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Newton's law of universal gravity is a thing of beauty in its simplicity and power. It is simple enough that basic experiments can be run in any high school phy

Newton's law of universal gravity is a thing of beauty in its simplicity and power. It is simple enough that basic experiments can be run in any high school physics class, and yet so powerful that it can with a great deal of accuracy predict the movement of the planets. I'm contending that current climate science is different. I think it is too complex to ever boil down to a nice little F = G x (m_1 x m_2) / r^2 package. But perhaps we just haven't discovered that piece yet. Please understand that I'm not arguing we shouldn't study climate change. The complexity of what climate science is trying to predict just gives me pause.

acqq 13y ago
Contrary to your claim, the effects of CO2 are comparably simple formula: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/atmosphericwarming/climatsensitivity.html https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/atmospheri... And no scientist disproved it. And anybody who is able to calculate the orbits is able to use the CO2 formula too. And it's also nothing new, first such scientific work is by Arrhenius, 1895, that is 120 years ago: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Arrhenius/arrhenius_2.php http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Arrhenius/arrheniu... And even then he also "stood on the shoulders" of other scientists: "Arrhenius relied heavily on the experiments and observations of other scientists, including Josef Stefan, Arvid Gustaf Högbom, Samuel Langley, Leon Teisserenc de Bort, Knut Angstrom, Alexander Buchan, Luigi De Marchi, Joseph Fourier, C.S.M. Pouillet, and John Tyndall."
- crazy1van 13y ago
  Interesting reading. Thanks for the link. So what does that formula say the average temperature will be in 2014? Because I'm pretty sure we'll be able to predict very precisely where Pluto will be throughout the year.
  - acqq 13y ago
    I will assume that you are honestly interested. Moreover I'll assume that you don't know enough of hard science, otherwise you wouldn't ask the question. So I'll have to use an analogy: Imagine we're a colony of super-smart ants, living on the mountain slope, and as the product of our ant economy we pump through some smart pipes some water to some point some meters above our ant city, and there the water is released. That water produces the creek, sloshing around our city, like the water does, irregularly. The ant scientists are able to calculate that the increased sloshing practically didn't exist before the ants started to pump the water. They can estimate the proportion of the waves around the city and claim that if the increase of the pumping continues the water will in a span or two of ants lives reach the city. The ant deniers then claim: "you scientists can't predict a single wave from minute to minute, so we can be skeptical and continue what we're doing, it's good for our economy." The additional catch? The mechanism which the ants use doesn't respond immediately, it has a built-in delay and built-in amplifier. Even if the ants stop now the amount of water will raise, or maybe even blow the fuses of the mechanism, where the increase of the water will never stop. That's where we are now. Asking for the height of the moment of the single wave doesn't invalidate the formula we know: more CO2 gives more heat on Earth. And we should be aware of the mechanism, which has both the delay and the amplifier. The humanity released in the atmosphere around 10 billion tons of CO2 in 2012 alone. Around 150 years ago it was cca 50 million tonnes per year, that is two hundred times less than now. The concentration of the CO2 in the atmosphere is measured in the ppm (parts per million). Even difference in such small concentrations provably increases the heat on the Earth, the basic formulas are indisputable. In 2013 the atmosphere reached 400 ppm of CO2, that is 0.04% concentration indisputably produced by human activity: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/may/14/record-400ppm-co2-carbon-emissions http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/may/14/record-40... If you're really interested, do read the article.
    - crazy1van 13y ago
      Thanks for the article. It seems like the gist is - (please correct me if I'm wrong) 1) We have much better ways of measuring CO2 than we ever have before. 2) The amount we're detecting is going up and recently passed a major milestone 3) Serious and politically difficult cut backs in fossil fuels are required to decrease CO2 totals Taking all that as fact because I certainly don't know enough to dispute it, that's for sure, I have a few questions - 1) Is this actually "bad" for the planet, or is it just bad for humans? The article states that the planet had 400ppm 2-4 million years ago. I guess my question is, why is it bad if humans cause this when it wasn't bad when other phenomena caused it? 2) Could the earth have a feedback mechanism that we don't yet understand to deal with this on its own? These seem so common in nature on a small scale. It seems likely one could exist on a large scale, too. 3) If the only way out of this is drastic human behavior change, then it seems like we should switch to focusing on adapting rather than preventing. Humanity just won't make the levels of fossil fuel cuts that the article says are necessary. --- Also, to respond to your ant analogy - I gather that you equate my question of the average temp for 2014 to predicting waves from minute to minute in the analogy. If one year is too short, then what length of time is long enough to predict? I really think that a major reason why climate change is so unpersuasive to many people (myself included) is that the theories aren't testable in short enough windows of time. Please consider this analogy: I have invented an algorithm that correctly predicts the average value of the S&P500 over the next 50 years. The algorithm really works and it says the average value is 1000x higher than now. Obviously, people could use it to make a killing, even though the algorithm does not claim what the year to year value will be. I could explain my logic over and over, but most people are simply not going to risk their own money on it. However, if I correctly predicted the value of the S&P500 for 2014, 2015, and 2016, I bet lots of people would take my advice for 2017. Without that evidence can you really blame their skepticism?
      - acqq 13y ago
        1) As humans are causing it, they are making the change much much faster than the natural effects did. The living world has much less time to adapt. Humans are producing the massive extinction. 2) No, the Earth would certainly not fix it for us, we know how CO2 behaves. A third of CO2 goes in the oceans at the moment, raising acidity which dissolves , for example, corals. It's another place where humans produce extinctions. 3) Human civilization is extremely dependent on the current state, most of the decisions are made like the current state lasts forever (very short term) and the deniers aren't focusing on anything else than spreading the belief that there isn't any need to adapt to anything. They deny the basic facts. You are also still making the same questions doubting the basic facts. There's absolutely no need to wait for any "confirmation," the scientific certainty is 97% right now. If you don't understand this, imagine that your doctor analyses your blood, your tissue samples, your medical history and many more observations and all results are absolutely consistent with the same illness, and 97 of 100 people die with that results if they don't stop smoking. In our case, we are actually even more certain than any "uncertain" medical diagnosis of today. We measure the "organism" not with one thermometer but with almost unlimited number of them, and we make the different "tissue probes" also on unlimited number of places all the time. All are consistent. More CO2. More heat. Nobody who understands basic science can deny that. You ask basically "shouldn't the patient smoke until the certainty that he dies is 100%?" Well then he is actually dead. The problem is, the patient is the whole earth, and we don't have another one.

acqq 13y ago

Contrary to your claim, the effects of CO2 are comparably simple formula: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/atmosphericwarming/climatsensitivity.html https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/atmospheri... And no scientist disproved it. And anybody who is able to calculate the orbits is able to use the CO2 formula too. And it's also nothing new, first such scientific work is by Arrhenius, 1895, that is 120 years ago: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Arrhenius/arrhenius_2.php http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Arrhenius/arrheniu... And even then he also "stood on the shoulders" of other scientists: "Arrhenius relied heavily on the experiments and observations of other scientists, including Josef Stefan, Arvid Gustaf Högbom, Samuel Langley, Leon Teisserenc de Bort, Knut Angstrom, Alexander Buchan, Luigi De Marchi, Joseph Fourier, C.S.M. Pouillet, and John Tyndall."

crazy1van 13y ago
Interesting reading. Thanks for the link. So what does that formula say the average temperature will be in 2014? Because I'm pretty sure we'll be able to predict very precisely where Pluto will be throughout the year.
- acqq 13y ago
  I will assume that you are honestly interested. Moreover I'll assume that you don't know enough of hard science, otherwise you wouldn't ask the question. So I'll have to use an analogy: Imagine we're a colony of super-smart ants, living on the mountain slope, and as the product of our ant economy we pump through some smart pipes some water to some point some meters above our ant city, and there the water is released. That water produces the creek, sloshing around our city, like the water does, irregularly. The ant scientists are able to calculate that the increased sloshing practically didn't exist before the ants started to pump the water. They can estimate the proportion of the waves around the city and claim that if the increase of the pumping continues the water will in a span or two of ants lives reach the city. The ant deniers then claim: "you scientists can't predict a single wave from minute to minute, so we can be skeptical and continue what we're doing, it's good for our economy." The additional catch? The mechanism which the ants use doesn't respond immediately, it has a built-in delay and built-in amplifier. Even if the ants stop now the amount of water will raise, or maybe even blow the fuses of the mechanism, where the increase of the water will never stop. That's where we are now. Asking for the height of the moment of the single wave doesn't invalidate the formula we know: more CO2 gives more heat on Earth. And we should be aware of the mechanism, which has both the delay and the amplifier. The humanity released in the atmosphere around 10 billion tons of CO2 in 2012 alone. Around 150 years ago it was cca 50 million tonnes per year, that is two hundred times less than now. The concentration of the CO2 in the atmosphere is measured in the ppm (parts per million). Even difference in such small concentrations provably increases the heat on the Earth, the basic formulas are indisputable. In 2013 the atmosphere reached 400 ppm of CO2, that is 0.04% concentration indisputably produced by human activity: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/may/14/record-400ppm-co2-carbon-emissions http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/may/14/record-40... If you're really interested, do read the article.
  - crazy1van 13y ago
    Thanks for the article. It seems like the gist is - (please correct me if I'm wrong) 1) We have much better ways of measuring CO2 than we ever have before. 2) The amount we're detecting is going up and recently passed a major milestone 3) Serious and politically difficult cut backs in fossil fuels are required to decrease CO2 totals Taking all that as fact because I certainly don't know enough to dispute it, that's for sure, I have a few questions - 1) Is this actually "bad" for the planet, or is it just bad for humans? The article states that the planet had 400ppm 2-4 million years ago. I guess my question is, why is it bad if humans cause this when it wasn't bad when other phenomena caused it? 2) Could the earth have a feedback mechanism that we don't yet understand to deal with this on its own? These seem so common in nature on a small scale. It seems likely one could exist on a large scale, too. 3) If the only way out of this is drastic human behavior change, then it seems like we should switch to focusing on adapting rather than preventing. Humanity just won't make the levels of fossil fuel cuts that the article says are necessary. --- Also, to respond to your ant analogy - I gather that you equate my question of the average temp for 2014 to predicting waves from minute to minute in the analogy. If one year is too short, then what length of time is long enough to predict? I really think that a major reason why climate change is so unpersuasive to many people (myself included) is that the theories aren't testable in short enough windows of time. Please consider this analogy: I have invented an algorithm that correctly predicts the average value of the S&P500 over the next 50 years. The algorithm really works and it says the average value is 1000x higher than now. Obviously, people could use it to make a killing, even though the algorithm does not claim what the year to year value will be. I could explain my logic over and over, but most people are simply not going to risk their own money on it. However, if I correctly predicted the value of the S&P500 for 2014, 2015, and 2016, I bet lots of people would take my advice for 2017. Without that evidence can you really blame their skepticism?
    - acqq 13y ago
      1) As humans are causing it, they are making the change much much faster than the natural effects did. The living world has much less time to adapt. Humans are producing the massive extinction. 2) No, the Earth would certainly not fix it for us, we know how CO2 behaves. A third of CO2 goes in the oceans at the moment, raising acidity which dissolves , for example, corals. It's another place where humans produce extinctions. 3) Human civilization is extremely dependent on the current state, most of the decisions are made like the current state lasts forever (very short term) and the deniers aren't focusing on anything else than spreading the belief that there isn't any need to adapt to anything. They deny the basic facts. You are also still making the same questions doubting the basic facts. There's absolutely no need to wait for any "confirmation," the scientific certainty is 97% right now. If you don't understand this, imagine that your doctor analyses your blood, your tissue samples, your medical history and many more observations and all results are absolutely consistent with the same illness, and 97 of 100 people die with that results if they don't stop smoking. In our case, we are actually even more certain than any "uncertain" medical diagnosis of today. We measure the "organism" not with one thermometer but with almost unlimited number of them, and we make the different "tissue probes" also on unlimited number of places all the time. All are consistent. More CO2. More heat. Nobody who understands basic science can deny that. You ask basically "shouldn't the patient smoke until the certainty that he dies is 100%?" Well then he is actually dead. The problem is, the patient is the whole earth, and we don't have another one.