Friday, March 02, 2012
Theory Meets Reality
Here are some things that you hear from the Global Warming alarmists. I used to call them Warmies, but I'm not going to any more as it's disparaging. I'm technically a luke warmer. I believe that CO2 has some effect in the atmosphere and much of the recent rise above the pre-industrial 280 ppm atmospheric concentration of CO2 has been man-made. However, the current effect of rising levels of CO2 is approaching saturation and the man-made component is very small indeed. Despite my technical pigeonhole, I will continue to embrace the label the alarmists put on me--I'm a Denier. I deny that increasing CO2 will do anything bad. Anyway, to each of the alarmists' allegation/predictions I've responded in turn. Hat tip to Dr. Evans.
1) The sea level is rising at an ever increasing rate and will soon inundate low lying regions and coastal towns, like New York and London.
No, the sea has stopped its 1 to 3 millimeters per year natural, interglacial rise (at most .118110 inch per year). At even the old rate, that's less than 12 inches a century. So, we won't see a lot of inundation from that rate even if it picks up and resumes the former creeping. Saying it's going to rise 20 feet in just a few decades, as some alarmists claim, is wild fantasy. I have yet to hear a climate scientist of any stripe explain how the ice caps are melting at reportedly alarming rates yet the sea is not rising. Is there a such thing as negative water? (h/t Steven Goddard)
2) The rise of man-made CO2 in the atmosphere will cause a rise in temperature of between 3 and 7 degrees C by 2080.
Since Dr. Hansen made his prediction in 1988, we've had 23 years of data with which to compare. We're substantially below the Scenario C line, which scenario assumed drastic cuts to CO2 emissions of which there have been none, at least none on the whole world scale. Usually, when the theory doesn't match the data, the theory is wrong. The Global Warming alarmists attack (and adjust) the data instead. I'm sorry, who's supposed to be anti-science here?
3) The sea temperature will rise inexorably as CO2 traps ever more heat in the atmosphere and it transfers to the oceans.
Oops. Again, the prediction is wrong. The alarmists believe that their computer models are worthwhile because they are constantly adjusting the code to reproduce the recent real world data, but the computer programs are hopelessly simple. Remember the chaos theory extreme example that a single beat of a butterfly wing can create a hurricane? Well, the computer simulacra don't account for butterfly wing flaps, or a thousand other things including cloud formation. That last omission is a killer. The long term climate predictions are no more reliable than the few-days-ahead TV weather forecasts.
4) (And this is my favorite) The CO2 will trap a lot of excess heat in the atmosphere about 10 or 12 kilometers up over the tropics, which atmospheric hotspot will be the fingerprint of man made global warming.
Satellite measurement and even more comprehensive weather balloon measurement has detected no hotspot, not even the slightest glimmer of a hotspot over the tropics; so there is no man made global warming fingerprint, and the central tenet of the alarmist theory crashes and burns. If the extra CO2 in the atmosphere is not heating where it exists in the most direct sunshine, then the extra CO2 in the atmosphere is not doing squat anywhere.5) The small increase of temperature from a doubling of CO2 will be amplified by extra water vapor the slightly increased heat CO2 will cause through evaporation, which increased water vapor will, in turn, trap ever more heat in the atmosphere. The predictions all say because of this amplification less heat will escape from the Earth into space.
The first panel is the ERBE satellite record of heat leaving the top of the atmosphere. All the other panels are the various computer models' predictions of what will happen to that same heat. They are all wrong, again. The reality is wholly different from what the models predicted. There is no positive feedback from water vapor (the 'gas' which does the heavy lifting keeping us warm). There is instead a negative feedback, so that the laboratory derived number for the increased heat from a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere (1.1 degrees C) is actually lessened largely by cloud formation and will be a mere .6 degree C rise, which is a temperature we can all live with, on our ever greening planet now that the CO2 starvation diet of plants has been ended by humans.
This series of wrong predictions are not nit-picky things around the edges of the 'settled science' of alarming man-made global warming, they are theories at the heart of the matter. They are sine qua non aspects which, when they fail, as they have, bring the whole edifice of climate theory down. The theory is refuted by reliable data. Anyone who does not at least acknowledge these problems is in denial, whistling past the graveyard of previous failed, alarmist predictions.
Labels: Global Warming Alarmism; Superfail
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 3:03 PM 
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Just this afternoon finished Short-Timers. Wow. Stunning book. I have to give that one some thought....
If indeed that is a realistic portrayal of what it was like for the grunt in the mud, then no wonder those who survived came back with re-socializing difficulties. Brutalizing. Literally brutalizing.
Hasford's repeated phrase, "There it is," recalled for me the "So it goes," of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, in its suggestion of surrender to fate, to "what will be will be," to the powerlessness to change one's future.
Yeah, for a little book it gives one lots to think about.
If indeed that is a realistic portrayal of what it was like for the grunt in the mud, then no wonder those who survived came back with re-socializing difficulties. Brutalizing. Literally brutalizing.
Hasford's repeated phrase, "There it is," recalled for me the "So it goes," of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, in its suggestion of surrender to fate, to "what will be will be," to the powerlessness to change one's future.
Yeah, for a little book it gives one lots to think about.
# posted by 
: 7:58 PM
: 7:58 PM
I am heartbroken.
http://www.kolotv.com/home/headlines/NAS_Fallon_Reports_Plane_Crash_141617403.html
Capt. LeFon, USN Retd. is the blogger, Neptunus Lex.
http://www.kolotv.com/home/headlines/NAS_Fallon_Reports_Plane_Crash_141617403.html
Capt. LeFon, USN Retd. is the blogger, Neptunus Lex.
# posted by : 9:51 AM
: 9:51 AM
Yeah, I read about Neptunus on Instapundit. It was an Israeli plane, I think. Sad.
You can see why Kubrick did not make the Khe Sanh part of the book but put Cowboy's death in before the death of the sniper, so it had less impact. I'm led to believe that the battles of Ia Drang, Khe Sahn and Hue were the most savage and this book covers two of them. I can't say if it gives an unvarnished look at that war. Glad you had the same reaction I had. Thanks, as always, for your comments.
You can see why Kubrick did not make the Khe Sanh part of the book but put Cowboy's death in before the death of the sniper, so it had less impact. I'm led to believe that the battles of Ia Drang, Khe Sahn and Hue were the most savage and this book covers two of them. I can't say if it gives an unvarnished look at that war. Glad you had the same reaction I had. Thanks, as always, for your comments.
Last I looked, the last post on Lex's blog (by Whisper, that announced his death) had >700 comments/condolences from his blog readers and friends. When you have some time, take a look at some of them -- he was a much admired man, even by those who had never met him (myself included.)
Lex was flying for ATAC, which contracts with the USDOD to act/fly as OpFor for USAF, USN, etc. training purposes, as at TOPGUN in Nevada. (Full disclosure: ATAC was a corporate client for limited purposes at my former law firm employer, so I am somewhat familiar with it.) Lex himself was a former TOPGUN squadron XO, I believe, and a highly experienced pilot. He was flying a Kfir, an Israeli-made fighter of which I think ATAC owns a few used for these training exercises.
It will be interesting to see what the eventual NTSB findings are. His last several posts described problems with the weatherstripping on the canopy and the failure of a drag chute to pop. He had not before written much about mechanical problems with his planes.
I did not see the movie FMJ, so I had no preconceptions about the story. (I did find the bag of feet a bit ... much.) Karl Marlantes speaks in his book What It Is Like To Go To War of making deliberate effort to counteract the tendency to become brutalized. That effort is necessary because when surrounded by brutality it easier to surrender to it than to confront it.
It seems quite amazing, given the history of combat & the circumstances of fighting in Afgh & Iraq, that our warriors there have had relatively few events of excessive behavior (as in killing civilians with no perceptive cause a la My Lai; I don't count pissing on a dead body as brutality, btw, nor even as disrespect -- on a live body, maybe.) We have perhaps the most disciplined yet effective fighting force ever known.
Speaking of brutal? I'm also reading Victor Davis Hanson's Carnage and Culture. Not even Vietnam (with its souvenir ears or bags of feet) compares with the fighting at Salamis or Cannae.
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Lex was flying for ATAC, which contracts with the USDOD to act/fly as OpFor for USAF, USN, etc. training purposes, as at TOPGUN in Nevada. (Full disclosure: ATAC was a corporate client for limited purposes at my former law firm employer, so I am somewhat familiar with it.) Lex himself was a former TOPGUN squadron XO, I believe, and a highly experienced pilot. He was flying a Kfir, an Israeli-made fighter of which I think ATAC owns a few used for these training exercises.
It will be interesting to see what the eventual NTSB findings are. His last several posts described problems with the weatherstripping on the canopy and the failure of a drag chute to pop. He had not before written much about mechanical problems with his planes.
I did not see the movie FMJ, so I had no preconceptions about the story. (I did find the bag of feet a bit ... much.) Karl Marlantes speaks in his book What It Is Like To Go To War of making deliberate effort to counteract the tendency to become brutalized. That effort is necessary because when surrounded by brutality it easier to surrender to it than to confront it.
It seems quite amazing, given the history of combat & the circumstances of fighting in Afgh & Iraq, that our warriors there have had relatively few events of excessive behavior (as in killing civilians with no perceptive cause a la My Lai; I don't count pissing on a dead body as brutality, btw, nor even as disrespect -- on a live body, maybe.) We have perhaps the most disciplined yet effective fighting force ever known.
Speaking of brutal? I'm also reading Victor Davis Hanson's Carnage and Culture. Not even Vietnam (with its souvenir ears or bags of feet) compares with the fighting at Salamis or Cannae.
# posted by : 12:53 PM
: 12:53 PM << Home
