Once again, Jane just has 4 textbooks that say "radiative power out = (epsilon * sigma)*T^4*area". I bet Jane $100 that his textbooks don't claim that electrical heating power = radiative power out. That's Jane's incorrect Slayer assumption. Even Jane should be able to recognize that his 4 unnamed textbooks don't support him, because deep down even Jane should be able to tell that he's just endlessly blustering to cover up the fact that he can't produce any textbook quotes saying that electrical heating power = radiative power out.
This is one of the rare times I will deign to respond to your nonsense any longer.
Your own insistence that power in = power out (assuming perfect conversion and no entropic losses) belies this argument. You are arguing against yourself and you refuse to see that.
If power in = power out (your own stipulation), and the only NET power INTO a defined spherical region is electrical, and the only NET power OUT of that region is radiative, then net radiative power out at steady-state must therefore be equal to the net electrical power consumed.
This is so fucking simple it is almost a tautology. As I have pointed it out to you before.
Since this is a simple statement of conservation of energy, it is up to YOU to disprove it, and you have not. If you disagree, then point out where the other energy is coming from or going. We have already established that there is no NET radiative energy input to the sphere from the surrounding cooler walls.
Islam is a peaceful religion, that's why followers just went out of their way to do this. And in Canada we had two terrorist attacks(one in Quebec), and another on Parliament Hill in two days.
While it may be true that many Muslims have been terrorists, not all Muslims are terrorists and not all egregious crimes or even hostage-taking constitutes "terrorism".
Despite the fact that politicians have grossly mis-used the term, Terrorism has an actual definition. One essential part of that definition is that the terrorists are making (usually political) demands in exchange for ceasing their terror.
Unless and until they make demands, and especially political demands, they aren't "terrorists". If they do so, and they also meet the other qualifications, THEN they are terrorists. Not before.
Some crazy with a bomb is not a "terrorist" until he proves himself to be.
I'm getting plain fed up with all these cockamamie "CO2-based disaster" predictions. It's nothing but speculation run amok, and all the more baneful because it's politically- and money-driven.
Fact: we have no real, objective evidence that CO2 is going to cause us any real problems.
The scientific evidence has been stacking up against the idea for at least 10 years. It isn't happening, it isn't going to happen. And even if it did, it would probably benefit us more than hurt us.
What they achieved was naming themselves "The Greatest Generation". Nobody else did it; they decided to call themselves that.
And of course, that doesn't make it so.
Even so, I have to admit that GP has a point. The "current generation" seems to be completely full of itself, with an arrogance it never earned. At the same time they're making some of the same stupid mistakes their grandparents did, when they should know better. It's like nobody ever taught them history.
I used to think that Hilary Clinton was the shoo-in candidate to be the next President of the US.
Why would you think that? I mean yes, last I heard the Democrats are still planning to run her. But I don't understand why, because once the political machine starts revealing to the public what a rotten human being and traitor to America she has been, she is pretty much guaranteed to lose.
I think having a woman President might be a fine thing. I think Hillary Clinton as President would be an unmitigated disaster.
Freenet is not "shady". In fact its purpose was the opposite of shady: to enable legitimate internet use without being spied on by others.
There are others, among them OneSwarm, created at the University of Washington.
These projects were intended to promote freedom and privacy. That isn't a "shady" goal. Though people who want to spy on you (like the government) try to pretend that it is.
But doesn't bittorrent require that all data you download is shared between peers?
No.
Most bittorrent clients force you to upload to others as you download. But that isn't a requirement of the protocol, it was a judgment call on the part of the programmers. They felt that if you don't share what you download, then "the community" of sharers will fall apart.
But the BitTorrent protocol has many perfectly legitimate uses today, other than just copyright infringement.
At least some BT clients allow you to control how much (or whether) you upload when you download. Or to share things you didn't download in the first place.
But the short answer is: no. There is no requirement in the BitTorrent protocol that you "share" everything.
The problem here is that the mob has figured out how to abuse hashtags.
No. The problem is that Bennet Haselton thinks that hashtags should be "owned" by the originators, and that nobody should be allowed to say things that aren't politically correct under those hashtags.
In other words, Haselton is promoting an "algorithm" for censorship.
When you get up on a soapbox to spout your views (which is basically what a hashtag is), you have no right to the entire streetcorner. Other people will get up on their soapboxes, too, and say things you probably don't like.
No, it doesn't. In fact some of the foundational members of AI research (and other philosophers of mind) very much agree that what we call "intelligence" is not possible without self-awareness.
AI is already here, and it's all around us: in your washing machine, in your dishwasher, in longshoreman cranes, in your car, in Google, in Facebook etc...
With all due respect, calling that "intelligence" is not very intelligent. Those things are very far from intelligence. It's plain old procedural software, written by humans to do specific things. Yes, sometimes those things include learning, but hell, we have mechanical devices sans electronics that learn. That isn't intelligence either. Nor is your smartphone even remotely "smart"... it only does things that humans programmed it specifically to do.
Both Deep Blue and Watson were essentially "just a look-up program" yet they are considered actual AI, just not the self-aware, generally intelligent kind.
By whom? Certainly not by me, and I am a programmer. Deep Blue was a rule-based game engine. Essentially it generated different "dry run" possibilities until it found a winning strategy. In effect, it was little more than a trial-and-error chess move generator, even though it was very fast at doing so, allowing it to look farther ahead than previous machines.
And Watson is glorified Google Search + Wikipedia. It can search vast stores of information very fast, and make simple pre-programmed inferences from the data it finds. But although it represents the pinnacle of today's "AI" research, it isn't AI. Here's how you can tell it's not even a little bit "intelligent": when it makes mistakes, they tend to be spectacular. Its wrong answers are SO wrong, it is easy to see that it is mainly just echoing existing information, rather than reasoning about it.
So, no: these things aren't "generally accepted" by the experts as AI. The public, which largely doesn't understand how they work, may accept them as such, but that doesn't make it so. Another example: many people still think the Turing Test is a measure of intelligence; however, we now know that programs that have come closest to passing the Turing Test (the real one) are not intelligent at all. They're just programmed to create the illusion of intelligence.
Jokes aside, it does suck that Comcast is forcing this on everybody. It's good to be the king, err, monopoly.
I insist on using my own cable adapter (a Motorola Docsis 3). Actually insisting that customers use Comcast's own cable adapter/router is probably illegal. That's what got Ma Bell broken up.
I run my own public WiFi hotspot, as a "guest" network. Someone could say that's the same thing, but it's not: I decide when to turn it on or off, and I can block particular people from using it if I want. Yes, I supply the electricity but I do that voluntarily.
t also completely ignores the numerous experiments showing the ability of various gases (or other materials reall) to absorb radiated energy. All matrials can absorb radiated energy. Some re-radiate better than others, some retain it better than others.
You are grossly oversimplifying the radiation physics of the situation.
Just one example: if your gas absorbs radiation, and becomes hotter, what happens to it? At the risk of oversimplifying things myself, it expands, and rises in the atmosphere. There, it radiates its heat out to space.
Simple radiative heating of an already-warmer surface by cooler gases is a physical impossibility. Further, it doesn't happen via conduction or convection because convection carries warm gases AWAY from the surface.
So while I may not accept the gravimetric theory of warming on its face, neither does your explanation explain "greenhouse" warming.
There is no point to his/her statement; it's just a (pretty random) assertion.
There is a very good point to the statement, and not everything we already know to be true must be proven in front of us here on Slashdot.
That climate science, to date, has been poor at prognostication is indisputably true. Stating it in a discussion like this has a purpose: to point that fact out to those who were not already aware of it.
What problem will be solved RIGHT NOW by passing strict regulations for ISP's to abide by?
The fact that the United States is something like 26th of industrialized countries in average internet bandwidth, AND more expensive than even those that have far better service.
The big ISPs haven't been investing in infrastucture, because they haven't had to. They don't compete. In 80% of the United States, people have only one real choice for low-latency, modern broadband.
Instead, they've just been pocketing their insane profits.
You can't expect free market forces to fix a situation in which there is no free market. The obvious answer is Title II Common Carrier status.
It worked just fine for landline telephones. It can work for internet.
(PS: before anybody yells that it didn't work for landline telephones, yes, it did. Ma Bell wasn't broken up for lack of service and high service fees. It was different reasons altogether.)
The interesting thing to me is that Spencer seems to be missing the point. Direct radiative heating of the Earth's surface by CO2 in the atmosphere is a Lie-to-children in the first place, and people who defend it based on religious faith really make themselves look silly.
Well, the fact is that mainstream textbooks which deal with radiative heat transfer (I have at least 3 of them, maybe 4 if I look around) show Spencer's conclusion about his little gedankeneksperiment to be quite wrong.
As I have stated to that person (I prefer not to mention names in this case) many times: I do not deny that there may be a greenhouse effect of some sort, but if there is, it doesn't work via the simple back-radiation mechanism that is usually given as the explanation. That explanation violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. (Latour's original written explanation was rather short and rough; one could wish he had been more thorough. Then there might have been less controversy about it.)
Nevertheless I did not merely echo his statements but took the trouble to research the subject myself. My textbooks do agree with Latour about his main point, which is that direct warming of a surface via back-radiation from a cooler atmosphere is impossible, just as Spencer's warming of the only heat source by a cooler passive plate is impossible.
I've been all over this topic with many people. Some compare the back-radiation concept to an insulator such as a blanket (100% incorrect), or even worse, a reflector. Also 100% incorrect, but worse because there seems to be more of an intuitive connection... which is quite false. Most people just don't really understand radiative heat transfer. So much is clear. One person tried to tell me that IR reflection from the underside of a cloud was proof of back-radiation.
There are two way in which CO2 interacts with IR radiation:
In the interest of goodwill I would warn you about trying to argue with this person. I have documented proof that (a) he doesn't argue honestly, (b) he will personally hound and harass people, especially if they prove him wrong. He doesn't seem to be able to accept being wrong.
For example: he insisted on debating Roy Spencer's radiation experiment. I agreed to do so only on the condition that it was understood that I was debating only Spencer's experiment, not global warming.
When I showed him that the mainstream physics, textbook solutions to the temperatures in Spencer's experiment disagreed with his (and Spencer's) conclusions, he hasn't ceased demanding that I solve it a different way of his own devising, which doesn't appear in any textbook on radiative heat transfer, anywhere.
He is still doing so, when the whim strikes him; he did it again just a few days ago. And as you can see, even though I told him in no uncertain terms that we were debating only Spencer's experiment (his agreement can still be seen here on Slashdot), he insists that I am a "Sky Dragon Slayer", simply because I stated that Pierre Latour's radiation physics were correct. (For the record, I have never read the "Sky Dragon" books.)
I do assert that there is no solidly demonstrated cause for concern over CO2. This person conflates that position of mine, with my use of textbook physics to refute Spencer, as somehow proving I am a Sky Dragon Slayer.
If you insist on arguing with him, prepare to have your words repeated -- for years -- out of context and in distorted and misleading ways. I suppose it's possible that it's some kind of personal vendetta against just me, but I suspect an actual personality flaw.
Jane's "conversations" about Earth rely on Sky Dragon Slayer denial that CO2 warms the surface.
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".
Since then, you have consistently, improperly, and dishonestly misrepresented argument as including "global warming" even after repeated statements that I did not make that argument, and in fact you agreed that you understood this before we had our long discussion of Spencer's experiment..
If you cannot represent my position correctly and honestly (and you have repeatedly demonstrated your unwillingness to do so), then don't try to tell other people what my arguments are. Quotes taken out of context from 5 years ago also count against you, not for you.
CEASE misrepresenting my words. You have been warned repeatedly.
Readers: It is my policy to not respond to this person, and I want other people to understand why. There are records right here on Slashdot, in black and white, showing him to have violated clear agreements he made, and to have rather blatantly misrepresented the words of others, in order to try to bulldoze away dissent.
When I have solid, unimpeachable evidence that someone is willing to lie and be a hypocrite, and commits other unethical acts I will not mention here. It would serve no genuine purpose. He started harassing me when I challenged his incorrect answer to a physics problem several years ago, and as you can see he has not yet ceased. When I showed him that textbooks on the subject contradicted his answer, he merely doubled down on what I consider to be continued harassment.
(He also knows that the Venus argument is a prime example of circular reasoning: greenhouse gas theory says that is the reason Venus is hot, therefore Venus proves greenhouse gas theory on Earth. It's a ludicrous argument.)
Those are examples of why I do not reply directly to this person. Whenever I have, he merely doubled down on the nonsense, misrepresentation, and what I consider to be harassment. So it would serve no purpose.
Some years ago, I was very upset to learn that my position was exempt from overtime. I mean... I wasn't an executive, I was just a lowly coder. The exemption laws were supposed to apply to people who had some say in how a company is run, and pretty much presumes that you are an executive-level employee who sets his/her own hours.
What costs? Specifically the release of millions of years worth of CO2 into the atmosphere in just a couple centuries.
Nobody has proved beyond reasonable doubt -- and I emphasize the word reasonable -- that it has caused ANY harm, at all.
Nobody has been able to show, convincingly, that ANY weather pattern, or either singular or collective weather events, have been caused by "CO2-based warming". Lots of stuff has been BLAMED on it, but I'm talking about actual evidence.
So I repeat: show me the costs. We do not know - and I mean very literally do not know -- that there have been any. Any at all.
As far as scrubbers, are you saying acid rain wasn't a problem? Or Sulfur Dioxide? Or Nitrogen oxides? Mercury? Estimates are that coal plants kill thousands annually. So yes, pollute and you, and I did say we, should pay for it.
I didn't say anything like that. They DID pay to clean that shit up. Or rather, you and I did. None of those things are emitted at more than a tiny fraction of what they used to be.
Is it pristine? No, it's not. But it's ONE HELL OF A LOT BETTER than it used to be, and yes, we paid for that.
If you want 100% renewables right now, you're dreaming. And while I agree that we definitely should work toward that goal, I'm not willing to pay for your dream of having it this year. That's an unrealistic dream.
And I'm sure as hell not willing to pay to clean up some CO2 demon which science says is largely imaginary. Not the CO2. That's real enough. But any "harm" is so far only theory, and that theory is looking shakier every day.
"Real" infrastructure build-outs are not the internet - changes happen over 20 years, not 20 months.
Why are you excepting the Internet? It has worked pretty much the same way. It only works via physical infrastructure, and it takes time for that infrastructure to be built. I have watched very painfully as the internet infrastructure has grown in the last 20 years. It was anything but instant.
And that is precisely why we in the U.S. should start demanding more and better infrastructure from our ISPs, as of 10 years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think that the GP was indicating the *project* was shady, but more likely many of the visible uses.
I don't think that argument holds water. Is cash "shady" because it can be used for illegal purposes?
Sadly, lgw still hasn't objected to Jane's Slayer misinformation
And perhaps not so sadly, it is quite possible -- I think even likely -- that Igw did not do so because he recognized that you were spewing nonsense.
I suggest you learn what "800 milli-timecubes" means. I doubt you will be pleased.
Once again, Jane just has 4 textbooks that say "radiative power out = (epsilon * sigma)*T^4*area". I bet Jane $100 that his textbooks don't claim that electrical heating power = radiative power out. That's Jane's incorrect Slayer assumption. Even Jane should be able to recognize that his 4 unnamed textbooks don't support him, because deep down even Jane should be able to tell that he's just endlessly blustering to cover up the fact that he can't produce any textbook quotes saying that electrical heating power = radiative power out.
This is one of the rare times I will deign to respond to your nonsense any longer.
Your own insistence that power in = power out (assuming perfect conversion and no entropic losses) belies this argument. You are arguing against yourself and you refuse to see that.
If power in = power out (your own stipulation), and the only NET power INTO a defined spherical region is electrical, and the only NET power OUT of that region is radiative, then net radiative power out at steady-state must therefore be equal to the net electrical power consumed.
This is so fucking simple it is almost a tautology. As I have pointed it out to you before.
Since this is a simple statement of conservation of energy, it is up to YOU to disprove it, and you have not. If you disagree, then point out where the other energy is coming from or going. We have already established that there is no NET radiative energy input to the sphere from the surrounding cooler walls.
Islam is a peaceful religion, that's why followers just went out of their way to do this. And in Canada we had two terrorist attacks(one in Quebec), and another on Parliament Hill in two days.
While it may be true that many Muslims have been terrorists, not all Muslims are terrorists and not all egregious crimes or even hostage-taking constitutes "terrorism".
Despite the fact that politicians have grossly mis-used the term, Terrorism has an actual definition. One essential part of that definition is that the terrorists are making (usually political) demands in exchange for ceasing their terror.
Unless and until they make demands, and especially political demands, they aren't "terrorists". If they do so, and they also meet the other qualifications, THEN they are terrorists. Not before.
Some crazy with a bomb is not a "terrorist" until he proves himself to be.
I'm getting plain fed up with all these cockamamie "CO2-based disaster" predictions. It's nothing but speculation run amok, and all the more baneful because it's politically- and money-driven.
Fact: we have no real, objective evidence that CO2 is going to cause us any real problems.
The scientific evidence has been stacking up against the idea for at least 10 years. It isn't happening, it isn't going to happen. And even if it did, it would probably benefit us more than hurt us.
What they achieved was naming themselves "The Greatest Generation". Nobody else did it; they decided to call themselves that.
And of course, that doesn't make it so.
Even so, I have to admit that GP has a point. The "current generation" seems to be completely full of itself, with an arrogance it never earned. At the same time they're making some of the same stupid mistakes their grandparents did, when they should know better. It's like nobody ever taught them history.
I used to think that Hilary Clinton was the shoo-in candidate to be the next President of the US.
Why would you think that? I mean yes, last I heard the Democrats are still planning to run her. But I don't understand why, because once the political machine starts revealing to the public what a rotten human being and traitor to America she has been, she is pretty much guaranteed to lose.
I think having a woman President might be a fine thing. I think Hillary Clinton as President would be an unmitigated disaster.
Corporate greed vs individual entitlement.
NO! Not "individual entitlement". Individual privacy. Huge difference.
Why should I allow Universal to spy on my Internet communications? Would you allow AT&T to spy on your phone conversations? Why or why not?
This is a big fight and it isn't about "entitlement", at all. It's about freedom and privacy. Get it straight.
and.... we're done here.
They're going to NEED that new Gorilla Glass, due to all those phones with the app being touched with 11-foot poles.
Freenet is not "shady". In fact its purpose was the opposite of shady: to enable legitimate internet use without being spied on by others.
There are others, among them OneSwarm, created at the University of Washington.
These projects were intended to promote freedom and privacy. That isn't a "shady" goal. Though people who want to spy on you (like the government) try to pretend that it is.
But doesn't bittorrent require that all data you download is shared between peers?
No.
Most bittorrent clients force you to upload to others as you download. But that isn't a requirement of the protocol, it was a judgment call on the part of the programmers. They felt that if you don't share what you download, then "the community" of sharers will fall apart.
But the BitTorrent protocol has many perfectly legitimate uses today, other than just copyright infringement.
At least some BT clients allow you to control how much (or whether) you upload when you download. Or to share things you didn't download in the first place.
But the short answer is: no. There is no requirement in the BitTorrent protocol that you "share" everything.
The problem here is that the mob has figured out how to abuse hashtags.
No. The problem is that Bennet Haselton thinks that hashtags should be "owned" by the originators, and that nobody should be allowed to say things that aren't politically correct under those hashtags.
In other words, Haselton is promoting an "algorithm" for censorship.
When you get up on a soapbox to spout your views (which is basically what a hashtag is), you have no right to the entire streetcorner. Other people will get up on their soapboxes, too, and say things you probably don't like.
That's called "free speech".
The entire field of AI disagrees with you.
No, it doesn't. In fact some of the foundational members of AI research (and other philosophers of mind) very much agree that what we call "intelligence" is not possible without self-awareness.
AI is already here, and it's all around us: in your washing machine, in your dishwasher, in longshoreman cranes, in your car, in Google, in Facebook etc...
With all due respect, calling that "intelligence" is not very intelligent. Those things are very far from intelligence. It's plain old procedural software, written by humans to do specific things. Yes, sometimes those things include learning, but hell, we have mechanical devices sans electronics that learn. That isn't intelligence either. Nor is your smartphone even remotely "smart"... it only does things that humans programmed it specifically to do.
Both Deep Blue and Watson were essentially "just a look-up program" yet they are considered actual AI, just not the self-aware, generally intelligent kind.
By whom? Certainly not by me, and I am a programmer. Deep Blue was a rule-based game engine. Essentially it generated different "dry run" possibilities until it found a winning strategy. In effect, it was little more than a trial-and-error chess move generator, even though it was very fast at doing so, allowing it to look farther ahead than previous machines.
And Watson is glorified Google Search + Wikipedia. It can search vast stores of information very fast, and make simple pre-programmed inferences from the data it finds. But although it represents the pinnacle of today's "AI" research, it isn't AI. Here's how you can tell it's not even a little bit "intelligent": when it makes mistakes, they tend to be spectacular. Its wrong answers are SO wrong, it is easy to see that it is mainly just echoing existing information, rather than reasoning about it.
So, no: these things aren't "generally accepted" by the experts as AI. The public, which largely doesn't understand how they work, may accept them as such, but that doesn't make it so. Another example: many people still think the Turing Test is a measure of intelligence; however, we now know that programs that have come closest to passing the Turing Test (the real one) are not intelligent at all. They're just programmed to create the illusion of intelligence.
Jokes aside, it does suck that Comcast is forcing this on everybody. It's good to be the king, err, monopoly.
I insist on using my own cable adapter (a Motorola Docsis 3). Actually insisting that customers use Comcast's own cable adapter/router is probably illegal. That's what got Ma Bell broken up.
I run my own public WiFi hotspot, as a "guest" network. Someone could say that's the same thing, but it's not: I decide when to turn it on or off, and I can block particular people from using it if I want. Yes, I supply the electricity but I do that voluntarily.
t also completely ignores the numerous experiments showing the ability of various gases (or other materials reall) to absorb radiated energy. All matrials can absorb radiated energy. Some re-radiate better than others, some retain it better than others.
You are grossly oversimplifying the radiation physics of the situation.
Just one example: if your gas absorbs radiation, and becomes hotter, what happens to it? At the risk of oversimplifying things myself, it expands, and rises in the atmosphere. There, it radiates its heat out to space.
Simple radiative heating of an already-warmer surface by cooler gases is a physical impossibility. Further, it doesn't happen via conduction or convection because convection carries warm gases AWAY from the surface.
So while I may not accept the gravimetric theory of warming on its face, neither does your explanation explain "greenhouse" warming.
There is no point to his/her statement; it's just a (pretty random) assertion.
There is a very good point to the statement, and not everything we already know to be true must be proven in front of us here on Slashdot.
That climate science, to date, has been poor at prognostication is indisputably true. Stating it in a discussion like this has a purpose: to point that fact out to those who were not already aware of it.
What problem will be solved RIGHT NOW by passing strict regulations for ISP's to abide by?
The fact that the United States is something like 26th of industrialized countries in average internet bandwidth, AND more expensive than even those that have far better service.
The big ISPs haven't been investing in infrastucture, because they haven't had to. They don't compete. In 80% of the United States, people have only one real choice for low-latency, modern broadband.
Instead, they've just been pocketing their insane profits.
You can't expect free market forces to fix a situation in which there is no free market. The obvious answer is Title II Common Carrier status.
It worked just fine for landline telephones. It can work for internet.
(PS: before anybody yells that it didn't work for landline telephones, yes, it did. Ma Bell wasn't broken up for lack of service and high service fees. It was different reasons altogether.)
If you don't know what a netmask is, you shouldn't be able to pass CCNA (though could get an MCSE or RHCE).
That's absurd. Whatever your opinion of MCSE, you aren't going to get one without knowing what a subnet mask is.
The interesting thing to me is that Spencer seems to be missing the point. Direct radiative heating of the Earth's surface by CO2 in the atmosphere is a Lie-to-children in the first place, and people who defend it based on religious faith really make themselves look silly.
Well, the fact is that mainstream textbooks which deal with radiative heat transfer (I have at least 3 of them, maybe 4 if I look around) show Spencer's conclusion about his little gedankeneksperiment to be quite wrong.
As I have stated to that person (I prefer not to mention names in this case) many times: I do not deny that there may be a greenhouse effect of some sort, but if there is, it doesn't work via the simple back-radiation mechanism that is usually given as the explanation. That explanation violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. (Latour's original written explanation was rather short and rough; one could wish he had been more thorough. Then there might have been less controversy about it.)
Nevertheless I did not merely echo his statements but took the trouble to research the subject myself. My textbooks do agree with Latour about his main point, which is that direct warming of a surface via back-radiation from a cooler atmosphere is impossible, just as Spencer's warming of the only heat source by a cooler passive plate is impossible.
I've been all over this topic with many people. Some compare the back-radiation concept to an insulator such as a blanket (100% incorrect), or even worse, a reflector. Also 100% incorrect, but worse because there seems to be more of an intuitive connection... which is quite false. Most people just don't really understand radiative heat transfer. So much is clear. One person tried to tell me that IR reflection from the underside of a cloud was proof of back-radiation.
Sigh. It has been an uphill battle.
There are two way in which CO2 interacts with IR radiation:
In the interest of goodwill I would warn you about trying to argue with this person. I have documented proof that (a) he doesn't argue honestly, (b) he will personally hound and harass people, especially if they prove him wrong. He doesn't seem to be able to accept being wrong.
For example: he insisted on debating Roy Spencer's radiation experiment. I agreed to do so only on the condition that it was understood that I was debating only Spencer's experiment, not global warming.
When I showed him that the mainstream physics, textbook solutions to the temperatures in Spencer's experiment disagreed with his (and Spencer's) conclusions, he hasn't ceased demanding that I solve it a different way of his own devising, which doesn't appear in any textbook on radiative heat transfer, anywhere.
He is still doing so, when the whim strikes him; he did it again just a few days ago. And as you can see, even though I told him in no uncertain terms that we were debating only Spencer's experiment (his agreement can still be seen here on Slashdot), he insists that I am a "Sky Dragon Slayer", simply because I stated that Pierre Latour's radiation physics were correct. (For the record, I have never read the "Sky Dragon" books.)
I do assert that there is no solidly demonstrated cause for concern over CO2. This person conflates that position of mine, with my use of textbook physics to refute Spencer, as somehow proving I am a Sky Dragon Slayer.
If you insist on arguing with him, prepare to have your words repeated -- for years -- out of context and in distorted and misleading ways. I suppose it's possible that it's some kind of personal vendetta against just me, but I suspect an actual personality flaw.
Jane's "conversations" about Earth rely on Sky Dragon Slayer denial that CO2 warms the surface.
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".
Since then, you have consistently, improperly, and dishonestly misrepresented argument as including "global warming" even after repeated statements that I did not make that argument, and in fact you agreed that you understood this before we had our long discussion of Spencer's experiment..
If you cannot represent my position correctly and honestly (and you have repeatedly demonstrated your unwillingness to do so), then don't try to tell other people what my arguments are. Quotes taken out of context from 5 years ago also count against you, not for you.
CEASE misrepresenting my words. You have been warned repeatedly.
Public Service Announcement
Readers: It is my policy to not respond to this person, and I want other people to understand why. There are records right here on Slashdot, in black and white, showing him to have violated clear agreements he made, and to have rather blatantly misrepresented the words of others, in order to try to bulldoze away dissent.
When I have solid, unimpeachable evidence that someone is willing to lie and be a hypocrite, and commits other unethical acts I will not mention here. It would serve no genuine purpose. He started harassing me when I challenged his incorrect answer to a physics problem several years ago, and as you can see he has not yet ceased. When I showed him that textbooks on the subject contradicted his answer, he merely doubled down on what I consider to be continued harassment.
(He also knows that the Venus argument is a prime example of circular reasoning: greenhouse gas theory says that is the reason Venus is hot, therefore Venus proves greenhouse gas theory on Earth. It's a ludicrous argument.)
Those are examples of why I do not reply directly to this person. Whenever I have, he merely doubled down on the nonsense, misrepresentation, and what I consider to be harassment. So it would serve no purpose.
End of PSA. Have a nice day.
Some years ago, I was very upset to learn that my position was exempt from overtime. I mean... I wasn't an executive, I was just a lowly coder. The exemption laws were supposed to apply to people who had some say in how a company is run, and pretty much presumes that you are an executive-level employee who sets his/her own hours.
What costs? Specifically the release of millions of years worth of CO2 into the atmosphere in just a couple centuries.
Nobody has proved beyond reasonable doubt -- and I emphasize the word reasonable -- that it has caused ANY harm, at all.
Nobody has been able to show, convincingly, that ANY weather pattern, or either singular or collective weather events, have been caused by "CO2-based warming". Lots of stuff has been BLAMED on it, but I'm talking about actual evidence.
So I repeat: show me the costs. We do not know - and I mean very literally do not know -- that there have been any. Any at all.
As far as scrubbers, are you saying acid rain wasn't a problem? Or Sulfur Dioxide? Or Nitrogen oxides? Mercury? Estimates are that coal plants kill thousands annually. So yes, pollute and you, and I did say we, should pay for it.
I didn't say anything like that. They DID pay to clean that shit up. Or rather, you and I did. None of those things are emitted at more than a tiny fraction of what they used to be.
Is it pristine? No, it's not. But it's ONE HELL OF A LOT BETTER than it used to be, and yes, we paid for that.
If you want 100% renewables right now, you're dreaming. And while I agree that we definitely should work toward that goal, I'm not willing to pay for your dream of having it this year. That's an unrealistic dream.
And I'm sure as hell not willing to pay to clean up some CO2 demon which science says is largely imaginary. Not the CO2. That's real enough. But any "harm" is so far only theory, and that theory is looking shakier every day.
"Real" infrastructure build-outs are not the internet - changes happen over 20 years, not 20 months.
Why are you excepting the Internet? It has worked pretty much the same way. It only works via physical infrastructure, and it takes time for that infrastructure to be built. I have watched very painfully as the internet infrastructure has grown in the last 20 years. It was anything but instant.
And that is precisely why we in the U.S. should start demanding more and better infrastructure from our ISPs, as of 10 years ago.