This month’s open thread. Topics might include the record breaking hurricane season, odds for the warmest year horse race (and it’s relevance or not), or indeed anything climate science related.
Reader Interactions
304 Responses to "Unforced variations: Dec 2020"
J Doug Swallowsays
#201 23 Dec 2020 at 10:54 AM Kevin McKinney says: “Mr. Swallow is clearly a troll, and not worth rebutting in detail”. I assume that to mean that any one that has different substantiated views of your anthropogenic climate change is deemed to be something like what you call a ‘troll’. Going forward from this 201 post, I find that these 22 post mention me;
202, 204, 211, 214, 215, 216, 217, 220, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 233, 234, 237, 240, 241, 243 & 146. It appears that whomever moderates my replies out of the conversation is doing a disservice to those who took the time to try to prove what I have maintained is wrong. Is that how science is conducted at Real Climate. Org when one of the definitions of science is; “knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study”?
Question for the moderators, or other competent people:
How would the Clausius-Clapeyron relation for water vapor work on a planet with a different level of gravity? Or a different total pressure in the atmosphere? If I use a relation like:
es(T) = 611.2 exp (17.67 T / [T + 243.5])
where es is saturation vapor pressure and T is in degrees Celsius, it tells me that es is 1,704 pascals at 15 C. Would I be correct in thinking this would be 2,045 Pa on a 1.5 g planet? And that other constituents don’t matter? Or do they? Dalton’s law of partial pressures depends on mole fraction, so what does that tell me about the Clausius-Clapeyron relation? Any input would be appreciated.
Alastair McDonaldsays
Gavin,
I have just been reading your “MY Review of Books” from 2006. It was very interesting. I wonder if it would be possible for you to write a sequel with your opinion of three recent books? I am sure I am not the only one who would be pleased to be brought up to date. Thanks in anticipation.
nigeljsays
Piotr @241
“A related chicken and egg question – do you guys becoming climate change deniers because you are so dense, or are you becoming so dense, because of the climate change denial (e.g. sacrificing one’s intellect on the altar of ideology, or ego validation – look at me how brave contrarian I am!)”
Oh you wondered too. Some denialists are just dense to begin with. But some denialists are quite smart, but do indeed dumb themselves down on the alter of climate change denial. And much of this might be because they just cannot admit to themselves they are wrong and have been fooled, so they plunge ahead anyway. The sin of pride?
And I suspect some smart denialists start by being deliberately stupid. They know their denialist ideas are crap, but eventually over time they start to truly BELIEVE in the crap. I have said its like they brainwash themselves. And when they live entirely in echo chambers they get all this positive reinforcement like a feedback loop.
The rest of us might have some normal scepticism, but we do a bit of reading to sort out fact from fiction , but we learn and we move on. We admit to ourselves when we get things wrong, or misinterpret people, and we move on. (Although a few warmists seem to have trouble with this as well).
Western Hikersays
Vendicar, 250
“It is true, without question, that religionists are liars.
The more devout, the more they deceive.”
I mostly disagree:
[According to Einstein: A Life, a biography published in 1996, he was devoutly religious as a child. But at the age of 13, he “abandoned his uncritical religious fervour, feeling he had been deceived into believing lies”.]
If a brilliant scientist could be deceived until age 13, a lesser mind could be deceived a lifetime. We humans tend to be gullible.
J Doug Swallow @251,
You are a prize twit aren’t you.
You find within the lower reaches of this comment thread “22 post[s] mention [you]” and there are more higher up. Mind, not all of them actually mention you. A fair few only refer to you comments or your words.
But your count of posts that “mention [you]” is deficient. It ignores a further 24 posts that actually do mention you:- 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 165, 170, 171, 172, 196, 197, 198, 200, 206, 207, 208, 209, 212, 219 and 251, plus 1962 – 1965 diverted to the borehole. These, of course, are the posts you posted yourself, J Doug Swallow, the bloke with such important things to say.
There are 48,000 words down this December UV thread (if you count the borehole diversions) and 8,000 were written by J Doug Swallow. Given all that effort, it is such a shame that it’s all just bullshit written by a bloke so stupid that he thinks the crap he spouts in these 24 posts is “substantiated”!!! You’d have to be jaw-droppingly stupid to believe such a thing.
But there is an alternative explanation. J Doug Swallow could be not so stupid but instead a low-grade troll.
I say ‘alternative’ but without even a hint of doubt expressed by J Doug Swallow about his “different substantiated views,” twit or troll amounts to the same thing. That is why Kevin McKinney @201 is correct in calling you a troll (which I myself also did @184) and “not worth rebutting in detail.”
Al Bundysays
mrkia: OK, you chemists, show us the real numbers: what PPM of arsenic in a cup of coffee will ensure death? You coffee drinkers have no need to be afraid, it’s just math. :)
Rasputin: Bring me three cups. I laugh at your math.
_________________
Killian: So, asshat, who, exactly, has been more accurate than I have been?
AB: Me. By a country mile. Why, I can see Nigel’s back from here!
___________________
MaRodger: With 2020 just a handful of days to run, we can declare 2020 as having the least Arctic Sea Ice Extent, that is averaged through the calendar year.
AB: Thanks. Care to take it the final step by multiplying each day’s SIE by that day’s solar insolation and then dividing the sum by average insolation, giving the annual reflective power of the ice sheet, more or less?
jgnfldsays
Re.: “you chemists, show us the real numbers: what PPM of arsenic in a cup of coffee will…”
You need a bit more than chemistry. You also need a bit of physiology and genetics as well. Arsenic is well known to be a chemical that humans can adapt to over time[1]…at least through genetic selection. The case for individual adaptation is not at all clear to my limited clinical knowledge, though Agatha Christie employed it in one of her major books.
Nigel (254): “And I suspect some smart denialists start by being deliberately stupid. They know their denialist ideas are crap, but eventually over time they start to truly BELIEVE in the crap. I have said its like they brainwash themselves. And when they live entirely in echo chambers they get all this positive reinforcement like a feedback loop.”
You may be onto something. I know a university researcher from Europe and have observed his gradual de-evolution from an open-minded, intelligent, person into right-wing climate change denier hack, who defends the deniers “arguments” – cherry-picking the data, using outliers as the reference point – he would never stand for in his papers in his area of expertise.
When it started, it looked at first as tongue-in-cheek parodying of the right-wing arguments, then gradually moved into the devil’s advocate, and has ended up to wholesale embrace of the ideology and language, accompanied by the dramatic decline in mental capacity – from interesting and witty observations, and original thinking – to reposting blogposts, tweets and gifs made by others, with his own intellectual contribution reduced to discrediting others by making … puns on their names to associate them … with defecation, rape or treason. That’s from a university prof with many publications in the past.
In case of others, this process may be much faster – I have seen the opinions and personality flipped by 180 deg., to the point when they don’t recognize them as their own, over a couple years.
So the question is – if we had the initially smart people, and they end up like _that_ – is it the auto-brainwashing, driven by the need for ego validation (look how “fiercely-independent mind” I have, how I don’t cow-tow to the political correctness), and reinforced by the Internet echo-chamber, or some kind of gradual physical brain deterioration?
On the origin of the (previously) intelligent denier – nurture or nature?
And if the former – can something be done?
nigeljsays
J Doug Swallow @251
“It appears that whomever moderates my replies out of the conversation is doing a disservice to those who took the time to try to prove what I have maintained is wrong.”
We have proven you wrong. Over and over. You can say what you like in the name of free speech, but nobody is obliged to give you an internet platform for your drivel, and unfounded accusations people are lying, and empty assertions devoid of quoting any science to back them up, and silly cherrypicked information and screeds of irrelevant data, which is just spamming. Go and rant away on the street corner. You have been given more than a fair go.
I assume that to mean that any one that has different substantiated views of your anthropogenic climate change is deemed to be something like what you call a ‘troll’.
No. Strictly, a troll is someone who posts purely in order to provoke outrage, to ‘get a rise.’ You may be that; the jury is out on your motivation, though clearly a rise has been gotten. However, I do see behaviors including the ol’ Gish gallop; selective quotation; illogical (rhetoric-based) argument; moving goalposts; and in general, little attempt at real engagement. By just slightly extended usage, this is pretty trollish.
You can be as “contrarian” as you like, but if you engage in good faith, a troll you will not be.
“Is that how science is conducted at Real Climate.org.[?]”
No, because RC doesn’t do science, it does science *education.* Science (or more precisely, the communicative part of it) is done in the professional literature.
You can not be a religionist without lying to yourself every day that your God is real, and by extension lying to those around you of the same thing.
I once agreed with you, but I now know religion is a complex psychological and social phenomenon. I still don’t understand how Katharine Hayhoe, for example, reconciles her faith with her profession, but I’m now more willing to entertain the possibility I’m missing something. Some religious people of my acquaintance manifestly produce good science, that AFAICT contradicts, or at least fails to support, their faith. My failure to understand how they do it, doesn’t negate their contributions. I’m resolved to be content with that.
mikesays
So, I guess we are in La Nina state these days, does that seem right? CO2 numbers have been dropping a bit which I would expect with a LN.
Weekly CO2 Mauna Loa Observatory | NOAA-ESRL
per co2.earth
Atmospheric CO2
December 20 – 26, 2020 414.60 ppm
December 20 – 26, 2019 412.30 ppm
December 20 – 26, 2010 390.27 ppm
Cheers
Mike
nigeljsays
Piotr @259
“So the question is – if we had the initially smart people, and they end up like _that_ – is it the auto-brainwashing, driven by the need for ego validation (look how “fiercely-independent mind” I have, how I don’t cow-tow to the political correctness), and reinforced by the Internet echo-chamber, or some kind of gradual physical brain deterioration?”
I suspect it’s both. You could brainwash yourself, or allow yourself to be brain washed, and this could cause a deterioration in the circuitry in the brain at a physical level. I recall reading something about all the one sided repetition of rubbish and illogical or stupid arguments being very bad for the brain at a physical level. Cant recall where.
And scientists are taught to recognise their biases and not fool themselves. But many of the denialists are lawyers and business people and dont have this training. They will be more susceptible to brainwashing themselves.
But recent research shows the brain can recover from injuries and bad thinking more than we used to think. So there is hope.
“On the origin of the (previously) intelligent denier – nurture or nature?”
Probably a bit of both. The denialism is tied to a conservative world view and studies show this driven by nature, but that conservatism and liberalism are not rigidly fixed things, from what I’ve read. And the environment could include strong political tribalism that creates group think, and vested business or personal interests that oppose the science and oppose change.
“And if the former – can something be done?”
So it looks like its possible to do something, and change at least some peoples minds, but it looks rather challenging doing it, or perhaps a slow process. Although political leanings are not absolutely rigid, they don’t easily change. And when people get old they get set in their ways (William Happer?).
J Doug Swallowsays
#256 29 Dec 2020 at 5:44 AM MA Rodger says: “There are 48,000 words down this December UV thread (if you count the borehole diversions) and 8,000 were written by J Doug Swallow. Given all that effort, it is such a shame that it’s all just bullshit written by a bloke so stupid that he thinks the crap he spouts in these 24 posts is “substantiated”!!! You’d have to be jaw-droppingly stupid to believe such a thing”.
“When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the losers.” Socrates
nigeljsays
Vendicar decarian:
“You can not be a religionist without lying to yourself every day that your God is real, and by extension lying to those around you of the same thing.”
I used to think that as well like MA, but its known that people are quite good at partioning their minds into very separate compartments where the information in each doesnt pollute the other. I read some article somewhere, probably Psychology Today. I’m guessing that might actually be an evolved survival mechanism allowing us to be flexible. And theres this:
“For a start, science is an exercise in observing and measuring things in the world, and coming up with general principles about the way things are. There’s nothing inherently anti-God about those activities……”
And obviously it all probably depends on whether someone leans towards fundamentalist beliefs or just thinks god is a prime mover. I’m not a religious person myself, but I dont get as angry about it all as I used to.
Vendicar Decariansays
Re 251: “Is that how science is conducted at Real Climate. Org”
Science isn’t conducted on this site, and your comment indicates that you don’t have a clue as to how science is conducted.
That is why your comments vanished. They are filled to the brim with ignorance.
Sometimes children have interesting things to say, and opinions to voice, but for the most part they have no place in adult discussion.
The proper roll is for children to ask questions and learn from the answers. You have done neither.
Vendicar Decariansays
Re 259: “That’s from a university prof with many publications in the past.”
VD: It is true, without question, that religionists are liars. . . The more devout, the more they deceive. . . You can not be a religionist without lying to yourself every day that your God is real, and by extension lying to those around you of the same thing. . . Those who are practiced in lying about their God/God’s are more prone to lying about other things, and are more prone to believing the lies told to them by others. . . This is why Religionists are prone to support America’s Lying, Mentally Ill president.
BPL: As a born-again Christian who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Pennsylvania primary, Hilary Clinton in the 2016 general election, and Joe Biden in 2020, I can say without hesitation that your bigoted overgeneralization is crap of the purest ray serene. Keep your bigotry to yourself. Nobody cares about your religious prejudices.
Ray Ladburysays
J. D. Swallow: “It appears that whomever moderates my replies out of the conversation is doing a disservice to those who took the time to try to prove what I have maintained is wrong. Is that how science is conducted at Real Climate.”
Aw, bite me, snowflake!
Al Bundysays
Kevin McKinney: RC doesn’t do science, it does science *education.*
AB: True that. And when the prof is in the hall the kids do as they please. Apparently a large fraction of the more vocal kids here love slathering troll juice all over their keyboards while remarking about its yuckiness.
So fun it is that some might do an entire analysis of word counts and whatever in order to ensure the resulting mashed trolls (with olive oil and garlic!) doesn’t turn out lumpy.
Al Bundysays
Mal: but I now know religion is a complex psychological and social phenomenon. I still don’t understand how Katharine Hayhoe, for example, reconciles her faith with her profession, but I’m now more willing to entertain the possibility I’m missing something.
AB: Religions are models. The question isn’t about absolute factualness, but usefulness. “Faith” is (should be defined as, against the faithful’s protest?) belief that one’s model has usefulness. This connects directly to Ray’s comments on economic theories and belief. I loved his unreal tale about the “Real” becoming real stable by lopping off three nothings (along with some placeboesque economic reforms). How about pontificating economists and business cycles?
The human mind is a distributed processing system, and the discussions between sub-processors aren’t exactly two-way. Your sub-processors initiate action before your “self” chooses to take said action. If the subs are wrong, hopefully the action is extended enough and you’re cognizant enough (and ego-free enough) to perform a successful abort.
Al Bundysays
Mal,
You asked about QM, and I had a response typed out, but I’m not sure how many of my notes/dives I want to write here. I was planning on using my blog. If that happens, I’ll probably mostly disappear here.
Dunno. But for now I’ve got stuff I need to get finished before I dive into writing about the rabbit hole I’ve been exploring.
jgnfldsays
Re.: “When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the losers.” Socrates
Fact: Facts are not “slander”.
Fact: You actually did “contribute” a large fraction of all the words. I can’t confirm the exact provided count (life is too short) but it seems about right.
Fact: Diarrhetic repetition of misleading and irrelevant factoids constitutes neither “debating” nor evidence for anything except your own bad science [Google “Gish Gallop rationalwiki”].
Fact: YOU are the one providing evidence of your scientific stupidity. All anyone has done here is to accurately label what the evidence you provide implies.
Fact: There is little or no debate about that amongst those qualified to judge about the worth of your “evidence” Most of it has been well known and dealt with by the actually qualified. In many cases since the 19th century. You clearly are not qualified.
Facts. Not slander.
Al Bundysays
nigelj: I recall reading something about all the one sided repetition of rubbish and illogical or stupid arguments being very bad for the brain at a physical level.
AB: Interconnections and myelinization and a third level I don’t remember. Your brain builds highways with insulating bumpers (myelinization) to facilitate repeated traffic. If said highway always takes the same route with no interesting stops and diversions to explore, it becomes an express route via that third level, which represents a huge infrastructure cost that in a denier’s case generally has negative utility. It’s tough to reuse an express route’s neurons. Lots of effort with lots of itty bitty pickaxes to get through the third level. And the mind will chip in its opinion about wasting all that effort building that beautiful highway to Hell. Nobody likes to admit they’ve been on that road crew.
Al Bundysays
J Doug Swallow: “When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the losers.” Socrates
AB: When the debate is pointless, out of date, and lopsided, the bruised will pretend that Socrates said that statements of fact and slander are equivalent.
Al Bundysays
In other words, JDS, it ain’t slander until you provide convincing evidence that the words you object to “just ain’t so” and aren’t obvious hyperbole or baseless insult, such as “Bastard”, which nobody would take to mean that you were born out of wedlock. (as an aside, “libel” is the word used for written communications)
And no, I don’t remember whatever insult you’re whining about. You most likely came here to “own libs” (and will almost assuredly vehemently deny it).
Gotta tell you, kid. Whining about getting owned is pretty “little girly” of you.
Susan Andersonsays
re religion and science
(hats off to BPL and Mal Adapted, and probably others)
Many scientists adhere to a variety of religious faiths. They know perfectly well the difference between faith/community/culture – all the varied inputs that choose to put spirituality in relationship to some kind of deity – and science which is a method of setting aside illusion, as much as possible, and studying reality (that’s a limited definition of course).
Scientists are perfectly well able to separate their faith and/or their doubts and/or their atheism from the study of and understanding of reality.
I’ve been in all three of those categories, and none of them have affected the way I view science, as a child, friend, colleague, boss, employee, and interested layperson. There are many good things in religion, but it is a puzzle that the teachings of Jesus (see Gospels) are set aside by people who call themselves Christians in the service of power and wealth, or just belonging to a “cult”. There is a similar problem with people’s misuse of the basic search for caring for each other, community, and helping the less fortunate of many other faiths.
This is one of the reasons it is so annoying to see people speak of “belief” in science: language is an approximation of meaning. Science is a body of work developed over millenia, and constantly seeks to improve itself (mostly, though I’m not sure making better bombs is an improvement). What this use of “belief” means is they understand and support the effort to improve understanding.
Al Bundysays
BPL: I can say without hesitation that your bigoted overgeneralization is crap of the purest ray serene. Keep your bigotry to yourself. Nobody cares about your religious prejudices.
AB: I fully support you there, BPL. I’ll also note, however, that this discussion could change a mind or two, assuming we keep it on the rails.
Al Bundy @257,
I’m assuming you are not expecting an elaborate analysis comprising SIE & insolation, coz you won’t get one from me.
The Arctic insolation, if taken as a simplistic multiplier of total daily SIE using the angle of inclination of the pole to the sun doesn’t make a great deal of difference to any analysis. There is no sudden appearance of an acceleration.
The average annual SIE values give a strongly linear decline since 1979, running at 60k km^2/yr. On top of that, the annual cycle has been stretching significantly since about 1995, again linearly at a rate of 72k km^2/yr, although not symmetrically so the combined effect on the annual minimum gives a trend of 105k km^2/yr. There is also an interannual wobble for the minimum of +//0.8M km^2 (2sd).
Such linear rates would suggest ice free summers could appear by 2038 and should be expected by 2047. Of course, as the SIE minimum shrinks, the linearity could well disappear. And it may already be set up for that.
When insolation is assumed as a simplistic factor, the SIE between solstices are not entirely in balance and the linear rate of SIE decline is about 5% greater during the sunny half of the year. Factoring the angle of insolation reduces this as the angle is tiny by the time the minimum, the main period of that asymmetry, appears.
So no sign of any accelerating factor.
The clueless troll continues with his demonstration of incompetance @266, but now he appears to have run out of things climatological to say.
Even so, what he says in attempting to summate his time with us here still doesn’t add up. We shouldn’t be surprised by his fallacious summation as presumably he is less familiar with the words of Aristotle than we are. “Μία χελιδὼν ἔαρ οὐ ποιεῖ.” But then, maybe J Doug Swallow does know this quote but doesn’t think Aristotle knew what he was talking about so doesn’t consider it necessary for his mum or dad to check his work.
A second Swallow or even two would perhaps have spotted that the Socrates quote he wields is entirely fake and, on top of that, it is also misplaced as the word “slander” has a precise meaning. His quoting of me provides nothing untrue that I can see. Maybe the troll meant to provide some different quote from me that does contain a factual error. Maybe there is such an error. I’m always happy to correct my mistakes if there were such a one.
William B Jacksonsays
266 I do not for a minute confuse JDS and Socrates.
jgnfldsays
Re 284 “I do not for a minute confuse JDS and Socrates.” [!!!]
Not only is JDS clearly not Socrates, the “quote” he provides cannot be sourced to him, or ANYONE else before 2008 (according to snopes, it first appeared on the site Goodreads [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/socrates-debate-lost-slander-loser/]).
Interestingly Eric Trump provides a recent example [https://twitter.com/EricTrump/status/1144004337842229248] which is certainly one likely place JDS might have “learned” his “knowledge”. If I could make a suggestion to JDS it would be that Trump family tweets probably aren’t the best source to use for either science OR classical knowledge.
JDS certainly never read Socrates himself–I wonder if he knows there is no extant literature from him at all. Nor is there evidence he has studied Socrate’s contemporaries or later disciples as there is no mention of the JDS “quote” by any of them. (I have a classicist in my immediate family circle.)
But no one reading his prior drivel (if I may be “slanderous”) is surprised at his total lack of scholarship, I’m sure.
Al Bundysays
MARodger: Factoring the angle of insolation reduces this as the angle is tiny by the time the minimum, the main period of that asymmetry, appears.
AB: Tracks with what we’ve been taught. The ice gets thinner and spreads out. The “sudden loss” scenario that Wadham’s hypotheses imply makes sense.
When will the decrease in ice extent during periods of high insolation become significant? Will that inflection mark a nosedive to essentially ice free?
And I’m still interested in what happens insulation-wise over an ice-free arctic ocean. It’s contribution to humidity over the surrounding region feels like a huge climatic change.
The city fathers of Cambridge have breathed new life into the Prohibitionist Party with public notices warning drivers of the climatic perils of burning ethanol:
OK space travelers, you have ~ 24 hours to meet your 2020 New Year’s resolutions. ;)
In other news, there is evidence in 2020 that slowing of the AMOC Thermo-haline circulation system may be ushering in a new ice age in the northern latitudes of the earth; particularly if the circulation stops. I did not make it up:
Evidence in 2020 that this ice age has already started includes: earlier this year, we had 3-4 feet of snow in one storm in parts of the USA, over 7 feet of snow on Japan in one storm, and now, on New Year’s Eve, TEXAS, yes, southern TEXAS, may receive up to 18 inches of snow!!! TEXAS!!! I did not make it up:
ALL THAT, AND WE’RE ONLY 9 DAYS INTO WINTER!!!!!! It’s gonna get rough – buckle up and HOLD ON TIGHT!!!!! Ice age farmer on Youtube may be onto something.
;)
prlsays
JDS @266 “When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the losers.” Socrates
I suspect that it will surprise few that Socrates didn’t say that (the link’s to Snopes, but a search of the quote will find many pages that agree with Snopes).
Killiansays
So, a point about Pattern Literacy. I noted the last year or so the ASI extent was lower than it seemed it should be, and global temps have been, too. I said there appeared to have been a system shift.
Turns out, this La Nina year will tie or exceed 2016, a massive El Nino.
So…. ya gonna start listening?
jgnfldsays
@288 and possible northern latitude cooling…
It is possible that high latitude cooling especially in some areas like northwestern Europe could indeed happen should thermohaline transport slow.
Now let’s take your “reasoning” a bit farther. I wonder what, pray tell, Mr. K DOES think will happen at all OTHER latitudes and places if transport of the heat from the tropics to those areas ceases?
For the umpteenth time: Local/regional daily weather conditions say just about nothing about overall planetary climate. The heat doesn’t just go away like COVID did last April (well it did according to another great mind), you know (see First Law of Thermodynamics). Or do you?
jgnfldsays
Oh…and on that other point that an “ice age” is occurring. An ice age occurs when snow accumulates that is not removed each year. Could you please point out to us the growing glaciers in the USA and Japan as a result of all that “cooling”?
And, having lived in Texas, winter temps often go well below 32F in areas away from the Gulf. When there is water in the air at subfreezing temps, it tends to rain out as snow.
What do you get when you cross an Alberta Clipper with a shot of hot, humid air from the Gulf which will continue getting both hotter and more humid (in absolute water vapor amounts carried terms)? Even at a rather balmy 25F (it very often gets to near 0F each Dec/Jan in east TX away from the Gulf, the High Plains in the NW go way below 0F when clippers hit) you tend to get a lot of precipitation in the form of snow. Essentially it’s the same basic idea as a nor’easter: Bone dry, frigid polar air mixing with hot, humid tropical air tends to cause precipitation. On the cold side of the storm you get tonnes of snow. On the warm side you get tons of rain. What you don’t get this way is an “ice age”. You get wetter and wilder weather events.
266 I do not for a minute confuse JDS and Socrates.
Me either. “J Doug Swallow” been denying climate science on the Internet since at least 2012, under various ‘nyms, but with the same clumsy rhetorical tactics he deploys here. Greg Laden‘s response in 2015 was admirably succinct:
This comment has been deleted because the commenter is an unrepentant ass who has nothing intelligent to say.
Log in to post comments By John Swallow (not verified) on 18 Sep 2015 #permalink
AFAICT, our JDS is a textbook victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect, so facts and logic can’t be expected to dissuade him from his cognitively motivated position. He is on the list of known trolls I’m happy to scroll past on RC. Don’t let that stop the rest of you from heaping scorn and derision upon him 8^D!
I’ll weigh in, although this whole topic is really pretty OT, I suppose. I’m a UU–a Unitarian Universalist; you can Google that if you wish–and my comments come from that perspective.
Although many commenters here are perhaps not ‘believers’, the great majority of us here do appear on the strength of internal evidence to be heirs of the “Western intellectual tradition”, and thus strongly influenced by Christianity, and especially Protestantism. As such, I’d suggest that our view of the essence of religion is strongly colored by what Protestantism is.
The emphasis on “belief” didn’t start with Protestantism–after all, the Credo (the Latin word, at the root of the English “creed,” literally means “I believe”) is a pillar of the Mass, and one must recall the wars over belief (sometimes, the minutiae thereof) summed up in the term “heresy.” So an emphasis on ‘right belief’ was already a feature of Catholicism.
But, as I understand it at least, Protestantism raised this to ‘a whole ‘nother level.’ It was no longer sufficient that most of the time you could just go to Mass and maybe Confession, live a halfway decent life, and leave the doctrinal details to the priests, whose proper business it was. No, you were to understand doctrine to the best of your ability, study Scripture assiduously, and even have a personal relationship with Jesus. You were to be ‘all in.’ And belief was the key, as for instance we hear it put in “Amazing Grace”:
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed…
But while all other religious traditions have ‘beliefs’ in some form, many are much less centered on metaphysics. Indeed, as an old friend and mentor of mine who happened to be a Protestant minister once said, disapprovingly, “Buddhism isn’t even theistic!” I was skeptical of his claim, but at the core, he was right: while there are Buddhist schools with elaborately developed theistic metaphysics, these are not shared across the Buddhist spectrum. If you look at Buddha’s actual teachings, you find they aren’t about God at all, but about humankind and how we are to move through the world: they are meant to address suffering in this world.
Which brings us back to UUism. Our catchphrase is “deeds, not creeds,” which is meant to express our lack–“rejection” might be a better word–of any metaphysical dogma whatever. Our “beliefs” are rather “covenants”–agreements we hold to about how we are to act together, and act in the world. Religion is not so much about what you believe, as what you do, and especially what you do together. UUism is pretty small–there are more Buddhists in the US than UUs, and North America, especially the US, is by far the center of UUism. But I think our take is actually a lot closer to historical norms over the grand sweep of time than is Protestantism or even Catholicism. Compare the other Abrahamic religions; compare Hinduism; compare indigenous religious practice.
But there’s one other aspect in which we are all of us influenced by not just Protestantism, but the loudest American exemplars thereof–fundamentalist evangelicals. They have brought in an ingredient that once again has roots in Catholicism but which they raise to a level of primacy that’s quite remarkable: I speak of the doctrine of the Bible being literally and unerringly true.
What’s remarkable about that doctrine is its utter incompatibility with reason. Never mind science; the Bible is quite simply not coherent with itself if we are asked to believe that everything in it is true as a literal historical account. That is the context in which Vendicar’s description of belief in God as a “lie” comes closest to the truth. The conflict between the ethical teachings found in the Old and New Testaments is, I take it, too well-known and remarked upon to require recapitulation here. But even the apparently ‘historical’ accounts found in the four Gospels are really not compatible with each other, read literally; you can shoehorn together the various Christmas stories into one narrative without too much violence, but just try it with the various accounts of the Resurrection–the single most central event in the history of the Universe, per orthodox Christian theology! If you do–and I’ve seen attempts made–you end up with masses of poorly differentiated characters rushing on- and off-stage, missing each other by seconds in a manner suggestive of an old-fashioned French bedroom farce, but with the humor suppressed. And every bit as plausible! Very unfitting indeed. To believe in a literally true inerrant Bible is to believe that the Universe is essentially nonsensical. Do you fear God, or love God, remembering that “Love casts out fear?”
When I’m in a theistic mood, I like to say that it’s almost as if the God who inspired the Bible wanted to make sure it *couldn’t* be read literally–that we are required to use empathy and imagination and critical thinking in reading Scripture. That, far from being a handy rule book that makes it all easy, a labor-saver, Scripture requires engaging all of our beings. That we must wrestle with it, as Jacob–strangely enough!–was required to wrestle with the angel.
Indeed, the Protestant ministers I knew growing up, and as a young adult, did that, at least some of the time. As one said, “Sometimes, you just have to ‘hunch it’.” Fidelity mean discernment, and that was never thought to be easy. Sure, those ministers asserted their belief in the Apostle’s Creed, to be sure–as did their congregations, as part of the regular liturgy. And I’m sure the familiarity was comforting, a refuge of sorts from the struggle.
But note that there’s nothing in that creed that contradicts scientific rationality; you can easily keep all of modern science* (including physics) and simply set aside a metaphysical realm ‘beyond.’ I would presume that that’s the position of a Katherine Hayhoe, more or less, and also that it was of the late great John Houghton, who we lost to Covid this year, and whose obit Gavin linked elsewhere. I quote from that:
Throughout his scientific career, Houghton remained true to his devout evangelical Christian upbringing, and worked on combining the two as president of the John Ray Initiative, which aims to connect the environment, science and Christianity, and as a founding member of the International Society for Science and Religion. He said of his Christian faith: “The most important choice I have made is to accept Jesus as my saviour and lord. I was brought up that way, but there was a point when I realised it was an important decision that I had to make.”
Well, I’ve certainly pontificated–also, I suppose, a religiously-derived word–at some length. Sorry ’bout that! But as New Year dawns, may I humbly suggest we leave each others’ metaphysics alone? A couple of millennia of experience suggests it’s practically certain to be an unprofitable exercise at best.
And surely the salvation of the world in its own secular terms is sufficiently difficult, absorbing, and ethically desirable to keep us all busy. Be well, my friends, if you can! I hope the new year brings us all better things.
Of all modern sciences, IMO the most nearly subversive of orthodox Christian doctrine is neuroscience, as it suggests a purely physical basis for all cognition and awareness, thereby undermining (though not conclusively negating) the possibility of the traditional spirit/matter dualism which conceptually underlies the putative existence of the ‘immortal soul.’
Al Bundysays
Killian: So…. ya gonna start listening?
AB: Yep. A good laugh is always fun. Your total failure at prediction coupled with your constant crowing really improves folks’ moods.
It is a little incoherent but languishing in the borehole is a response to my comment @283 which is probably the nearest thing to a question we are going to get from our recent troll.
“If this were to get beyond the moderator, it will be interesting to get MA Rodger’s view of how I have come to understand the part that the essential for all terrestrial life on Earth, CO₂, that is 1.6 time more dense/heavier than the rest of the atmosphere that it is contained in and what part that it could play in the Earth’s temperature or in changing its climate.”
This is followed by the assertion that I am “obsessed with degrading” the troll “because [he] hold(s) a different view of this subject” than he does, the comment concluding with a tedious description of 10^-6.
If I interpret this correctly, the troll wishes an explanation of the part CO2 plays in the Earth’s greenhouse effect which is indeed “essential” for the vast majority of “life on Earth,” terrestrial or otherwise. (I will pass over the important point that science is a brutal subject and does not hold with “different view(s)” that contradict the evidence.)
The wondrous interweb provides all the explanation anyone could wish but I am of the view that the explanations thus provided are far from useful for a denialist troll.
So from first principles…..
(1) Exhibit A. A graph of the Earth’s long wave radiation. [It is not from measurement but from a simulation.]
This long wave radiation is why the planet Earth is a cool place to be. Were there no such radiation balancing the planetary heating from the sun, we would soon melt. So this is an important graphic.
The two lines Ts & Tmin represent the long wave radiation you would expect from a solid body, Ts if it were the temperature of the Earth’s surface (so +15ºC) and Tmin if the temperature of the tropopause (so -60ºC). This is all very basic physics. The waggles of the hairy molecular surface of a solid depends on temperature and, being composed of electrically-charged particles, such waggles will result in radiation being emitted and the wavelength and quantity of radiation depends on those waggles & thus on temperature.
And the graph shows the Earth’s outward radiation into space sitting somewhere in between Ts & Tmin. To balance outward radiation with solar heating, the area under this line must equal the area under a similar graph of incoming sunlight.
Given this, the big bite out of the outward radiation at Wave Number 666 significantly reduces that all-important area under the line. If the difference between Ts & Tmin is 75ºC, that bite represents perhaps a tenth of the Ts-Tmin area or something like 7½ºC. In other words, without that big bite at Wavenumber 666, the rest of the line would have to be lower to balance with sunlight, and that means the things radiating won’t be so hot, something like 7½ºC cooler. So that big bite is indeed significant.
The question for the troll is ‘What is responsible for the big bite out of the outward radiation at Wave Number 666 shown in the graph?’
All the scientific literature gives the same answer to that question. It is our old friend CO₂.
I’m happy to continue this explanation which at this point goes all gassy. But I will pause here to allow the troll to interject.
Piotrsays
Nigel (265): I suspect it’s both. You could brainwash yourself, or allow yourself to be brain washed, and this could cause a deterioration in the circuitry in the brain at a physical level.
Makes sense. Use it or loose it. So it is a positive (spiral downward). I guess one could stop and reverse the decline, provided that the damage is reversible, AND that you can reach the denier, i.e. can still open on arguments enough that it overcomes the confirmation bias.
But since this would involve the need to admit to others and to yourself that you were wrong – not very likely, particularly in those who have been long enough in it/are older i.e. more set in their ways.
The botany prof I was talking about – in the past was able to overcome his ideological enthusiasm for George W. Bush, and became his critic. 15 years later was no longer able to do it, even though Trump was much more “deserving” of it.
Killiansays
Sorry. Global temps have been *higher* than they should be.
Re: #290
Piotrsays
Know It All, yet DIDN’T know in (288) that:
1. weakening of AMOC may cause local cooling, e.g. in Europe, is old news – has been published for many decades now. So why it is a revelation for you (“I did not make it up“!), but to hardly anyone else. “These forty years now I’ve been speaking in prose without knowing it! I did not make it up!“, eh? ;-)
2. Youtube clip proves nothing. Use peer-reviewed papers instead.
3. Local cooling in Europe is NOT “Ice Age”. Hint: “Little Ice Age” was not really an Ice Age.
4. And as many times before – local weather (e.g. snow in south Texas) is NOT global climate.
If anything – you may have unwittingly supported^* climate change.
Ivanka: “ Father, forgive them, for they not know what they are doing” ?
Piotr
====
^* climate change -> weakened Jet Stream -> deeper meanders -> if meander extends toward Texas -> it sucks from the north Arctic air masses -> which on colliding with moisture-laden warm air from the Gulf, creates the sources of your wide-eyed amazement (“ !!!“):
“ on New Year’s Eve, TEXAS, yes, southern TEXAS, may receive up to 18 inches of snow!!! TEXAS!!! I did not make it up ” KIA
#201 23 Dec 2020 at 10:54 AM Kevin McKinney says: “Mr. Swallow is clearly a troll, and not worth rebutting in detail”. I assume that to mean that any one that has different substantiated views of your anthropogenic climate change is deemed to be something like what you call a ‘troll’. Going forward from this 201 post, I find that these 22 post mention me;
202, 204, 211, 214, 215, 216, 217, 220, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 233, 234, 237, 240, 241, 243 & 146. It appears that whomever moderates my replies out of the conversation is doing a disservice to those who took the time to try to prove what I have maintained is wrong. Is that how science is conducted at Real Climate. Org when one of the definitions of science is; “knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study”?
Question for the moderators, or other competent people:
How would the Clausius-Clapeyron relation for water vapor work on a planet with a different level of gravity? Or a different total pressure in the atmosphere? If I use a relation like:
es(T) = 611.2 exp (17.67 T / [T + 243.5])
where es is saturation vapor pressure and T is in degrees Celsius, it tells me that es is 1,704 pascals at 15 C. Would I be correct in thinking this would be 2,045 Pa on a 1.5 g planet? And that other constituents don’t matter? Or do they? Dalton’s law of partial pressures depends on mole fraction, so what does that tell me about the Clausius-Clapeyron relation? Any input would be appreciated.
Gavin,
I have just been reading your “MY Review of Books” from 2006. It was very interesting. I wonder if it would be possible for you to write a sequel with your opinion of three recent books? I am sure I am not the only one who would be pleased to be brought up to date. Thanks in anticipation.
Piotr @241
“A related chicken and egg question – do you guys becoming climate change deniers because you are so dense, or are you becoming so dense, because of the climate change denial (e.g. sacrificing one’s intellect on the altar of ideology, or ego validation – look at me how brave contrarian I am!)”
Oh you wondered too. Some denialists are just dense to begin with. But some denialists are quite smart, but do indeed dumb themselves down on the alter of climate change denial. And much of this might be because they just cannot admit to themselves they are wrong and have been fooled, so they plunge ahead anyway. The sin of pride?
And I suspect some smart denialists start by being deliberately stupid. They know their denialist ideas are crap, but eventually over time they start to truly BELIEVE in the crap. I have said its like they brainwash themselves. And when they live entirely in echo chambers they get all this positive reinforcement like a feedback loop.
The rest of us might have some normal scepticism, but we do a bit of reading to sort out fact from fiction , but we learn and we move on. We admit to ourselves when we get things wrong, or misinterpret people, and we move on. (Although a few warmists seem to have trouble with this as well).
Vendicar, 250
“It is true, without question, that religionists are liars.
The more devout, the more they deceive.”
I mostly disagree:
[According to Einstein: A Life, a biography published in 1996, he was devoutly religious as a child. But at the age of 13, he “abandoned his uncritical religious fervour, feeling he had been deceived into believing lies”.]
If a brilliant scientist could be deceived until age 13, a lesser mind could be deceived a lifetime. We humans tend to be gullible.
J Doug Swallow @251,
You are a prize twit aren’t you.
You find within the lower reaches of this comment thread “22 post[s] mention [you]” and there are more higher up. Mind, not all of them actually mention you. A fair few only refer to you comments or your words.
But your count of posts that “mention [you]” is deficient. It ignores a further 24 posts that actually do mention you:- 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 165, 170, 171, 172, 196, 197, 198, 200, 206, 207, 208, 209, 212, 219 and 251, plus 1962 – 1965 diverted to the borehole. These, of course, are the posts you posted yourself, J Doug Swallow, the bloke with such important things to say.
There are 48,000 words down this December UV thread (if you count the borehole diversions) and 8,000 were written by J Doug Swallow. Given all that effort, it is such a shame that it’s all just bullshit written by a bloke so stupid that he thinks the crap he spouts in these 24 posts is “substantiated”!!! You’d have to be jaw-droppingly stupid to believe such a thing.
But there is an alternative explanation. J Doug Swallow could be not so stupid but instead a low-grade troll.
I say ‘alternative’ but without even a hint of doubt expressed by J Doug Swallow about his “different substantiated views,” twit or troll amounts to the same thing. That is why Kevin McKinney @201 is correct in calling you a troll (which I myself also did @184) and “not worth rebutting in detail.”
mrkia: OK, you chemists, show us the real numbers: what PPM of arsenic in a cup of coffee will ensure death? You coffee drinkers have no need to be afraid, it’s just math. :)
Rasputin: Bring me three cups. I laugh at your math.
_________________
Killian: So, asshat, who, exactly, has been more accurate than I have been?
AB: Me. By a country mile. Why, I can see Nigel’s back from here!
___________________
MaRodger: With 2020 just a handful of days to run, we can declare 2020 as having the least Arctic Sea Ice Extent, that is averaged through the calendar year.
AB: Thanks. Care to take it the final step by multiplying each day’s SIE by that day’s solar insolation and then dividing the sum by average insolation, giving the annual reflective power of the ice sheet, more or less?
Re.: “you chemists, show us the real numbers: what PPM of arsenic in a cup of coffee will…”
You need a bit more than chemistry. You also need a bit of physiology and genetics as well. Arsenic is well known to be a chemical that humans can adapt to over time[1]…at least through genetic selection. The case for individual adaptation is not at all clear to my limited clinical knowledge, though Agatha Christie employed it in one of her major books.
______________________
[1] https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/32/6/1544/1074042
Nigel (254): “And I suspect some smart denialists start by being deliberately stupid. They know their denialist ideas are crap, but eventually over time they start to truly BELIEVE in the crap. I have said its like they brainwash themselves. And when they live entirely in echo chambers they get all this positive reinforcement like a feedback loop.”
You may be onto something. I know a university researcher from Europe and have observed his gradual de-evolution from an open-minded, intelligent, person into right-wing climate change denier hack, who defends the deniers “arguments” – cherry-picking the data, using outliers as the reference point – he would never stand for in his papers in his area of expertise.
When it started, it looked at first as tongue-in-cheek parodying of the right-wing arguments, then gradually moved into the devil’s advocate, and has ended up to wholesale embrace of the ideology and language, accompanied by the dramatic decline in mental capacity – from interesting and witty observations, and original thinking – to reposting blogposts, tweets and gifs made by others, with his own intellectual contribution reduced to discrediting others by making … puns on their names to associate them … with defecation, rape or treason. That’s from a university prof with many publications in the past.
In case of others, this process may be much faster – I have seen the opinions and personality flipped by 180 deg., to the point when they don’t recognize them as their own, over a couple years.
So the question is – if we had the initially smart people, and they end up like _that_ – is it the auto-brainwashing, driven by the need for ego validation (look how “fiercely-independent mind” I have, how I don’t cow-tow to the political correctness), and reinforced by the Internet echo-chamber, or some kind of gradual physical brain deterioration?
On the origin of the (previously) intelligent denier – nurture or nature?
And if the former – can something be done?
J Doug Swallow @251
“It appears that whomever moderates my replies out of the conversation is doing a disservice to those who took the time to try to prove what I have maintained is wrong.”
We have proven you wrong. Over and over. You can say what you like in the name of free speech, but nobody is obliged to give you an internet platform for your drivel, and unfounded accusations people are lying, and empty assertions devoid of quoting any science to back them up, and silly cherrypicked information and screeds of irrelevant data, which is just spamming. Go and rant away on the street corner. You have been given more than a fair go.
#251, JDS–
No. Strictly, a troll is someone who posts purely in order to provoke outrage, to ‘get a rise.’ You may be that; the jury is out on your motivation, though clearly a rise has been gotten. However, I do see behaviors including the ol’ Gish gallop; selective quotation; illogical (rhetoric-based) argument; moving goalposts; and in general, little attempt at real engagement. By just slightly extended usage, this is pretty trollish.
You can be as “contrarian” as you like, but if you engage in good faith, a troll you will not be.
Re #251, PT. 2–
“Is that how science is conducted at Real Climate.org.[?]”
No, because RC doesn’t do science, it does science *education.* Science (or more precisely, the communicative part of it) is done in the professional literature.
Vendicar decarian:
I once agreed with you, but I now know religion is a complex psychological and social phenomenon. I still don’t understand how Katharine Hayhoe, for example, reconciles her faith with her profession, but I’m now more willing to entertain the possibility I’m missing something. Some religious people of my acquaintance manifestly produce good science, that AFAICT contradicts, or at least fails to support, their faith. My failure to understand how they do it, doesn’t negate their contributions. I’m resolved to be content with that.
So, I guess we are in La Nina state these days, does that seem right? CO2 numbers have been dropping a bit which I would expect with a LN.
Weekly CO2 Mauna Loa Observatory | NOAA-ESRL
per co2.earth
Atmospheric CO2
December 20 – 26, 2020 414.60 ppm
December 20 – 26, 2019 412.30 ppm
December 20 – 26, 2010 390.27 ppm
Cheers
Mike
Piotr @259
“So the question is – if we had the initially smart people, and they end up like _that_ – is it the auto-brainwashing, driven by the need for ego validation (look how “fiercely-independent mind” I have, how I don’t cow-tow to the political correctness), and reinforced by the Internet echo-chamber, or some kind of gradual physical brain deterioration?”
I suspect it’s both. You could brainwash yourself, or allow yourself to be brain washed, and this could cause a deterioration in the circuitry in the brain at a physical level. I recall reading something about all the one sided repetition of rubbish and illogical or stupid arguments being very bad for the brain at a physical level. Cant recall where.
And scientists are taught to recognise their biases and not fool themselves. But many of the denialists are lawyers and business people and dont have this training. They will be more susceptible to brainwashing themselves.
But recent research shows the brain can recover from injuries and bad thinking more than we used to think. So there is hope.
“On the origin of the (previously) intelligent denier – nurture or nature?”
Probably a bit of both. The denialism is tied to a conservative world view and studies show this driven by nature, but that conservatism and liberalism are not rigidly fixed things, from what I’ve read. And the environment could include strong political tribalism that creates group think, and vested business or personal interests that oppose the science and oppose change.
“And if the former – can something be done?”
So it looks like its possible to do something, and change at least some peoples minds, but it looks rather challenging doing it, or perhaps a slow process. Although political leanings are not absolutely rigid, they don’t easily change. And when people get old they get set in their ways (William Happer?).
#256 29 Dec 2020 at 5:44 AM MA Rodger says: “There are 48,000 words down this December UV thread (if you count the borehole diversions) and 8,000 were written by J Doug Swallow. Given all that effort, it is such a shame that it’s all just bullshit written by a bloke so stupid that he thinks the crap he spouts in these 24 posts is “substantiated”!!! You’d have to be jaw-droppingly stupid to believe such a thing”.
“When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the losers.” Socrates
Vendicar decarian:
“You can not be a religionist without lying to yourself every day that your God is real, and by extension lying to those around you of the same thing.”
I used to think that as well like MA, but its known that people are quite good at partioning their minds into very separate compartments where the information in each doesnt pollute the other. I read some article somewhere, probably Psychology Today. I’m guessing that might actually be an evolved survival mechanism allowing us to be flexible. And theres this:
https://www.faraday.cam.ac.uk/churches/church-resources/posts/how-can-a-christian-be-a-scientist/
“For a start, science is an exercise in observing and measuring things in the world, and coming up with general principles about the way things are. There’s nothing inherently anti-God about those activities……”
And obviously it all probably depends on whether someone leans towards fundamentalist beliefs or just thinks god is a prime mover. I’m not a religious person myself, but I dont get as angry about it all as I used to.
Re 251: “Is that how science is conducted at Real Climate. Org”
Science isn’t conducted on this site, and your comment indicates that you don’t have a clue as to how science is conducted.
That is why your comments vanished. They are filled to the brim with ignorance.
Sometimes children have interesting things to say, and opinions to voice, but for the most part they have no place in adult discussion.
The proper roll is for children to ask questions and learn from the answers. You have done neither.
Re 259: “That’s from a university prof with many publications in the past.”
But none in the future.
VD: It is true, without question, that religionists are liars. . . The more devout, the more they deceive. . . You can not be a religionist without lying to yourself every day that your God is real, and by extension lying to those around you of the same thing. . . Those who are practiced in lying about their God/God’s are more prone to lying about other things, and are more prone to believing the lies told to them by others. . . This is why Religionists are prone to support America’s Lying, Mentally Ill president.
BPL: As a born-again Christian who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Pennsylvania primary, Hilary Clinton in the 2016 general election, and Joe Biden in 2020, I can say without hesitation that your bigoted overgeneralization is crap of the purest ray serene. Keep your bigotry to yourself. Nobody cares about your religious prejudices.
J. D. Swallow: “It appears that whomever moderates my replies out of the conversation is doing a disservice to those who took the time to try to prove what I have maintained is wrong. Is that how science is conducted at Real Climate.”
Aw, bite me, snowflake!
Kevin McKinney: RC doesn’t do science, it does science *education.*
AB: True that. And when the prof is in the hall the kids do as they please. Apparently a large fraction of the more vocal kids here love slathering troll juice all over their keyboards while remarking about its yuckiness.
So fun it is that some might do an entire analysis of word counts and whatever in order to ensure the resulting mashed trolls (with olive oil and garlic!) doesn’t turn out lumpy.
Mal: but I now know religion is a complex psychological and social phenomenon. I still don’t understand how Katharine Hayhoe, for example, reconciles her faith with her profession, but I’m now more willing to entertain the possibility I’m missing something.
AB: Religions are models. The question isn’t about absolute factualness, but usefulness. “Faith” is (should be defined as, against the faithful’s protest?) belief that one’s model has usefulness. This connects directly to Ray’s comments on economic theories and belief. I loved his unreal tale about the “Real” becoming real stable by lopping off three nothings (along with some placeboesque economic reforms). How about pontificating economists and business cycles?
The human mind is a distributed processing system, and the discussions between sub-processors aren’t exactly two-way. Your sub-processors initiate action before your “self” chooses to take said action. If the subs are wrong, hopefully the action is extended enough and you’re cognizant enough (and ego-free enough) to perform a successful abort.
Mal,
You asked about QM, and I had a response typed out, but I’m not sure how many of my notes/dives I want to write here. I was planning on using my blog. If that happens, I’ll probably mostly disappear here.
Dunno. But for now I’ve got stuff I need to get finished before I dive into writing about the rabbit hole I’ve been exploring.
Re.: “When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the losers.” Socrates
Fact: Facts are not “slander”.
Fact: You actually did “contribute” a large fraction of all the words. I can’t confirm the exact provided count (life is too short) but it seems about right.
Fact: Diarrhetic repetition of misleading and irrelevant factoids constitutes neither “debating” nor evidence for anything except your own bad science [Google “Gish Gallop rationalwiki”].
Fact: YOU are the one providing evidence of your scientific stupidity. All anyone has done here is to accurately label what the evidence you provide implies.
Fact: There is little or no debate about that amongst those qualified to judge about the worth of your “evidence” Most of it has been well known and dealt with by the actually qualified. In many cases since the 19th century. You clearly are not qualified.
Facts. Not slander.
nigelj: I recall reading something about all the one sided repetition of rubbish and illogical or stupid arguments being very bad for the brain at a physical level.
AB: Interconnections and myelinization and a third level I don’t remember. Your brain builds highways with insulating bumpers (myelinization) to facilitate repeated traffic. If said highway always takes the same route with no interesting stops and diversions to explore, it becomes an express route via that third level, which represents a huge infrastructure cost that in a denier’s case generally has negative utility. It’s tough to reuse an express route’s neurons. Lots of effort with lots of itty bitty pickaxes to get through the third level. And the mind will chip in its opinion about wasting all that effort building that beautiful highway to Hell. Nobody likes to admit they’ve been on that road crew.
J Doug Swallow: “When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the losers.” Socrates
AB: When the debate is pointless, out of date, and lopsided, the bruised will pretend that Socrates said that statements of fact and slander are equivalent.
In other words, JDS, it ain’t slander until you provide convincing evidence that the words you object to “just ain’t so” and aren’t obvious hyperbole or baseless insult, such as “Bastard”, which nobody would take to mean that you were born out of wedlock. (as an aside, “libel” is the word used for written communications)
And no, I don’t remember whatever insult you’re whining about. You most likely came here to “own libs” (and will almost assuredly vehemently deny it).
Gotta tell you, kid. Whining about getting owned is pretty “little girly” of you.
re religion and science
(hats off to BPL and Mal Adapted, and probably others)
Many scientists adhere to a variety of religious faiths. They know perfectly well the difference between faith/community/culture – all the varied inputs that choose to put spirituality in relationship to some kind of deity – and science which is a method of setting aside illusion, as much as possible, and studying reality (that’s a limited definition of course).
Scientists are perfectly well able to separate their faith and/or their doubts and/or their atheism from the study of and understanding of reality.
I’ve been in all three of those categories, and none of them have affected the way I view science, as a child, friend, colleague, boss, employee, and interested layperson. There are many good things in religion, but it is a puzzle that the teachings of Jesus (see Gospels) are set aside by people who call themselves Christians in the service of power and wealth, or just belonging to a “cult”. There is a similar problem with people’s misuse of the basic search for caring for each other, community, and helping the less fortunate of many other faiths.
This is one of the reasons it is so annoying to see people speak of “belief” in science: language is an approximation of meaning. Science is a body of work developed over millenia, and constantly seeks to improve itself (mostly, though I’m not sure making better bombs is an improvement). What this use of “belief” means is they understand and support the effort to improve understanding.
BPL: I can say without hesitation that your bigoted overgeneralization is crap of the purest ray serene. Keep your bigotry to yourself. Nobody cares about your religious prejudices.
AB: I fully support you there, BPL. I’ll also note, however, that this discussion could change a mind or two, assuming we keep it on the rails.
Hmmm…
https://twitter.com/Jumpsteady/status/1179420109800169474?s=09
Al Bundy @257,
I’m assuming you are not expecting an elaborate analysis comprising SIE & insolation, coz you won’t get one from me.
The Arctic insolation, if taken as a simplistic multiplier of total daily SIE using the angle of inclination of the pole to the sun doesn’t make a great deal of difference to any analysis. There is no sudden appearance of an acceleration.
The average annual SIE values give a strongly linear decline since 1979, running at 60k km^2/yr. On top of that, the annual cycle has been stretching significantly since about 1995, again linearly at a rate of 72k km^2/yr, although not symmetrically so the combined effect on the annual minimum gives a trend of 105k km^2/yr. There is also an interannual wobble for the minimum of +//0.8M km^2 (2sd).
Such linear rates would suggest ice free summers could appear by 2038 and should be expected by 2047. Of course, as the SIE minimum shrinks, the linearity could well disappear. And it may already be set up for that.
When insolation is assumed as a simplistic factor, the SIE between solstices are not entirely in balance and the linear rate of SIE decline is about 5% greater during the sunny half of the year. Factoring the angle of insolation reduces this as the angle is tiny by the time the minimum, the main period of that asymmetry, appears.
So no sign of any accelerating factor.
The clueless troll continues with his demonstration of incompetance @266, but now he appears to have run out of things climatological to say.
Even so, what he says in attempting to summate his time with us here still doesn’t add up. We shouldn’t be surprised by his fallacious summation as presumably he is less familiar with the words of Aristotle than we are. “Μία χελιδὼν ἔαρ οὐ ποιεῖ.” But then, maybe J Doug Swallow does know this quote but doesn’t think Aristotle knew what he was talking about so doesn’t consider it necessary for his mum or dad to check his work.
A second Swallow or even two would perhaps have spotted that the Socrates quote he wields is entirely fake and, on top of that, it is also misplaced as the word “slander” has a precise meaning. His quoting of me provides nothing untrue that I can see. Maybe the troll meant to provide some different quote from me that does contain a factual error. Maybe there is such an error. I’m always happy to correct my mistakes if there were such a one.
266 I do not for a minute confuse JDS and Socrates.
Re 284 “I do not for a minute confuse JDS and Socrates.” [!!!]
Not only is JDS clearly not Socrates, the “quote” he provides cannot be sourced to him, or ANYONE else before 2008 (according to snopes, it first appeared on the site Goodreads [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/socrates-debate-lost-slander-loser/]).
Interestingly Eric Trump provides a recent example [https://twitter.com/EricTrump/status/1144004337842229248] which is certainly one likely place JDS might have “learned” his “knowledge”. If I could make a suggestion to JDS it would be that Trump family tweets probably aren’t the best source to use for either science OR classical knowledge.
JDS certainly never read Socrates himself–I wonder if he knows there is no extant literature from him at all. Nor is there evidence he has studied Socrate’s contemporaries or later disciples as there is no mention of the JDS “quote” by any of them. (I have a classicist in my immediate family circle.)
But no one reading his prior drivel (if I may be “slanderous”) is surprised at his total lack of scholarship, I’m sure.
MARodger: Factoring the angle of insolation reduces this as the angle is tiny by the time the minimum, the main period of that asymmetry, appears.
AB: Tracks with what we’ve been taught. The ice gets thinner and spreads out. The “sudden loss” scenario that Wadham’s hypotheses imply makes sense.
When will the decrease in ice extent during periods of high insolation become significant? Will that inflection mark a nosedive to essentially ice free?
And I’m still interested in what happens insulation-wise over an ice-free arctic ocean. It’s contribution to humidity over the surrounding region feels like a huge climatic change.
The city fathers of Cambridge have breathed new life into the Prohibitionist Party with public notices warning drivers of the climatic perils of burning ethanol:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2020/12/puritans-display-holiday-spirit-with.html
OK space travelers, you have ~ 24 hours to meet your 2020 New Year’s resolutions. ;)
In other news, there is evidence in 2020 that slowing of the AMOC Thermo-haline circulation system may be ushering in a new ice age in the northern latitudes of the earth; particularly if the circulation stops. I did not make it up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyAuWeoTm2s
Evidence in 2020 that this ice age has already started includes: earlier this year, we had 3-4 feet of snow in one storm in parts of the USA, over 7 feet of snow on Japan in one storm, and now, on New Year’s Eve, TEXAS, yes, southern TEXAS, may receive up to 18 inches of snow!!! TEXAS!!! I did not make it up:
https://wsiltv.com/2020/12/30/heavy-snow-expected-in-texas-storm-could-spawn-tornadoes/
ALL THAT, AND WE’RE ONLY 9 DAYS INTO WINTER!!!!!! It’s gonna get rough – buckle up and HOLD ON TIGHT!!!!! Ice age farmer on Youtube may be onto something.
;)
JDS @266 “When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the losers.” Socrates
I suspect that it will surprise few that Socrates didn’t say that (the link’s to Snopes, but a search of the quote will find many pages that agree with Snopes).
So, a point about Pattern Literacy. I noted the last year or so the ASI extent was lower than it seemed it should be, and global temps have been, too. I said there appeared to have been a system shift.
Turns out, this La Nina year will tie or exceed 2016, a massive El Nino.
So…. ya gonna start listening?
@288 and possible northern latitude cooling…
It is possible that high latitude cooling especially in some areas like northwestern Europe could indeed happen should thermohaline transport slow.
Now let’s take your “reasoning” a bit farther. I wonder what, pray tell, Mr. K DOES think will happen at all OTHER latitudes and places if transport of the heat from the tropics to those areas ceases?
For the umpteenth time: Local/regional daily weather conditions say just about nothing about overall planetary climate. The heat doesn’t just go away like COVID did last April (well it did according to another great mind), you know (see First Law of Thermodynamics). Or do you?
Oh…and on that other point that an “ice age” is occurring. An ice age occurs when snow accumulates that is not removed each year. Could you please point out to us the growing glaciers in the USA and Japan as a result of all that “cooling”?
And, having lived in Texas, winter temps often go well below 32F in areas away from the Gulf. When there is water in the air at subfreezing temps, it tends to rain out as snow.
What do you get when you cross an Alberta Clipper with a shot of hot, humid air from the Gulf which will continue getting both hotter and more humid (in absolute water vapor amounts carried terms)? Even at a rather balmy 25F (it very often gets to near 0F each Dec/Jan in east TX away from the Gulf, the High Plains in the NW go way below 0F when clippers hit) you tend to get a lot of precipitation in the form of snow. Essentially it’s the same basic idea as a nor’easter: Bone dry, frigid polar air mixing with hot, humid tropical air tends to cause precipitation. On the cold side of the storm you get tonnes of snow. On the warm side you get tons of rain. What you don’t get this way is an “ice age”. You get wetter and wilder weather events.
William B Jackson:
Me either. “J Doug Swallow” been denying climate science on the Internet since at least 2012, under various ‘nyms, but with the same clumsy rhetorical tactics he deploys here. Greg Laden‘s response in 2015 was admirably succinct:
AFAICT, our JDS is a textbook victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect, so facts and logic can’t be expected to dissuade him from his cognitively motivated position. He is on the list of known trolls I’m happy to scroll past on RC. Don’t let that stop the rest of you from heaping scorn and derision upon him 8^D!
#267 (nigel) and preceding comments on religion–
I’ll weigh in, although this whole topic is really pretty OT, I suppose. I’m a UU–a Unitarian Universalist; you can Google that if you wish–and my comments come from that perspective.
Although many commenters here are perhaps not ‘believers’, the great majority of us here do appear on the strength of internal evidence to be heirs of the “Western intellectual tradition”, and thus strongly influenced by Christianity, and especially Protestantism. As such, I’d suggest that our view of the essence of religion is strongly colored by what Protestantism is.
The emphasis on “belief” didn’t start with Protestantism–after all, the Credo (the Latin word, at the root of the English “creed,” literally means “I believe”) is a pillar of the Mass, and one must recall the wars over belief (sometimes, the minutiae thereof) summed up in the term “heresy.” So an emphasis on ‘right belief’ was already a feature of Catholicism.
But, as I understand it at least, Protestantism raised this to ‘a whole ‘nother level.’ It was no longer sufficient that most of the time you could just go to Mass and maybe Confession, live a halfway decent life, and leave the doctrinal details to the priests, whose proper business it was. No, you were to understand doctrine to the best of your ability, study Scripture assiduously, and even have a personal relationship with Jesus. You were to be ‘all in.’ And belief was the key, as for instance we hear it put in “Amazing Grace”:
But while all other religious traditions have ‘beliefs’ in some form, many are much less centered on metaphysics. Indeed, as an old friend and mentor of mine who happened to be a Protestant minister once said, disapprovingly, “Buddhism isn’t even theistic!” I was skeptical of his claim, but at the core, he was right: while there are Buddhist schools with elaborately developed theistic metaphysics, these are not shared across the Buddhist spectrum. If you look at Buddha’s actual teachings, you find they aren’t about God at all, but about humankind and how we are to move through the world: they are meant to address suffering in this world.
Which brings us back to UUism. Our catchphrase is “deeds, not creeds,” which is meant to express our lack–“rejection” might be a better word–of any metaphysical dogma whatever. Our “beliefs” are rather “covenants”–agreements we hold to about how we are to act together, and act in the world. Religion is not so much about what you believe, as what you do, and especially what you do together. UUism is pretty small–there are more Buddhists in the US than UUs, and North America, especially the US, is by far the center of UUism. But I think our take is actually a lot closer to historical norms over the grand sweep of time than is Protestantism or even Catholicism. Compare the other Abrahamic religions; compare Hinduism; compare indigenous religious practice.
But there’s one other aspect in which we are all of us influenced by not just Protestantism, but the loudest American exemplars thereof–fundamentalist evangelicals. They have brought in an ingredient that once again has roots in Catholicism but which they raise to a level of primacy that’s quite remarkable: I speak of the doctrine of the Bible being literally and unerringly true.
What’s remarkable about that doctrine is its utter incompatibility with reason. Never mind science; the Bible is quite simply not coherent with itself if we are asked to believe that everything in it is true as a literal historical account. That is the context in which Vendicar’s description of belief in God as a “lie” comes closest to the truth. The conflict between the ethical teachings found in the Old and New Testaments is, I take it, too well-known and remarked upon to require recapitulation here. But even the apparently ‘historical’ accounts found in the four Gospels are really not compatible with each other, read literally; you can shoehorn together the various Christmas stories into one narrative without too much violence, but just try it with the various accounts of the Resurrection–the single most central event in the history of the Universe, per orthodox Christian theology! If you do–and I’ve seen attempts made–you end up with masses of poorly differentiated characters rushing on- and off-stage, missing each other by seconds in a manner suggestive of an old-fashioned French bedroom farce, but with the humor suppressed. And every bit as plausible! Very unfitting indeed. To believe in a literally true inerrant Bible is to believe that the Universe is essentially nonsensical. Do you fear God, or love God, remembering that “Love casts out fear?”
When I’m in a theistic mood, I like to say that it’s almost as if the God who inspired the Bible wanted to make sure it *couldn’t* be read literally–that we are required to use empathy and imagination and critical thinking in reading Scripture. That, far from being a handy rule book that makes it all easy, a labor-saver, Scripture requires engaging all of our beings. That we must wrestle with it, as Jacob–strangely enough!–was required to wrestle with the angel.
Indeed, the Protestant ministers I knew growing up, and as a young adult, did that, at least some of the time. As one said, “Sometimes, you just have to ‘hunch it’.” Fidelity mean discernment, and that was never thought to be easy. Sure, those ministers asserted their belief in the Apostle’s Creed, to be sure–as did their congregations, as part of the regular liturgy. And I’m sure the familiarity was comforting, a refuge of sorts from the struggle.
But note that there’s nothing in that creed that contradicts scientific rationality; you can easily keep all of modern science* (including physics) and simply set aside a metaphysical realm ‘beyond.’ I would presume that that’s the position of a Katherine Hayhoe, more or less, and also that it was of the late great John Houghton, who we lost to Covid this year, and whose obit Gavin linked elsewhere. I quote from that:
Well, I’ve certainly pontificated–also, I suppose, a religiously-derived word–at some length. Sorry ’bout that! But as New Year dawns, may I humbly suggest we leave each others’ metaphysics alone? A couple of millennia of experience suggests it’s practically certain to be an unprofitable exercise at best.
And surely the salvation of the world in its own secular terms is sufficiently difficult, absorbing, and ethically desirable to keep us all busy. Be well, my friends, if you can! I hope the new year brings us all better things.
*NB.–Note to previous post:
Of all modern sciences, IMO the most nearly subversive of orthodox Christian doctrine is neuroscience, as it suggests a purely physical basis for all cognition and awareness, thereby undermining (though not conclusively negating) the possibility of the traditional spirit/matter dualism which conceptually underlies the putative existence of the ‘immortal soul.’
Killian: So…. ya gonna start listening?
AB: Yep. A good laugh is always fun. Your total failure at prediction coupled with your constant crowing really improves folks’ moods.
It is a little incoherent but languishing in the borehole is a response to my comment @283 which is probably the nearest thing to a question we are going to get from our recent troll.
This is followed by the assertion that I am “obsessed with degrading” the troll “because [he] hold(s) a different view of this subject” than he does, the comment concluding with a tedious description of 10^-6.
If I interpret this correctly, the troll wishes an explanation of the part CO2 plays in the Earth’s greenhouse effect which is indeed “essential” for the vast majority of “life on Earth,” terrestrial or otherwise. (I will pass over the important point that science is a brutal subject and does not hold with “different view(s)” that contradict the evidence.)
The wondrous interweb provides all the explanation anyone could wish but I am of the view that the explanations thus provided are far from useful for a denialist troll.
So from first principles…..
(1) Exhibit A. A graph of the Earth’s long wave radiation. [It is not from measurement but from a simulation.]
This long wave radiation is why the planet Earth is a cool place to be. Were there no such radiation balancing the planetary heating from the sun, we would soon melt. So this is an important graphic.
The two lines Ts & Tmin represent the long wave radiation you would expect from a solid body, Ts if it were the temperature of the Earth’s surface (so +15ºC) and Tmin if the temperature of the tropopause (so -60ºC). This is all very basic physics. The waggles of the hairy molecular surface of a solid depends on temperature and, being composed of electrically-charged particles, such waggles will result in radiation being emitted and the wavelength and quantity of radiation depends on those waggles & thus on temperature.
And the graph shows the Earth’s outward radiation into space sitting somewhere in between Ts & Tmin. To balance outward radiation with solar heating, the area under this line must equal the area under a similar graph of incoming sunlight.
Given this, the big bite out of the outward radiation at Wave Number 666 significantly reduces that all-important area under the line. If the difference between Ts & Tmin is 75ºC, that bite represents perhaps a tenth of the Ts-Tmin area or something like 7½ºC. In other words, without that big bite at Wavenumber 666, the rest of the line would have to be lower to balance with sunlight, and that means the things radiating won’t be so hot, something like 7½ºC cooler. So that big bite is indeed significant.
The question for the troll is ‘What is responsible for the big bite out of the outward radiation at Wave Number 666 shown in the graph?’
All the scientific literature gives the same answer to that question. It is our old friend CO₂.
I’m happy to continue this explanation which at this point goes all gassy. But I will pause here to allow the troll to interject.
Nigel (265): I suspect it’s both. You could brainwash yourself, or allow yourself to be brain washed, and this could cause a deterioration in the circuitry in the brain at a physical level.
Makes sense. Use it or loose it. So it is a positive (spiral downward). I guess one could stop and reverse the decline, provided that the damage is reversible, AND that you can reach the denier, i.e. can still open on arguments enough that it overcomes the confirmation bias.
But since this would involve the need to admit to others and to yourself that you were wrong – not very likely, particularly in those who have been long enough in it/are older i.e. more set in their ways.
The botany prof I was talking about – in the past was able to overcome his ideological enthusiasm for George W. Bush, and became his critic. 15 years later was no longer able to do it, even though Trump was much more “deserving” of it.
Sorry. Global temps have been *higher* than they should be.
Re: #290
Know It All, yet DIDN’T know in (288) that:
1. weakening of AMOC may cause local cooling, e.g. in Europe, is old news – has been published for many decades now. So why it is a revelation for you (“I did not make it up“!), but to hardly anyone else. “These forty years now I’ve been speaking in prose without knowing it! I did not make it up!“, eh? ;-)
2. Youtube clip proves nothing. Use peer-reviewed papers instead.
3. Local cooling in Europe is NOT “Ice Age”. Hint: “Little Ice Age” was not really an Ice Age.
4. And as many times before – local weather (e.g. snow in south Texas) is NOT global climate.
If anything – you may have unwittingly supported^* climate change.
Ivanka: “ Father, forgive them, for they not know what they are doing” ?
Piotr
====
^* climate change -> weakened Jet Stream -> deeper meanders -> if meander extends toward Texas -> it sucks from the north Arctic air masses -> which on colliding with moisture-laden warm air from the Gulf, creates the sources of your wide-eyed amazement (“ !!!“):
“ on New Year’s Eve, TEXAS, yes, southern TEXAS, may receive up to 18 inches of snow!!! TEXAS!!! I did not make it up ” KIA