The heat capacity of the atmosphere and earth's surface is so low, that it varies drastically within a few hours every day. Bodies of water, on the other hand, hold about 100x as much heat per unit volume. I have been debating global warming for a damn long time, and NOBODY has ever had a damn thing to say about the real global heat content (including oceans), just debating bullshit air temperatures, which account for almost nothing compared to ocean temps.... Anybody who knows about global warming knows that air temp doesn't matter in the big picture of the climate, and knows that the evidence is so overwhelming that somebody would have to disprove the info on ocean heating to make a valid argument. But again and again I just see the same shit come out of you people "air temps, air temps, air temps"
Incidentally, I've discussed ocean heat content several times, and agree that it's a better diagnostic than air temperatures (subject to the caveats referenced in that post and those quoted at the very bottom of this post.)
... the actually CO2 and methane levels, you don't have a clue how much society produces compared to natural causes, right now people make about 50x as much as nature puts out.
Well, it's a little more complicated than that. I've previously said that human CO2 emissions are ~100x than those from volcanoes. This is the comparison that matters, so your summary is essentially correct. But the biosphere's yearly fluctuations are much larger than our yearly emissions, as you can see by the fact that the red line's annual amplitude is much smaller than its linear trend. The biosphere is a closed system, though, so it's not relevant to abrupt climate change.
I survived my trip through Cambodia, so unfortunately I'll have to spend WAY more than 5 minutes answering your huge list of "philosophical musings", primarily by showing that I've already answered them repeatedly. I will eventually do this, but my actual research has to take priority. I'll post this epic response to your most recent Slashdot post when I'm finished. Until then, please let me focus on trying to not fail out of school, okay?
No, you didn't just ask four questions. You repeated many accusations about climatology not being falsifiable science (etc), which where merely grouped into four paragraphs. I've already explained that I have serious OCD and can't answer all these insults without referencing all the times I've already answered the same cynical accusations. Do you seriously think that answering all these accusations for the N'th time is more important than developing an early warning system for tsunamis? I don't. Seriously, let's just agree to disagree. Have a nice day.
That's the fourth time you've accused me of being dishonest, and of not really being a scientist. I tried to tell you twice that economics involves people who have free will but radiative physics involves molecules which don't have free will (unless you're a pantheist, I suppose) but you haven't even peripherally answered that point, and I've long since lost interest.
Your reading of AR1 yet again misses the point that climate models are dynamical, not empirical. So the entire reason for giving different scenarios is to account for uncertainty in human pollution, solar activity, volcanism, etc. As Gavin pointed out, the projected forcings assumed in scenario B were actually slightly too high compared to reality, so scenario B is a slight overestimate. But that uncertainty is compartmentalized away from the GCM uncertainty.
If you want to take a shot at defending the mistakes in An Inconvenient Truth, let me know.
I'm now convinced that you're just playing a cynical game to see how much of my time you can waste. I've archived all of your statements in this article, so I'll simply let my readers decide if you called climatologists deceitful hacks who make bullshit claims, aren't really scientists, just make themselves feel better by calling each other scientists and holding "science-y" conferences even though they can't falsify their hypotheses because their error bars "so large you can basically never prove the predictions wrong." Maybe they'll agree with you that these are just strawman arguments which you didn't actually make.
Obviously, this conversation is a waste of time. Let's just agree to disagree, okay?
That's the third time you've accused me of being dishonest. I'll add these repetitive comments to the huge list you've repeatedly demanded that I answer lest I be considered dishonest. This will take ~10 hours, and consist of ~10 pages of statements like "I've already answered this here, here, and directly to you here, and this is the text:...."
I'll only post this redundancy to Slashdot (and Dumb Scientist) with the expectation that you'll have the courtesy to finally explain (in a similar point-by-point fashion) why you think this comment is filled with strawman arguments (which, if true, would mean I'm a drooling idiot or a deceitful hack...)
Mass eigenstates don't oscillate. n1 is always n1, unless you try to measure it, in which case its eigenfunction collapses into the interaction base (ne+nm+nt). That's quantum weirdness for you.
Yeah I get that, although my phrasing and editing have been poor. I'm simply uncomfortable with the idea of a superposition of massless and massive particles. This post's 2nd paragraph summed up my feelings on the matter. And I really do mean to say "feelings"-- it's been years since I touched quantum mechanics, and none of that was based on relativistic hamiltonians (except for fine structure, of course). I couldn't spinor my way out of a paper bag.
The interactions (production and detection) happen in the flavour base. The propagation happens in the mass base. This means you never oscillate "from massless to massive": you are created with a mixture of massive and massless states, which travel differently, changing the probability of each flavour.
Okay, this makes sense and doesn't really bother me for natural neutrinos which are wildly ultrarelativistic even for the most massive eigenstate allowed by experiment. But suppose we could artificially create neutrinos with extremely low energies? Then the massive eigenstates would travel so differently than the massless eigenstates that it my head hurts just thinking about it. It might be possible to contain the slow-moving massive eigenstates, but the massless ones would still fly off at lightspeed, albeit with less energy. One part of the superposition would be in the lab, and the other part would be heading to the stars...
... Also, remember that the limit for the neutrino mass is at about 1eV, while it's hard to have neutrinos travelling with energies under 10^6 eV....
Is this because most nuclear (or other?) reactions producing neutrinos give them so much energy, or something to do with QFT propagation?
Anyway, thanks for all your insights. Until I can go back to school and take QFT for real, it's always a pleasant surprise to meet someone willing and able to answer these questions.
I don't know of any superselection-rule -- it's possible, in theory, for the electron neutrino to have zero mass but the muon neutrino to have nonzero mass.
That's fascinating. Do you have a good reference in mind that discusses this topic? I find the idea of a superposition which sometimes travels at lightspeed and sometimes travels slower than light to be... very bizarre.
Well, if it went from something with mass to something without mass, could it not use that energy from the mass to speed up to the speed of light?
First, it's one thing to claim that electron-positron collisions produce gamma rays. This is a (generally) non-repeated event with a clear discontinuity in time. Before the discontinuity, particles travel slower than light. Afterwards, the products of the collision travel at lightspeed. But an oscillating particle varies smoothly and repeatedly between the two states so there's no clear discontinuity even though the physics of massless and massive particles are wildly different.
Second, I'm not suggesting such a superposition would violate conservation of energy. I'm struggling to put my objections in words. First, I grok quantum superpositions of electrons in different places or polarizations. But I don't think it's possible to have a quantum superposition of an electron and a proton because that would violate conservation of charge, mass, lepton number, and baryon number. (I believe this general idea is known as a superselection rule, which forbids certain superpositions.) In the same way, I'm trying to figure out if a superposition of a particle that defines the light cone and a particle that's constrained to move inside the light cone is meaningful. No conservation laws seem to apply, but I'm vaguely thinking that environmentally-induced superselection wouldn't allow such a superposition to exist for much longer than a Planck time.
Sort of like how pair production causes light to become two particles traveling slower then the speed of light and then when they annihilate each other you get the photons traveling at the speed of light again?
A photon can only produce a real electron-positron pair when it has at least twice the rest-energy of an electron and it hits a nucleus. Photons can't produce real particle pairs in free space because momentum and energy can't be simultaneously conserved without a third particle.
The fact that light travels slower in matter can be explained in many different ways. Some QED cartoons attribute this to the effective non-zero mass of a quasi-particle known as a polariton, which is composed of a photon and phonons in the material. Again, this doesn't happen in free space. Also, this example involves virtual particles but the oscillating neutrino is real (because it can be detected as a single particle.)
Well that got butchered. Change "I'm curious to see how a massive particle which travels at v at c is mandatory." to:
I'm curious to see how a massive particle which must travel slower than light can oscillate into a massive particle that must travel at exactly the speed of light. I'd always figured a superselection rule would prevent this sort of thing...
The explanation for that is that what we call "electron-neutrino", "muon-neutrino" and "tau-neutrino" aren't states with a definite mass; they're a mixture of three neutrino states with definite, different mass (one of those masses can be zero, but at most one).
Right above I speculated that it's not possible for a particle to oscillate between massive and massless eigenstates. Do you have a reference showing that one mass eigenvalue can be zero? I'm curious to see how a massive particle which travels at v at c is mandatory. I only got through two semesters of quantum using Sakurai in grad school; I'm hoping this point is also comprehensible with the Schrodinger equation and not full QED. (shudder)
Thanks. I just found someequations that appear to reinforce what you said.
Since the oscillation frequency is proportional to the difference of the squared masses of the mass eigenstates, perhaps it's more accurate to say that neutrino flavor oscillation implies the existence of several mass eigenstates which aren't identical to flavor eigenstates. Since two mass eigenstates would need different eigenvalues in order to be distinguishable, this means at least one mass eigenvalue has to be nonzero. There's probably some sort of "superselection rule" which prevents particles from oscillating between massless and massive eigenstates, so both mass eigenstates have to be non-zero. Cool.
That's the way I've always understood the mass/oscillation connection too. But then I thought... wait... don't photons oscillate too? They're just coherent oscillations of the EM field; oscillating back and forth between electric and transverse magnetic in free space. If there's something different about neutrino oscillation which makes it necessary for the neutrino to travel at sublight, what is it specifically?
Oops. Change this: "As in, scientists had already documented ~3,000 changes to surface station site characteristics."
To this:
In other words, scientists had already documented the timing of ~3,000 changes to network; these are mostly relocations and instrument upgrades but the timing of changes to surface station site characteristics are also documented.
Given the number of error sources listed in just this paper alone, along with the fact that half the changes went undocumented, it would make me even more dubious of the temperature record without having empirical data to verify it.... To go back to my original point, somebody needed to get out there and do the legwork that Watts did, and provide empirical confirmation.... When I said back in my first post in this long thread that RC.org was on the bullshit end of the surface station data, this was precisely the point: empirical data trumps statistical filtering (especially with something so complex). Dismissing a source of empirical confirmation data, because you don't like the guy's political views, is the bullshit end of the argument.
Yes, as my previous quotes showed, half of ~6,000 "statistically significant changepoints" were already recorded in the metadata. As in, scientists had already documented ~3,000 changes to surface station site characteristics.
The Menne 2009 paper refreshingly takes the opposite approach even while reinforcing your point that the longitudinal data is much more important. It even cited Pielke as a source of criticisms about the temperature record.
Notice that they're referring specifically to surfacestations.org, and they mention it only to quote several studies showing that Watts is making a claim that has already been considered and rejected. I'm referring to that website and wattsupwiththat.com. And note that I've already agreed with Pielke when he makes sense.
That's why I've said the satellite data makes the issue moot moving forward; unless something goes tragically wrong the environment around a satellite won't be exposed to any of the confounding factors that impact surface station data.
Like I said, I don't understand that subjective preference, but to each his own. I've already talked about problems unique to satellite data; it's useful (which is why my research centers on satellite data) but introduces new problems and suffers from a very short time series relative to the surface instrumental record.
... In addition to changes in the time of observation, most surface weather stations also experience changes in station location or instrumentation at various times throughout their histories. Such modifications generally entail alterations in sensor exposure and/or measurement bias that cause shifts in the temperature series that are unrelated to true climate variations. In HCN version 1, the effects of station moves and instrument changes were addressed using the procedure described by Karl and Williams (1987). Because this procedure addressed changes that are documented in the NOAA/NCDC station history archive, the HCN version 1 homogeneity algorithm was called the Station History Adjustment Program (SHAP).
Unfortunately, COOP station histories are incomplete. As a result, discontinuities may occur with no associated record in the metadata. Since undocumented discontinuities remain undetected by methods like SHAP, a new homogenization algorithm was developed for the HCN version 2 temperature data (Menne and Williams 2009). This new algorithm addresses both documented and undocumented discontinuities via a pairwise comparison of temperature records, which avoids problems associated with the use of reference series in undocumented changepoint detection (Menne and Williams 2005)....
... Overall, the pairwise algorithm identified around 6,000 statistically significant changepoints in maximum temperature series and roughly 7,000 shifts in minimum temperature series. Since there are approximately 120,000 station years of temperatures in the HCN version 2 dataset, this represents an average of about one significant artificial shift for every 15-20 years of station data. In terms of the adequacy of the HCN metadata, about half of the identified inhomogeneities are undocumented.Most of the documented changes in the HCN are associated with station relocations....
... Adjustments for undocumented changes are especially important in removing bias
in minimum temperature records. Tests for undocumented shifts, however, are inherently less sensitive than in cases where the timing of changes is known
through metadata. Thus, metadata are exceedingly valuable when it comes to adjusting and evaluating climate trends....
However, from a climate change perspective, the primary concern is not so much the absolute measurement bias of a particular site but rather the changes in that bias over time, which the TOB and pairwise adjustments effectively address (Vose et al. 2003; Menne and Williams 2009).... In this regard, photographic documentation, though valuable, is most valuable when it is used to document the timing and causes of such shifts in bias through time.
In other words, several studies have already examined the more important issue of site characteristic change over time and found that current adjustments are valid. The patient records of thousands of anonymous scientists over decades are actually more useful in a climate change context than an exhaustive snapshot of the network as it stands today.
Ultimately, the magnitude of relative changes in the bias of observations, whatever the source, cannot be inferred from the metadata. Instead, the effect of station changes and nonstandard instrument exposure on temperature trends must be determined via a systematic evaluation of the observations themselves (Peterson 2006), generally through relative comparisons.
Metadata like station quality, for instance. Menne 2010 made a similar point: Further, the influence of non-standard siting on temperature trends can only be quantified through an analysis of the data.
Such an analysis suggests that the effect of undocumented changes appears to be at least as significant as documented changes in the HCN and that homogeneity testing for both types of shifts is critical.
Again, scientists are considering both documented changes (via station visits, other empirical evidence, etc.) and undocumented changes (for stations that are too remote to visit, or understaffed, etc).
Apparently I can't count to four, so when I archive these comments at the bottom of the abrupt climate change article, I'll remove the repeated "second" words.
So either economics is a science, or climate science isn't, or you have to put some sort of nebulous grey area together for fields that make observations and construct hypothesis for predictions, but can't run controlled experiments and have problems with falsifiability. Economics is actually the closest parallel to climate science... I'm perfectly well aware that people in the field have adopted the title of scientists for themselves, in order to achieve a patina of respectability, but everyone has been doing that these days.... it certainly doesn't meet all the criteria of a real science... the semi-scientific schools of inquiry, like climate science and economics.
First, I've already pointed out that this economics comparison is ridiculous. Second, I've already pointed out that I've worked in both experimental optics and a field which is more related to climate science, and I don't agree with your assessment that the fields have differing levels of intellectual rigor. Second, this assertion that climate scientists can't perform experiments to test hypotheses has been made before. A similar assertion was made about modern cosmology, but as I point out it could just as easily be aimed at forensic science, astronomy, paleontology, etc.
If you think the consensus that climate science isn't science by the philosophy crowd bothers you...
Citation needed. Notice that the person who preceded you wasn't so much a representative of the philosophy crowd as he was a representative of the creationist crowd.
Just like my foot is in my mouth mouth. I also have to correct the sentence in my quantum teleportation paper where I claim that using current technology to teleport an entire human would take longer than the age of the universe. I've been unable to track down the source for that statement, and more recently I've learned that classical communication bitrate requirements only grow as the logarithm of the number of atoms. So I retract that statement.
The Watts research is case in point. He went out and did legwork that everyone else was ignoring. Unless you're actually claiming it's better off not knowing the quality of surface stations, he made a contribution. But the papers you reference, and your own statements on here, show your amazing reluctance to ever grant a single scrap of credit to the guy.
Yet again, it's the "everyone else was ignoring" clause that I'm disagreeing with. Watts isn't the first person to repeatedly survey stations in person, as riverat1 and I have been saying over and over. Notice that the emphasis is on correcting for undocumented changes. That is, scientists long since recognized that even their labor-intensive survey efforts would miss changes to the site quality, so the last decade has seen additional steps above and beyond repeated surveys. Watts isn't the first person to examine stations in person, he's just the first person to become an internet celebrity by claiming he is.
Climate science is closer in practice to economics than any other field. So either economics is a science, or climate science isn't, or you have to put some sort of nebulous grey area together for fields that make observations and construct hypothesis for predictions, but can't run controlled experiments and have problems with falsifiability.
Radtea made a similar argument, which I've already pointed out is ridiculous.
To use your own words, it's like a modified Salem Hypothesis that lets non-physicists like climate scientists think that their hand-waving is a legitimate form of argumentation, whereas everyone else is an anti-scientific nutjob. It probably comes from their field being only tenuously considered a science. Yes, yes, I've read http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/is-climate-modelling-science/, and as someone who as actually studied the philosophy of science, in graduate school... RC.org is wrong, again.
You're not the first "graduate student of the philosophy of science" to say these things. And it's really odd to see you label me a non-physicist. My physics B.S. is in physics, with a research emphasis on experimental optics. I went to graduate school planning to focus on quantum teleportation (that presentation and review paper was part of my physics M.S. defense). It's only in the last 4 years that I switched from optics to studying Earth's time-variable gravity field using GRACE k-band satellite ranging measurements (which got me interested in the physics of the climate). I realize that you think that "I don't fucking know what I'm talking about" but I'm curious as to what you think qualifies someone to be a physicist?
You're not familiar with the Gettier paradox then. I'm tempted here to just quote a bunch of papers on it to show you why you're wrong, without ever saying why, just to show you why your method of argumentation is so poor. But I'll just leave it up to you to research it and figure out for yourself why this claim is fallacious.
Again, you're not the first person to change the topic from "how many independent empirical data sources have been shown to be consistent with dynamical climate model ensembles" to something like "Is justified true belie
No, you haven't. Answering a question involves writing a thesis statement. References are not an acceptable substitute for a thesis statement. The Menne quote you've given twice before accepts his classification of surface stations as "good" and "bad", and you've now accepted #1.
As I've said, I'm tired of the repetitive nature of my conversations with non-physicists. You're the N'th person to claim that Watts has performed some vital, original research that scientists have been "bullshitting" about. I don't have time to provide free tutoring to every person in the general public, so I tend to provide references under the assumption that nonscientists are willing to read papers on their own. Like I said, I have actual research to do, and I thought you were interested in understanding why scientists don't think Watts's research is original rather than playing a cynical game to see if I'd praise Watts for his 1-5 rankings while ignoring 99% of his claims. What a waste of time that I could have used to continue developing a new tsunami early warning system using GRACE/GRACE2!
Claiming that stats can fix everything when 90% of stations are compromised is nonsense. I know they do a lot of clever tricks (checking for temperature dips on windy days for example), but I'm not happy with any substitute except satellite data (validating via another empirical source).
Claiming that 90% of the stations are compromised would require showing that the previously documented empirical evidence hadn't corrected for the bias. Menne 2010 showed that this isn't the case. You seem to think that Parker 2004 and all the other papers I've quoted are merely playing games with statistics. Nonsense. Those papers are validating the instrumental temperature record with wind sensors, which are another independent empirical data source, even if you personally prefer satellites. (I work with GRACE satellite data, and frankly I don't understand that subjective preference, but to each his own.) The only differences between these peer-reviewed papers and Watts's blogosphere "research" (aside from the peer-reviewed part, obviously) are that the actual scientists didn't ignore previous studies, didn't make crackpot claims about what the comparison would reveal, and are using a source of empirical data that's less subjective than Watts (station rankings are inherently more subjective than automated wind sensors).
It's a shame... yet another pro-AGW person that has a complete mental block to ever admit that someone in the anti-AGW camp might be right about something. It's a very simple question: is his surface station data accurate or not? Why can't you answer this question??
I have answered that question. Repeatedly. First I linked the section in my article containing the surfacestations.org conversation, where Menne 2010 is linked at the end. I assumed that any scientist interested in the instrumental temperature record would follow the links and read the Menne paper. When it became clear that you hadn't, I mentioned Menne 2010 explicitly and urged you to read the abstract. When that didn't work, I directly linked Menne 2010. When even that didn't work, I finally quoted from the abstract:
... Results indicate that there is a mean bias associated with poor exposure sites relative to good exposure sites...
In other words, Watts can apparently rank stations on a 1-5 scale well enough that the mean bias agrees roughly with his rankings. That's what you're calling argument #1, and you call it "a validation of his work". If you want to consider that validation of his work, fine. Personally, I think it's only validation that he isn't blind or in a coma.
I view argument #2 (Watts's ubiquitous claims that the instrumental temperature record is contaminated by the UHI effect) as Watts's main point. This claim has been convincingly falsified. Watts himself seems to agree that argument #2 is his main point, because he attacks Menne's analysis and character rather than thanking him for "validating his work." That's why I've been focused on argument #2. If you've really just been talking about argument #1 this entire time, then I was wrong to assume you were claiming that Watts had performed important, original research which NOAA scientists and Real Climate had been bullshitting about. Sorry for the confusion.
And, yet again, your apparent belief that Watts was the first one to perform empirical research to test surface stations simply isn't true. Aside from the many studies I've linked that show the UHI isn't responsible for the instrumental temperature rise, notice the sentences I've previously quoted:
"this bias is consistent with previously documented changes associated with the widespread conversion to electronic sensors in the USHCN during the last 25 years.... Adjustments applied to USHCN Version 2 data largely account for the impact of instrument and siting changes, although a small overall residual negative ("cool") bias appears to remain in the adjusted maximum temperature series."
If NOAA hadn't already been "documenting" changes to surface stations, there's no way these bias corrections could possibly have been accurate.
I'm not trying to say that Watts is blind, or that he's unable to fill in bubbles on a multiple choice form (which, if true, would refute argument #1). I've just been saying that his "research" isn't original, ignores many previous studies, and didn't uncover the UHI problems that Watts was clearly expecting (which does refute argument #2). I'm sorry that I mistook your statements as endorsement of argument #2. We can certainly both agree that Watts has good enough vision to see the stations and has mastered multiple choice forms.
So I still think I'm right in saying that that's where the debate exists. We agree that the more CO2 we output the more we raise the global temperature. Debate still seems to be out on what will happen in terms of e.g. crop yields or extinctions.
Pretty much. The survey authors stress that only 47% of the general public thinks there's a consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. As the Doran survey says, the scientific community is seemingly unable to convey the fact that we agree on the basic facts. The projections over the next 100 years are uncertain, of course, due to imperfect knowledge of feedback effects and imperfect knowledge of future economics/emissions scenarios. But many people in the general public assert that this uncertainty is so wide that, hey, climate change might be good for us. (Seriously, check out the article on my homepage to see these crackpots in action.) No scientist that I've ever met thinks that abrupt climate change will be good for the human race; it's either viewed as bad or very bad.
It'd be worth going back to an agrarian lifestyle today to prevent humanity's extinction, is it worth it to prevent flooding for a few million people in 2080? (***very confident on the flooding by the way, scary stuff.) There are a lot of possible courses we could take, and a wide and disagreed-upon assortment of potential consequences.
Uh... I haven't heard any scientists advocating an agrarian lifestyle. I think that's utterly absurd. As the people-press survey shows, ~90% of physicists (including me) think we should respond to climate change by building more nuclear power plants. I find it utterly baffling that nonscientists think we need infinitely precise climate models in order to justify a new industrial revolution that will also help reduce our dependence on oil from corrupt governments, help soften the inevitable blow of peak oil, and help our deep space program by increasing available plutonium for RTGs.
Slashdot Mirror
Incidentally, I've discussed ocean heat content several times, and agree that it's a better diagnostic than air temperatures (subject to the caveats referenced in that post and those quoted at the very bottom of this post.)
Well, it's a little more complicated than that. I've previously said that human CO2 emissions are ~100x than those from volcanoes. This is the comparison that matters, so your summary is essentially correct. But the biosphere's yearly fluctuations are much larger than our yearly emissions, as you can see by the fact that the red line's annual amplitude is much smaller than its linear trend. The biosphere is a closed system, though, so it's not relevant to abrupt climate change.
I survived my trip through Cambodia, so unfortunately I'll have to spend WAY more than 5 minutes answering your huge list of "philosophical musings", primarily by showing that I've already answered them repeatedly. I will eventually do this, but my actual research has to take priority. I'll post this epic response to your most recent Slashdot post when I'm finished. Until then, please let me focus on trying to not fail out of school, okay?
No, you didn't just ask four questions. You repeated many accusations about climatology not being falsifiable science (etc), which where merely grouped into four paragraphs. I've already explained that I have serious OCD and can't answer all these insults without referencing all the times I've already answered the same cynical accusations. Do you seriously think that answering all these accusations for the N'th time is more important than developing an early warning system for tsunamis? I don't. Seriously, let's just agree to disagree. Have a nice day.
That's the fourth time you've accused me of being dishonest, and of not really being a scientist. I tried to tell you twice that economics involves people who have free will but radiative physics involves molecules which don't have free will (unless you're a pantheist, I suppose) but you haven't even peripherally answered that point, and I've long since lost interest.
Your reading of AR1 yet again misses the point that climate models are dynamical, not empirical. So the entire reason for giving different scenarios is to account for uncertainty in human pollution, solar activity, volcanism, etc. As Gavin pointed out, the projected forcings assumed in scenario B were actually slightly too high compared to reality, so scenario B is a slight overestimate. But that uncertainty is compartmentalized away from the GCM uncertainty.
Huh?
I'm now convinced that you're just playing a cynical game to see how much of my time you can waste. I've archived all of your statements in this article, so I'll simply let my readers decide if you called climatologists deceitful hacks who make bullshit claims, aren't really scientists, just make themselves feel better by calling each other scientists and holding "science-y" conferences even though they can't falsify their hypotheses because their error bars "so large you can basically never prove the predictions wrong." Maybe they'll agree with you that these are just strawman arguments which you didn't actually make.
Obviously, this conversation is a waste of time. Let's just agree to disagree, okay?
That's the third time you've accused me of being dishonest. I'll add these repetitive comments to the huge list you've repeatedly demanded that I answer lest I be considered dishonest. This will take ~10 hours, and consist of ~10 pages of statements like "I've already answered this here, here, and directly to you here, and this is the text: ...."
I'll only post this redundancy to Slashdot (and Dumb Scientist) with the expectation that you'll have the courtesy to finally explain (in a similar point-by-point fashion) why you think this comment is filled with strawman arguments (which, if true, would mean I'm a drooling idiot or a deceitful hack...)
Yeah I get that, although my phrasing and editing have been poor. I'm simply uncomfortable with the idea of a superposition of massless and massive particles. This post's 2nd paragraph summed up my feelings on the matter. And I really do mean to say "feelings"-- it's been years since I touched quantum mechanics, and none of that was based on relativistic hamiltonians (except for fine structure, of course). I couldn't spinor my way out of a paper bag.
Okay, this makes sense and doesn't really bother me for natural neutrinos which are wildly ultrarelativistic even for the most massive eigenstate allowed by experiment. But suppose we could artificially create neutrinos with extremely low energies? Then the massive eigenstates would travel so differently than the massless eigenstates that it my head hurts just thinking about it. It might be possible to contain the slow-moving massive eigenstates, but the massless ones would still fly off at lightspeed, albeit with less energy. One part of the superposition would be in the lab, and the other part would be heading to the stars...
Is this because most nuclear (or other?) reactions producing neutrinos give them so much energy, or something to do with QFT propagation?
Anyway, thanks for all your insights. Until I can go back to school and take QFT for real, it's always a pleasant surprise to meet someone willing and able to answer these questions.
oscillate into a MASSLESS particle. Sheez.
That's fascinating. Do you have a good reference in mind that discusses this topic? I find the idea of a superposition which sometimes travels at lightspeed and sometimes travels slower than light to be... very bizarre.
First, it's one thing to claim that electron-positron collisions produce gamma rays. This is a (generally) non-repeated event with a clear discontinuity in time. Before the discontinuity, particles travel slower than light. Afterwards, the products of the collision travel at lightspeed. But an oscillating particle varies smoothly and repeatedly between the two states so there's no clear discontinuity even though the physics of massless and massive particles are wildly different.
Second, I'm not suggesting such a superposition would violate conservation of energy. I'm struggling to put my objections in words. First, I grok quantum superpositions of electrons in different places or polarizations. But I don't think it's possible to have a quantum superposition of an electron and a proton because that would violate conservation of charge, mass, lepton number, and baryon number. (I believe this general idea is known as a superselection rule, which forbids certain superpositions.) In the same way, I'm trying to figure out if a superposition of a particle that defines the light cone and a particle that's constrained to move inside the light cone is meaningful. No conservation laws seem to apply, but I'm vaguely thinking that environmentally-induced superselection wouldn't allow such a superposition to exist for much longer than a Planck time.
A photon can only produce a real electron-positron pair when it has at least twice the rest-energy of an electron and it hits a nucleus. Photons can't produce real particle pairs in free space because momentum and energy can't be simultaneously conserved without a third particle.
The fact that light travels slower in matter can be explained in many different ways. Some QED cartoons attribute this to the effective non-zero mass of a quasi-particle known as a polariton, which is composed of a photon and phonons in the material. Again, this doesn't happen in free space. Also, this example involves virtual particles but the oscillating neutrino is real (because it can be detected as a single particle.)
Well that got butchered. Change "I'm curious to see how a massive particle which travels at v at c is mandatory." to:
I'm curious to see how a massive particle which must travel slower than light can oscillate into a massive particle that must travel at exactly the speed of light. I'd always figured a superselection rule would prevent this sort of thing...
Right above I speculated that it's not possible for a particle to oscillate between massive and massless eigenstates. Do you have a reference showing that one mass eigenvalue can be zero? I'm curious to see how a massive particle which travels at v at c is mandatory. I only got through two semesters of quantum using Sakurai in grad school; I'm hoping this point is also comprehensible with the Schrodinger equation and not full QED. (shudder)
Thanks. I just found some equations that appear to reinforce what you said.
Since the oscillation frequency is proportional to the difference of the squared masses of the mass eigenstates, perhaps it's more accurate to say that neutrino flavor oscillation implies the existence of several mass eigenstates which aren't identical to flavor eigenstates. Since two mass eigenstates would need different eigenvalues in order to be distinguishable, this means at least one mass eigenvalue has to be nonzero. There's probably some sort of "superselection rule" which prevents particles from oscillating between massless and massive eigenstates, so both mass eigenstates have to be non-zero. Cool.
That's the way I've always understood the mass/oscillation connection too. But then I thought... wait... don't photons oscillate too? They're just coherent oscillations of the EM field; oscillating back and forth between electric and transverse magnetic in free space. If there's something different about neutrino oscillation which makes it necessary for the neutrino to travel at sublight, what is it specifically?
Oops. Change this: "As in, scientists had already documented ~3,000 changes to surface station site characteristics."
To this:
In other words, scientists had already documented the timing of ~3,000 changes to network; these are mostly relocations and instrument upgrades but the timing of changes to surface station site characteristics are also documented.
Yes, as my previous quotes showed, half of ~6,000 "statistically significant changepoints" were already recorded in the metadata. As in, scientists had already documented ~3,000 changes to surface station site characteristics.
Notice that they're referring specifically to surfacestations.org, and they mention it only to quote several studies showing that Watts is making a claim that has already been considered and rejected. I'm referring to that website and wattsupwiththat.com. And note that I've already agreed with Pielke when he makes sense.
Like I said, I don't understand that subjective preference, but to each his own. I've already talked about problems unique to satellite data; it's useful (which is why my research centers on satellite data) but introduces new problems and suffers from a very short time series relative to the surface instrumental record.
Some more relevant quotes:
Yes?
In other words, several studies have already examined the more important issue of site characteristic change over time and found that current adjustments are valid. The patient records of thousands of anonymous scientists over decades are actually more useful in a climate change context than an exhaustive snapshot of the network as it stands today.
Metadata like station quality, for instance. Menne 2010 made a similar point: Further, the influence of non-standard siting on temperature trends can only be quantified through an analysis of the data.
Again, scientists are considering both documented changes (via station visits, other empirical evidence, etc.) and undocumented changes (for stations that are too remote to visit, or understaffed, etc).
Apparently I can't count to four, so when I archive these comments at the bottom of the abrupt climate change article, I'll remove the repeated "second" words.
First, I've already pointed out that this economics comparison is ridiculous. Second, I've already pointed out that I've worked in both experimental optics and a field which is more related to climate science, and I don't agree with your assessment that the fields have differing levels of intellectual rigor. Second, this assertion that climate scientists can't perform experiments to test hypotheses has been made before. A similar assertion was made about modern cosmology, but as I point out it could just as easily be aimed at forensic science, astronomy, paleontology, etc.
Citation needed. Notice that the person who preceded you wasn't so much a representative of the philosophy crowd as he was a representative of the creationist crowd.
Just like my foot is in my mouth mouth. I also have to correct the sentence in my quantum teleportation paper where I claim that using current technology to teleport an entire human would take longer than the age of the universe. I've been unable to track down the source for that statement, and more recently I've learned that classical communication bitrate requirements only grow as the logarithm of the number of atoms. So I retract that statement.
Yet again, it's the "everyone else was ignoring" clause that I'm disagreeing with. Watts isn't the first person to repeatedly survey stations in person, as riverat1 and I have been saying over and over. Notice that the emphasis is on correcting for undocumented changes. That is, scientists long since recognized that even their labor-intensive survey efforts would miss changes to the site quality, so the last decade has seen additional steps above and beyond repeated surveys. Watts isn't the first person to examine stations in person, he's just the first person to become an internet celebrity by claiming he is.
Radtea made a similar argument, which I've already pointed out is ridiculous.
You're not the first "graduate student of the philosophy of science" to say these things. And it's really odd to see you label me a non-physicist. My physics B.S. is in physics, with a research emphasis on experimental optics. I went to graduate school planning to focus on quantum teleportation (that presentation and review paper was part of my physics M.S. defense). It's only in the last 4 years that I switched from optics to studying Earth's time-variable gravity field using GRACE k-band satellite ranging measurements (which got me interested in the physics of the climate). I realize that you think that "I don't fucking know what I'm talking about" but I'm curious as to what you think qualifies someone to be a physicist?
Again, you're not the first person to change the topic from "how many independent empirical data sources have been shown to be consistent with dynamical climate model ensembles" to something like "Is justified true belie
As I've said, I'm tired of the repetitive nature of my conversations with non-physicists. You're the N'th person to claim that Watts has performed some vital, original research that scientists have been "bullshitting" about. I don't have time to provide free tutoring to every person in the general public, so I tend to provide references under the assumption that nonscientists are willing to read papers on their own. Like I said, I have actual research to do, and I thought you were interested in understanding why scientists don't think Watts's research is original rather than playing a cynical game to see if I'd praise Watts for his 1-5 rankings while ignoring 99% of his claims. What a waste of time that I could have used to continue developing a new tsunami early warning system using GRACE/GRACE2!
Claiming that 90% of the stations are compromised would require showing that the previously documented empirical evidence hadn't corrected for the bias. Menne 2010 showed that this isn't the case. You seem to think that Parker 2004 and all the other papers I've quoted are merely playing games with statistics. Nonsense. Those papers are validating the instrumental temperature record with wind sensors, which are another independent empirical data source, even if you personally prefer satellites. (I work with GRACE satellite data, and frankly I don't understand that subjective preference, but to each his own.) The only differences between these peer-reviewed papers and Watts's blogosphere "research" (aside from the peer-reviewed part, obviously) are that the actual scientists didn't ignore previous studies, didn't make crackpot claims about what the comparison would reveal, and are using a source of empirical data that's less subjective than Watts (station rankings are inherently more subjective than automated wind sensors).
I have answered that question. Repeatedly. First I linked the section in my article containing the surfacestations.org conversation, where Menne 2010 is linked at the end. I assumed that any scientist interested in the instrumental temperature record would follow the links and read the Menne paper. When it became clear that you hadn't, I mentioned Menne 2010 explicitly and urged you to read the abstract. When that didn't work, I directly linked Menne 2010. When even that didn't work, I finally quoted from the abstract:
In other words, Watts can apparently rank stations on a 1-5 scale well enough that the mean bias agrees roughly with his rankings. That's what you're calling argument #1, and you call it "a validation of his work". If you want to consider that validation of his work, fine. Personally, I think it's only validation that he isn't blind or in a coma.
I view argument #2 (Watts's ubiquitous claims that the instrumental temperature record is contaminated by the UHI effect) as Watts's main point. This claim has been convincingly falsified. Watts himself seems to agree that argument #2 is his main point, because he attacks Menne's analysis and character rather than thanking him for "validating his work." That's why I've been focused on argument #2. If you've really just been talking about argument #1 this entire time, then I was wrong to assume you were claiming that Watts had performed important, original research which NOAA scientists and Real Climate had been bullshitting about. Sorry for the confusion.
And, yet again, your apparent belief that Watts was the first one to perform empirical research to test surface stations simply isn't true. Aside from the many studies I've linked that show the UHI isn't responsible for the instrumental temperature rise, notice the sentences I've previously quoted:
"this bias is consistent with previously documented changes associated with the widespread conversion to electronic sensors in the USHCN during the last 25 years. ... Adjustments applied to USHCN Version 2 data largely account for the impact of instrument and siting changes, although a small overall residual negative ("cool") bias appears to remain in the adjusted maximum temperature series."
If NOAA hadn't already been "documenting" changes to surface stations, there's no way these bias corrections could possibly have been accurate.
I'm not trying to say that Watts is blind, or that he's unable to fill in bubbles on a multiple choice form (which, if true, would refute argument #1). I've just been saying that his "research" isn't original, ignores many previous studies, and didn't uncover the UHI problems that Watts was clearly expecting (which does refute argument #2). I'm sorry that I mistook your statements as endorsement of argument #2. We can certainly both agree that Watts has good enough vision to see the stations and has mastered multiple choice forms.
Pretty much. The survey authors stress that only 47% of the general public thinks there's a consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. As the Doran survey says, the scientific community is seemingly unable to convey the fact that we agree on the basic facts. The projections over the next 100 years are uncertain, of course, due to imperfect knowledge of feedback effects and imperfect knowledge of future economics/emissions scenarios. But many people in the general public assert that this uncertainty is so wide that, hey, climate change might be good for us. (Seriously, check out the article on my homepage to see these crackpots in action.) No scientist that I've ever met thinks that abrupt climate change will be good for the human race; it's either viewed as bad or very bad.
Uh... I haven't heard any scientists advocating an agrarian lifestyle. I think that's utterly absurd. As the people-press survey shows, ~90% of physicists (including me) think we should respond to climate change by building more nuclear power plants. I find it utterly baffling that nonscientists think we need infinitely precise climate models in order to justify a new industrial revolution that will also help reduce our dependence on oil from corrupt governments, help soften the inevitable blow of peak oil, and help our deep space program by increasing available plutonium for RTGs.