COP26

[Orraloon]

4 minutes ago, phart said:

You can measure the motion of the planets/solar system/galaxy etc without measuring the momentum of each of the individual particles that make up the planet.

The entire fluid dynamics field you ignore the individual atoms as well and there is great accuracy and precision as well.

You can measure the charge without counting the electrons/ protons.

You can't get exact values with these techniques but you can get them good enough to launch something into space and have it land on another planet 9 months later. Accurately map ocean currents, stellar evolution etc

Their methodology is included in each of the papers. You break up the earth into sections take hundreds of readings in each sector each day and then sort it from there, use various different measuring techniques to calibrate etc. They're not even one order of magnitude more precise than you were able to do and they have millions of points of data, billions of dollars of budget, an entire array of satellites and hundreds of various scientists working on it. If you can get 0.5 then i'm even more convinced 0.08 is doable.

 

Aye, it's probably more that I haven't read enough stuff to convince myself that they can measure the temp of a planet that accurately. But if they can't convince me then they will have a much harder job with most other people. I have an open mind on it. I could still be convinced either way. 

I think my measurements were more accurate than theirs. 😉🤣

[phart]

27 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

Aye, it's probably more that I haven't read enough stuff to convince myself that they can measure the temp of a planet that accurately. But if they can't convince me then they will have a much harder job with most other people. I have an open mind on it. I could still be convinced either way. 

I think my measurements were more accurate than theirs. 😉🤣

It's impossible to convince most folk of high level scientific theories. Take the two most succesful theories in physics

How can a cosmologist convince you of general relativity without being able to do Tensor mathematics, and compute the consequences of Einstein field theory.

Or a particle physicist convince you of the standard model without being able to do Quantumn mechanics.

Yet we have semi-conductors and GPS and all that jazz.

 

 

[aaid]

53 minutes ago, phart said:

It's impossible to convince most folk of high level scientific theories. Take the two most succesful theories in physics

How can a cosmologist convince you of general relativity without being able to do Tensor mathematics, and compute the consequences of Einstein field theory.

Or a particle physicist convince you of the standard model without being able to do Quantumn mechanics.

Yet we have semi-conductors and GPS and all that jazz.

 

 

When I did my degree in the first half of second year we did Electrical Field Theory and no-one had a clue what was going on, it was only the second half of the class being the much more straight forwards circuit theory that stopped the entire year failing that subject.  

At the start of third year we did vector calculus and suddenly it all made sense.

Same to an extent with Quantum Mechanics but at least we’d done the supporting maths *before* we did the theory.  That was one subject where the penny just dropped for me but don’t ask me to explain it now.

The lecturer only lasted that one year as I don’t think we were the only year he screwed up.

[Lobey]

As I may have mentioned I live bang in the middle of Cop26 - last night all the cars in the area deemed to be "SUVs" had their tyres let down and parking style notices put on them declaring us the second worst polluter etc. I suspect sourced from this https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2019/oct/25/suvs-second-biggest-cause-of-emissions-rise-figures-reveal

That seems somewhat unlikely - just one container ship pushes massive amounts of pollution out see -

https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/cargo-container-shipping-carbon-pollution-114721

So take your pick of whatever "evidence" supports your view at the minute.

I would point out that I drive an old Landrover that runs on Biodiesel  - so I take a little umbrage at this accusation (and being called an SUV - it's a 4x4 😋). Also not a great way to engage folk and potentialy opens the folk doing this up to criminal charges.

Anyway I have tonight helped pump up the tyres on a couple of elderly neighbours cars (those evil polluters) one of whoms car hasn't even turned a wheel throughout the pandemic. I've also printed out notices for my car windows stating that I run Biofuel in the hope it might discourage a repeat performance.

I'd have happily engaged in discusion with anyone who wanted to discuss my cars carbon footprint - especially versus that of a new vehicle and would also have informed them of the electric conversions now becoming available, such as

https://www.plower.nl/electric-defender or the more fun (but expensive) Tesla based one - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjFzhFHyYl4

I suspect, though that the outrage is being driven in many cases by a dislike of folk having large cars rather than any environmental reason.

The extinction folk who "chained" themselves to Glasgow Uni's gate on the opening day - did so to a gate thats only opened once a year, inconveniencing no one - but it made a nice picture https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/19682273.extinction-rebellion-lock-glasgow-university-gates-ahead-cop26/ - also those bike D-locks round their neck aren't holding anyone in place - just turn your head and you are out.

Also why would they want to disrupt the very conference thats meant to be trying to do the things they want ?

Yes we know it's all bollocks really - but surely let them at least try ?

I will bet they don't try letting down the tyres of any "SUV"s in Easterhouse, Drumchapel or Castlemilk though.....

On a more usefull note Biodiesel is currently available at £1.20 a litre from http://alexanderscottoils.co.uk/contact/

On London Road just past Jewsons on the other side - fine for most cars since 2000 on, but will clean out your system on first use - so expect to need a fuel filter change and I'd recomend not going a00% right a way especially in winter.

 

 

[phart]

It' s just stupid vandelism, probably muddied water from the firms responsible for the majority of the emissions.

There was a report that basically said Just 100 companies have been the source of more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988, according to a new report.

 

https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1499691240

 

[Orraloon]

Combustion of Biodiesel produces CO2.  

[Grim Jim]

5 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

Combustion of Biodiesel produces CO2.  

Yeah, but it's cyclic.   On the short term.   Plant another field of biofuel, and it'll quickly draw the same CO2 back out the air.

And you know the fossil fuel cycle is millions of years.   Unless we can capture its CO2 and put it in the hole the fuel came out of.

[thplinth]

How important is the process of photosynthesis to our 'environment'. I'd say it is probably pretty high up the list eh.

CO2 is key component in generating plant growth, in producing oxygen. It is not a poison and it not even that significant a greenhouse gas. It is a strange thing to wage a war on and try to regulate. There have already been reports of how the planet is regreening itself as a result of elevated CO2. Life loves CO2. 

So I am thinking of maybe buying a hummer and installing a bigger engine in it, perhaps something from a plane, one of them Rolls Royce Merlin ones would be good. I definitely need to up my carbon footprint.

How much CO2 is coming out that Volcano in La Palma out of curiosity. How dare you volcano! 😀

[phart]

At current rates photosynthesis only absorb 30% of total emissions anyway, the absorption rate is already at maximum. At one point it was Algae more than "plants" that were responsible for the majority of the carbon capture via photosynthesis. However with pollution and a change in it's environment due to warming we've devestated its environment.

Also if we just want to reduce life on earth to Flora then sure carbon-dioxide is a great way, we should be trying to balance it out though across all biological domains as opposed to regressing evolution a billion years and creating an atomosphere only Plantae can thrive in.

It might be anthropocentric but it's a bad thing for hundreds of millions of people to be displaced cause of us.

Carbon dioxide actually has the highest increase in radiative forcing out of all greenhouse gases. It'd the cumulative total not how much per mol that matters.

[thplinth]

I cant even believe people are even talking about CO2. The documentary about the global warming swindle revealed that changes in CO2 levels are correlated with changes in temperature levels yes, but what AL Gore did not reveal was that the changes in CO2 levels lag behind the temperature changes by an average of 800 years. (It is fucking joke! 😀) The temperature changes result in the CO2 changes and not the other way around.

And yet they were telling you that CO2 changes are driving the temperature changes, 800 years after they have already happened... Or at least they were until the new satellites proved temperatures were no longer rising (or had at least paused), that is when it gradually became 'climate change' instead of 'global warming'. (Another changing narrative in action...)

We are undoubtedly poisoning our environment and the oceans and it is shocking, but CO2 gets all the attention and it is a red herring from what I can see. It seems like a mis-direction from much more important problems. 

I would also be suspicious of who is behind the promotion of Greta Tornface as well. The environmental movement is literally an industry now in its own right, a cannibalistic one, that eats other industries to survive. I think they are well out of control and this is just the beginning.

The changes we are seeing in the automotive industry are not in any way 'consumer driven' (pardon the pun). All of this is because politicians have said as of certain dates you must comply with XYZ meaning goodbye cars as we have known them.

It is pretty extraordinary really what they are doing based on such bogus science in many ways. Lotus for example just launched a car which they have said will be its last combustion engine car... this is happening everywhere it seems and none of it is because you demanded it. It is because politicians feel empowered to do this by the urgent 'crisis' folk like Greta and co are working hard to conjure up. I dare say many of them believe it even.

[phart]

Who the fuck is listening to Al Gore about climate change?

I'm getting my knowledge from retraining into a planetary scientist/ astrobiologist via the open uni so I can work on the Europa life finding missions once my caring duties with my gran inevitably end. I've literally measured the radiative effect of various gases in a lab. Absorbtion and emmission, what spectrums they belong to , infra-red being the one we're focussed on.

Carbon dioxide has the largest increase in watts per area on surface temperature which is why it get's mentioned a lot.

Worrying about Al Gore and Greta "tomface" (ad hominem, oh clutch the pearls haha) is too much time on social media and not enough time reading textbooks.

[thplinth]

It’s bizarro world in the auto industry, again
Rick Newman

It’s not just Tesla.

Electric-vehicle startup Rivian (RIVN) has roared into public markets with a killer public offering and a market value of $116 billion. That’s 32% more than General Motors (GM) is worth, and 47% more than Ford (F). Rivian has never sold a vehicle until this year. GM sells around 7 million vehicles per year; Ford, 4 million.

If you add up the market value of Tesla (TSLA), Rivian, and 5 other startups including Lucid (LCID), Nikola (NKLA), Fisker (FSR), Lordstown Motors (RIDE) and Workhorse (WKHS), their combined capitalization is nearly $1.3 trillion. Nine of the world’s biggest automakers—GM, Ford, Stellantis, Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler-Benz—are only worth $845 billion. So those 9 giant automakers are worth 34% less than 7 fledgling EV manufacturers. As for sales, the established manufacturers outsell the EV upstarts 100 to 1.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/its-bizarro-world-in-the-auto-industry-again-203740250.html

This is very reminiscent of the dot.com bubble in some ways (with crazy valuations) . It is a very artificial bubble that has been blown here. Who is benefiting I wonder.

Edited November 12, 2021 by thplinth

[phart]

Global warming by increased concentration of carbon dioxide goes back to the 19th century as a theory. It's not a new thing. It's a prediction by the laws of physics, a prediction which has held true during observation. Pretty wild that someone born in 1768 had enough information to work out the greenhouse effect.

Joseph Fourier was writing about in 1824.

his bio as he probably isn't well known outside of folk having to do fourier transforms

Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier (/ˈfʊrieɪ, -iər/;^[1] French: [fuʁje]; 21 March 1768 – 16 May 1830) was a French mathematician and physicist born in Auxerre and best known for initiating the investigation of Fourier series, which eventually developed into Fourier analysis and harmonic analysis, and their applications to problems of heat transfer and vibrations. The Fourier transform and Fourier's law of conduction are also named in his honour. Fourier is also generally credited with the discovery of the greenhouse effect.

Edited November 12, 2021 by phart

[thplinth]

It was before my time but I have vague memories of it. Prior to the 80's they were worried about 'Global Cooling' for ages as temperatures were in decline. And indeed if you got out the graphs showing when all the historical ice ages occurred going back eons we were / are definitely 'due one'.😀 So the fear then was we could be slipping into another ice age and that fear lasted a decade or two! up to the 80's roughly.

And what drives the ices ages, apparently it is the sun and the earths position relative to it. Little eccentricities in our orbit and variations in the sun combine and produce repeating patterns in the earth's climate. It really is hard to emphasize enough the size of the sun and the energy it is pumping out. I know it does not look so big but it is very far away. 😀 

Apparently it is the primary driver of the earths temperature not man made CO2 which is an infinitesimal contribution in comparison. Again I'd recommend that documentary, even if it is 15 years old now. Covers a lot of different stuff. But it does hint at times at what might be really going on here.

Edited November 12, 2021 by thplinth

[thplinth]

Personally I'd tilt more in favour of worrying about an ice age than worrying about global warming. 

The medieval warm period was ace apparently and a time of great prosperity. You could grow grapes for wine in england no bother, hence the names of many old streets have some 'vine' connection in them. The little ice age was pish in comparison and no amount of skating on the Thames at Christmas time is going to change that.

An ice age would not be so hot, especially for Scotland. Two kilometers of grinding crushing ice sheet above your house in Inverurie is going to knock a substantial sum of its resale value.

If we are going to take preventative measures here I'd rather err on the side of global warming happening versus a new ice age. That is just my cautious side. I strongly suggest we all buy cars that can run on coal.

[phart]

There was one article in newsweek written by Peter Gwynee in 1975, which is the citation for global cooling. Written 4 years before I was born. It just gets recylced over and over till folk think it was some sort of scientific consensus. When it was a minority of climatologists trying to predict trends. The data has shown that theory to be incorrect though.

The same way if you polled cosmologists before 1997 about the gravitational constant being negative,0, or positive. You'd have a mix in fact almost all the string theorists would say negative, turned out to be positive though. So now all cosmologists (that i know of anyway) say it is positive. 

That's what drives the efficacy of science, data being the deciding factor. Doesn't matter what Al Gore says, Rush Limbaugh, Greta,a 50 year old newsweek article. You measure reality and accept what it tells you.

We can measure the earths total heat content and it is increasing year by year.

 

[phart]

Milankovitch cycles is the name of the physical phenomemon. It's reflected in the models. Changing the eccentricity of our orbit our obliquity or axial precession is a bit harder than primary source of energy though.

Our planet would be like -18C without the greenhouse effect as well. Almost all heat comes from the sun though. which is a function of distance.

Edited November 12, 2021 by phart

[Orraloon]

56 minutes ago, phart said:

Milankovitch cycles is the name of the physical phenomemon. It's reflected in the models. Changing the eccentricity of our orbit our obliquity or axial precession is a bit harder than primary source of energy though.

Our planet would be like -18C without the greenhouse effect as well. Almost all heat comes from the sun though. which is a function of distance.

-18 C? Holy fuk.

That's me convinced. I'm joining the thplinth gas guzzler revolution. 😂

[Toepoke]

Supposedly we were on the cusp of another ice age before the industrial revolution started, but human activity since has postponed the next one by an estimated 50,000 years.

 

[aaid]

Yoons are really starting to lose their shit at these now.

 

[phart]

27 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

-18 C? Holy fuk.

That's me convinced. I'm joining the thplinth gas guzzler revolution. 😂

That's what made  Fourier postulate the greenhouse effect. All the calculations had the Earth should be colder than it was so there had to be an unaccounted variable driving temperature up.

Don't worry the carbon cycle pre-industrial levels kept it in equilibrium so it wasn't a problem we'd not go that cold. We're talking an increase of between 1.5 and 2 C that's causing the changes. Not like it's huge numbers. Shows you how delicately balanced everything is.

[exile]

[aaid]

Looks like CNN were in the right place all along.

 

 

[phart]

https://xkcd.com/1732/

 

Edited November 20, 2021 by phart

[Morrisandmoo]

I hate shit like that because it is pretending to show a long time-line when it's actually really short. Also the longer timeline shows that when the earth starts warming it often does so at ferocious speed. Whereas that chart tries to pretend it's always been smooth, except today. 

It's not to say that climate change is going to be good or anything or what is happening is "normal". But that chart suggests it's generally warmer today than in the past, which is not true, and that temperature variations in the past have been smooth/gradual process, which is also not true.

Not a fan.  I prefer the one that shows it being so warm not so long ago that there were swamps and crocodiles in the arctic 🤪

Edited November 20, 2021 by Morrisandmoo