The Science.

[Baron von Lotsov]

CERN is another international science project. They have been building particle accelerators for decades and understand how they work, and yet:

Operational history



The LHC first went live on 10 September 2008,[55] but initial testing was delayed for 14 months from 19 September 2008 to 20 November 2009, following a magnet quench incident that caused extensive damage to over 50 superconducting magnets, their mountings, and the vacuum pipe.[56][57][58][59][60]



Loss of only one ten-millionth part (10−7) of the beam is sufficient to quench a superconducting magnet, while each of the two beam dumps must absorb 362 MJ (87 kilograms of TNT). These energies are carried by very little matter: under nominal operating conditions (2,808 bunches per beam, 1.15×1011 protons per bunch), the beam pipes contain 1.0×10−9 gram of hydrogen, which, in standard conditions for temperature and pressure, would fill the volume of one grain of fine sand.

It was just someone forgot part of the calculations.



See what I mean. Of all people you would have thought they would have had it licked, but no.

[Baron von Lotsov]

No. The question is how the professor got the readings. If he used a very simple thermometer and compared it with a reading that was taken 100 years before by someone also using a very simple thermometer then that would a worthwhile piece of research. Anything would be open to question.



The essence of  any research is simplicity. Anything more is simply adding errors.

Sure and he did elaborate quite a bit on this. He said the early samples were laborious to take and I think what they did was drill a bore hole. So the earlier data is more sparse because it was expensive business to do this stuff what with the ships and all of that. Then at some time when they developed radar, which was WW2 time, some bright spark sussed that a radar signal can reflect off the bottom ice to water transition, so you could fly over in an aeroplane and take a whole line of measurement very easily, and they use satellites now. So I would not question the data because back in the day, Blighty could do science and was good at it. This was way before global warming was invented. It's just i can't understand how some areas are completely thermally isolated from their environment. A world leading expert should know this stuff. He passed on it. I did not like the interviewer either for agreeing with something that was clearly wrong.



Another weird anomaly in the data I downloaded from the CRU was a few islands in the middle of the Pacific on a 100 year plot show absolutely zero fluctuation in climate, like as flat as a ruler. I can understand why it is flat alright because the pacific is a huge heat reservoir, but if that ocean is also thermally isolated from the globe then we have a problem. I have no idea of the reason, never seen it mentioned or anything. I just looked the data up myself. Had a peek like.

[Borchester]

OK some professor in Cambridge, who I think was on the BBC or similar, was going on about arctic ice. This was apparently the world's leading authority on it, since only ourselves have bothered to run a great long time-frame survey of it. So we get the historical view of what is happening, and we are told the evidence states quite a lot of places show evidence that global warming has had an effect on the ice, typically that it is has melted compared to records going right back to the old days of arctic exploration. He then states there are some areas where there is zero evidence of global warming affecting the ice. Then he makes a false statement and says it is because some areas have less sensitivity to global warming than others. No they don't. He's just contradicted himself. The sensitivity is your factor in the equation, and for areas that have not seen any change then this must be zero sensitivity, which is vastly different to simply a lower sensitivity. The question is why? It is quite convincing to say there would be variability, in the geology varies and other parameters, so I would not question that, but just how some areas see zero is bewildering. A scientist would naturally see this as a serious clue. If an explanation can be found it may well reveal much more. There could be an unknown factor at play, but he is quite happy to gloss over stuff like this, and that worries me.

No. The question is how the professor got the readings. If he used a very simple thermometer and compared it with a reading that was taken 100 years before by someone also using a very simple thermometer then that would a worthwhile piece of research. Anything would be open to question.



The essence of  any research is simplicity. Anything more is simply adding errors.

[Baron von Lotsov]

Which brings us back to the original point, how accurate are the inputs? It does not matter how clever the system is or how fast the computer system is, if you put in rubbish that is what you get out.



I have been speaking to a couple of friends in the US in the state of Ohio. One is in Cleveland and reckons that the temperature is over 22C. Another is in Toledo and says that it is below freezing point. If you had a system whereby my two friends phone in the local temperatures on a regular basis then you have the basis for research into climate change. If you do anything any more complex then you have the beginnings of a research paper that will be valueless but get your name in the newspapers and help secure your tenure at whatever uni employs you.

OK some professor in Cambridge, who I think was on the BBC or similar, was going on about arctic ice. This was apparently the world's leading authority on it, since only ourselves have bothered to run a great long time-frame survey of it. So we get the historical view of what is happening, and we are told the evidence states quite a lot of places show evidence that global warming has had an effect on the ice, typically that it is has melted compared to records going right back to the old days of arctic exploration. He then states there are some areas where there is zero evidence of global warming affecting the ice. Then he makes a false statement and says it is because some areas have less sensitivity to global warming than others. No they don't. He's just contradicted himself. The sensitivity is your factor in the equation, and for areas that have not seen any change then this must be zero sensitivity, which is vastly different to simply a lower sensitivity. The question is why? It is quite convincing to say there would be variability, in the geology varies and other parameters, so I would not question that, but just how some areas see zero is bewildering. A scientist would naturally see this as a serious clue. If an explanation can be found it may well reveal much more. There could be an unknown factor at play, but he is quite happy to gloss over stuff like this, and that worries me.

[Borchester]

Well the inputs are the functions relating to all the different mechanisms, like the sea absorbs CO2 and stuff like that, and they then use experimental data to get these functions. What I wonder about is more the idea of the multi-body problem where you get one or more of these functions being dependent on one or more of the other functions. Every scientist knows strange sh*t happens when one is predicting what an experiment will do. It's like when you build prototype models in engineering. If you are good, most of it works first time, but rarely does it all work.

Which brings us back to the original point, how accurate are the inputs? It does not matter how clever the system is or how fast the computer system is, if you put in rubbish that is what you get out.



I have been speaking to a couple of friends in the US in the state of Ohio. One is in Cleveland and reckons that the temperature is over 22C. Another is in Toledo and says that it is below freezing point. If you had a system whereby my two friends phone in the local temperatures on a regular basis then you have the basis for research into climate change. If you do anything any more complex then you have the beginnings of a research paper that will be valueless but get your name in the newspapers and help secure your tenure at whatever uni employs you.

[Baron von Lotsov]

In short, GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out. We don't know how accurate the data being feed into the system is.

Well the inputs are the functions relating to all the different mechanisms, like the sea absorbs CO2 and stuff like that, and they then use experimental data to get these functions. What I wonder about is more the idea of the multi-body problem where you get one or more of these functions being dependent on one or more of the other functions. Every scientist knows strange shit happens when one is predicting what an experiment will do. It's like when you build prototype models in engineering. If you are good, most of it works first time, but rarely does it all work.

[Borchester]

It's based on a mathematical model. It's referred to as zero dimensional as it models the whole earth as one system and forms what is a linear sum of different functions, and these are the functions of the various sources and sinks, and the radiation balance of the earth is modelled as a sum of incoming energy and outgoing energy. The albedo of the earth is important here and I believe it is factored in.  There have been quite a few papers written on how accurately this approach works with experimental data, and t is said to be pretty good. The question really is, is it any good. I mean it is logical alright, but actually quite crude. Sometimes crude models work but then sometimes you get complex behaviours in the system which can't be modelled in this way. Perhaps also the vegetation on the earth will behave in a different way to how they expect it to. Plants are incredibly intelligent things. It's only in the last few years have scientists understood a lot about what plants do and how they know what is going on. They might genetically mutate into triffids and suck every gram of CO2 up.

In short, GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out. We don't know how accurate the data being feed into the system is.

[Borchester]

Anyone got any actual science to prove anthropogenic global warming or are you all just jumping on the rhetoric?

Not me.



There was a guy at Wisconsin Madison University called (I think) Dr Liu who managed to prove that the world is both warming up and cooling down, but climate change is a serious business at WMU and the good doctor's publications appear to have been taken down.



It is a shame really. It would be fun to have some real cold blooded research, but so far the science does not appear to have gotten beyond those who worship at the feet of St Geta and those who think that the opinions of teenage girls should only be of interest to teenage boys.

[Baron von Lotsov]

It's based on a mathematical model. It's referred to as zero dimensional as it models the whole earth as one system and forms what is a linear sum of different functions, and these are the functions of the various sources and sinks, and the radiation balance of the earth is modelled as a sum of incoming energy and outgoing energy. The albedo of the earth is important here and I believe it is factored in.  There have been quite a few papers written on how accurately this approach works with experimental data, and t is said to be pretty good. The question really is, is it any good. I mean it is logical alright, but actually quite crude. Sometimes crude models work but then sometimes you get complex behaviours in the system which can't be modelled in this way. Perhaps also the vegetation on the earth will behave in a different way to how they expect it to. Plants are incredibly intelligent things. It's only in the last few years have scientists understood a lot about what plants do and how they know what is going on. They might genetically mutate into triffids and suck every gram of CO2 up.

[Nick]

Anyone got any actual science to prove anthropogenic global warming or are you all just jumping on the rhetoric?