Can anyone point me at a web site that explains why FTL travel violates causality?
I've tried to explain that here. Long story short: FTL travel can automatically be used as a time machine, which means you can kill your own grandfather.
I've tried to explain the connection between FTL travel and travel back in time here. But, as you said, it really requires spacetime diagrams that I haven't had time to draw yet...
A cheap plan for emergencies may not be necessary if you live in the US. I think landlines are regulated like cell phones in that you must be able to dial 911 even if they're disconnected. In most emergencies that's who you'd want to call anyway.
But we do have free education, free health care, free public libraries, free telephony...
You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.
I suspect you meant "subsidized by taxation." Which is completely different.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not disparaging the system you've got. If it works for your country then that's great. But it's disingenuous to pretend that forcing other people to support you through taxation (which is inherently coercive) constitutes some kind of magical loophole in the laws of reality that allows you to obtain the mythical "free lunch." It doesn't.
That makes a lot of sense. I'd ignored the charged capacitors, which probably isn't an issue for the drives I've already got in foil (they've almost certainly discharged by now) but I'll stop doing that in the future. Thanks for the correction.
I do something similar, but use aluminum foil instead of the anti-static bags. Because anti-static bags are conductive (to force all charge to the outside of the bag via Gauss's law) this is just as effective, not to mention cheaper.
Excellent post. I've written about FTL drives being time machines before, and just wanted to note that a "preferred frame" would seem to invalidate this equality. (Unless I've missed something?)
Actually, the joke is that you've either never seen a real ship (which do have windows called "portholes") or that you're confusing the term s-h-i-p with the term s-u-b-m-a-r-i-n-e.
Nowhere do you see that more clearly than in cosmology, as highlighted by the Electric Universe folks. I don't care whether you believe in the Electric Universe theory or whether you think it's a load of crap (though, all people I've encountered who felt that way had one thing in common - they were not very familiar with it). It's not the theory that I really want to mention here. It's the associated writings which represent an excellent critique of what modern science has become. Those can be found at thunderbolts.info and at holoscience.com.
I've been following your otherwise insightful and reasonable comments for some time, so I'm utterly astonished to see you say this. The "Electric Universe" is essentially a conspiracy theory, and I've recently discussed it here. In short, I see no reason to take them more seriously than I do young earth creationist or 9/11 Truthers. They're ignored because the claims they're making are nonsensical, not because science has become "religious and un-scientific."
If you still think I'm being dogmatic after reading that discussion, please let me know because I've been desperately looking for someone qualified enough to defend the electric universe. All subjects require a devil's advocate.
Well, $22k with any form of interest produces a gain for the bank.
I'm not an economist, but isn't this statement only true for interest rates that are above the inflation rate? For the example in question, the bank would have to charge at least the average inflation rate over the student loan period in order to break even...
... get the GIMP to the point of real feature parody...
That's your goal? I mean, it's certainly realistic- some people would say that GIMP's been hilariously bad for a while- but it might be worthwhile to aim a little higher. For instance, I'd suggest that we bring GIMP to feature parity instead.
The only thing we can afford to burn in the long run is hydrogen, which requires energy to produce.
No, actually that's wrong. You were right about concentrated solar allowing for a burner backup. Biofuels won't cause any net CO2 increase because their combustion only releases the CO2 they've recently absorbed to grow. I'm not a big fan of generation 1 biofuels, because they tend to provide an incentive for farmers to grow crops that humans can't eat. But generation 2 biofuels use the discarded husks of human-edible plants and might be industrially feasible some day. Genetically engineered bacteria also look like they could produce biofuels given enough time.
I'm not sure there'd be a point to building that kind of backup into the concentrated solar plant, though. Wouldn't it be exactly like building an ordinary oil-powered backup generator, which we already have? It seems like there wouldn't be any point to doing that just to use the sodium loop...
I asked for a link. As in, one (possibly two if I've got a lot of spare time). I opened up several of the seven links you pasted into your message (with no context or explanation) and can't see anything that backs up your statements, which were (1) That the CO2 concentration has recently hit 400ppm, and (2) global cooling was a serious, widespread prediction of the scientific community. I've provided specific links to all the claims I've made so that you can follow up on those claims. If you can provide a specific, credible link to back up each of your claims, I'll look at them.
I still think that it is the ultimate arrogance that humans think they can alter the planets evolution. Think of continental drift and the accompanying earthquakes, volcanic activity etc. and you'll understand how insignificant humans are.
Continental drift and earthquakes are completely irrelevant to the climate. As for volcanic activity, eruptions only put about a hundredth of the CO2 into the atmosphere that humans do. Massive eruptions in the geologically distant past (such as the Siberian traps which are a suspected cause of the Permian extinction) have likely put more CO2 into the atmosphere, but none of the eruptions in the last 500,000 years pushed the CO2 level above 300 ppm.
My understanding of CSP was that, to increase its baseload ability, you just made it bigger (especially the molten salt tank).
Yeah, you might be right about that. I think I remember seeing similar studies, and probably spoke too soon. I've yet to be convinced that this is a sure bet, but I'm delighted that Obama is putting more research money into these areas.
You also have the option of burning something to keep the fluid warm, for cloudy days or to provide more baseload.
The only thing we can afford to burn in the long run is hydrogen, which requires energy to produce.
Transmission losses, while not negligible, seem manageable. I've seen figures of about 2-3% to move electricity 600mi using HVDC. I mean, it's on Wikipedia, so it must be right.
Yes, HVDC looks promising, but some population centers are farther away than that from a good spot for solar or geothermic (not all northern countries are as fortunate as Iceland). In the long run this isn't a serious problem because we will eventually build a superconducting grid, but until then it's a nuisance.
The big problem I see with the "we need power now" argument is that we could probably install several gigawatts of CSP and wind before we could even get the nuclear reactor through the permitting process.
If it works, that's great. The problem is that no country has ever successfully powered their civilization in that manner, so it's a bit of a gamble. France gets 80% of its power from nuclear, so we know it works. I'm also inclined to say that the delay in getting new nuclear plants online is more of a problem with lenders being extremely cautious about nuclear energy because of public disapproval, so the permitting process is much more ridiculous than it should be. Nuclear power isn't nearly as dangerous as it's commonly made out to be, and we need enrichment anyway for medical isotopes so terrorism will always be a problem.
I think concentrated solar is great, and might be our best bet in the long run. I just don't want these unproven technologies to be our only bet. It'd be nice to see our civilization put no more than 1/3 of its power generation into one particular technology so that the loss of any particular mode of power generation isn't catastrophic.
Are you talking about: J R Petit, J Jouzel, D Raynaud, N I Barkov, et al. (1999). Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica. Nature, 399(6735), 429-436. Retrieved April 7, 2009, from ProQuest Medical Library database. (Document ID: 42351682)? Because the phrase is not in there. The paper reads like the researchers were involved in the drilling.
Yeah, that's the paper I originally linked, but you're right- the phrase isn't there. I was at work (with access to the journals) when I wrote that, and had 4-5 of the older Vostok papers open at once. That particular phrase is probably in one of those papers, but I don't have journal access at home (and my cache is empty) so I can't verify that right now. The phrase you're looking for in the paper I did link is below the references, in the Acknowledgements section: "We thank the drillers from the St. Petersburg Mining Institute; the Russian, French and US participants for field work and ice sampling..."
Sorry about the confusion; I was juggling too many papers to keep them all straight on my desktop. But you can also verify that J. Jouzel is referenced many times, with reference 6 being published in 1987 (several years after the section from 950-2083m was extracted in 1982-83), and 12,13 published in 1993 and 1996. C. Genthon is reference 14, published in 1987.
I must humbly disagree that the paper "read like the researchers were involved in the drilling." They've certainly tried to describe the drilling process in a brief manner for the benefit of the reader, but acknowledged the hard work of their fellow scientists, thanked them for their contributions, and provided citations to their original work in extracting and sampling the ice core. It all seems perfectly civilized.
They limited the ice core due to volcanic activity without discussing the impact. None of my editors would allow me to get away with that.
That limitation has exactly the same impact as stopping the drilling above Lake Vostok. It merely truncates the time series, preventing the reconstruction of data earlier than 423,000 years ago. You're probably thinking about studies which fail to sample the population in a uniform or unbiased manner, and thus alter the resulting statistics because they're using a skewed sample. This is a serious problem in many sociological studies, but it's not a relevant concern here. An ice core taken from a shallower hole (like the 3310m core in the paper) has precisely one impact: it provides data back to 423,000 years before the present instead of even further back in time.
The section is clumsily written, almost like they are trying to shove two thesis statements into the same flow. It goes warrant one, warrant two, evidence one, evidence two, synthesis two, synthesis one, closure. Since it is hard to track its flow, the section is a difficult read, which causes the warrant to come across badly, removing support from the general thesis.... If you want someone to research something, you state 'This study raises these questions for further research' or something similar. Another method is to state 'We suggest... but it would require further research'.
Oh. I thought you were trying to make some kind of point regarding the science. Instead, you were talking about their need for better editing. Heck, you're probably even right. Their writing style probably isn't the same as the articles in your field, and your articles are undoubtedly better written. I concede this point.
That is data analysis and synthesis. I am asking about the appropriateness and validity of the approach, not the data. If a research does not discuss the appropriateness of their approach, then it is impossible to validate the reasons for the approach.
Petit et al. (1999) takes no effort to describe the methodologies used in handling ice cores, which raises questions on the process used.
That's because they didn't handle the ice core at all. They simply applied a newer computational algorithm to the data collected from the ice core by other scientists years before they published. In fact, the second to last sentence in the paper says "We thank C. Genthon and J. Jouzel for performing the CO2 spectral analysis..." Their papers are, of course, listed at the end with all the other references.
But just in case you don't have free access to Nature articles, I've found a source (see section II) that provides a rough overview of the way the ice core was handled. It was sliced into 1.5m sections, put into a clean stainless steel tube in Grenoble, France and melted so that various types of spectroscopic and chemical analysis could be performed.
But, let me stress that a deep understanding of this process is only available from the original peer-reviewed articles. I only linked that website for the benefit of people who don't have free access to journals through their universities.
The line "Ice cores give access to palaeoclimate series that includes local temperature and precipitation rate, moisture source conditions, wind strength and aerosol fluxes of marine, volcanic, terrestrial, cosmogenic and anthropogenic origin" is not attributed, which leads it reading as opinion or possible plagerism (Petit et al., 1999, p. 429). Since it is the bases of the work's analysis, it would make sense to give that sentence more concrete foothold in established theory.
It might be a good idea to read at least the next few sentences before hurling accusations of plagiarism around. When you do, notice that the sentence you quoted is the "topic sentence" of the paragraph. Other sentences in that paragraph serve to expand on individual points in the topic sentence, and they're all referenced. In fact, there are no less than 14 references you can read (they're all listed at the end of the article) to catch up on the science contained in that sentence.
There is no discussion on this approach's appropriateness or flaws.
Really? How about...
Page 431, paragraph 2, sentence 4: "This approach underestimated deltaTs by a factor of ~2 in Greenland (ref 22) and, possibly, by up to 50% in Antarctica (ref 23)."
Page 431, paragraph 3. (Virtually the entire paragraph is devoted to understanding shortcomings in the deuterium-temperature connection.)
Page 431, paragraph 4, sentence 3: "... the Vostok record may differ from coastal (ref 28) sites in E. Antarctica and perhaps from West Antarctica as well."
Page 434, paragraph 6, sentence 4: "However, considering the large gas-age/ice-age uncertainty (1000 years, or even more if we consider the accumulation-rate uncertainty), we feel that it is premature to infer the sign of the phase relationship between CO2 and temperature at the start of the terminations."
There is a good discussion on the research team's reason for limiting the data set but not the impact of that limitation.
Limiting the data set in what sense? If you're referring to the fact that they stopped drilling to avoid contaminating Lake Vostok, the impact of that limitation is that the time series stops roughly 500,000 years ago rather than extending slightly farther back in time. If you're talking about some other data set limitation, you'll need to be a little more specific so I know precisely what you mean.
There is no review of further research questions.
Really? how about...
Page 433, paragraph 4, sentence 3: "We suggest that there also may be some link between the Vostok dust record and deep ocean circulation th
Bias in the Vostok data is actually good exercise for you to work through, which helps enforce the fundamental flaws in your research so you can fix it.
Yes sir, thank you for helping me with that exercise. It never would've occurred to me that maybe I should think critically about my research. What a revelation! I'll have to get to work fixing all those fundamental flaws, which I've been ignoring since the day of my birth.
Just out of curiosity, what exactly were the flaws that you noticed in the Petit paper? Clearly, you understand all this much better than I do, so maybe you can help me spot problems in the analysis.
Brevity is not your goal. Conciseness is your goal.
Yet again, your boundless intellect exposes even more flaws in my devious plot to take over humanity through my scheme to use language sloppily. At first, I was confused by the fact that Merriam-Webster defines brevity as "shortness or conciseness of expression" and conciseness as "marked by brevity of expression or statement."
Then I realized that they must be part of the conspiracy too!
I believe I read that the last time CO2 reached "400ppm", the Earth entered an ice-age, which is what the Russians were predicting in the early 70's.
Uh... got a link for that? As far as I know, the last time the earth had a CO2 concentration above 300 ppm was at least 500,000 years ago.
And I'm not sure what you mean by Russians. The ice-age in the 70's quote makes me think you're referring to global cooling, which can be traced back to Newsweek. There are aerosol-induced forcings that cause what is currently referred to as "global dimming" but they're not strong enough to counter the greenhouse gas effects.
A 37% increase in the concentration of a trace gas is still a small increase. A 4-degree mean temperature increase, given historic temperature trends and the amount of energy involved, is a large increase. You seem to be confusing percentages, which can be misleading, with absolute amounts, which are scientifically relevant.
It seems unproductive to try to compare "small" and "large" when discussing measurements as different as CO2 concentrations and global temperature anomalies.
Climatologists have concluded that human CO2 emissions are changing the climate because we've introduced gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere that haven't been part of the ecosystem for millions of years. Because we've raised the concentration of this greenhouse gas to a point 30-40% higher than it's been in the last half million years, the temperature of the planet is too high to be explained by natural forcing.
Furthermore, a disturbing number of positive feedback effects present the possibility that the climate is only metastable:
Melting snow/ice uncovers dark ocean water in the Arctic and dark dirt in the Antarctic. In each case, the albedo of the snow is higher, which means more heat is absorbed after the ice melts.
A warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor, which is a more effective greenhouse gas than CO2.
Warmer deep ocean temperatures may destabilize methane hydrate deposits, releasing another more potent greenhouse gas.
Melting permafrost releases CO2.
Melting glaciers help to lubricate the slide of the glacier into the ocean, speeding up the loss of glaciers once the process starts.
Increased temperatures leads to an increased risk of forest fires, which release the CO2 sequestered in the wood.
There are negative feedback effects, such as the fact that trees grow faster due to more CO2 and thus sequester more CO2 in their wood. But they're outnumbered by the more numerous and powerful positive feedback effects. It seems likely that a little bit of warming will lead to more warming.
Diffusion of isotopes over time leads to large horizontal error bars (i.e. it's uncertain when particular temperature/co2 measurements occurred, especially relative to each other). Accumulation rate uncertainty makes these horizontal uncertainties larger at deeper depths (older ages). But vertical uncertainty is smaller (i.e. the absolute maximum of CO2 is less uncertain). Furthermore, the correlation of those values to the global paleoclimate is still a matter of debate, but other ice cores (as well as borehole measurements and coral growth rates) provide measurements that aren't qualitatively different.
What are the bias in the sources you used for the Vostok data interpretation?
That was just a source for the graph, which was produced by Petit et. al. in this article. It's been cited by over 1300 authors according to Google Scholar, so you won't have to look hard to find someone disagreeing with him.
You cover it in a haphazard method. What might be a better strategy is to cover it in clear sections.
Excellent advice... for someone writing a formal research paper. Did I mention I was jotting down a quick Slashdot post instead?
When discussing your expertise, which you brought to the forefront by stating that you are a climate scientist, it might be better stating that you are a grad student working on theoretical and computational physics with work in using gravitational analysis on glaciers.
Brevity is often a virtue. More nuanced explanations such as the one you've proposed ignore the fact that in my previous messages I was only discussing my current project. In earlier years I used other datasets to help correct water storage models such as GLDAS. Glaciers also aren't the main thrust of my research, which is better constraining ocean tide models using satellite gravimetry. It's just that the gravitational signals from the melting glaciers are so large that I have to correct for them otherwise they'd screw up my models. Plus, the quote on the "about me" page was actually "studying physics" that rather than "studing computational and theoretical physics." I think this entire tirade started when you mistook the statement of my interests with my professional field of study, which is more technically a subfield of computational geophysics.
See how annoyingly long and involved that was? I decided to sum those experiences up with the phrase "climate scientist," and I only did it to provide a first hand eyewitness account that the AC had used a "gross generalization" that wasn't true of me or 9/10 of the climate scientists I know. Then I immediately disowned the AC's idea that people should make decisions based on someone's qualifications, and tried desperately to steer the conversation towards the actual science in question. Degrees and titles are irrelevant. All that matters is the quality of the evidence, and the rigor of the analysis behind it.
Interestingly, I posted another reply to your parent comment that also included those links. Except, I linked to the main page. I was referring to the figures above the one you directly linked to. Figures A2 and A show the Global Annual Mean Surface Air Temperature Change, measured using two different data sets. Uncertainty is indicated by the green bars. Notice the trend in both figures.
The graph you're talking about from 1880 onwards is from this paper, where they specifically state that the warming in the U.S. is known to be smaller than the rest of the world. The reasons for this are not (to my knowledge) completely understood. But the rest of the world have had temperature sensors too, and we've had satellites up for decades which provide the basis for the statement that global temperatures are increasing faster than temperatures in the U.S.
In my opinion, any evidence based on "global temperature" that includes data from more than just recent years should be viewed with scepticism, because our worldwide measurement and calculation techniques have changed dramatically, which likely skews the results in one direction or another.
Figure A (linked to above) is based on this article, which describes adjusting for inhomogeneities in station records and station history adjustments. Sensibly integrating differing datasets is an irritating task, and it's an ongoing process. But it doesn't seem to be a problem climate scientists are ignoring- the techniques for dealing with non-uniform noise characteristics for different data sets are well known.
Furthermore, we don't just have to rely on mechanical recording devices. Tree rings, coral growth rates, borehole measurements and ice core proxies can be used to independently verify the temperature record. They agree to within the limits of experimental uncertainty.
NASA presents data on mean global temperature extending from today back to 1880 as a single line graph with no error bars, which is ridiculous.
Yes, the particular graphs you linked to on that page aren't very detailed. Instead, I suggest the IPCC 4th report. Download chapter 3, open the PDF to page 15 (which is labeled 249) and look at figure 3.6. It includes 5-95% error bars. The trend obtained from the data in figure 3.6 is 0.65 C plus or minus 0.2 C over the period from 1901 to 2005. The report notes that this rate is higher than at any other point since the 11th century.
My point is that arriving at a "mean global temperature" is a very difficult calculation to make.
I wholeheartedly agree. I think scientists should be careful to state the estimated uncertainty in all their statements, and abrupt climate change is no exception. It's just that the error bars are now small enough to rule out the hypotheses "climate change isn't happening" and "climate change is largely natural."
... You make bold statements without considerations of what you say, which shows sloppy academic writing skills - which show whether your anonymous or not.
Okay, I admit it. You got me. I'm really a circus clown. Good thing you didn't bother to discuss any of the links I provided, because they were all just goatse and spyware installs. You must be the only one whose computer hasn't been zombified...
You can't refute someone by making poor statements. When you make easily defeatable statements based on gross generalizations, then you put yourself and any information you provide in question.
I'm not sure exactly what you said, because my fuzzy orange wig is getting in my painted eyes, but I agree that people shouldn't ever be sloppy with their language. I accidentally drew too close a comparison between computational physics and the concepts I'm trying to talk about, which are long term climate measurements based on computational inversions of radioisotope concentrations in the Vostok ice core. They're not exactly identical fields, as you so correctly pointed out. And I sincerely apologize for any confusion that my inexcusable sloppiness caused.
But I'm trying to remember what started this exchange. You were contesting the first paragraph in my post while ignoring the other five paragraphs, I think. And if I recall correctly, you were admonishing me for saying I was a climate scientist because the "about me" page on my homepage said I was a computational physicist, "which is outside climatology."
First of all, I have to hand it to you: your guess was absolutely correct. Clown school is nothing like climate scientist school. You deftly exposed my fraud, but your genius extends even further. That is, there is absolutely no overlap between computational physics and climate science. None. Your astute observation of this fact, and the space this conversation takes up in the internet archive, will endure so long as humanity does. I salute you, sir!
You just have poor presentation skills, which is quite common among the hard sciences, especially the faddish ones. Work on learning to be eloquent in your communication and you will not get other scholars, such as I, questioning your work due to the lack of presentation skills.
Get and read the book I suggest, study epistemology, and learn how to apply critical thought to what you write. Otherwise, your just an elitist dick who posts on/. and worries too much about the people who disagree with him, since his god complex means that he isn't ever wrong.
I just wanted to let you know that I'm taking your advice to heart. Starting this day, I'm going to focus less on my balloon animals and more on your book. I'm also going to learn some restraint, and stop being so much of a dick. I'm sorry.
I'll also work on being more eloquent. Believe me when I say that I feel the shame of your (righteous) criticism, and will try to be better in the future!
Good science is not just playing out in the field or lab, but communicating with both the profession and the public in constructive ways.
Thanks for the feedback. What, exactly, did you want me to say differently in the last five paragraphs of my original comment? I'm willing to listen to any advice you have that will help me communicate with the public in constructive ways. I realize now that I haven't been acting constructively enough, but I want to change that.
Slashdot Mirror
I've tried to explain that here. Long story short: FTL travel can automatically be used as a time machine, which means you can kill your own grandfather.
I've tried to explain the connection between FTL travel and travel back in time here. But, as you said, it really requires spacetime diagrams that I haven't had time to draw yet...
A cheap plan for emergencies may not be necessary if you live in the US. I think landlines are regulated like cell phones in that you must be able to dial 911 even if they're disconnected. In most emergencies that's who you'd want to call anyway.
The French have discovered time travel? Mon Dieu!
You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.
I suspect you meant "subsidized by taxation." Which is completely different.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not disparaging the system you've got. If it works for your country then that's great. But it's disingenuous to pretend that forcing other people to support you through taxation (which is inherently coercive) constitutes some kind of magical loophole in the laws of reality that allows you to obtain the mythical "free lunch." It doesn't.
That makes a lot of sense. I'd ignored the charged capacitors, which probably isn't an issue for the drives I've already got in foil (they've almost certainly discharged by now) but I'll stop doing that in the future. Thanks for the correction.
I do something similar, but use aluminum foil instead of the anti-static bags. Because anti-static bags are conductive (to force all charge to the outside of the bag via Gauss's law) this is just as effective, not to mention cheaper.
Excellent post. I've written about FTL drives being time machines before, and just wanted to note that a "preferred frame" would seem to invalidate this equality. (Unless I've missed something?)
Actually, the joke is that you've either never seen a real ship (which do have windows called "portholes") or that you're confusing the term s-h-i-p with the term s-u-b-m-a-r-i-n-e.
Good lord, you got modded troll for that? WTF?!
I've been following your otherwise insightful and reasonable comments for some time, so I'm utterly astonished to see you say this. The "Electric Universe" is essentially a conspiracy theory, and I've recently discussed it here. In short, I see no reason to take them more seriously than I do young earth creationist or 9/11 Truthers. They're ignored because the claims they're making are nonsensical, not because science has become "religious and un-scientific."
If you still think I'm being dogmatic after reading that discussion, please let me know because I've been desperately looking for someone qualified enough to defend the electric universe. All subjects require a devil's advocate.
I'm not an economist, but isn't this statement only true for interest rates that are above the inflation rate? For the example in question, the bank would have to charge at least the average inflation rate over the student loan period in order to break even...
674 Prius batteries, actually.
That's your goal? I mean, it's certainly realistic- some people would say that GIMP's been hilariously bad for a while- but it might be worthwhile to aim a little higher. For instance, I'd suggest that we bring GIMP to feature parity instead.
No, actually that's wrong. You were right about concentrated solar allowing for a burner backup. Biofuels won't cause any net CO2 increase because their combustion only releases the CO2 they've recently absorbed to grow. I'm not a big fan of generation 1 biofuels, because they tend to provide an incentive for farmers to grow crops that humans can't eat. But generation 2 biofuels use the discarded husks of human-edible plants and might be industrially feasible some day. Genetically engineered bacteria also look like they could produce biofuels given enough time.
I'm not sure there'd be a point to building that kind of backup into the concentrated solar plant, though. Wouldn't it be exactly like building an ordinary oil-powered backup generator, which we already have? It seems like there wouldn't be any point to doing that just to use the sodium loop...
I asked for a link. As in, one (possibly two if I've got a lot of spare time). I opened up several of the seven links you pasted into your message (with no context or explanation) and can't see anything that backs up your statements, which were (1) That the CO2 concentration has recently hit 400ppm, and (2) global cooling was a serious, widespread prediction of the scientific community. I've provided specific links to all the claims I've made so that you can follow up on those claims. If you can provide a specific, credible link to back up each of your claims, I'll look at them.
Continental drift and earthquakes are completely irrelevant to the climate. As for volcanic activity, eruptions only put about a hundredth of the CO2 into the atmosphere that humans do. Massive eruptions in the geologically distant past (such as the Siberian traps which are a suspected cause of the Permian extinction) have likely put more CO2 into the atmosphere, but none of the eruptions in the last 500,000 years pushed the CO2 level above 300 ppm.
Yeah, you might be right about that. I think I remember seeing similar studies, and probably spoke too soon. I've yet to be convinced that this is a sure bet, but I'm delighted that Obama is putting more research money into these areas.
The only thing we can afford to burn in the long run is hydrogen, which requires energy to produce.
Yes, HVDC looks promising, but some population centers are farther away than that from a good spot for solar or geothermic (not all northern countries are as fortunate as Iceland). In the long run this isn't a serious problem because we will eventually build a superconducting grid, but until then it's a nuisance.
If it works, that's great. The problem is that no country has ever successfully powered their civilization in that manner, so it's a bit of a gamble. France gets 80% of its power from nuclear, so we know it works. I'm also inclined to say that the delay in getting new nuclear plants online is more of a problem with lenders being extremely cautious about nuclear energy because of public disapproval, so the permitting process is much more ridiculous than it should be. Nuclear power isn't nearly as dangerous as it's commonly made out to be, and we need enrichment anyway for medical isotopes so terrorism will always be a problem.
I think concentrated solar is great, and might be our best bet in the long run. I just don't want these unproven technologies to be our only bet. It'd be nice to see our civilization put no more than 1/3 of its power generation into one particular technology so that the loss of any particular mode of power generation isn't catastrophic.
Yeah, that's the paper I originally linked, but you're right- the phrase isn't there. I was at work (with access to the journals) when I wrote that, and had 4-5 of the older Vostok papers open at once. That particular phrase is probably in one of those papers, but I don't have journal access at home (and my cache is empty) so I can't verify that right now. The phrase you're looking for in the paper I did link is below the references, in the Acknowledgements section: "We thank the drillers from the St. Petersburg Mining Institute; the Russian, French and US participants for field work and ice sampling..."
Sorry about the confusion; I was juggling too many papers to keep them all straight on my desktop. But you can also verify that J. Jouzel is referenced many times, with reference 6 being published in 1987 (several years after the section from 950-2083m was extracted in 1982-83), and 12,13 published in 1993 and 1996. C. Genthon is reference 14, published in 1987.
I must humbly disagree that the paper "read like the researchers were involved in the drilling." They've certainly tried to describe the drilling process in a brief manner for the benefit of the reader, but acknowledged the hard work of their fellow scientists, thanked them for their contributions, and provided citations to their original work in extracting and sampling the ice core. It all seems perfectly civilized.
That limitation has exactly the same impact as stopping the drilling above Lake Vostok. It merely truncates the time series, preventing the reconstruction of data earlier than 423,000 years ago. You're probably thinking about studies which fail to sample the population in a uniform or unbiased manner, and thus alter the resulting statistics because they're using a skewed sample. This is a serious problem in many sociological studies, but it's not a relevant concern here. An ice core taken from a shallower hole (like the 3310m core in the paper) has precisely one impact: it provides data back to 423,000 years before the present instead of even further back in time.
Oh. I thought you were trying to make some kind of point regarding the science. Instead, you were talking about their need for better editing. Heck, you're probably even right. Their writing style probably isn't the same as the articles in your field, and your articles are undoubtedly better written. I concede this point.
You said "There is no discussion on
That's because they didn't handle the ice core at all. They simply applied a newer computational algorithm to the data collected from the ice core by other scientists years before they published. In fact, the second to last sentence in the paper says "We thank C. Genthon and J. Jouzel for performing the CO2 spectral analysis..." Their papers are, of course, listed at the end with all the other references.
But just in case you don't have free access to Nature articles, I've found a source (see section II) that provides a rough overview of the way the ice core was handled. It was sliced into 1.5m sections, put into a clean stainless steel tube in Grenoble, France and melted so that various types of spectroscopic and chemical analysis could be performed.
But, let me stress that a deep understanding of this process is only available from the original peer-reviewed articles. I only linked that website for the benefit of people who don't have free access to journals through their universities.
It might be a good idea to read at least the next few sentences before hurling accusations of plagiarism around. When you do, notice that the sentence you quoted is the "topic sentence" of the paragraph. Other sentences in that paragraph serve to expand on individual points in the topic sentence, and they're all referenced. In fact, there are no less than 14 references you can read (they're all listed at the end of the article) to catch up on the science contained in that sentence.
Really? How about...
Limiting the data set in what sense? If you're referring to the fact that they stopped drilling to avoid contaminating Lake Vostok, the impact of that limitation is that the time series stops roughly 500,000 years ago rather than extending slightly farther back in time. If you're talking about some other data set limitation, you'll need to be a little more specific so I know precisely what you mean.
Really? how about...
Yes sir, thank you for helping me with that exercise. It never would've occurred to me that maybe I should think critically about my research. What a revelation! I'll have to get to work fixing all those fundamental flaws, which I've been ignoring since the day of my birth.
Just out of curiosity, what exactly were the flaws that you noticed in the Petit paper? Clearly, you understand all this much better than I do, so maybe you can help me spot problems in the analysis.
Yet again, your boundless intellect exposes even more flaws in my devious plot to take over humanity through my scheme to use language sloppily. At first, I was confused by the fact that Merriam-Webster defines brevity as "shortness or conciseness of expression" and conciseness as "marked by brevity of expression or statement."
Then I realized that they must be part of the conspiracy too!
Uh... got a link for that? As far as I know, the last time the earth had a CO2 concentration above 300 ppm was at least 500,000 years ago.
And I'm not sure what you mean by Russians. The ice-age in the 70's quote makes me think you're referring to global cooling, which can be traced back to Newsweek. There are aerosol-induced forcings that cause what is currently referred to as "global dimming" but they're not strong enough to counter the greenhouse gas effects.
It seems unproductive to try to compare "small" and "large" when discussing measurements as different as CO2 concentrations and global temperature anomalies.
Climatologists have concluded that human CO2 emissions are changing the climate because we've introduced gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere that haven't been part of the ecosystem for millions of years. Because we've raised the concentration of this greenhouse gas to a point 30-40% higher than it's been in the last half million years, the temperature of the planet is too high to be explained by natural forcing.
Furthermore, a disturbing number of positive feedback effects present the possibility that the climate is only metastable:
There are negative feedback effects, such as the fact that trees grow faster due to more CO2 and thus sequester more CO2 in their wood. But they're outnumbered by the more numerous and powerful positive feedback effects. It seems likely that a little bit of warming will lead to more warming.
Diffusion of isotopes over time leads to large horizontal error bars (i.e. it's uncertain when particular temperature/co2 measurements occurred, especially relative to each other). Accumulation rate uncertainty makes these horizontal uncertainties larger at deeper depths (older ages). But vertical uncertainty is smaller (i.e. the absolute maximum of CO2 is less uncertain). Furthermore, the correlation of those values to the global paleoclimate is still a matter of debate, but other ice cores (as well as borehole measurements and coral growth rates) provide measurements that aren't qualitatively different.
That was just a source for the graph, which was produced by Petit et. al. in this article. It's been cited by over 1300 authors according to Google Scholar, so you won't have to look hard to find someone disagreeing with him.
Excellent advice... for someone writing a formal research paper. Did I mention I was jotting down a quick Slashdot post instead?
Brevity is often a virtue. More nuanced explanations such as the one you've proposed ignore the fact that in my previous messages I was only discussing my current project. In earlier years I used other datasets to help correct water storage models such as GLDAS. Glaciers also aren't the main thrust of my research, which is better constraining ocean tide models using satellite gravimetry. It's just that the gravitational signals from the melting glaciers are so large that I have to correct for them otherwise they'd screw up my models. Plus, the quote on the "about me" page was actually "studying physics" that rather than "studing computational and theoretical physics." I think this entire tirade started when you mistook the statement of my interests with my professional field of study, which is more technically a subfield of computational geophysics.
See how annoyingly long and involved that was? I decided to sum those experiences up with the phrase "climate scientist," and I only did it to provide a first hand eyewitness account that the AC had used a "gross generalization" that wasn't true of me or 9/10 of the climate scientists I know. Then I immediately disowned the AC's idea that people should make decisions based on someone's qualifications, and tried desperately to steer the conversation towards the actual science in question. Degrees and titles are irrelevant. All that matters is the quality of the evidence, and the rigor of the analysis behind it.
Interestingly, I posted another reply to your parent comment that also included those links. Except, I linked to the main page. I was referring to the figures above the one you directly linked to. Figures A2 and A show the Global Annual Mean Surface Air Temperature Change, measured using two different data sets. Uncertainty is indicated by the green bars. Notice the trend in both figures.
The graph you're talking about from 1880 onwards is from this paper, where they specifically state that the warming in the U.S. is known to be smaller than the rest of the world. The reasons for this are not (to my knowledge) completely understood. But the rest of the world have had temperature sensors too, and we've had satellites up for decades which provide the basis for the statement that global temperatures are increasing faster than temperatures in the U.S.
Figure A (linked to above) is based on this article, which describes adjusting for inhomogeneities in station records and station history adjustments. Sensibly integrating differing datasets is an irritating task, and it's an ongoing process. But it doesn't seem to be a problem climate scientists are ignoring- the techniques for dealing with non-uniform noise characteristics for different data sets are well known.
Furthermore, we don't just have to rely on mechanical recording devices. Tree rings, coral growth rates, borehole measurements and ice core proxies can be used to independently verify the temperature record. They agree to within the limits of experimental uncertainty.
Yes, the particular graphs you linked to on that page aren't very detailed. Instead, I suggest the IPCC 4th report. Download chapter 3, open the PDF to page 15 (which is labeled 249) and look at figure 3.6. It includes 5-95% error bars. The trend obtained from the data in figure 3.6 is 0.65 C plus or minus 0.2 C over the period from 1901 to 2005. The report notes that this rate is higher than at any other point since the 11th century.
I wholeheartedly agree. I think scientists should be careful to state the estimated uncertainty in all their statements, and abrupt climate change is no exception. It's just that the error bars are now small enough to rule out the hypotheses "climate change isn't happening" and "climate change is largely natural."
Okay, I admit it. You got me. I'm really a circus clown. Good thing you didn't bother to discuss any of the links I provided, because they were all just goatse and spyware installs. You must be the only one whose computer hasn't been zombified...
I'm not sure exactly what you said, because my fuzzy orange wig is getting in my painted eyes, but I agree that people shouldn't ever be sloppy with their language. I accidentally drew too close a comparison between computational physics and the concepts I'm trying to talk about, which are long term climate measurements based on computational inversions of radioisotope concentrations in the Vostok ice core. They're not exactly identical fields, as you so correctly pointed out. And I sincerely apologize for any confusion that my inexcusable sloppiness caused.
But I'm trying to remember what started this exchange. You were contesting the first paragraph in my post while ignoring the other five paragraphs, I think. And if I recall correctly, you were admonishing me for saying I was a climate scientist because the "about me" page on my homepage said I was a computational physicist, "which is outside climatology."
First of all, I have to hand it to you: your guess was absolutely correct. Clown school is nothing like climate scientist school. You deftly exposed my fraud, but your genius extends even further. That is, there is absolutely no overlap between computational physics and climate science. None. Your astute observation of this fact, and the space this conversation takes up in the internet archive, will endure so long as humanity does. I salute you, sir!
I just wanted to let you know that I'm taking your advice to heart. Starting this day, I'm going to focus less on my balloon animals and more on your book. I'm also going to learn some restraint, and stop being so much of a dick. I'm sorry.
I'll also work on being more eloquent. Believe me when I say that I feel the shame of your (righteous) criticism, and will try to be better in the future!
Thanks for the feedback. What, exactly, did you want me to say differently in the last five paragraphs of my original comment? I'm willing to listen to any advice you have that will help me communicate with the public in constructive ways. I realize now that I haven't been acting constructively enough, but I want to change that.