There used to a consensus among scientists that Alchemy was legitimate and they could turn lead into gold.

Skeptics in that era were also purged.

I guess I am not prepared to comment on that says it all. It's bad when a climatologist has to bend to someone who has very little or no knowledge on climate. George Taylor did the right thing, now let the moon bats do the explaining.

No they didn't Fred. They had a choice:

Recant your views and end your life with a mercifully quick hanging, or stick to your guns and be burnt at the stake as a heretic.

Ya gotta give monkeys like Suzuki their due; they only want you censored, fired from your job and imprisoned.

Science has progressed in the last 500 years dontchya know...

:)

Taylor: Look, if we reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, that will tend to lower the temperature, all other things being equal. The question is how much, and are the other things equal? Those are tough questions to answer.

Taylor: When I look at precipitation, temperature and snowfall in the Northwest, I see stronger correlation with natural factors than with greenhouse gases.

ROFL. No kidding pal.

Taylor: So I have concluded that the influence of natural factors on climate is more significant than that of greenhouse gases.

Is this for real?

No wonder the governor told him to stop calling himself "state climatologist".

The portion of atmospheric CO2 vapor that is produced by humans is about 3% or 0.03. The portion of green-house gasses that is CO2 is about 1% or 0.01. Thus, the portion of green-house gasses that is human produced CO2 is about 0.03% or 0.0003. The heat trapping effectiveness of CO2 compared to the average of green-house gasses is about 10% or 0.10. Thus, the portion of the green-house gas effect caused by human CO2 is about 0.003% or 0.00003 or 30 millionths. The portion of human-produced CO2 vapor that comes from Canada is about 2% or 0.02. Thus, the portion of green-house gas effects caused by Canadian-produced CO2 is about 0.00006% or 0.0000006 or 0.6 millionths.

So, even if (contrary to the evidence that suggests that changes in CO2 concentrations are caused by significant temperature changes) we assume that changes in CO2 concentrations cause significant temperature changes, and even if we ignore the Beer-Lambert law on absorption saturation, and even if we assume (contrary to the evidence that suggests a slightly warmer planet would be a good thing) that an increase of a few degrees in temperature will cause terrible things, then even if Canadians stop producing any atmospheric CO2 at all, stopped all heating, stopped all transportation, stopped all manufacturing, then the reduction in terrible things will be less than 1 millionth; 999,999 millionths of it will still happen.

I like the 'Global Warming Theory of Relativity' aspect of the piece. Warmer/cooler than when? Good point George. It's definitely warmer than 15,000 years ago and glaciers are melting - as they have been since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. Does that mean the world will end? Not likely. We learn to adapt.

The alarmists think on a very small short scale.

"No wonder the governor told him to stop calling himself 'state climatologist'."

Sammy, would you like to explain how you are qualified to make such a snotty remark?

I'm only a humble BSc but, having practiced a relevant science for 30 years I feel qualified to state that Taylor's approach to science gives me hope for the survival of scholarship in a world of feuding ideologies.

I was also impressed by the way he conducted himself with the hostile interviewer.

Warmer climate results in greater evaporation. Greater evaporation results in more cloud cover. More cloud cover results in cooler temperatures. Cooler temperatures results in less evaporation.

In other words, hysteresis.

But clouds are not in the models.

And the climate-change-denier-hating trolls expect anything other than guffaws and the bum's rush?

Ah heck, vitruvius. Are you saying that we Canadians are so insignificant in the global world that no matter what we do, regardless of any of our most earnest endeavours to make our mark on the world, that 999,999 millionths of the world will do just as it always does regardless of our input/output? Ah heck, vitruvius.

From the link:

http://ncwatch.typepad.com/media/2008/04/again-cycle-24.html

"Cedar Rapids and the surrounding Midwest has been consistently colder than normal since December. In Cedar Rapids, December averaged 3.0 F below normal, January 1.9 F below normal, February a whopping 8.3 F below normal, March 4.9 F below normal and so far in April 4.4 degrees below normal."

Most significant is his comment:
And then there are things whose role we dont understand, like clouds they are usually ignored by climate prediction models. They dont know how to include them, so they ignore them. Same with El Nio and La Nia.

Clouds are the primary source of reflected sunlight and hence global cooling ant they're not part of the GCM's?! I happen to be in Vancouver this week and it's snowing outside. I didn't think I'd have to bring winter clothes to Vancouver at the end of April.

Have some mercy Vitruvius!

The poor kids brain will explode from being exposed to so many facts that contradict his programming.

Y'all may be interested in Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics, a paper by Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf Tscheuschner from the Institut fur Mathematische Physik, Technische Universitat Carolo-Wilhelmina, September, 2007. Here's the abstract:

"The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861, and Arrhenius 1896, and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation.

"In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 C is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified."

You can find the PDF at arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161v3

Digging up the reference to the Gerlich & Tscheuschner paper reminded me that I was planning to send it to my mailing list. I've now done so. I included there the Physicist's Summary that starts on page 92 of the paper, but the whole summary is too long for here. However, here are the final paragraphs of the summary:

"Already the natural greenhouse effect is a myth albeit any physical reality. The CO2 -greenhouse effect, however is a "mirage". The horror visions of a risen sea level, melting pole caps and developing deserts in North America and in Europe are fictitious consequences of fictitious physical mechanisms as they cannot be seen even in the climate model computations. The emergence of hurricanes and tornados cannot be predicted by climate models, because all of these deviations are ruled out.

"The main strategy of modern CO2 -greenhouse gas defenders seems to hide themselves behind more and more pseudo- explanations, which are not part of the academic education or even of the physics training. A good example are the radiation transport calculations, which are probably not known by many. Another example are the so-called feedback mechanisms, which are introduced to amplify an effect which is not marginal but does not exist at all. Evidently, the defenders of the CO2 -greenhouse thesis refuse to accept any reproducible calculation as an explanation and have resorted to unreproducible ones.

"A theoretical physicist must complain about a lack of transparency here, and he also has to complain about the style of the scientific discussion, where advocators of the greenhouse thesis claim that the discussion is closed, and others are discrediting justified arguments as a discussion of "questions of yesterday and the day before yesterday". In exact sciences, in particular in theoretical physics, the discussion is never closed and is to be continued ad infinitum, even if there are proofs of theorems available.

"Regardless of the specific field of studies a minimal basic rule should be fulfilled in natural science, though, even if the scientific fields are methodically as far apart as physics and meteorology: At least among experts, the results and conclusions should be understandable or reproducible. And it should be strictly distinguished between a theory and a model on the one hand, and between a model and a scenario on the other hand, as clarified in the philosophy of science.

"That means that if conclusions out of computer simulations are to be more than simple speculations, then in addition to the examination of the numerical stability and the estimation of the effects of the many vague input parameters, at least the simplifications of the physical original equations should be critically exposed.

"The point discussed here was to answer the question, whether the supposed atmospheric effect has a physical basis. This is not the case. In summary, there is no atmospheric greenhouse effect, in particular CO2 -greenhouse effect, in theoretical physics and engineering thermodynamics. Thus it is illegitimate to deduce predictions which provide a consulting solution for economics and intergovernmental policy."

Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me

- Al Gore -

So, Vitruvius, it is settled after all.

No, Shaken, as Gerlich & Tscheuschner explain in their fourth-last paragraph, "In exact sciences, in particular in theoretical physics, the discussion is never closed and is to be continued ad infinitum, even if there are proofs of theorems available."

"There used to a consensus among scientists that Alchemy was legitimate and they could turn lead into gold. Skeptics in that era were also purged."

Please don't do that. It makes everyone associated with you look uneducated and ignorant. For the record:

1) Alchemists and scientists are tow completely different thing. You may as well compare witch-doctors to MD's.

2) Even amongst alchemists, the idea that lead could be turned into gold wasn't exactly an accepted belief. It was more of a Holy Grail that many alchemists strove for without ever seeing any thing even resembling positive results.

You raise a good point Alex. Greenhouse warming alchemists strive for the Holy Grail of a carbon-dioxide based feed-forward control system, without ever seeing any thing even resembling positive results, while real scientists keep their nose to the grindstone trying to do something actually useful.

Alex:

"You may as well compare witch-doctors to MD's"

And your point is?

Speaking of "settled science", seems the Failed Presidential Candidate has gone even more hollywood than first thought... Weird Al's majestic ice shelves in his movie are nothing more than styrofoam - and not just any styrofoam,but the exact same styrofoam used to create the ice shelves in the movie "Day after tomorrow".

I just laughed when John Stossel showed this on 20/20 on his Myths show....

"Al Gore's "traveling global warming show," the award-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," includes a long flyover shot of majestic Antarctic ice shelves. But this shot was first seen in the 2004 blockbuster "The Day After Tomorrow." Sculpted from Styrofoam and later scanned into a computer, the ice shelf "flyover" looks real."

Al and his team declined interviews with 20/20...

Ah slowly but surely the global warming snow job is melting....

After rereading the posts on the previous MMGW thread on this site I was struck by the arrogant ignorance of the trolls infecting it.

How anyone can survive this modern world without being a natural skeptic is beyond me.
And how anyone can look at the entire structure of the MMGW argument and not see the massive holes inherent in it is also beyond me.

From the "case closed" mentality that flies in the very face of scientific procedure itself to the computer models that admittedly ignore VITAL factors with a DIRECT impact on climatology to the simple fact a politician and a scientist in a completely unrelated field are it's main pitchmen,it is abundantly clear to me that this is not real science.

In my lifetime I have heard many who claim to be able to accurately predict the future and they have all proven to be frauds.Yet they always find the gullible to lead.

And as has been said before,the Gore/Suzuki/Travoltas,etc,travelling the world preaching reducing carbon emmissions is no different than alcoholics driving drunk from AA meeting to AA meeting tellings others not to abide.

Without the MSM's help,this UN generated farce would have died immediately after it's birth.

From their pot of water example, it seriously seems like Gerlich and Tscheuschner don't know the difference between energy and heat.

Care to explain, vitruvius , why Gerlich and Tscheuscher don't seem to grasp the concept that radiative energy can be reflected back to the surface from the atmosphere?


Actually, just answer me this one, pretty simple question. If you have two systems, one at a lower temp than the other, is it possible for the warmer system to absorb some level of energy from the colder one?

(Hint: If it can, the second law of thermodynamics isn't broken when some smaller degree of radiative energy is reflected back to earth, as compared to the amount passing through the atmosphere -- and their premise is out the window)


Also, vitruvius , you might be interested in this link

http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2005/2005_Hansen_etal_2.pdf

and

http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1990/1990_Lorius_etal.pdf

In response to your sophomoric calculation in your first post.

Samuel, I do thermodynamics modelling for a living.
I actually grok the Gerlich & Tscheuschner paper.
I'm actually interested in the truth about metaphysics.
I'm not interested in playing footsie with alchemists.

Canadian Observer :
In this case I believe you have drunk deeply at the spring of common sense.

This whole con is being exposed finally. I noticed in Drudge a recantation as well as warnings about this UN boondoggle. My only concern is legitimate science will now be hurt by these chicken little’s lies.

An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the man", "argument against the man") consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the person making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim. The process of proving or disproving the claim is thereby subverted, and the argumentum ad hominem works to change the subject.

An appeal to authority or argument by authority is a type of argument in logic consisting on basing the truth value of an assertion on the authority, knowledge, expertise, or position of the person asserting it. It is also known as argument from authority, argumentum ad verecundiam (Latin: argument to respect) or ipse dixit (Latin: he himself said it). It is one method of obtaining propositional knowledge, but a fallacy in regard to logic, because the validity of a claim does not follow from the credibility of the source. The corresponding reverse case would be an ad hominem attack: to imply that the claim is false because the asserter lacks authority or is otherwise objectionable in some way.

Two logical fallacies in one!

Maybe you can grok me the answer to my question Mr. "I do thermodynamics modelling for a living"

Samuel pose the question:
Actually, just answer me this one, pretty simple question. If you have two systems, one at a lower temp than the other, is it possible for the warmer system to absorb some level of energy from the colder one?
The answer to that question is as close as your refrigerator. Set the inside temperature of your refrigerator to a lower level and the warmer system (your kitchen) absorbs heat from the cold system inside the refrigerator. This requires the expenditure of energy to drive the heat transfer. What do you propose as the driving force for this process in the atmosphere?

Apparently I wasn't clear, Samuel. In a June 4, 2007 survey of over 600 SDA readers, over half were scientists, engineers, and technologists. Many of the commenters here are capable of understanding the Gerlich & Tscheuschner paper, it is them who I may be interested in discussing it with.

However, Samuel, you, sir, opened with the "it seriously seems like Gerlich and Tscheuschner don't know the difference between energy and heat" gambit, when the difference between energy and heat is one of the principle considerations of the paper. That was a bad opening gambit.

It takes a few hours to read the paper, and you probably have to read it a couplya times to get the flow, and I've done that. Yet about an hour and a half after I first post the link, you, Samuel, come waltzing in here with some cherry-picked quotes that completely misrepresent the paper.

And you want me to interlocute civily with you?

You, sir, are a fraud.

It seems as though you dont understand it either. Are you suggesting that greenhouse gases know where space is, and elect to only radiate energy that direction?

Because that doesnt make any sense, they radiate energy in all directions.

I think that perhaps you too are confused by the difference between "heat" and "energy"

Trolls, spam - same thing. Perhaps trolls can be eliminated the same way google's gmail virtually eliminates spam from your inbox. (with trolls, you'd think embarasement alone would do it)

sda, and millions of others, would belong to a master troll registry. When ever one blog site bans a troll, that troll would also be baned from the other millions of sites. One delete would be worth millions. Problem solved.

Cherry picked quotes Vitruvius?

You're the one who cherry picked the quote regarding the second law of thermodynamics @ April 18, 2008 9:56 PM.

As for me reading the article, perhaps I read and understand things more quickly than you do.

=)

I can see that instead of discussing the paper with someone who has a working understanding of thermodynamics, you've chosen the countergambit of running for the hills.

In your case, that's probably a good countergambit.

Get a grip on yourself, Samuel. At 9:56 I posted the entire abstract of the paper. Anyone who could suggest that I was "cherry-picking quotes" by posting the entire abstract needs to stop in at the Reason repair shop for a tune-up. Perhaps we can talk after that.

Seems to me science has been hijacked by certain orthodoxies that are based on theory. Now as in the last century these claims are being challenged. The response? The usual inquisition . The two founders of continental drift where like wise ostracized. One committed suicide I believe. The other became a drunk from ridicule.

Yet all we hear about is Galileo who was sentenced more for calling his buddy the Pope a SOB than his science.

This is a pattern found in human nature to resist changing comfortable mythologies. reinforced by the learning institutions governed by Monies from government, sometimes religion, mostly defenders of the old ways. Professors who's reputations where made on their theories. Who own the resources, so can dictate the terms or filter knowledge & research. This movie tackles this. I have no idea how sound they are, but it is an intriguing trailer.

In my opinion all science is valid till a new theory comes up. Nothing is sacred , no idea should be spurned, unless proves rigorously fallacious. Science is agenda driven as well. To bad some crackpots with personnel axes to grind or even liars now infest this noble pursuit. To a Christian like myself , finding out the laws of the universe revels Gods attributes. So to most Christians I have meet see no dichotomy. it’s the individuals who read some meaning out of theory. Who become fanatic devotees of said theory , including silencing any dissent. Sad I say. This global warming scam will clean up that community soon I hope.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV8sN1UngFY

Perhaps Maurice Strong's dream of population reduction through Kyoto is dead.

Gore and Suzuki must be sweating - Biofuels was a major plank in Europe's Global Warming action plan.

Saturday April 19 2008
[EU set to scrap biofuels target amid fears of food crisis.

The European commission is backing away from its insistence on imposing a compulsory 10% quota of biofuels in all petrol and diesel by 2020, a central plank of its programme to lead the world in combating climate change.

Amid a worsening global food crisis exacerbated, say experts and critics, by the race to divert food or feed crops into biomass for the manufacture of vehicle fuel, and inundated by a flood of expert advice criticising the shift to renewable fuel, the commission appears to be getting cold feet about its biofuels target.] gaurdian.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/19/biofuels.food

(With apologies to Vitruvius for intervening)...

Samuel, you have picked the wrong fellow with whom to duel. Vitruvius, from what I can tell of him through his history of posts at SDA, is a true scientist. I refer you to his response to one of my posts earlier in this thread, wherein I invited him to invoke closure. He stuck to his scientific principles, and refrained. In my opinion, he seeks the truth, which does not choose sides.

Vitruvius has not cherry picked "a quote". He has cited a paper, of some considerable substance, that demands more than an narcistic quip from the audience.

If Vitruvius has "cherry picked" from the truth, then let it be so. Did you have some kind of point you wished to make?

Revnant Dream

The problem with Wegener (the continental drift guy) is that he thought that continents moved because of tidal forces and centrifugal force. Physicists knew that was ridiculous, so they dismissed his theory... throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

As far as Science goes, I couldnt agree more with you insofar as nothing is sacred, no idea should be spurned unless rigorously proven fallacious. But that sword cuts both ways, you cannot put something like intelligent design forth, slap the label of a "theory" on it and call it science.

For the reasons you gave, science needs to be able to stand up to rigorous testing... evolution does, intelligent design doesn't.

Protip: "Evolution" has nothing to do with how life originally came into existence, it's the theory of how species adapt and evolve. Is Ben Stein this stupid, or is he just playing a role?

Biofuels are a failed, out of favour, major part of Kyoto. What other 'damaged goods' ideas are out there ?

Windmills ? Because they don't work.

Solar ? Too expensive.

And then there is the fact that the Earth has actually been cooling the last ten years.

And that a warmer Earth is not all that bad.

No wonder they try to silence people such as George Taylor.

What does Al Gore have to hide and what is he afraid of ? Plenty.

Exhibit A; AIT.

Isn't a greenhouse a human-created, artificial environment noted for impermeable fabrics containing said environment and not subject to wind?

Where did the term, "greenhouse gas" originate?

shaken

Believe me, I have the credentials to call myself a "true scientist", so that argument does nothing for me.


You invited him to evoke closure on the subject of anthropogenic climate changed based on a single shoddily researched paper?

Perhaps you should take your own advice and either do some research or leave the science to the adults.


This comments section is filled with people preaching science, who seem to be wildly against disagreeing viewpoints. Isn't that kind of the point?

For the record, I'm by no means "sold" on anthropogenic climate change. But don't cite garbage that claims the atmosphere violates the second law of thermodynamics. It's laughable, gets in the way of the real debate and makes me seriously doubt your credentials.

No apologies needed, Shaken, indeed, thanks for bringing me back to the topic. Sometimes one has to go out on a limb as regards house rules to illustrate a point, but that's enough of that.

I've been thinking a bit over the last couplya hours about how to summarize the paper, and I think that I can now say something like this:

There are two problems with climate prediction. Firstly, and relatively trivally, a lot of the science is actually wrong. But secondly, and more importantly, it is simply not possible to forecast future climate, if you actually look at the physics and thermodynamics involved.

I really do think it is an awfully good paper, and even if one skips through a lot of the math and just digests the intro and outro to the sections, it really is a danming indictment against the whole fiasco. Assuming they've made no fundamental mistake, of course.

Once again, that's: arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161v3

How much are you willing to bet on a roll of the dice?

Aw crap, I should have read Vitruvius at April 18, 2008 9:56 PM before posting that.

Sorry.

It's April 18th and it's snowing in Vancouver. Global warming, yeah right.

tranio

It's April 18th and it's snowing in Vancouver. Global warming, yeah right.

Hah. That's beautiful. Must be one of those engineers, eh Vitruvius?

The Mother Of All Battles

The Intellectual Basket Weavers

VS

All Others Who Make Our World Tick

The Weavers do not want facts to be part of the discussion. (If only they would debate) They do not like scientific facts, don't understand them, never studied science. Maybe a Dumbed-Down course, no lab work.

Did you watch the interview with Rockefellers son on global warming when Alex Jones called in and raised the fact the ice on mars and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn were also melting. His response, they are closer to the Sun. The next leader of the world economy has a Paris Hilton brain. Where is eugenics when you need it.

Thanks for posting this link Vitruvius. I've downloaded it and will peruse it at a future time as my math has gotten rusty with disuse. A quick read through the paper yielded a very interesting paragraph:
Rather, the atmospheric Greenhouse mechanism is a conjecture, which may be proved or
disproved already in concrete engineering thermodynamics [95{97]. Exactly this was done
well many years ago by an expert in this field, namely Alfred Schack, who wrote a classical
textbook on this subject [95]. 1972 he showed that the radiative component of heat transfer
of CO2, though relevant at the temperatures in combustion chambers, can be neglected at atmospheric
temperatures. The influence of carbonic acid on the Earth's climates is definitively
unmeasurable [98].

Normally in science one proves or disproves things by experiment and I have yet to see an experiment where one measures the temperature of an artificial atmosphere containing various concentrations of CO2. Given that one can measure temperatures accurately to thousands of a degree, one would expect there to be a whole series of experiments which should demonstrate the effect of CO2 in causing warming which is a function of [CO2] present. I have never seen such a study. I would be very interested in seeing the combustion chamber data and presumably there is an equation there with the effect of temperature on the CO2 effect. Perhaps Vitruvius could enlighten us how much of an effect one could expect at a temperature of 293 K.

Nope, I can't do that Loki. But seriously, I think the forest delineated by the Gerlich & Tscheuschner paper is much more important than the details of any particular tree, especially since they've done such a good job of addressing the trees before backing off and considering the forest.

The key to me, it seems, is that this is not about the science of climate, this is about the predictability of climate. There are two measures one wants to optimize in a forecasting model, first its correspondence to reality, and second its practicability.

It is this second requirement that I think Gerlich & Tscheuschner are principally addressing, namely that considering the computational requirements that must be incumbent upon any approximating model of chaotic behaviour of this class, even if the science is correct, it is simply not feasible to compute a valid forecast. The equations, even when they are correct, can't be computed with sufficent accuracy in tractable time and space to determine whether or not there is any convergence or the lack thereof.

It reminds me of NP-complete problems, though I don't want to explore that analogy now. The upshot though is that if we quite simply can't actually compute climate forecasts, then why are we basing public policy on the perscriptions of those who would claim to do so?

And on that note, ladies and gentlemen, I wish you all the best, including you, Samuel; thanks to our lovely and gracious hostess Miss Kate for hosting our considerations, and good night.

this is not about the science of climate, this is about the predictability of climate.

Wrong, Vit. This whole fooferaw is the revenge of the weathermen (not the political crew with the same name, it's the gang that tells you what to wear tomorrow).

After decades of playing third banana to the blow-dried, respected glamour-types that read TelePrompTer text written by agenda-driven backroomers and the ex-jocks doing fill-in-the-blanks sports reports, it was time for them to rise.

All those decades of standing in front of green and blue screens turned them into the superbeings they are today. Y'know, radiation does tend to do that mutation thing, just look at Godzilla, for example.

I think I need a nap.

Samuel, like John Cross, a proponent of perpetual motion.

samuel and john cross sound VERY much alike in a couple of places. However I suspect that is more by fixation on CO2 than anything else. You have to wonder about people who fixate on one, TINY component of the entire climate of the planet, ignoring the PDO, volcanoes, cloud formation, THE SUN...

Vitruvius: There is no one on this board whom I respect more in terms of science than yourself, however I find I disagree with you on a number of .

One of the important ones is the Gerlich and Tscheuschner paper (or as I like to call it the G&T). Like yourself I have read it and actually discussed it a fair bit both on SDA and over at CJunk (the restrictions on linking here mean I can’t supply all the references in one post, but I can link them if anyone is interested.

There was a very long discussion in which G&T were involved over at Dot Earth which is good reading for (link available on request).

And finally it resulted in another arXiv posting by Arthur Smith.

Best,
John

PS otter, nope - not me. I always put my name to what I say.

PPS ol hoss, I am sure Virtuvius could explain the laws of thermodynamic radiation so you could have it from a second source. He appears to be quite knowledgeable about it.

Heat cannot by itself pass from a colder to a warmer body.

That's all you need to know.

We're not the only ones. April snow in London, England.

Settled science is an oxymoron; skeptical scientist is a redundancy. Vitruvius, I believe it was the former head of the Dutch national weather service who also produced papers pointing out that it was likely impossible to produce meaningful forecasts more than five days into the future. The authors of "Taken by storm" have pointed out the vacuity of climate modeling for similar reasons.
Also, while energy cannot be transfered in the form of heat from a colder body to a warmer body energy can in fact be transfered from a colder body to a warmer body by other means. This was proven to me at a very young age when I got whacked on the head with a snowball ; )

Vitruvius,

Where does one find the 3% number? (I.e. portion of atmospheric CO2 created by humans.)

Thanks.

Good morning to all it's April 19 and snowing in Qualicum, Vancouver island. Quite without argument the mildest climate in Canada. I do not see any tree houses here with wide eyed childern listening to the little weird=beard spouting crapola re the so called "global warming" oops that buzz phrase is now "climate change" a plague on all his houses.
cheers Bubba

two inches last night in deep cove...we're DOOMED !

You, sir, are a fraud.
Posted by: Vitruvius at April 19, 2008 12:13 AM

The dance Vitruvius, remember the dance.

More later, I haven't stirred them up nearly enough yet.

Hugger

We will solve the "global warming" issue by the believers and the deniers going to war and whomever is the victor will get to declare what the climate will do.

When ever one blog site bans a troll, that troll would also be baned from the other millions of sites. One delete would be worth millions. Problem solved.

ron in kelowna at April 19, 2008 12:25 AM

Ah, the final word from the thought Police. Sieg, Sieg....you know the drill. Hark, is that the sound of Jackboots I hear in the distance???

About that Free Speech you keep talking about José ...

Hugger

[quote]The equations, even when they are correct, can't be computed with sufficent accuracy in tractable time and space to determine whether or not there is any convergence or the lack thereof.[/quote]

Virtuvius & DrD
I think I agree that the present State of climate model methodology must fail re: tractable time but.. Feyman did not rule out a future functioning climate Model.

I would point to the obvious mass of "Redundant" data that it is not necessary to calculate in tractable time, once an accurate model is running. (real-time weather)

The challenge for society & Science IMO is to build a full functioning climate model, without the sleaze factor of Social engineering or agenda driven Project Management. (I know something about project Management, the good, the bad, and the Ugly)

The Manhattan Project (buzz-word) is an American process where anti-trust laws, etc are exempted/suspended. This allows the brightest & best from the private sector to "fully" contribute. The US Senate has battered that buzzword around Energy policy, but it’s a complex process that doesn't work IMO in a generalized research context.

If Canadian Scientists would step up to the plate and offer (via PMO) to "lead" a WORLD climate model project, independent of the UN, the US Politicians may find clear advantages in that path rather than mess with one of our own.

The Bubble Gum crowd has a flawed model, and a shitty attitude, both need fixing.

DrD: ... while energy cannot be transfered in the form of heat from a colder body to a warmer body...

Are you sure about that?

Regards,
John

To rolik, hugger and dan, I repeat:

CO2 is up 5% since 1998, yet the world's average temperature has not increased with it in the past ten years. Why?

The oceans are cooling. Why?

The 2006 hurricane season was 66% below the 2005 season, despite claims that hurricanes would become more frequent and more powerful. Why?

The 2007 hurricane season was 50% below the 2005 season. Why?

The Antarctic ice cap and Greenland are both increasing in mass, rather than melting as agw claims they would be. Why?

The Earth's average temperature has fallen Every Single Month for the last 15 months, erasing 40 years worth of natural global warming. Why?

btw, rolik, when you speak of precipitation, could you explain it including the effects of the PDO, solar forcing, volcanic influences, wildfires, and so forth?

Thanks!

On the subject of suppressing views, here is a link from the New Times regarding suppression of the views of the top climate scientist at NASA.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/earth/29climate.html

Hugger

'Ah, the final word from the thought Police. Sieg, Sieg....you know the drill. Hark, is that the sound of Jackboots I hear in the distance???'~ hugger

Missed role call, did you? Forgot to press your brown shirt?

hugger~ perhaps you could also explain to us why hundreds of scientists are being refused peer-review of their climate articles?

The Bubble Gum crowd has a flawed model, and a shitty attitude, both need fixing.
----------

I wonder which University Faculty reads Popular Science the most ? Science or Arts ?
------------

Thought police are a dangerous thing. But a problem arises when there is no thought, just litter and graffiti.

Otter, do you have a link to any web page that supports that contention? I'd love to be able to show it to certain "settled science" parties.

Alchemist and lead. Oye. Any more ancient references for us to consider? They also used to rack people in Spain. I believe they now use waterboarding instead. More humane and all.

Hugger

Thought police are a dangerous thing. But a problem arises when there is no thought, just litter and graffiti.
Posted by: ron in kelowna at April 19, 2008 2:00 PM

Is there a limit to your denial? Your anti free speech stance is in black and white. What might be your final solution?

Hugger

otter at April 19, 2008 1:59 PM

Link please. Unlike some, I don't have all the answers. I do my best to seek balance though.

Old feller once said to me, "there's two sides to every story, and somewhere in the middle is the truth". I always thought he was a wise man.

He helped me in that graduate course on my way to acquiring my Summa cum laude credentials.

Hugger

Mr. Taylor sounds reasonable, informed, balanced and is an obvious authority on the subject of global warming. HE MUST BE STOPPED!

Amid a worsening global food crisis exacerbated, say experts and critics, by the race to divert food or feed crops into biomass for the manufacture of vehicle fuel, and inundated by a flood of expert advice criticising the shift to renewable fuel, the commission appears to be getting cold feet about its biofuels target.] gaurdian.co.uk

Posted by: ron in kelowna at April 19, 2008 1:03 AM

So, if all this bio fuel is being diverted to replace Oil and derivatives, did you ever stop to ask yourself why the price of fuel has doubled in recent years? Why the Oil industry has downsized its refining capacity? Why every time there is a blip in the world production or refining capability its a further excuse to raise prices?

Can someone provide real evidence that this purported increase in bio fuel use is a significant factor? Or is this just more fodder at this point for the mush minds?

I have read numerous sources that dispel this, and contend that rising prices of commodities such as rice are as a result of a combination of factors including rising populations, protectionism and good old fashioned profit driven motivation. Charge what the market will bear.

This is not such an abstract concept, especially when you consider that corporate interests through the policies of governments and agricorp have come to control vast areas of food production. Add to that the influences of commodity traders and futures markets.

All of these forces are intertwined and although the article represents a truth, it doesn't deal with underlying pressures and necessary reactions to those pressures. It seems clear that production and use of bio fuel is not in the interests of big Oil, and their performance is a matter of record.

Hugger

Missed role call, did you? Forgot to press your brown shirt?
Posted by: otter at April 19, 2008 1:58 PM

Oberfuhrer, das Sie vergaßen, die Sitzung zu erwähnen

Hugger

"It seems clear that production and use of bio fuel is not in the interests of big Oil .. "

Sure it is.

It takes more than a litre of fossil fuel BTU equivalents to make a litre of biofuel BTU equivalents. aka, net loss. If we forget Biofuel and just put gasoline in our tanks, we will use less fossils. I bet Taylor knew it 30 years ago. So did I. For the media though, "Natures Fuel" was a better story.

BTW, it was not the Oil Industry that pushed biofuels -- the so-called Greens did.

Also, funny thing, that after farmers suffered through years of poor prices, one year of good prices .. Headlines !! FOOD PRICES DOUBLE !!

[TORONTO — Biofuels derived from crops such as corn and canola might have the support of Canadian governments but activists say a growing reliance on the technology represents a real threat to the environment and the global agriculture sector - a warning they plan to take across the county.

Beginning April 28 with stops in Charlottetown, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Halifax, Ottawa and Montreal, the tour's slate of international speakers will talk about how the "global conflict over the production of crops for fuel" is devastating farmers and leading to mass deforestation, said CBAN co-ordinator Lucy Sharratt.] CP

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5iFkKEb_amOg5tbUR12w9aw7j3fVg

If there is any justice in this world, the George Taylors and Tim Balls and Steve McIntyres and Bjorn Lomborgs will all see the day when the Al Gores and David Suzukis and Maurice Strongs are behind bars.

ron in kelowna at April 19, 2008 3:28 PM

Your reference article looks suspiciously like the words of environmentalist global warming conspiracy theorists. You can't have it both ways. Are you converting? The logical point derived from that article is to apply caution before haste in utilizing bio fuels. Seems like a fair consideration.

The rest of your post doesn't make any sense. i.e. You seem to be theorizing that only fossil fuels can be used to make biofuels. Biofuels can be used to produce more biofuels. Do you know how easy it is to make Ethanol?

Jeepers man, give me some molasses, an empty Ketchup can and some copper tubing and I'll show you how. I learned from an old Newfie who could barely speak mainlander.

It doesn't take a chemistry degree.

Hugger

'link, please'?

Fantastic. You've just told me that you know very little- or you would have known how to answer, or what to point to.

As expected, you don't have any answers, because the answers would prove agw Wrong.

I expect the same or No response from dan or rolik.

John Cross; thanks for posting the Smith paper. It was straighforward enough except Smith didn't then consider the warming effect of various atmospheric compositions. It would have been simple enough to model a planet with a perfectly flat surface and uniform albedo and an atmosphere with same N2 and O2 composition as earth but just varying CO2 concentration. Either the calculations are non-trivial or they don't show much of an effect of CO2. I felt cheated when I got to the end of the paper. Also, the paper doesn't consider the 17 degree K discrepancy between the moons calculated temperature and the measured temperature. For a planetoid with no atmosphere one would expect closer agreement if the theory took into account all variables.

One of the biggest heat sinks on the earth is represented by the oceans which have a mass of about 1.35x10(exp 21) kg compared to the atmosphere's 5.14 x 10(exp 18) kg of which about 5x10(exp 16)kg is water vapor but CO2 masses only about 1.8x10(exp 15)kg. Also H20 has more than 4X the specific heat capacity of air. As there is a temperature gradient in the oceans, the effective thermal mass is less and one should be able to pick up global warming signals in the form of rising ocean temperatures of surface waters which seem to be absent.

What this tells me is that any greenhouse effect on the earth is dominated by H2O vapor and the phase transitions of H2O in the atmosphere. When one gets into clouds, this results in models which do not have explicit mathematical solutions but rather must be modelled. It's a simple enough matter to simulate a spherical water covered earth using various cloud formation algorithms. I'd be very interested in seeing what the effects of altering atmospheric CO2 are in this model (well within the capabilities of even high end home computers).

If such a model shows a very strong dependency of calculated atmospheric temperature on tiny changes in CO2, then I'll change my mind about the AGW theory. Until such time I'll consider the effects of solar irradience, changes in suns magnetic field and other factors to be far more important determinents of the earths climate.

loki, you claim "tiny changes" in CO2. Are you talking tiny in terms of total volume, or tiny in terms of percentages? Because an increase of ~35% doesnt seem all that tiny to me.

Biofuels can be used to produce more biofuels. Do you know how easy it is to make Ethanol?

Jeepers man, give me some molasses, an empty Ketchup can and some copper tubing and I'll show you how.

First you need to refine the molasses from sugar cane or sugar beets...first you need to grow the sugar cane or sugar beets. That takes energy. No doubt using biofuels. heh

Somebody else who believes in perpetual motion.

“Only about 0.03 percent of the Earth's atmosphere consists of carbon dioxide (nitrogen, oxygen, and argon constitute about 78 percent, 20 percent, and 0.93 percent of the atmosphere, respectively) But carbon dioxide is produced both naturally and by humans. About 97 percent of atmospheric carbon dioxide is natural, in fact. Only about 3 percent is from human activity. That means that only about 0.11 percent of the greenhouse effect (that is, 3 percent of 3.6 percent) is due to human releases of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Factoring in the other greenhouse gases, the total human contribution to the greenhouse effect is about 0.3 percent. In other words, about 99.7 percent of the greenhouse effect is due entirely to nature.
When you consider that the greenhouse effect contributes about 60 degrees Fahrenheit to the Earth's average temperature (which would be about zero degrees Fahrenheit without the greenhouse effect), it doesn't really seem like atmospheric carbon dioxide levels — even if they triple or quadruple because of human activities — are all that important to global climate.
If the carbon dioxide-emissions reductions called for by the Kyoto global warming treaty were implemented, human greenhouse contributions would be reduced by about 0.03 percent. Atmospheric physicist Fred Singer says this would have an "imperceptible effect on future temperatures — one-twentieth of a degree by 2050."
As the Kyoto protocol would require cutting energy use by about 30 percent by 2010 — necessarily causing inestimable negative economic consequences — it's easy to see why U.S. politicians can't run away from the Kyoto protocol fast enough.”

alan, maybe you can cite someone else making those claims?

Fred Singer is, to put it bluntly, a whore.

Fred Singer is, to put it bluntly, a whore.

Posted by: Samuel at April 19, 2008 6:05 PM

An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the man", "argument against the man") consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the person making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim. The process of proving or disproving the claim is thereby subverted, and the argumentum ad hominem works to change the subject.

Posted by: Samuel at April 18, 2008 7:31 PM

: ol hoss at April 19, 2008 5:34 PM

I can make it out of cull taters too.

Pa..

Thanks, John Cross, for the Arthur Smith paper. It does, I think, a good job of summarizing the standard model, which at least according to their summary, I think I previously understood.

It seems to me that the Smith model is making a lot of assumptions about the uniformity and ideality of the underlying physical processes, whereas Gerlich & Tscheuschner are saying "but you can't do that!" Smith is happily integrating all over the place, definitely an elegant and simple model, but G&T are saying no, you have to look at more complex non-linear phenomenon, which render the system chaotic.

It's like that old joke about if you ask: Say you define a dog's tail to be a leg. How many legs does the dog have? The mathematician says one, the physicist says five, and the engineer says, "but you can't do that".

If so, then standard models may get lucky and get the correct answer, or they may get hit by a non-linearity bus, and the only way to tell is post-hoc. On the other hand, if the system is linear enough in practice, then it's more a matter of Larry (father of Perl) Wall's note to the effect that:

"Basically, we need to find the right oversimplification to make people think they understand it. Kind of like canceling the dx's and dy's in calculus--the physics profs always tell you to do that, while warning you not to tell the math profs they're telling you to do that, because it doesn't always work, except in real life."

Food for thought ~ which is what I come here for, not to argue.

As always, John, it's a pleasure to hear from you, now forward and onward in the name of real science, good technology, and a better tomorrow.

Samuel, the amount of human CO2 production is miniscule when compared to the amount of CO2 already present in the atmosphere. Assuming 380 ppm CO2 gives use 1.95x10(exp15) kg of CO2 present in the atmosphere. Human CO2 production has been estimated at about 10 billion tons/year or 1x10(exp 12) kg which is 0.05% of the CO2 already present.

We know that atmospheric CO2 concentration has been considerably higher than 380 ppm in the past. The higher the CO2, the greater the growth of plants so I consider higher atmospheric CO2 to be a good thing.

H2O in gas form makes up about 1% of the atmosphere or 10000 ppm. CO2 at 380 ppm is negligeable in comparison and this is why H2O is considered to be the primary greenhouse gas. I'd be very surprised if significant changes in planetary temparature would occur over the range of 300-450 ppm of CO2. What isn't being included in GCM's is the effect of plants on climate. Increased CO2 acts as plant fertilizer and this results in changes in albedo as well as H2O atmospheric concentrations as when plants transpire they release H2O. Plant pollens serve as nuclei for raindrop formation, etc. I wouldn't even begin to speculate what effects this would have on climate as it is a highly non-linear system. As Vitruvius has pointed out, the atmosphere is also a chaotic system and thus exquisitely sensitive to initial conditions. We can't even come up with a good model of effects of CO2 concentrations on temperature in a mathematical ideal spherical planet model and to think that we can predict the climate 50 years from now on the far more complex earth is simply insanity.

Fred Singer is, to put it bluntly, a whore.

Really what did you pay him?

sammy

"""""Fred Singer is, to put it bluntly, a whore."""""

I donna kno this falla, so's I'll not defend him not support your contention, butt you sure have proven yerself an arse!!!!!

I should also like to agree with Loki, I too am interested in the effect of the latent heats of water during phase changes (delightful things, phase changes). Also, I am interested in the work done by convective transport ~ heat is not transfered by radiation alone.

Perhaps John has a good reference or two, or even better, can provide us with a few paragraphs summarizing his own understanding of the standard models on those topics.

Loki, there's a Solar Cycle 24: Implications for the United States paper by David Archibald, March 2008, that from pages 22 through 28 considers both the Beer-Lambert effect, and the optimum CO2 levels for plant growth (which are way higher than what we have now):

westinstenv.org/wp-content/Solar_Arch_NY_Mar2_08.pdf

Even if the science is correct, and the models are feasible, and an effective engineering plan can be designed, we still have one last problem, which Phillip Shaw and others have alluded to above. If this is to be a global solution, then how can we trust trans-national statist organizations to manage the project?

Late and over-budget are bad enough, but there are three other considerations that form a whole 'nother class of problem. First, we have the authoritarians. These are people who want to force you to do what they want you to do. They want control. They want power. It's a personality type.

Second, we have greedy avarice. These are people who want your money more than wanting to do something actually sound. And third, we have frauds. These are people who lie, cheat, and steal for unearned personal benefit.

Combined, these considerations produce the phenomenon of greedy authoritarian frauds with no respect for human rights or sense of moral ethics, and their danger increases in proportion to the size of the project. This is a huge risk factor involved in any grand statist scheme.

To anyone who thinks they have the answer, I say, be very careful. There are people who want us to rush to judgement, even though the derivatives are changing slowly, and they want us to do that for immoral reasons. They are the enemy.

Vitruvius, thank you for the link to the Archibald paper which was fascinating. It is a little more mainstream than the writings of Theodore Landscheidt, but Landscheidt also predicted maximal cooling around 2030 based on his analysis of sunspot cycles.

What will be interesting to see is what will happen to the BC lieberal government with it's yearly increase in "carbon taxes" which will be taking a larger and larger chunk of peoples income as the earth cools and the heating bills in the BC interior steadily climb. It might be worthwhile to start a legal action against the BC government to deal with this pending problem.

I have far more faith in the sunspot/climate correlation than I do in GCM's. As Archibald noted the global warming fanatics have spurred a large number of people to start studying climate science (I would have never thought about it as I have so many other interests) to be able to provide scientific refuation of the AGW hypothesis and we'll have a chance to do something about the coming cold weather. The Archibald paper should be required reading for any politician although I'm sure they'll find some excuse in it to increase the power of government to deal with global cooling.

You have more faith than me, Loki, I don't think anyone really knows what's going on or is even likely to happen; I think that, at least at this point, it's purely a toss of the coin. We have time to study the problem more and understand it better. We have time to advance technology, and to adapt.

Why are people telling us to rush?

Why?

What's in it for them?

Vitruvius: Kind of like canceling the dx's and dy's in calculus--the physics profs always tell you to do that, while warning you not to tell the math profs they're telling you to do that, because it doesn't always work, except in real life. I like that. I never heard of that story before but I remember doing that exact thing in grad school!

I do not think that G&T have really shown much of anything except that the greenhouse effect does not work the same way as a greenhouse – but I think we all knew this anyway. Perhaps we will just have to agree to disagree on this one. If you are interested there was a significant discussion on this paper over at Dot Earth and G&T joined in.

In regards to the effect of the latent heats of water during phase changes I could not add anything tonight since I am on my way to bed.

Good night.

Regards,
John

Vitruvius: Kind of like canceling the dx's and dy's in calculus--the physics profs always tell you to do that, while warning you not to tell the math profs they're telling you to do that, because it doesn't always work, except in real life. I like that. I never heard of that story before but I remember doing that exact thing in grad school!

I do not think that G&T have really shown much of anything except that the greenhouse effect does not work the same way as a greenhouse – but I think we all knew this anyway. Perhaps we will just have to agree to disagree on this one. If you are interested there was a significant discussion on this paper over at Dot Earth and G&T joined in. I tried to link to it but I was slammed into the moderator queue (could someone please release it).

In regards to the effect of the latent heats of water during phase changes I could not add anything tonight since I am on my way to bed and I hate having my posts moderated!

Good night.

Regards,
John

No need to disagree, I am not married to the G&T paper. Good night, John.

Loki: I think that Dr. Smith’s paper was a direct reply to G&T and thus limited in scope. He did provide some references to the contributions of various greenhouse gases. I don’t think you understand where the -17C temperature for the moon comes in. He is saying that because the moon is a rotating body with a real surface (and thus real values of heat content etc.) there is a difference between the average temperature and the effective temperature.

In regards to your comments about CO2, first – I think you used 380 ppm to find the mass of CO2 and that is a volume measurement. For mass CO2 makes up about 580 ppm which means there is about 5.2*10^18 * 580*10^-6 = 3*10^15.

Second, the 10 Gt (giga-tonne) value you give is the carbon released, not the CO2. Essentially when talking about CO2 you must multiply by about 3.67 – so it is more like 36 Gt.

Third, you made a small math error in your initial calculation and dropped a zero (10 giga tonne = 1x10^13, not 1x10^12).

So when you take all that into account the anthropogenic CO2 production is more like 1% per year. Keep in mind that the total human contribution to atmospheric CO2 is about 30%.

In regards to your comments on plants, I know that certain aspect are considered in climate models but the effect of CO2 is not as important as you seem to think to plant growth. For example there will not be a great benefit for C4 type plants (as opposed to C3) since they are already efficient CO2 users. There will be a benefit from the reduced water stress due to lower transpiration rates, but plants are usually under a great number of simultaneous stresses. CO2 in a greenhouse works well where you have adequate temperature and fertilizer, but field trials have not shown a large effect. In regards to human consumption, the nutrition of a food can generally be estimated by the nitrogen content and adding CO2 won’t provide more nitrogen (it will cause a rise in plant mass and sugar content).

Anyway, I can't post a link tonight but if there is any of the above you question I may be able to supply a link tomorrow.

Regards,
John

johnlee

Oh, I didn't realize Fred Singer was on this discussion board!

Mr. Singer, you're a whore, the reason I say that is because you took money from tobacco companies and claimed that second hand smoke isnt connected to lung cancer. You should be ashamed of yourself.

David Suzuki takes money from Oil Companies and that makes him .... ok ?

Ron, where did I cite the glorious David Suzuki?

I guess this time I am guilty of "cherry picking". The reason I gave for Singer not being a credible source is one of too many to list. You would be hard pressed to find a scientist who takes Singer seriously at this point. He's a hack. Feel free to look into his research yourself.

John Cross; you're right about the mathematical errors (sloppy work on my part). As far as anthropogenic CO2 emissions, I found an internet reference to roughly 1x10(exp 10) tons; assuming that pure carbon is being burned would give 38.3 Gt of CO2 (I don't know where you got the 3.67). So human CO2 production would be 1.22% of total CO2 (assuming 3.15 x10(exp15) kg CO2 using 608 ppm CO2 as a weight percentage.

With regard to the Smith paper, why are the mean temperature and calculated temperature for Mars identical? Mars has an atmosphere comprised almost entirely of CO2 and one would expect some warming from this.

While looking up stuff on planetary atmospheres, came across an interesting paper on "Keeping Mars warm with new super greenhouse gases" (http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/98/5/21540)
An interesting terraforming idea which would provide a direct means of testing the greenhouse effect (unfortunately not in my lifetime though). The CFC's proposed would be effective at ppb concentrations. The calculations the authors perform suggest that "the current terrestrial warming scare or controversy may be too fixated on the likelihood of CO2 doubling, when the greater danger may be from newe trace gases with strong absorption bands in the window such as SF5CF3, which is observed in the earths atmosphere" If this method works in practice, it would also be a way of countering the next ice age as the quantities of chlorofluorocarbons needed are within the range of current industrial production capacity.

Hey, didn't Singer and Roger Revelle have a gig together at one time?

Loki: The 3.67 number comes from the ratio of the atomic mass of carbon dioxide to that of carbon. The masses are: C = 12.01 and O = 16.00. So the ratio of the mass of CO2 to C is (12.01 + 2*16.00)/12.01 = 3.66.

In regards to Mars, I think that it is the CO2 concentration that is keeping it warmer that it would otherwise be.

Thanks for the link to the interesting article. I agree that it won't happen in our lifetimes, but who knows. They had an interesting point at the end of the article where they say "Therefore, searches for extraterrestrial intelligence, which now mainly seek radio waves, should perhaps include looking for spectra of manufacturable molecules such as those mentioned here." I don't know that I would agree, but it is interesting to think about.

Regards,
John