I recently came across an old copy of Arthur Koestler’s “The Case of the Midwife Toad”. Originally published in 1971, it’s an exploration of a rather tragic footnote in the history of evolutionary science. Back in the early years of the 20th Century (prior to the understanding of DNA, but after Mendelian genetics had become well known), there was still a remnant of the biological community who preferred the Lamarckian idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics over the Darwinian idea of natural selection of random mutations. One of the vanguard for the Lamarckian idea was Paul Kammerer whose specialty was the breeding of amphibians that apparently few others could match. He claimed that he could get his toads and salamanders to acquire characteristics that were useful in the new environments in which he raised his specimens. This was touted loudly (in the New York Times for instance) as proof of Lamarckian inheritance and Kammerer was hailed as a ‘new Darwin’. It all ended very badly when one toad specimen was found to be faked (by who remains a mystery), and Kammerer killed himself shortly afterwards (though there may have been more involved than scientific disgrace).
The details of the experiments and controversy can be read online (with various slants) here and here, and a more modern non-replication of one of his experiments is described here. However, the reason I bring this up here is much more related to how the scientific community and Koestler dealt with this scientific maverick and the analogies that has for the climate science and its contrarians.
There are (at least) four points where the analogies with climate science are strong: First, there were clear philosophical motives for supporting Lamarckism (as there are for denying human effects on climate change) (see below). These are strongly articulated in Koestler’s book, and it is obvious that the author feels some sympathy with that argument. Second, there is idealization of the romantic notion of the scientist-as-hero, sacrificing their all (literally in Kammerer’s case) for the pursuit of truth in the teeth of establishment opposition (cf Svensmark). Third, there is the outrage at the apparent dirty tricks, rumours and persecution. Finally, there is the longing for a redemption – a time when the paradigm shift will occur and the hero will be proven right.
Enough time has passed and enough additional scientific evidence has been gathered however to show that Kammerer’s ideas are never going to be accepted into the mainstream. Therefore, we can use this episode to highlight how people’s misunderstanding of scientific process can lead them astray.
So let’s start with the non-scientific reasons why Kammerer’s ideas had resonance. Martin Gardner in Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (1952) puts it well (p143):
Just as Lamarckianism combines easily with an idealism in which the entire creation is fulfilling God’s vast plan by constant upward striving, so also does it combine easily with political doctrines that emphasize the building of a better world.
The point is that without Lamarckianism, none of the striving and achievement of a parent impacts their progeny’s genetic material. That was a depressing thought for many people (what is the point of striving at all?), and hence there was a clear non-scientific yearning for Lamarckian inheritance to be correct. I use the past tense in referring to these almost 100 year-old arguments, but Koestler’s book and more recent attempts to rehabilitate these ideas tap into these same (misguided) romantic notions. (Odd aside, one of the most positive treatments of this “neo-Lamarckianism” is by Michael Duffy, a frequent climate contrarian Australian journalist). Note that I am distinguishing the classic ‘inheritance of acquired characteristics’ from the much more respectable study of epigenetics.
The scientist-as-hero meme is a very popular narrative device and is widespread in most discussions of progress in science. While it’s clearly true that some breakthroughs have happened through the work of a single person (special relativity is the classic case) and someone has to be the first to make a key observation (e.g. Watson and Crick), the vast majority of scientific progress occurs as the accumulation of small pieces of new information and their synthesis into a whole. While a focus on a single person makes for a good story, it is very rarely the whole or even a big part of the real story. Thus while Koestler can’t be uniquely faulted for thinking that Lamarckianism rose and fell with Kammerer, that perspective leads him to imbue certain events with much more significance than is really warranted.
For instance, one of the more subtle misconceptions in the book though is how Koestler thinks that scientific arguments get settled. He places enormous emphasis on a academic tour that Kammerer made to the UK which included a well-documented talk in Cambridge in which the subsequently-notorious specimen was also in attendance. In fact, Koestler devotes a large number of pages to first-hand recollections of the talk. Koestler also criticises heavily the arch-protagonist in this story (a Dr. Bateson) who did not attend Kammerer’s talk, even though he presumably could have, while continuing to criticise his conclusions. The talk is in fact held up to be the one missed opportunity for some academic mano-a-mano that Koestler presumably thinks would have settled things.
Except that this is not how controversial ideas get either accepted or rejected. Sure, publishing papers, giving talks and attending conferences are all useful in bringing ideas to a wider audience, but they are very rarely the occasion of some dramatic denouement and mass conversion of the skeptical. Instead, ideas get accepted because of the increasing weight of evidence that supports them – and that usually comes in dribs and drabs. A replication here, a theoretical insight there, a validated prediction etc. Only in hindsight does there appear to be a clean sequence of breakthroughs that can be seen to have led inexorably to the new conclusions. At the time, the landscape is far more ambiguous. Thus in focusing on one specific talk, and on its reception by one particularly outspoken opponent, Koestler misses the wider issue – which was that Kammerer’s ideas just didn’t have any independent support. The wider community thus saw his work (as far as I can tell) as a curiosity: possibly his findings were correct, but his interpretation was likely not, and maybe his findings weren’t all that reproducible in any case?
This remains the issue, if Lamarckian evolution were possible, it should have been viewable in hundreds of other systems that were much easier to replicate than Kammerer’s toads (nematodes perhaps?). Absent that replication, no amount of exciting talks will have persuaded scientists. In that, scientists are probably a little different from the public, or at least the public who went to Kammerer’s more public lectures where he was very warmly received.
In these circumstances, it is not surprising that Kammerer’s more vocal opponents would occasionally give vent to their true feelings. Koestler is particular critical of Bateson who, in retrospect, does appear to have gone a little far in his public critiques of Kammerer. However, Koestler perhaps doesn’t realise how common quite scathing criticism is in the halls of academe. This rarely gets written down explicitly, but it is nonetheless there, and forms a big part of how well some people’s ideas are received. If someone is perceived as an exaggerator, or an over-interpreter of their results, even their most careful work will not get a lot of support.
Koestler ends his book with the familiar refrain that since modern science is incomplete, alternative theories must continue to be pursued. He states that since “contemporary genetics has no answers to offer to the problem of the genesis of behaviour”, the replication the key experiments (which he clearly expected to vindicate Kammerer), would very likely make biologists ‘sit up’ and have a long-lasting impact on the field. This notion fails to take into account the vast amount of knowledge that already exists and that makes certain kinds of ‘alternative’ theories very unlikely to be true. The link between this optimistic expectation and discussions of climate change is persuasively demonstrated in this pastiche.
There is one additional characteristic of this story that has some modern resonance, and that’s the idea that once someone starts accepting one class of illogical arguments, that leads them to accept others that aren’t really connected, but share some of the same characteristics. Some people have called this ‘crank magnetism‘. In Kammerer’s case, he was a great believer in the meaningfulness of coincidences and wrote a book trying to elucidate the ‘laws’ that might govern them. Koestler himself became a big proponent of parapsychology. And today there are examples of climate contrarians who are creationists or anti-vaccine campaigners. Though possibly this is just coincidence (or is it….?).
Of course, the true worth of any scientific idea is whether it leads to more successful predictions than other theories. So I’ll finish with a 1923 prediction that Kammerer made while he was on a speaking tour of the US: “Take a very pertinent case. The next generation of Americans will be born without any desire for liquor if the prohibition law is continued and strictly enforced” (NYT, Nov 28).
Joeeeseph #541 minor typos mean absolutely nothing.As you can see I did cite some basic evidence to support my claims, though there do exist many others, some you may find more reputable, but I do not want to waste anymore time on this issue when it is clear I have already made my points. Suffice to say that the green movement overall is a great thing, but capitalists and resulting disinformation leads to some severe detriments that can be worse than just being a skeptic or denialist. The IPCC report is not easily understandable by the lay public, but the basic explanation seems too simple to them. It is just like my students, when they ask is that all there is to wave functions or cell metabolism, well when I show them the complexity they give up and wave their hands in the air: “I don;t understand.” they exclaim… at other times they ask for a simplification of SN2 reactions, and when they get it, they have a topical understanding better than a lay person, but they cannot pass the test. When CO2 comes up and global warming, again the results are similar. The statistics alone does start out as elementary stats, but ends in graduate level stats, advanced physics and physical chemistry to just name a few topics. Green is great, when properly applied and even then we make mistakes, those of us who know and understand a lot, really still know so little.
I am not going for the big prize, but I am an expert in several areas and I still get surprised, perplexed and amazed by nature itself, surely we all are. Green will make things better, but not before there are detriments as well, it is a double edged sword.Some green movements are misinformed and do a lot of harm.
“And if you’re willing to live with the non-negligible environmental effects of tens of thousands of wind turbines – but of course, they’re probably not going to be in YOUR back yard” – James
Erm, probably not, since offshore turbines were specified.
“Nick, one man’s tiresome whining is another’s objecting to a grossly offensive term, thinly disguised. That you have no problem with that sort of name-calling is your choice, but I am sure you understand why others might shy away from it.” – wmanny
I do indeed. When you have no argument, and no interest in learning about the science, whining about a spade being called a spade is your only option.
wmanny says “And Ray, I am the first to admit I don’t understand the science. Neither do you, of course, or you would simply state it and go collect your Nobel Prize, this one for Physics, not Peace.”
See, this is the sort of fetid dingo’s kidneys I’m talking about. The basic science of atmospheric energy balance has been known for over a century. Yes, there are uncertainties. No, they don’t affect the basic argument that CO2 forcing makes the climate warmer. That this is true is an inevitable consequence of our current understanding of climate–e.g. that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, responsible for about 7 or the 33 degrees of greenhouse warming that keeps Earth from turning into a snowball. There are only three ways out of this:
1)Everything we know about climate is wrong. This is contra-indicated by the success of climate models at reproducing many aspects of the climate–from explaining paleoclimate to the response to small perturbations (e.g. volcanic eruptions)
2)There is some negative feedback that kicks in magically at our current temperature range that keeps the globe from warming any more. This is contra-indicated by the paleo-climate, which shows Earth has been much warmer in the past. Remember, climate doesn’t care whether the added forcing is greenhouse or solar or whatever. It just responds to the added energy the same way, regardless of source.
3)Somehow, CO2 magically stops acting like a greenhouse gas at 280 ppmv. Again, we know of no mechanism for this to occur. It is certainly contra-indicated by all the data we have to date.
So, which magical outcome do you choose, wmanny? If 1), you and your denialist buddies had better be ready with a better theory. Science doesn’t discard perfectly good theories just because somebody doesn’t like them. If 2) or 3), I’ll be waiting to hear what your favorite magic spell is.
Or, you could stop wasting your time and ours and just learn how greenhouse forcing works. There are plenty of resources here to help you out. I would be happy to answer your questions if I can. That is, after all, what this site is for.
James wrote: “Solar thermal (for power generation rather than home heating) requires building over large areas of land, with consequent habitat destruction – but again, I suspect it’s not your neighborhood that’s going to be built over.”
From SourceWatch:
By comparison (from the same SourceWatch article):
Note that some of the thousands of square miles of land that has already been “disturbed” and is currently used for road and railroad rights of way, airports, military bases, and urban and industrial areas could also accommodate solar or wind power generators, reducing the need to site them on environmentally important land.
And for the record, I would be more than happy to have solar photovoltaic, concentrating solar thermal or wind turbine generators built in my neighborhood — indeed, I’d love to have my own solar power station in my own back yard. Instead of a “NIMBY” I guess that makes me a PPPIIMBY (Please, Please Put It In My Back Yard!).
Well, to paraphrase an old saying, don’t leave it so open that your brain falls out …
There are constraints as to what’s possible in the real world. The intelligent person closes their mind to crank claims that fall outside those constraints. Won’t be an angel investor for someone who claims to have invented a perpetual motion machine, won’t jump up and down for joy when someone “proves” that CO2 no longer acts as a GHG once the atmospheric concentration reaches 280ppm, etc.
Ray,
Your tone feels a bit angry, or at least exasperated, and I do not wish to annoy you. The point I have been repeatedly trying to make on this thread (which was, after all, about contrarians in general and an analogy to Lamarckian inheritance) is that I disagree with the sneering about opposing points of view, but I’m guessing that’s largely a matter of taste here, [edit] I’ll drop it, at least for the time being.
Since you insist that I provide some sort of question for you to answer, I’ll try to meet you halfway. I could ask some question like, “What is the physical mechanism whereby CO2 causes net positive feedback in water vapor and how much?” and I imagine you would lead me here, here, and here. I think it would be far more efficient, though, for me to ask you, since you are in the profession, what uncertainties you worry about, if any.
The last time I was able to get a consensus proponent to answer that question, he came up with, “If I worry about something, it’s the possibility of non-linear effects like ice-albedo feedback around the Arctic or permafrost melt speeds.”
I realize that it’s an anathema to give an inch on this site, so I hardly expect you to violate the code, but I would be interested in knowing if there’s anything at all that gives you, the scientist, any pause whatsoever as you look at the current state of the theory or the models.
And for what it’s worth, I have no “denialist buddies”. My pals are all with you.
> what ReCAPTCHA or “toast threat” means
That sort of posting is a frightening consequence of a wisecrack I made here some time ago, in the context of how people perceive patterns so easily in random material.
It refers to the spamblocker service “ReCAPTCHA” you see at each posting, which presents two words.
I noticed how easily I could feel as though the words presented were somehow related to what I was posting (or thinking) and said hey, has the AI achieved intelligence, thereby polluting the minds of many other readers with this superstition.
If you don’t feel like the words are somehow related to what you wrote or thought, try pasting them into Google, to get even more material on which the brain’s pattern recognition propensity can elaborate.
The words for this one are:
_________________
“Ladra, confused”
And Google, searching those words, yields
> LaDra asked confused. “I’m so high right now,
> cause this is just weird! Don’t aliens have
> really big heads and green skin?
See a pattern? Chuckle. The mind is a strange thing. Now, if you’d like your fortune told …..
PS — no, I don’t think anyone here believes there’s an AI lurking for real (but, but, wouldn’t it be neat if it were true?). It’s shared amusement here.
Superstitious behavior is behavior that gets reinforced randomly. Much written about, e.g.
Human Reactions to Uncontrollable Outcomes: Further Evidence for Superstitions …
H Matute – Quarterly J. Experimental Psychology 1995
… Inspired by Skinner’s “superstition in the pigeon” paper (1948), many experiments
have provided evidence demonstrating the tendency of human subjects …
http://www.informaworld.com/index/771551438.pdf
Nick, sorry you misread my 510 post; I admit is was bad syntax. As I also said in 510 I have zero expectations of any cite of destructive environmentalists being accepted, even though the cites are out there by the hundreds (at least many tens).
Sorry I botched your reference to Herndon.
SecularAnimist (555), you skipped past that “day and night” thing from solar power pretty fast. Have any explanations? Know any storage mechanism that can handle the entire nighttime US load?
You make a decent point over the land resources required. It sounds and is terribly humongous, but certainly not impossible or beyond the pale.
Gonna allow 4 or 5 of those HV transmission towers and a pile of humming convertors and transformers in your back acre, too? ;-)
wmanny, Here’s something you need to understand. I do not want the current period of warming to be due to human activity. My most fervent hope is that somebody will find some heretofore unknown negative feedback, and humanity can get on with the business of learning about the Universe around us–that’s what gives my life meaning.
Instead, it appears that we have to worry about how our activities will change the climate on which the infrastructure of civilization depends. It will probably take a generation or more of human activity to develop new, sustainable ways of supporting civilization, and much else will have to be put on hold until that is accomplished. When I look at the problem of climate change, I do indeed see lots of uncertainties, but most of them line up on the side of making things worse.
So, when I say that what I worry about is reaching a tipping point for outgassing of the oceans and permafrost, it is not because I am trying to avoid giving an inch. I’d really LIKE TO BE WRONG. There are worse things than being wrong. Rather, that is what I worry about because then we become passive spectators to whatever the climate chooses to do to civilization.
I am not a climate scientist. I’m a radiation physicist who has to make sure radiation threats don’t compromise a satellite’s ability to do its mission. This is a credible threat. I’m trying to approach it as I would any other risk mitigation issue. The first step:
1)Understand the threat–we need time to see how bad things could really get, but already there is enough credible evidence that they could be pretty bad.
2)Develop mitigation–again, this will take time
3)Mitigate the threat–again more time
In addressing this threat, time is our friend; uncertainty is not.
Rod B wrote: “you skipped past that ‘day and night’ thing from solar power pretty fast. Have any explanations? Know any storage mechanism that can handle the entire nighttime US load?”
Thermal storage.
> I do not want the current period of warming
> to be due to human activity.
Me neither, but it hardly matters; there’s no question the change in ocean (and river!) pH is due to the vast sudden excess of fossil carbon pushing CO2 above what natural cycling can remove in the short term.
http://www.agu.org/eos_elec/2008/salisbury_89_50.html
Salisbury, J., M. Green, C. Hunt, and J. Campbell (2008), Coastal acidification by rivers: A new threat to shellfish?, Eos Trans. AGU, 89(50), 513. [Full Article (pdf) is linked from the HTML page.]
That’s our urgent problem. Warming will be a problem later.
I have had numerous conversations with friends and associates about man-made global warming and seem to run up against this contrarian response…”Give me the names of any real Climatologists that support the theory that man contributes to global warming. Can you help me out here or direct me to somebody or place that can. My google searches have been way to time consuming.
Thanks,
Jim Patrick
[Response: Umm… all of us? (see Contributor’s on the side bar for brief bios). Alternatively, look up the list of lead and contributing authors on the IPCC reports, or the people writing the CCSP reports, or the National Academy Reports, or presenting at AGU …. etc. – gavin]
562 — Ray, utterly reasonable explanation of where you are coming from. Thanks.
Jim Patrick (565) — When so queried, I encourage you to then whip out a copy of climatologist W.F. Ruddiman’s “Plows, Plagues and Petroleum” in one hand while simultaneously whipping out a copy of climatologist David Archer’s “The Long Thaw” with the other.
Biologists are somewhat like Global Warmists.
That’s why some interested person could do all this pontificating in good faith, and not even know that the recent advances in genetics are pointing towards Lamarckian mechanisms. (Though they are published using terminology that hides any hint that they are Lamarckian.)
Science should not be approached with firm ideals in mind. Data and logic should come before ideals. [edit]
Bhanwara (568) — Many aspects of climatology are much simplier and easier to understand than molecular biology. I enocurage you to go over to the Books ’08 thread here on RealClimate for some recommendations. Be sure to read those in the comments as well. Lots of both data and logic to be found.
SecularAnimist, thermal storage?? Boggles the mind!
And I have zero expectations of any cite proving I’m not beating my wife, even though the cites are out there in the hundreds (at least many tens).
See how silly you are?
Re #555: “Note that some of the thousands of square miles of land that has already been “disturbed” and is currently used for road and railroad rights of way, airports, military bases, and urban and industrial areas could also accommodate solar or wind power generators, reducing the need to site them on environmentally important land.”
ALL land is environmentally important. It’s not like the Earth’s surface is expanding or anything.
Beyond that, and to the extent that that can be done, I’m in favor: putting PV panels on your roof is a good thing, putting them on lots of roofs is better. But may I point out that some things only work at industrial scale. so it’s not really practical (AFAIK) to do e.g. mini solar thermal power plants on everyone’s roofs? It’s hard to envision building a solar thermal without taking undisturbed lands for the purpose, and in fact that’s what all the proposals I’ve seen suggest: building them in Nevada or Arizona, or some place similarly distant from the backyards of the proposers.
So if I take this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Solar_One as a representative solar thermal plant, and take US electricity consumption from here http://www.eei.org/industry_issues/ industry_overview_and_statistics/industry_statistics I get (unless I hit the wrong buttons on the calculator) about 31,000 such plants would be needed to supply last year’s US electricity use. They’d cover over 18,000 square miles, and cost $8.2 trillion. (Of course prices would come down with mass production, but you’d also have to add the cost of storage.)
At the other extreme, say you want to just replace current coal generation with nuclear. (Double the figures to replace all of it.) That’s about 230 GWatts, and assuming 1 GWatt reactors at $5 billion each, costs about $1.15 trillion. More importantly, they require far less land – I’d think 100 acres per reactor would be plenty – and could easily be located in already-disturbed areas, close to the major population centers which consume most of the power.
Rod B and matt:
I agree here with SecularAnimist that you lay too much emphasis on the grid. Labeling the required changes ‘humongous’ is simply not credible. The consumption side will remain the same. Cities will not be changed or moved because we are building solar plants and wind farms.
Only because of supply side changes must existing lines be upgraded and new ones built. Expanding the grid is something that has been going on for more than a century, and will continue in the future albeit for different reasons. The switch to renewables does not need to be completed by tomorrow or next year. It will be a gradual change taking place over half a century or more.
I am not aware of ‘humongous’ problems in countries like Denmark, Germany or Spain. That leads me to believe that your are being alarmists, rather than realists.
I am purely talking about the grid here, not about other issues with renewables like cost or reliability, which in my opinion are much more worthy of attention. Don’t focus on non-problems.
#561 Rod B:
#563 SecularAnimist:
How often do you have tell people that we are NOT going to supply our energy with one source only. Wind blows at night. Waves move at night. Heat escapes through the Earth’s crust at night. Water flows at night. Consumption is lower at night. No storage mechanism necessary that can handle the entire nighttime US load.
Anne, you write “the consumption side will stay the same” — why do you think people won’t do this sort of thing, since they are demonstrably already doing it?
http://www.fypower.org/feature/awards/6th/
dhogaza (571), not silly at all. I’ve cited such a couple of times before (elsewhere) and the reaction is exactly as I described in #510 — unadulterated denialism (to borrow a term). Pure waste of time.
Anne (574), but SecularAnimist was discussing only solar-voltic. I don’t think he excludes all other alternative sources; he just wasn’t talking about them.
Anne (573), the realities of adding major new transmission lines over hundreds of miles, overbuilding most to all of today’s lines over hundreds of miles, and coming up with a management and control process that noway exists today on a national scale is easy only to those who have never actually implemented or have no knowledge of the millions of little but difficult pieces in projects of such scale. Addressing these realities is not only not alarmist it is essential if you ever get to the stage of being seriously interested. Ignore roadblocks, mines, and difficulties in project implementation at your own peril.
The transmission interconnect for T. Boone Pickens’ wind power farm in northwest Texas will prove almost as daunting as building the farm.
Anne PS: Building a new grid in Denmark, or even Germany or Spain for that matter is hardly like building in the U.S. And I’ll guarantee they had major hitches or otherwise planned hard in advance for their probability.
[Response: So? Do you have an aversion to advance planning? When someone keeps saying that something can’t be done, and is given a good example of it actually being done, the sensible response is to ask how, not to insist that it still can’t be done. – gavin]
Rod, I don’t see any obstacles you have raised that are insurmountable with planning and foresight. In other words, I don’t think anyone is proposing: “Hey, guys, let’s really screw up the Electric Grid!” New infrastructure is going to be essential in any case. It may as well be green infrastructure as “Clean Coal” (snicker, snicker).
What is more, in much of the world there is no grid and little prospect for one. They’re going to consume more energy in any case in the future, and whether it is through aid or offsets, helping them to do it in a green fashion not only helps them in the near term, it also provides a laboratory for solutions that can be applied elsewhere.
David B. Benson (569), thanks for your comments.
If you follow the link to my blog (click on the name), you may find plenty of opportunities to correct my understanding of climatology. Just keep clicking on the “older post” link, and I think there are a dozen or so posts that could use comments from a climatology expert.
Gavin (578), I never said it can’t be done. It certainly is feasible. But not with Anne’s wave of her hand, saying don’t worry about it, and calling those who think about the difficult details alarmists. It is likely as, or more difficult than building the solar and wind farms, which themselves are a long way from easy. “Difficult” does not mean it can’t be done. Actually we probably have more know-how here than with the alternative power sources. But it’s a long slog and takes tons and tons of planning, resources (money, people, stuff), and time.
> Bhanwara
Try starting with the first link under Science in the right sidebar.
That will help. Much has been discovered since the original work by Arrhenius. Arrhenius did get the saturation thing wrong, and that’s explained there. CO2 does not “hold” heat, it transfers heat to surrounding molecules. Air pressure/density changes interactions, and Arrhenius (and you) didn’t know pressure changes “saturation” effects.
No sense in us retyping the basic information; it is well explained.
Bhanwara … is an engineer.
Why don’t you study the subject, using available online resources, as Hank’s suggested? How did you learn engineering? By posting stuff that’s “not even wrong” (as is true of the current post on your site) and expecting people to correct your extreme misinformation for you? Or did you learn by systematically studying engineering in a structured way?
Surely some of you nice folks will not mind explaining in some detail (so even not very smart people can understand it) why the post is “not even wrong”?
As for Arrhenius, I was in fact sayingthe online resources that explain why CO2 saturation is not valid — lack even basic physics understanding, for instance they totally misunderstand what “saturation” means. I say that after reading lots of references (including realclimate.org.) But I could be wrong. Nobody has taken the time/effort to point out my errors, unfortunately. [edit]
[Response: Actually, your posts are almost all wrong from start to finish. The effort to point out your errors would take all week, and unfortunately, many of us have better things to do. Please note, this is not a venue for you to advertise nonsense. Genuine inquiries are welcome, but yours are far from that. – gavin]
Anne van der Bom wrote:
I agree. That’s why I have repeatedly referred to the need for a next-generation “smart” electrical grid that can intelligently integrate diverse, large & small, centralized & distributed, baseline & intermittent energy producers, consumers and storage.
Moreover, my view is that as existing and emerging technologies for small-to-medium-scale solar and wind generation — e.g. thin-film photovoltaics, micro-wind turbines — scale up to mass production, that small-scale, distributed electricity generation will become much more important to the overall mix than large-scale, centralized power plants of any kind. Like cell phones and personal computers, ultra-cheap thin-film photovoltaics are likely to be a “disruptive” technology that will profoundly change the way electricity is generated and used. Investors would be wise to think twice before investing in new nuclear or coal-fired, large power plants that may well be obsolete, unneeded and unprofitable by the time they are built.
Having said that, the solar thermal company Ausra which I referenced above does assert that “100 percent of the US electric power, day and night, can be supplied by CSP using a land area smaller than 92 by 92 miles” or 8464 square miles. They propose thermal storage to provide night time power, using a technology that they are developing that they say will be more efficient and less costly than molten salts.
Likewise, various studies have shown that the offshore wind energy resources of the US northeast alone, or the onshore wind energy resources of a few midwestern states alone, or maximum deployment of photovoltaics alone could provide more electricity than the entire country uses. And there are existing technologies for thermal and kinetic (compressed air, flywheels) energy storage, which are less expensive and more efficient than chemical storage of electricity in batteries.
My point in mentioning these proposals is not to advocate that we actually rely on any one of them, alone, to produce all the nation’s electricity. The point is that we have a vast, abundant, endless supply of solar and wind energy, such that exploiting even a small portion of these various, diverse resources can produce all the electricity we need — without fossil fuels, and without nuclear.
I’m not an expert, just a regular reader; I read your site and see you claiming saturation means something different than how climatologists use the word. But I don’t see any argument that what they’re describing is incorrect; you’re using the word to mean something else?
Dr. Weart comments that radiation physics is the hardest section of the book to understand. I’m taking his word for it.
Bhanwara (580) — Thank you, but I am one of the amateurs here. But do take the advice to consult Weart’s book, also the Start Here link at the top of this page.
There are many other good books, some are mentioned over on the Books ’08 thread. I’ll add W.F. Ruddiman’s “Earth’s Climate: Past and Future” as a very fine starting point for learning climatology.
Also, following RealClimate thoroughly helps; you’ll find many of the earlier threads of interest as well.
When an engineer tells me that physicists are wrong about physics …
I listen to the physicists.
Gavin, Thanks for the response (actually, I hardly expected the comments would be published in this forum… So that was a bit of unexpected honesty), but surely it can’t be that hard to point out some basic error in “nonsense”? If my posts are wrong from start to finish, at least one could point out a mistake at the start! Frankly, that sounds like a wiggling out by suggesting “yes, there is a refutation to this”, and at the same time suggesting “but of course, I can’t be bothered to provide the refutation”…
And I am not advertising for a book or something here. By saying that it’s an “advertisement for nonsense”, you are saying climate science arguments are not relevant to this forum, which is another wiggling out.
Bhanwara, Look, no disrespect intended. But lots of folks have pointed out why you are in error. About half of the links under the “START HERE” button have to do with the same sorts of mistakes you are making. So rather than hijacking the whole website and turning it into your own private tutoring session, why not go to the Start Here button and start reading. If you have specific questions, come back and ask them. That is how this website works best–and it works really, really well at its best.
Basic errors: see the threads titled “What Ångström didn’t know;” among much else, CO2 doesn’t “hold” heat; it exchanges heat and evens out with its surroundings. You write “”CO2 molecules have already absorbed all the heat that they can” — no, because the CO2 is at about the same temperature as the gas around it, exchanging energy by collisions (far more often colliding, in the lower/denser air, than emitting a photon). That’s one basic example.
Seriously, the phrase “not even wrong” had occurred to me too when I looked at your page, though I didn’t write it the first time above. But you’ve built a towering structure of logic on basic assumptions you should have checked first.
Read the basic book, first link under Science; read the footnotes; note how often each of those papers has been cited; read the citing papers; if anyone contradicted or disproved any of those papers you’ll find that in the subsequent references.
Don’t believe what any guy on a blog tells you is true. Look it up.
Bhanwara, We have all been through this many times before. A possibly well meaning but uninformed individual comes on here convinced that conventional climate science is wrong. He hijacks the thread for a day or two, peppering regular posters with questions that demonstrate that he hasn’t bothered to really learn the science. And we wind up answering questions everyone here has seen answered many times before. Not productive.
So here is one thing area where you are simply flat wrong: when it comes to climate science, climate scientists know their stuff; they are not idiots. It is the basis of all your other errors, since it keeps you from investing the time to learn the science. So, the absolute effrontery of your post “Does RealClimate.org understand any science?” is simply astounding and frankly insulting to the people you are now trying to engage. Any wonder why we think you are a troll?
Your argument against saturation is utter twaddle. You seem to be saying that all the 15 micron band is absorbed, but we know from satellite measurements that in fact there is finite energy in that band–and it is at a greenhouse temperature that shows it comes from high in the atmosphere. What is more, as you add more CO2, the absorption band broadens, so you absorb radiation you would not have at lower concentrations. That is clearly stated in the Saturated Gassy Argument piece, which I know you have at least seen, since you purport to refute it.
Finally, you claim to base your refutations on basic physics. Dude, I am a physicist. So are many of the folks who work in climate science. AND the American Physical Society endorses the consensus position on climate science, along with every other major scientific professional organization.
Now, please, please, please, unlearn all the fetid dingo’s kidneys you think you know and go and learn the real science.
Your most recent post provides a glaring example of the sort of ignorance you are peddling: The current increase in CO2 has nothing to do with warming in the Middle Ages. We can show by isotopic signature that it comes from a fossil (i.e. once alive) source.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cites=8337085834435558156&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=science_links&resnum=7&ct=sl-citedby
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cites=8337085834435558156&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=science_links&resnum=7&ct=sl-citedby
Some uses of isotope ratios tracking carbon from fossil fuel use (as well as nitrogen and other changes affecting major areas of biology in the Pacific)
(typo in the first attempt fixed here)
> Princeton
Some history. Happer described some of the chemical reactions that others later found affecting the ozone layer, ironically.
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev27-3/text/phoside4.htm
You’ve missed the point. Your arguments have nothing to do with climate science. They have to do with denialist climate science *fiction*.
If you think that pretty much everything we know about atmospheric physics (for starters) is wrong, and can prove it, there’s probably a Nobel awaiting you. To collect your prize, you’re going to have to publish in the literature, not on a blog.
Get to it! And, please, don’t come back until you’re done.
“As I also said in 510 I have zero expectations of any cite of destructive environmentalists being accepted” – Rod B.
Rod@560, I’m not denying there have been “destructive environmentalists. That is not what you were claiming. You said @535:
“some deny that the green/environmental movement has ever produced destructive and stupid supporters, or similarly some maintain that the movement has never produced anybody like that”
So you are claiming here, not that there have been destructive environmentalists, but that there are people who deny this. @543, I asked you to justify this claim. You appear to be completely unable to understand yourself, so I don’t know how you expect anyone else to do so.
wmanny quick reminder I answered your questions.
PS: If the absorption bands were to “broaden” it would be logarithmic and trivial.
There have been some attempts at claiming the effect will be larger, but laboratory measurements do not bear this out. Check this paper from GISS itself:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/ma_01/
This is about experimental results, not theoretical, so it’s not a debating issue but actual observation.
[Response: And why do you think this isn’t included in the calculations? It is not trivial at all (see the ‘Saturated Gassy Argument‘ post). (PS. comments linking to insulting diatribes on your blog will be deleted.) – gavin]
> Your most recent post provides a glaring example
> of the sort of ignorance you are peddling: The
> current increase in CO2 has nothing to do with
> warming in the Middle Ages. We can show by
> isotopic signature that it comes from a
> fossil (i.e. once alive) source.
I am not sure how you could do that, it’s the same carbon that goes from the atmosphere into alive sources, and then back into atmosphere.
But in any case, are you saying (a) there was no MWP or (b) there is no 800-year later release of CO2 or (c) MWP and 800-year later release of CO2 are irrelevant, and fossil fuels have totally overwhelmed this natural cycle that occured many times in the past?