in the first place, is that the signal is very small in relation to the noise: any human-caused differences are so small in relation to the natural variations that it has been nearly impossible to detect (if, indeed, it has actually been detected).
"some small fraction is natural..." is not the real situation at all. The problem is the opposite: the vast majority of it is natural. Any scientist, even the staunchest AGW supporter, will admit that if he/she has any pretension to honesty at all.