Yeah, well, that depends on where you live. If you like higher sea levels and don't care about anyone else who gets flooded, fine, but there are certain ethical quandries involved in geoengineering the climate to your liking at the detriment of others.
And no, I wouldn't bet on precipitation doing what you want. Regional precipitation projections aren't as reliable as global temperature projections, but climate models are leaning towards decreased precipitation in Australia, particularly in the south. I don't see how you're getting giant moderating bodies of water for "more temperature weather", either.
And yet empirical evidence says otherwise. Observation indeed says co2 may cause cooling, As I just explained, observation does not say any such thing. CO2 positively correlates with temperature, CO2-induced warming is necessary to explain observed climate trends both in the ice age cycle and in the industrial period, and both of these observational facts agree with what is predicted from the laws of physics.
the reason this happens is NOT understood, It's not "understood" because it doesn't happen. CO2 doesn't cause cooling, and neither observation nor theory says it does.
What do you think data mining is? Data mining is purely statistical prediction based on correlations detected in large data sets. Physical prediction is not data mining; it is prediction based on verified physical laws.
Have you ever done any of it? Have you ever solved Newton's laws to predict the trajectory of a body? Do you understand the difference between that and statistical extrapolation?
Like I said, no one knows the future. If you could use data mining to predict the future, these scientists would be retired as millionaires who had played the stock market correctly.... Fortunately, we are not talking about using data mining to predict the stock market. We are talking about using the laws of physics to predict the behavior of a physical system.
My main point is that these models are based on a correlation of temperature increase with increased CO2 and yet this doesn't seem to be the case....which makes the models in themselves suspect. This is doubly wrong, for reasons I already gave. The models do not ASSUME a correlation of CO2 and temperature, they PREDICT it, and the observational data DO show such a correlation.
I always suspect anyone that tells me they can predict the future as suspect. All of science and engineering involves prediction. It's baffling that you believe that science cannot make predictions, or that statistics somehow hinders rather than helps the ability of science to do so. You don't really seem to understand what science is, let alone what it has done or can do.
There is a study for you that contridicts the CO2 theory.
Yeah, right. It's a pile of misleading statements to fool people who don't know any of the science. I think it's quite telling that you choose to cite a self-published web page which spends half its time deriding "left wing wackos", instead of citing any scientific studies. It's quite plain that your agenda is political in nature, not honest scientific skepticism.
Water vapor amplifies existing warming trends, but it cannot cause them; it is a feedback, not a forcing. You can't increase the average water vapor content of the atmosphere without first raising its temperature — otherwise, any excess water vapor would quickly precipitate back out. That's why you need forcings like long-lived greenhouse gases, solar irradiance, etc.
It's true that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere has less of an effect the more you add, because the adsorption bands start to saturate. This gives rise to the well known logarithmic relationship (Beer-Lambert law) between CO2 concentration and its radiative forcing. But it is nowhere near full saturation, which is why the curve is logarithmic rather than asymptotically constant. This is verified in laboratory experiments, in line-by-line radiative transfer codes, and IIRC in satellite observations of the atmosphere.
It is simply ridiculous to claim that CO2 causes cooling; it is at odds with both theory and observation. CO2 and warming exist in a feedback system: external influences (such as the orbital variations which set the timing for the ice age cycle) cause warming (or cooling), and CO2 amplifies that warming or cooling: warming brings more CO2 out of the oceans which leads to more warming; cooling has the opposite effect.
It is indeed quite possible that clouds contribute a negative feedback (cooling effect) in response to global warming, but that has nothing to do with the warming which is due to CO2. It just means that clouds may slow the warming beyond CO2's effect alone. There are a number of such feedbacks, both positive and negative. (Water vapor has already been mentioned as a positive feedback.) The instrumental temperature record indicates that the net feedback is significantly positive.
Let me know if you want any citations to journal articles regarding these topics. You can start with the latest IPCC report, Working Group 1.
A fact is that there is no sound scientific data that climate change and CO2 correlate.
The very web page you cite notes the strong correlation between climate change and CO2 in the ice core record. (It goes on to claim, incorrectly, that the causation is backwards, but it admits the correlation.)
Indeed, all the studies are either inconclusive or say the opposite.
Oh really? What "studies" are those? Certainly none of the ones documented here.
Studies of icecaps indicate that before every iceage the earth's CO2 levels were much higher then at any time...
As I said, this doesn't mean that CO2 causes ice age. CO2 helps to warm out of ice ages, finishing what orbital variations and other climate forcings started. You can't get the large amount of warming observed in the ice age cycle if you ignore the greenhouse effect of the excess CO2. Eventually, the orbital cycle shifts into a phase of declining solar irradiance (well, it's more complicated than that; where the sunlight is concentrated and the extremes of variations contribute at least as much as the raw insolation itself), which causes temperatures to drop. A few centuries to a millennium after that, the CO2 starts dropping too, which hastens the cooling.
How many examples must I give you about statistics and how they can be misused before you will see the light?
Whee, statistics can be misused. So can mathematics, experiments, observations, and t
Sounds scientific basis is not what global warming has...what it has is computer modeling that supports a theory that its possible that man-kind will increase the temperature of the earth by CO2 emissions.
I love it how people toss out the phrase "computer modeling" as if that somehow makes the science uncertain.
No, global warming is based on fundamental and uncontroversial physical facts concerning the adsorption spectra of atmospheric constituents such as carbon dioxide. These facts were known long before computers as we know them even existed.
When you perform data mining on large amounts of data,
The evidence for global warming is not based on "data mining large amounts of data", it is based on trends in the observed climate, and the physics which predicts such trends.
you use something called statistics which can be scewed depending on the model you are using,
The second refuge of the skeptics... it's based on "statistics", so therefore nobody knows what's going on.
Sorry, models predict man-made global warming regardless of whether you use a simple two equation energy balance model or a supercomputer general circulation model. The existence of statistics does not change this.
To explain further, the models are based on data starting in different years, with different levels of scientific precision, and in many cases the data is not necassarilly reliable. If you start in 1810, a lot of the data from other parts of the Earth are missing.
Yes, the error bars are larger the further back in time you go. However, they are not so large that we cannot detect the warming trend.
The models that really get me are the ones that predict the weather 100 years from now based on 100 years worth of data.
Climate models do not predict weather, they predict climate, which can be thought of as "average weather".
Thats like predicting whats going to happen in the NFL next year based on what happened this year
It's more like predicting where a falling rock is going to be in 1 second based on where it was 1 second ago.
You are confusing statistical extrapolation with physical modeling. Statistically extrapolating a historical trend is less reliable then applying physical laws to predict the behavior of a system.
No one really knows the future, and although models may support something, you are still using statistics
You don't need statistics to model the future. You do need it to calculate how big the error bars on the prediction are.
which we all know that 60% of all statistics are made up.
Right, let's bring back the statistical boogeyman. Oooh, they're using statistics, they could predict anything.
Sure, there are models out there that support global warming, but there are also models that don't.
Name one.
Sound scientific basis doesn't use statistics.
What. The. Hell.
Sound science REQUIRES statistics. It's how you quantify uncertainty.
Scientific basis in this case would be if you could prove that increased CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere increases the Earth's temperature all by itself.
Like I said, the greenhouse effect is an undisputed physical fact concerning the interaction of electromagnetic waves with atoms.
There are too many factors in the science of climate that makes this causation unprovable, and in addition there is no direct evidence or science that even shows a correlation.
This is nonsense. The observed surface warming and ocean heat uptake correlate well with the radiative forcing trend, as directly predicted by both simple conservation-of-energy arguments and by more sophisticated modeling.
I also believe that in this case that the statistics used can NEVER be construed as SOUND scientific basis.
And the global warming crowd seems way too tied up in non-scientific anti-capitalism and irrational hydrocarbon and nuclear hatred. Are you still talking about scientists here? Because I seem to have missed the anti-capitalistic nuclear hatred in Geophysical Research Letters.
if you really think there are too many people in the world, then why not shoot yourself right now and stop contributing to the problem? That would only get rid of one person. It would be far more effective to shoot many other people.
In order for c to remain constant, either both of the variables that make it up must remain constant OR these two components must change in opposite directions, in order to keep c constant. That's precisely why special relativity introduced time dilation and length contraction, which by construction always balance each other to keep c constant. If you assume c is constant, as Einstein did, then you necessarily get those two counterbalancing effects.
I suggest that you sit down and learn some special relativity before trying your hand at general relativity and cosmology. Start with Einstein's light-clock derivation of time dilation, starting from an assumption of a constant speed of light for all observers.
Assuming that it is correct that the universe was very tiny at the beginning, light, even at its present "speed" could make it clear across the entire universe in a fraction of a second. Today, obviously it takes lots of time for light to propagate across the present size of the universe. So obviously, the furthest possible distance light could travel back then was much less than today. So we know that the maximum distance light could possibly travel definitely became greater. There is such a thing as gravitational time dilation, but the above has nothing to do with it. Light could travel around the early universe in less time because it had less distance to travel. You don't need to introduce time dilation to explain that aspect of the physics.
(Here I'm using "around the early universe" as a proxy for something like "across what is now the observable universe".)
If time DID change, in order to keep the c constant, how then can we have a clock to measure time in order to do reliable dating? Time is what a clock measures. Regardless of what time dilation may be occurring relative to other observers elsewhere in the universe, an Earth clock is not dilated with respect to itself: it always measures 1 Earth second per Earth second.
There are observers in the universe with different states of motion or in different gravitational fields who will measure the age of the Earth as something different than we do, due to time dilation, but that's irrelevant to what Earth clocks measure for the age of the Earth.
We measure the speed of light at a certain value today. We know that light speed varies according to the medium it is transmitted through. When light moves through the medium of space, it's speed is also determined by the property of that medium. For the third and last time, space is not a medium. The permittivity and permeability of free space (i.e., vacuum) are constants in Maxwellian electromagnetism for the same reason that c is constant in relativity. They do not vary with the geometry of spacetime. This is a mathematical fact of all relativistic field theories.
Bringing Einstein into all of this is really IRRELEVANT. It's not irrelevant when you claim "there is no law of physics that forbids the speed of light from varying", when relativity is such a law, which in fact was precisely DESIGNED for the express purpose of making the speed of light an absolute constant.
At any given point in the state of the universe, the properties of space are determined. As space changes, so will c. This is false in relativity, and is also empirically ruled out by observation to a very high precision.
When the universe was small and hot, the properties of space were vastly different that today. Consequently, the speed of light was also different, namely much faster. Again, that claim disagrees with both theory and experiment.
The CMBR and the red shift give us some clues as to how much faster c must have been. They are not, for experimental reasons which I have already mentioned about five times now and refuse to do so again. You cannot explain either the CMBR or cosmological redshift using variable speed of light theories; they are inconsistent with other evidence.
You only say that the Big Bang was completely uniform in space because science is agnostic as to whether space even existed outside the Big Bang at all. No, I say it because it's an empirical feature of our universe, which is observed to be homogeneous and isotropic at large scales. There is no direction you can point to and say "that's where the Big Bang came from".
But to say that my view is incorrect, is to say you know something about the area outside the Big Bang expansion, but you do not. The Big Bang did not occur at a specific point in space, so I have no idea what you mean by "the area outside the Big Bang expansion".
You say, "This is not a valid analogy." I respond to say, "I is not an analogy - it is a thought experiment". It's also wrong, since there is no such thing as spatially "near the Big Bang".
You say, "If you want a clock at the Big Bang to measure what the age of the universe is, you have to leave it sitting there for the entire duration of the universe." I respond to say, "In my thought experiment, was able to measure the rate of time at the start of the universe only and use that rate of time for the remainder of my observations. So I don't have to leave the clock there." You can use that "rate of time", but not for the remainder of your "observations", because it does not correspond to a time which is observable by anybody in any reference frame.
You say, "There is no observer or reference frame whose clock ticks off the 'gravitational time dilation factor'." I respond to say, "Scientists use theory and thought experiments to estimate the time certain events (i.e. start of the laws of physics, etc.) occurred during the Big Bang, despite the fact that no one observed it." No, you miss the point . I'm not complaining that nobody was around at the Big Bang. I'm pointing out that there is no observer even in principle whose clock measures the "time" you have defined.
In other words, you're repeating Schroeder's fallacy. You've redefined "time" away from something that is physically measurable by a clock to a number you calculate by some arbitrary mathematical procedure. You are free to do that, of course, but it's semantics, not physics.
As the big bang propagates out, and in time planets form, the observer holding Clock B measures six days as occurring for the near-center-of-Big-Bang-Time. At the same time the observer near the center of the Big Bang measures that 15 billion years has occurred with far-from-center-time. You're also making the mistake of thinking of the Big Bang as having a center, with observers "close to the Big Bang" being in a deep gravitational well, and observers far from the Big Bang being in a weak well.
This is not how Big Bang cosmology works. The Big Bang was completely uniform in space; it occurred everywhere at once. It was not a point of matter which exploded outward into empty space, forming a boundary of exploding matter. Rather, it was the expansion of all points in space away from each other. The gravitational field at one point in space is the same as the gravitational field at any other point in space (except for local perturbations due to individual galaxies), at any given cosmological time.
Gravitational time dilation HAS been experienced by an observer with real clocks. As I said before, I know what gravitational time dilation is.
As I also said before, a time dilation factor is not how you compute the proper time elapsed according to any observer.
If you want to figure out how much time is measured by, say, a ground observer or by an airplane observer, you integrate proper time along their worldline.
Place a clock (lets call it Clock A) next to the big bang. To an observer holding the clock, Clock A is ticking at a standard rate. But to an observer far away it is ticking very slowly. This is not a valid analogy. If you want a clock at the Big Bang to measure what the age of the universe is, you have to leave it sitting there for the entire duration of the universe. If you do that, you get 15 billion years. You can't just take its readout and multiply it by the time dilation factor and claim that it corresponds to the time that any observer measures. An actual observer present at the Big Bang will measure 15 billion years as his clock ticks from then to the present.
There is no observer or reference frame whose clock ticks off the "gravitational time dilation factor".
The first part of my response disappeared:
Concerning the gravitational time dilation pertaining to a black hole, no one can confirm that your claim regarding it is true. If that's your defense, it's a very weak defense. We're not talking about whether general relativity is right. We're talking merely about what general relativity itself says. Schroeder makes a claim within the framework of GR. That claim can be addressed within GR, regardless of whether black holes exist in our universe, whether there was a Big Bang, etc. It's just a question of what the theory says about time. Schroeder makes a mistake which is wrong when applied to what GR says about the Big Bang, and it's also wrong when applied to what GR says about black holes.
You seem to be saying that time which occurs during time dilation should never be used. You qualify this by saying it should never be used for "proper time". Okay, but Schroeder never claims that "proper time" is what is being used. Proper time is the ONLY quantity that can be used, if you're talking about what any observer in any reference frame will ever measure. "Proper time" is defined to be the amount of time that an observer measures.
What Schroeder has done is make up some new quantity, which he calls time, but which does not correspond to anything that anyone actually measures with a clock.
So you make it seem that gravitational time dilation can never be used for any purpose. Time dilation factors are good for calculating redshifts between events. They are not good for calculating the amount of time experienced by a given observer, except in simple cases where you can infer the proper time from the redshift factor.
Alternate INTERPRETATIONS of the red shift indicate that there could have been a large drop in the speed of light from the distant past. I have already given about five reasons why that's not the case, which you have ignored. So far you have not advanced any interpretation which is consistent with the evidence. You've ignored half the evidence I provided, and you've even provided "refutations" of evidence I've mentioned when you don't even know what evidence I was referring to!
ALL of Einstein's equations work EXACTLY the same, no matter WHAT value you put for the speed of light. He may have reflected the common thought that c was invariant, but none of his math REQUIRES this constancy. If you replace all the c's in his equations with functions of space and time, c(x,y,z,t), then you get a set of equations, but THOSE EQUATIONS ARE NOT THE EQUATIONS OF RELATIVITY. The equations of relativity have a c which does not depend on x, y, z, or t. That is the mathematical content of Einstein's second postulate. He said that ALL inertial observers measure the exact same number. He really meant ALL inertial observers.
It doesn't matter when or where they are or how fast they're moving. They all measure the SAME number. Whizzing through the solar system, floating in intergalactic space, ejected from a supernova in the early universe: all observers measure the same speed of light.
That's the POINT of relativity. That's what made the theory DIFFERENT from Newtonian theory, which did allow the speed of light to vary according to time, location, or observer.
The same is true of the Lorentz transforms and Maxwell's math. This is false. If you put a variable c into the Lorentz transformations, you no longer get the SO(3,1) Lorentz symmetry that all relativistic theories assume.
There is NOTHING in any physics that requires the speed of light to be constant. It's Einstein's second postulate of relativity. Period. All relativistic theories require it. You can change the equations if you want, but you won't get the theory that Einstein and everybody else call "relativity".
Changing the numbers you plug into equations, NEVER change the equations themselves. Changing c from a numerical constant to a function c(x,y,z,t) does change the equations. The equation ct, where c is a numerical constant, is not the same as the equation (x^2-y^3+sin(z)*e^t) t, where c(x,y,z,t) = x^2-y^3+sin(z)*e^t is a function.
I give up. Until you admit that you are talking about non-relativistic theories, there is no point in continuing this discussion. I can't deal with invincible ignorance. Pick up a bloody textbook and read what Einstein assumed in order to get relativity. Schutz is a good one because it covers both special and general. Hell, just read Wikipedia!
Concerning the gravitational time dilation pertaining to a black hole, no one can confirm that your claim regarding it is true.
You seem to be saying that time which occurs during time dilation should never be used. You qualify this by saying it should never be used for "proper time". Okay, but Schroeder never claims that "proper time" is what is being used. Proper time is the ONLY quantity that can be used, if you're talking about what any observer in any reference frame will ever measure. "Proper time" is defined to be the amount of time that an observer measures.
What Schroeder has done is make up some new quantity, which he calls time, but which does not correspond to anything that anyone actually measures with a clock.
So you make it seem that gravitational time dilation can never be used for any purpose.
Time dilation factors are good for calculating redshifts between events. They are not good for calculating the amount of time experienced by a given observer, except in simple cases where you can infer the proper time from the redshift factor.
Basically it seems like you are saying that time which has been dilated is invalid for any form of measurement.
I'm not saying that time dilation doesn't exist, I'm saying that calculating a time dilation ratio doesn't tell you how much time is elapsed by any observer's clock.
Note that Schroeder never actually specifies any observer who measures the universe's age to be much less than the Earth age of 15 billion years. Did you ever wonder why? It's because there is no such universal class of observers in a FLRW spacetime. This is a fact of geometry.
I don't claim to have any credentials which would impress but Schroeder earned his PhD in Physics from MIT where he taught as professor.
Do you think that's something that magically confers upon him knowledge of relativity? He didn't teach relativity, relativistic gravitation, cosmology, astrophysics, or anything related. He's never worked in the field. His background is in nuclear physics. The closest he ever came to astronomy is studying radon on the Moon.
Look, this is very simple. If you want to redefine the word "time", you can. You can define words however you want. That's what Schroeder is doing. But if you believe that time is something that is measured by some observer's clock, that in relativity is called "proper time", and Schroeder hasn't calculated it.
What he calculates is ratios of coordinate time. Not only does that not correspond to the amount of time measured in the reference frame of any observer, it also depends on what coordinate system you choose. By analogy, it's like choosing a "distance" which depends on whether you're working in Cartesian or polar coordinates; it's physically incoherent. Now, FLRW geometries do single out a unique way of separating spacetime into space and time, and a unique set of observers who measure that time (cosmological observers who measure cosmological time). So you can chose to work in that "preferred" coordinate systems (generic spacetimes don't have any preferred coordinates). But then you're back to the point that the time measured by those observers according to that coordinate (which is the same as their proper time, by construction) is 15 billion years.
An observer who is "at rest" in space measures the same time as us, because we are also "at rest" in space. In order to measure a different time, such an observer has to be moving, which implies moving in some direction at some speed. You can pick a direction and a speed to make the proper time work out to anything you like (less than 15 billion years), but it is an arbitrary choice.
If you support Schroeder's calculation, then you either believe that:
1. "Time" should not be defined as something measured by the clock of some observer.
or: 2. Schroeder's calculation gives the time measured by some observer.
It's called RELATIVITY because it's relative to the speed of light. It holds true, not matter WHAT the speed of light is. Light speed doesn't have to be constant nor absolute. Good grief.
EINSTEIN'S SECOND POSTULATE STATES the speed of light is constant!!
You can plug any number you want in for c and relativity will work, SO LONG AS THAT NUMBER IS CONSTANT.
What causes the speed of light to be the particular NUMBER is not fundamental to light itself, but the nature of whatever it traverses, whether that be matter of space. I'm sorry, you're not talking about relativity. Period.
The speed of light is the fundamental VARIABLE in any relativistic field theory. It is only a NUMBER, not a fundamental law unto itself. As I said, you can change the NUMBER to any value you want, but that number is a CONSTANT, which means that whatever value it happens to have, that value does not change from point to point in space, or from time to time.
These numbers have not changed a lot since we have been measuring them, but that have changed a little. They have changed a LOT since the beginning of time. I have already pointed out that this claim is contradicted by massive amounts of evidence, which you have ignored (including my entire post about Oklo, atomic spectral shifts, etc.)
Rest assured, all of physics, including Einstein concepts, STILL work the same, except as they relate to time measurements. No. If you allow c to vary with space and time, you break Lorentz invariance and you no longer have relativity.
There is simply NO known law of physics that mandates that certain numerical relationships be forever invariant. Yes, there is: relativity.
Again here, the assumptions among others, (beliefs) are that gravity is the only force involved in supernovas. No, that is not an assumption!! It is manifestly false. I strongly doubt you even know what I was referring to. Doesn't stop you from confidently charging it with more nonsense, though. But please, explain to me what YOU think supernova light curves have to do with it.
Exactly right! So if you use the atomic clock to measure c, then you will never measure a change, when c changes, because they cancel. No, that is the exact OPPOSITE of what I said. If c changes, we DO measure a shift in frequency.
This has nothing to with emotions or belief. Yeah, keep telling yourself that. I bet you tell yourself that all of the creationist nonsense you buy into is based on cold facts and logic.
We see these changes in science and other areas of life. Fallacy of generalization.
Just because some things change, does not imply that all things change. That is subject to experimental confirmation or refutation. There is no experimental evidence that physical constants have changed. Scientists are still looking, but as yet, there is no evidence.
You change with time. Even rocks and mountains change. Change is part of life and science is part of life. Why do you insist that anything MUST stay constant over time? I didn't say that anything "must" stay constant over time. I said that the evidence indicates that the speed of light has been constant over time, to within the limits of our instruments. I also explicitly said that scientists should be, and are, investigating the possibility of such changes. That doesn't change the fact that there haven't been any that we can yet measure. And it certainly doesn't change the fact that we have ruled out enormous changes that would make the universe appear only 6000 years old.
P.S. You're citing outdated mistakes. Setterfield doesn't use a squared cosecant curve anymore. He's made up a new curve to try to save his theory (which still runs afoul of the same objections). His latest appears to be some piecewise hodgepodge of several different curves glued together at arbitrary times, from what I can tell.
This has nothing to do with relativity. It has EVERYTHING to do with relativity. The constancy of the speed of light is a mathematical postulate of relativity. The entire theory is based off that assumption.
Relativity is expressed in terms of c, but c in turn depends on the properties of space. The value of c is not an independent constant, but depends on space itself. I don't know what theory you're thinking of, but it sure isn't one compatible with any of Einstein's theory.
It also has a time unit, meters/second. This means if time itself is not constant, then c must also change. No, it doesn't mean that. In fact, the whole point of special relativity is that time dilation occurs BECAUSE c is constant.
Einstein holds true, no matter what, even if c is slower or faster, relativity applies directly to the property of space as indirectly manifested by the speed of light in free space. as long as that value is constant in space and time. As soon as you have a c which varies throughout space or time, you're not dealing with relativity anymore.
Besides the electrical properties of space there is also its residual energy, known as zero point energy. As I already explained to you, in Maxwellian electromagnetism the electrical properties of space are ALSO constant, and the zero point energy (in the form of the comsological constant) does not influence the speed of light.
The properties of space determine the speed of light, not the other way around. That's wrong too. The speed of light is the fundamental constant in any relativistic field theory, including general relativity, Maxwellian electromagnetism, any relativistic quantum field theory, etc. That's why the speed of propagation of all of those different fields always has the same value, c: because it's a fundamental property of the spacetime in which these fields live.
Not at all. Among other things, properties of space are related to the average density of matter within it. The speed of light is independent of the curvature of space.
As with sound, so too light goes faster through denser SPACE, Space doesn't have a density, and light travels at the same speed everywhere in space, as measured by any inertial observer anywhere.
The known, observed red shift is commonly INTERPRETED to be due to the doppler effect. If this shift is instead attributed to the slowing of light, then a curve can be calculated that shows light speed decayed in a cosecant squared decay. Cosmological redshift cannot be interpreted as just variable speed of light; like its "tired light" cousins, the VSL explanation falls afoul of supernova light curves.
If over many measurements there is a steady drift in a particular direction, then even though there are large errors in the individual measurements, the general trend of the data must be real. You must be joking.
This conclusion neglects (a) statistical significance (large noise produces spurious "trends"), and (b) systematic bias.
Since 1945 or whatever, we have used the atomic clock to measure c. If your ruler changes its calibration at the same rate as the quantity you want to measure, you of course will see no change. Except atomic clock frequencies are sensitive to changes in c. So we're back to the speed of light suddenly becoming constant in 1945.
If a change over such a microscopic segment of time is too small to measure, does that mean we can now assume (believe) that it never occurred over these vast spans of time? We have plenty of other evidence for what the speed of light was prior to its direct measurement, as I have pointed out.
We humans don't like change, especially unpredictable or catastrophic change that shakes up our belief system. Nothing in nature is as constant as change. Yes, I know it's emotionally important for you to believe that everything changes, and maybe by repeatedly asserting it you think you can make it be true, but the physical evidence says otherwise.
That would be true if "the vacuum" were an empty nothing, as it was thought of long ago. Space itself has definite electromagnetic properties that determine the propagation of radiation. Just ask any antenna designer. Those properties are the permeability and permittivity of free space, which, like the speed of light, are CONSTANT in vacuum.
We also know that these properties of space are affected by the density of matter in the Universe. Not in vacuum, no.
In a medium, the speed of light is slower than in vacuum. But that doesn't change radioactive decay rates, atomic structure, or anything else like a change in the vacuum speed of light would. The constant which enters into these equations is c, the speed of light in vacuum, not the effective speed of light in a medium.
Therefore the speed of light CANNOT be constant, if the properties of space change. No. In general relativity, the speed of light in vacuum, as measured in any inertial frame, is constant. This is true everywhere in spacetime regardless of the curvature or how the geometry of space changes.
If you want to argue that there is experimental evidence that general relativity is wrong, feel free. But don't claim that there is some theoretical reason why the speed of light cannot be constant, because according to our existing theories, it is constant.
One of the properties of space also crucial to this is the residual energy present at absolute zero temperature. That's the cosmological constant. In theories in which this varies (quintessence), the vacuum speed of light is ALSO constant in space and time.
Since the Universe as a whole is still expanding, the properties of space are still changing slightly. This is reflected in the early measurements of the speed of light. These were consistently faster by a small amount, exceeding the possible error bars. If you look at the measurements, you see them become essentially constant in time post 1945. You are basically proposing that the expansion of the universe underwent a radical change circa 1945. 1945 is also when precision measurements of the speed of light started. This is not a coincidence. The vastly more plausible explanation is that early experimenters were overconfident in their error bars. Particularly considering all the other constraints on the variation of the speed of light; see my other post.
Why should it? Because they all depend on the speed of light, which is what you yourself are arguing.
Basically what is changing here is Planck's "Constant" h, which is inversely related to c. No. Planck's constant is a physical constant which is independent of the speed of light; varying the speed of light does not do anything to Planck's constant.
Really, though, what we care about are dimensionless constants like the fine structure constant.
There are plenty of experimental constraints on how much the speed of light could have changed. One of them is the very radioactive decay that you claim to be explaining away; the Oklo natural reactor bounds changes in the fine structure constant over the last ~2 billion years to less than 1 part in 10^7 or something like that. This idea goes back to the 1970s or so.
The derivation does NOT assume uniformity of the speed of light in time; that's the point of the analysis.
Now, you can play with the speed of light and Planck's constant at the same time in a way such as to make the fine structure constant remain the same, to be consistent with the results showing an unchanging fine structure constant. But that wouldn't get you the radioactive decay results you seek. The radioactively dated age of the Oklo reactor is still ~2 billion years, not 6000, and that's AFTER accounting for possibly variable c (as its inferred age depends on the fine structure constant, not c directly).
Other constraints are astronomical, looking at the atomic spectra from distant stars and galaxies.
Variation in physical constants is a neat idea, but it breaks down once you start calculating things. (I notice you haven't tried, which is the only thing allowing you to retain faith in it.) It's usually possible to juggle the constants to be consistent with one type of phenomenon. But because the constants affect different phenomena in different ways, you run into trouble as soon as you try to be consistent with all known phenomena. e.g., you might get nuclear decay right, but atomic spectra wrong.
We humans like the idea of the uniformly predictable. We are innately uncomfortable with the idea of change, especially fundamental, deep change. [...] Keep in this in mind: In nature, nothing is as constant as change. That's a nice slogan, but the constancy of the speed of light is not an assumption, it is a conclusion based on observational evidence.
Scientists still look for variations in the fundamental constants, as they should. But the experimental bounds on this variation exclude the very large changes you are suggesting; any such potential variation is much too small to get the effects you want to get. As another poster noted, even Answers in Genesis admits that creationists should avoid this argument.
I do know that Einstein originally got wrong the prediction for gravitational light deflection by the Sun (he got the Newtonian value, half of the correct GR value). But he fixed that later, and it was well before anybody had actually measured it (the aforementioned 1919 Eddington experiment).
I think he also made some false steps where his theory didn't agree with known Newtonian physics, but that doesn't really count. We're talking about whether it was designed around non-Newtonian observations that were used as tests of it.
Can't remember any other examples. The place to look is Relativity and Geometry by Torretti, but I don't have access to my copy right now.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, well, that depends on where you live. If you like higher sea levels and don't care about anyone else who gets flooded, fine, but there are certain ethical quandries involved in geoengineering the climate to your liking at the detriment of others.
And no, I wouldn't bet on precipitation doing what you want. Regional precipitation projections aren't as reliable as global temperature projections, but climate models are leaning towards decreased precipitation in Australia, particularly in the south. I don't see how you're getting giant moderating bodies of water for "more temperature weather", either.
http://www.mruzik.com/CO2.html
There is a study for you that contridicts the CO2 theory.
Yeah, right. It's a pile of misleading statements to fool people who don't know any of the science. I think it's quite telling that you choose to cite a self-published web page which spends half its time deriding "left wing wackos", instead of citing any scientific studies. It's quite plain that your agenda is political in nature, not honest scientific skepticism.
Water vapor amplifies existing warming trends, but it cannot cause them; it is a feedback, not a forcing. You can't increase the average water vapor content of the atmosphere without first raising its temperature — otherwise, any excess water vapor would quickly precipitate back out. That's why you need forcings like long-lived greenhouse gases, solar irradiance, etc.
It's true that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere has less of an effect the more you add, because the adsorption bands start to saturate. This gives rise to the well known logarithmic relationship (Beer-Lambert law) between CO2 concentration and its radiative forcing. But it is nowhere near full saturation, which is why the curve is logarithmic rather than asymptotically constant. This is verified in laboratory experiments, in line-by-line radiative transfer codes, and IIRC in satellite observations of the atmosphere.
It is simply ridiculous to claim that CO2 causes cooling; it is at odds with both theory and observation. CO2 and warming exist in a feedback system: external influences (such as the orbital variations which set the timing for the ice age cycle) cause warming (or cooling), and CO2 amplifies that warming or cooling: warming brings more CO2 out of the oceans which leads to more warming; cooling has the opposite effect.
It is indeed quite possible that clouds contribute a negative feedback (cooling effect) in response to global warming, but that has nothing to do with the warming which is due to CO2. It just means that clouds may slow the warming beyond CO2's effect alone. There are a number of such feedbacks, both positive and negative. (Water vapor has already been mentioned as a positive feedback.) The instrumental temperature record indicates that the net feedback is significantly positive.
Let me know if you want any citations to journal articles regarding these topics. You can start with the latest IPCC report, Working Group 1.
A fact is that there is no sound scientific data that climate change and CO2 correlate.
The very web page you cite notes the strong correlation between climate change and CO2 in the ice core record. (It goes on to claim, incorrectly, that the causation is backwards, but it admits the correlation.)
Indeed, all the studies are either inconclusive or say the opposite.
Oh really? What "studies" are those? Certainly none of the ones documented here.
Studies of icecaps indicate that before every iceage the earth's CO2 levels were much higher then at any time...
As I said, this doesn't mean that CO2 causes ice age. CO2 helps to warm out of ice ages, finishing what orbital variations and other climate forcings started. You can't get the large amount of warming observed in the ice age cycle if you ignore the greenhouse effect of the excess CO2. Eventually, the orbital cycle shifts into a phase of declining solar irradiance (well, it's more complicated than that; where the sunlight is concentrated and the extremes of variations contribute at least as much as the raw insolation itself), which causes temperatures to drop. A few centuries to a millennium after that, the CO2 starts dropping too, which hastens the cooling.
How many examples must I give you about statistics and how they can be misused before you will see the light?
Whee, statistics can be misused. So can mathematics, experiments, observations, and t
Sounds scientific basis is not what global warming has...what it has is computer modeling that supports a theory that its possible that man-kind will increase the temperature of the earth by CO2 emissions.
I love it how people toss out the phrase "computer modeling" as if that somehow makes the science uncertain.
No, global warming is based on fundamental and uncontroversial physical facts concerning the adsorption spectra of atmospheric constituents such as carbon dioxide. These facts were known long before computers as we know them even existed.
When you perform data mining on large amounts of data,
The evidence for global warming is not based on "data mining large amounts of data", it is based on trends in the observed climate, and the physics which predicts such trends.
you use something called statistics which can be scewed depending on the model you are using,
The second refuge of the skeptics ... it's based on "statistics", so therefore nobody knows what's going on.
Sorry, models predict man-made global warming regardless of whether you use a simple two equation energy balance model or a supercomputer general circulation model. The existence of statistics does not change this.
To explain further, the models are based on data starting in different years, with different levels of scientific precision, and in many cases the data is not necassarilly reliable. If you start in 1810, a lot of the data from other parts of the Earth are missing.
Yes, the error bars are larger the further back in time you go. However, they are not so large that we cannot detect the warming trend.
The models that really get me are the ones that predict the weather 100 years from now based on 100 years worth of data.
Climate models do not predict weather, they predict climate, which can be thought of as "average weather".
Thats like predicting whats going to happen in the NFL next year based on what happened this year
It's more like predicting where a falling rock is going to be in 1 second based on where it was 1 second ago.
You are confusing statistical extrapolation with physical modeling. Statistically extrapolating a historical trend is less reliable then applying physical laws to predict the behavior of a system.
No one really knows the future, and although models may support something, you are still using statistics
You don't need statistics to model the future. You do need it to calculate how big the error bars on the prediction are.
which we all know that 60% of all statistics are made up.
Right, let's bring back the statistical boogeyman. Oooh, they're using statistics, they could predict anything.
Sure, there are models out there that support global warming, but there are also models that don't.
Name one.
Sound scientific basis doesn't use statistics.
What. The. Hell.
Sound science REQUIRES statistics. It's how you quantify uncertainty.
Scientific basis in this case would be if you could prove that increased CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere increases the Earth's temperature all by itself.
Like I said, the greenhouse effect is an undisputed physical fact concerning the interaction of electromagnetic waves with atoms.
There are too many factors in the science of climate that makes this causation unprovable, and in addition there is no direct evidence or science that even shows a correlation.
This is nonsense. The observed surface warming and ocean heat uptake correlate well with the radiative forcing trend, as directly predicted by both simple conservation-of-energy arguments and by more sophisticated modeling.
I also believe that in this case that the statistics used can NEVER be construed as SOUND scientific basis.
T
But the real question is, how much more black could it be? And the answer is none. None more black.
Yeah, with a little elbow grease and a 4600 pound, 4 kilowatt magnet. Which most of us have lying around at home.
The autodoc didn't grow his head back. It grew his body back, starting from only a head.
I suggest that you sit down and learn some special relativity before trying your hand at general relativity and cosmology. Start with Einstein's light-clock derivation of time dilation, starting from an assumption of a constant speed of light for all observers. Assuming that it is correct that the universe was very tiny at the beginning, light, even at its present "speed" could make it clear across the entire universe in a fraction of a second. Today, obviously it takes lots of time for light to propagate across the present size of the universe. So obviously, the furthest possible distance light could travel back then was much less than today. So we know that the maximum distance light could possibly travel definitely became greater. There is such a thing as gravitational time dilation, but the above has nothing to do with it. Light could travel around the early universe in less time because it had less distance to travel. You don't need to introduce time dilation to explain that aspect of the physics.
(Here I'm using "around the early universe" as a proxy for something like "across what is now the observable universe".) If time DID change, in order to keep the c constant, how then can we have a clock to measure time in order to do reliable dating? Time is what a clock measures. Regardless of what time dilation may be occurring relative to other observers elsewhere in the universe, an Earth clock is not dilated with respect to itself: it always measures 1 Earth second per Earth second.
There are observers in the universe with different states of motion or in different gravitational fields who will measure the age of the Earth as something different than we do, due to time dilation, but that's irrelevant to what Earth clocks measure for the age of the Earth.
In other words, you're repeating Schroeder's fallacy. You've redefined "time" away from something that is physically measurable by a clock to a number you calculate by some arbitrary mathematical procedure. You are free to do that, of course, but it's semantics, not physics.
This is not how Big Bang cosmology works. The Big Bang was completely uniform in space; it occurred everywhere at once. It was not a point of matter which exploded outward into empty space, forming a boundary of exploding matter. Rather, it was the expansion of all points in space away from each other. The gravitational field at one point in space is the same as the gravitational field at any other point in space (except for local perturbations due to individual galaxies), at any given cosmological time.
As I also said before, a time dilation factor is not how you compute the proper time elapsed according to any observer.
If you want to figure out how much time is measured by, say, a ground observer or by an airplane observer, you integrate proper time along their worldline. Place a clock (lets call it Clock A) next to the big bang. To an observer holding the clock, Clock A is ticking at a standard rate. But to an observer far away it is ticking very slowly. This is not a valid analogy. If you want a clock at the Big Bang to measure what the age of the universe is, you have to leave it sitting there for the entire duration of the universe. If you do that, you get 15 billion years. You can't just take its readout and multiply it by the time dilation factor and claim that it corresponds to the time that any observer measures. An actual observer present at the Big Bang will measure 15 billion years as his clock ticks from then to the present.
There is no observer or reference frame whose clock ticks off the "gravitational time dilation factor".
What Schroeder has done is make up some new quantity, which he calls time, but which does not correspond to anything that anyone actually measures with a clock. So you make it seem that gravitational time dilation can never be used for any purpose. Time dilation factors are good for calculating redshifts between events. They are not good for calculating the amount of time experienced by a given observer, except in simple cases where you can infer the proper time from the redshift factor.
[... rest of post is as before
It doesn't matter when or where they are or how fast they're moving. They all measure the SAME number. Whizzing through the solar system, floating in intergalactic space, ejected from a supernova in the early universe: all observers measure the same speed of light.
That's the POINT of relativity. That's what made the theory DIFFERENT from Newtonian theory, which did allow the speed of light to vary according to time, location, or observer. The same is true of the Lorentz transforms and Maxwell's math. This is false. If you put a variable c into the Lorentz transformations, you no longer get the SO(3,1) Lorentz symmetry that all relativistic theories assume. There is NOTHING in any physics that requires the speed of light to be constant. It's Einstein's second postulate of relativity. Period. All relativistic theories require it. You can change the equations if you want, but you won't get the theory that Einstein and everybody else call "relativity". Changing the numbers you plug into equations, NEVER change the equations themselves. Changing c from a numerical constant to a function c(x,y,z,t) does change the equations. The equation ct, where c is a numerical constant, is not the same as the equation (x^2-y^3+sin(z)*e^t) t, where c(x,y,z,t) = x^2-y^3+sin(z)*e^t is a function.
I give up. Until you admit that you are talking about non-relativistic theories, there is no point in continuing this discussion. I can't deal with invincible ignorance. Pick up a bloody textbook and read what Einstein assumed in order to get relativity. Schutz is a good one because it covers both special and general. Hell, just read Wikipedia!
Concerning the gravitational time dilation pertaining to a black hole, no one can confirm that your claim regarding it is true.
You seem to be saying that time which occurs during time dilation should never be used. You qualify this by saying it should never be used for "proper time". Okay, but Schroeder never claims that "proper time" is what is being used. Proper time is the ONLY quantity that can be used, if you're talking about what any observer in any reference frame will ever measure. "Proper time" is defined to be the amount of time that an observer measures.
What Schroeder has done is make up some new quantity, which he calls time, but which does not correspond to anything that anyone actually measures with a clock.
So you make it seem that gravitational time dilation can never be used for any purpose.
Time dilation factors are good for calculating redshifts between events. They are not good for calculating the amount of time experienced by a given observer, except in simple cases where you can infer the proper time from the redshift factor.
Basically it seems like you are saying that time which has been dilated is invalid for any form of measurement.
I'm not saying that time dilation doesn't exist, I'm saying that calculating a time dilation ratio doesn't tell you how much time is elapsed by any observer's clock.
Note that Schroeder never actually specifies any observer who measures the universe's age to be much less than the Earth age of 15 billion years. Did you ever wonder why? It's because there is no such universal class of observers in a FLRW spacetime. This is a fact of geometry.
I don't claim to have any credentials which would impress but Schroeder earned his PhD in Physics from MIT where he taught as professor.
Do you think that's something that magically confers upon him knowledge of relativity? He didn't teach relativity, relativistic gravitation, cosmology, astrophysics, or anything related. He's never worked in the field. His background is in nuclear physics. The closest he ever came to astronomy is studying radon on the Moon.
Look, this is very simple. If you want to redefine the word "time", you can. You can define words however you want. That's what Schroeder is doing. But if you believe that time is something that is measured by some observer's clock, that in relativity is called "proper time", and Schroeder hasn't calculated it.
What he calculates is ratios of coordinate time. Not only does that not correspond to the amount of time measured in the reference frame of any observer, it also depends on what coordinate system you choose. By analogy, it's like choosing a "distance" which depends on whether you're working in Cartesian or polar coordinates; it's physically incoherent. Now, FLRW geometries do single out a unique way of separating spacetime into space and time, and a unique set of observers who measure that time (cosmological observers who measure cosmological time). So you can chose to work in that "preferred" coordinate systems (generic spacetimes don't have any preferred coordinates). But then you're back to the point that the time measured by those observers according to that coordinate (which is the same as their proper time, by construction) is 15 billion years.
An observer who is "at rest" in space measures the same time as us, because we are also "at rest" in space. In order to measure a different time, such an observer has to be moving, which implies moving in some direction at some speed. You can pick a direction and a speed to make the proper time work out to anything you like (less than 15 billion years), but it is an arbitrary choice.
If you support Schroeder's calculation, then you either believe that:
1. "Time" should not be defined as something measured by the clock of some observer.
or:
2. Schroeder's calculation gives the time measured by some observer.
If you believ
EINSTEIN'S SECOND POSTULATE STATES the speed of light is constant!!
You can plug any number you want in for c and relativity will work, SO LONG AS THAT NUMBER IS CONSTANT. What causes the speed of light to be the particular NUMBER is not fundamental to light itself, but the nature of whatever it traverses, whether that be matter of space. I'm sorry, you're not talking about relativity. Period. The speed of light is the fundamental VARIABLE in any relativistic field theory. It is only a NUMBER, not a fundamental law unto itself. As I said, you can change the NUMBER to any value you want, but that number is a CONSTANT, which means that whatever value it happens to have, that value does not change from point to point in space, or from time to time. These numbers have not changed a lot since we have been measuring them, but that have changed a little. They have changed a LOT since the beginning of time. I have already pointed out that this claim is contradicted by massive amounts of evidence, which you have ignored (including my entire post about Oklo, atomic spectral shifts, etc.) Rest assured, all of physics, including Einstein concepts, STILL work the same, except as they relate to time measurements. No. If you allow c to vary with space and time, you break Lorentz invariance and you no longer have relativity. There is simply NO known law of physics that mandates that certain numerical relationships be forever invariant. Yes, there is: relativity. Again here, the assumptions among others, (beliefs) are that gravity is the only force involved in supernovas. No, that is not an assumption!! It is manifestly false. I strongly doubt you even know what I was referring to. Doesn't stop you from confidently charging it with more nonsense, though. But please, explain to me what YOU think supernova light curves have to do with it. Exactly right! So if you use the atomic clock to measure c, then you will never measure a change, when c changes, because they cancel. No, that is the exact OPPOSITE of what I said. If c changes, we DO measure a shift in frequency. This has nothing to with emotions or belief. Yeah, keep telling yourself that. I bet you tell yourself that all of the creationist nonsense you buy into is based on cold facts and logic. We see these changes in science and other areas of life. Fallacy of generalization.
Just because some things change, does not imply that all things change. That is subject to experimental confirmation or refutation. There is no experimental evidence that physical constants have changed. Scientists are still looking, but as yet, there is no evidence. You change with time. Even rocks and mountains change. Change is part of life and science is part of life. Why do you insist that anything MUST stay constant over time? I didn't say that anything "must" stay constant over time. I said that the evidence indicates that the speed of light has been constant over time, to within the limits of our instruments. I also explicitly said that scientists should be, and are, investigating the possibility of such changes. That doesn't change the fact that there haven't been any that we can yet measure. And it certainly doesn't change the fact that we have ruled out enormous changes that would make the universe appear only 6000 years old.
P.S. You're citing outdated mistakes. Setterfield doesn't use a squared cosecant curve anymore. He's made up a new curve to try to save his theory (which still runs afoul of the same objections). His latest appears to be some piecewise hodgepodge of several different curves glued together at arbitrary times, from what I can tell.
This conclusion neglects (a) statistical significance (large noise produces spurious "trends"), and (b) systematic bias. Since 1945 or whatever, we have used the atomic clock to measure c. If your ruler changes its calibration at the same rate as the quantity you want to measure, you of course will see no change. Except atomic clock frequencies are sensitive to changes in c. So we're back to the speed of light suddenly becoming constant in 1945. If a change over such a microscopic segment of time is too small to measure, does that mean we can now assume (believe) that it never occurred over these vast spans of time? We have plenty of other evidence for what the speed of light was prior to its direct measurement, as I have pointed out. We humans don't like change, especially unpredictable or catastrophic change that shakes up our belief system. Nothing in nature is as constant as change. Yes, I know it's emotionally important for you to believe that everything changes, and maybe by repeatedly asserting it you think you can make it be true, but the physical evidence says otherwise.
In a medium, the speed of light is slower than in vacuum. But that doesn't change radioactive decay rates, atomic structure, or anything else like a change in the vacuum speed of light would. The constant which enters into these equations is c, the speed of light in vacuum, not the effective speed of light in a medium. Therefore the speed of light CANNOT be constant, if the properties of space change. No. In general relativity, the speed of light in vacuum, as measured in any inertial frame, is constant. This is true everywhere in spacetime regardless of the curvature or how the geometry of space changes.
If you want to argue that there is experimental evidence that general relativity is wrong, feel free. But don't claim that there is some theoretical reason why the speed of light cannot be constant, because according to our existing theories, it is constant. One of the properties of space also crucial to this is the residual energy present at absolute zero temperature. That's the cosmological constant. In theories in which this varies (quintessence), the vacuum speed of light is ALSO constant in space and time. Since the Universe as a whole is still expanding, the properties of space are still changing slightly. This is reflected in the early measurements of the speed of light. These were consistently faster by a small amount, exceeding the possible error bars. If you look at the measurements, you see them become essentially constant in time post 1945. You are basically proposing that the expansion of the universe underwent a radical change circa 1945. 1945 is also when precision measurements of the speed of light started. This is not a coincidence. The vastly more plausible explanation is that early experimenters were overconfident in their error bars. Particularly considering all the other constraints on the variation of the speed of light; see my other post.
Really, though, what we care about are dimensionless constants like the fine structure constant.
There are plenty of experimental constraints on how much the speed of light could have changed. One of them is the very radioactive decay that you claim to be explaining away; the Oklo natural reactor bounds changes in the fine structure constant over the last ~2 billion years to less than 1 part in 10^7 or something like that. This idea goes back to the 1970s or so.
The derivation does NOT assume uniformity of the speed of light in time; that's the point of the analysis.
Now, you can play with the speed of light and Planck's constant at the same time in a way such as to make the fine structure constant remain the same, to be consistent with the results showing an unchanging fine structure constant. But that wouldn't get you the radioactive decay results you seek. The radioactively dated age of the Oklo reactor is still ~2 billion years, not 6000, and that's AFTER accounting for possibly variable c (as its inferred age depends on the fine structure constant, not c directly).
Other constraints are astronomical, looking at the atomic spectra from distant stars and galaxies.
Variation in physical constants is a neat idea, but it breaks down once you start calculating things. (I notice you haven't tried, which is the only thing allowing you to retain faith in it.) It's usually possible to juggle the constants to be consistent with one type of phenomenon. But because the constants affect different phenomena in different ways, you run into trouble as soon as you try to be consistent with all known phenomena. e.g., you might get nuclear decay right, but atomic spectra wrong. We humans like the idea of the uniformly predictable. We are innately uncomfortable with the idea of change, especially fundamental, deep change. [...] Keep in this in mind: In nature, nothing is as constant as change. That's a nice slogan, but the constancy of the speed of light is not an assumption, it is a conclusion based on observational evidence.
Scientists still look for variations in the fundamental constants, as they should. But the experimental bounds on this variation exclude the very large changes you are suggesting; any such potential variation is much too small to get the effects you want to get. As another poster noted, even Answers in Genesis admits that creationists should avoid this argument.
I do know that Einstein originally got wrong the prediction for gravitational light deflection by the Sun (he got the Newtonian value, half of the correct GR value). But he fixed that later, and it was well before anybody had actually measured it (the aforementioned 1919 Eddington experiment).
I think he also made some false steps where his theory didn't agree with known Newtonian physics, but that doesn't really count. We're talking about whether it was designed around non-Newtonian observations that were used as tests of it.
Can't remember any other examples. The place to look is Relativity and Geometry by Torretti, but I don't have access to my copy right now.