Weekend Unthreaded

Hope you are having fun…

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105 comments to Weekend Unthreaded

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    Timo Soren

    Got a question for everyone. Since archived data from published papers is so hard, frequently, to get a hold of and since NASA NOAA CRU etc… seem to manipulate the data so viciously. Do we have a site that keeps track of who has what and what state it is in? I could see people volunteering excess space to hold archives. What is the status of ‘the data’?

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      Joe V.

      Didn’t the Dog eat most of it ?

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      Eliza Doodle

      Much of the data may well be a dog’s dinner but that doesn’t usually mean the dog has had his dinner.

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      stan stendera

      I have tons of unused space on my hard drive. I volunteer. There are cheep (I like birds) devices one can plug into a computer to store data. An even better answer then my hard drive because once loaded and removed they will not crash.

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    Matty

    Nice to see Patrick Moore being picked up by the mainstream.
    Greenpeace condemned by original founder as ‘evil..

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      Carbon500

      I liked this bit in the Daily Mail newspaper clip about Patrick Moore and Greenpeace:
      ‘The row comes after Pascal Husting, Greenpeace International’s Programme Director, was exposed earlier this year as having commuted the 250 miles between Luxembourg and Amsterdam by plane since 2012. Each trip is believed to have cost Greenpeace £200 and would have generated 142kg of carbon dioxide emissions, it was said. Dr Parr said Mr Husting’s behaviour was ‘a mistake’ and ‘should never have happened’.
      142kg per trip of C02 – big deal! There are about 3,000,000,000,000 tonnes (3 thousand Gt) of the stuff in the atmosphere, and let’s not forget that it’s a trace gas anyway – 0.04% of the atmosphere!
      Greenpeace do indeed seem to have lost their grip on reality.

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    Rereke Whakaaro

    New Zealand has just been appointed to the United Nations Security Council — the most influential body within the UN, we are told.

    This follows the appointment of Australia, on a tit-for-tat basis. New Zealand supported Australia’s application, and Australia reciprocated.

    But, within the Council, the U.S., Russia, China, France, and the U.K. all have the power of veto, and use it quite frequently.

    I this is the most influential body in the UN, and if it has trouble coming to any material agreements, what value is the General Assembly? What value is the U.N. itself?

    Thoughts?

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      Joe V.

      You can’t have the UN adopt something objected to by a P5 power. That is a founding principle.
      I’m afraid for all their incredible sacrifice in the WWs. the Commonwealth countries are still represented (such as it is) in that regard by Britain.

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      James McCown

      I think Japan would be a good addition as a permanent security council member.

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      Eddie

      Congratulations New Zealand. Use your time wisely. Turkey isn’t best pleased though.

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      Roy Hogue

      Rereke asks, of what value is the UN? I think the question isn’t serious but since he asks for some thoughts here are mine.

      Very little. They do more harm than good as far as I can tell.

      Had they been held to the original intent, to be the mediator between nations to avoid conflicts becoming wars; and if such a thing were really possible in the first place — which I think we see is not — then they might be of some value. Instead they clearly consider themselves the de facto government of the world and are working as hard as they can to become dictator.

      I’m told they do humanitarian work pretty well. But even there it turns out bad when you find the aid workers raping the very children they went to Africa to help. I’ve never heard that any serious repercussions happened to the rapists or that anything changed enough to be confident there won’t be more trouble.

      But here they are, worthwhile or not. So as Eddie said at #3.3, use your time well. See if you can get the IPCC undone or Agenda-21 cancelled. Or better yet, see if you can get the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change thrown out. And even better yet, see if you can manage to make them accountable to something or someone with the power to say no.

      Oh! Wait, the veto was supposed to do that.

      Anyway, New Zealand and Australia both have more than enough incentive to try for some or all of these things. And good luck!

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      • #
        Roy Hogue

        And yes, I’m being sarcastic about the UN. It’s about the only response that makes sense anymore.

        And #3.4 is in the sin bin so this won’t make sense. I suspect there are a set of key words that I violate all too often. But it should be released soon.

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        • #
          ROM

          Roy
          You summed up my sentiments towards the UN very well.

          Re UN humanitarian work;
          One of my brothers was the Agricultural officer for a refugee settlement of 65,000 refugees out of Urunda Burundi in western Tanzania in the first part of the 1970’s. [ They and the Hutus were killing one another with great gusto even back then.]

          He was one of three whites and black Tanzanian who was the boss and a very good and competent boss at that who many of the locals said should have been the President of Tanzania as he also had the tribal affiliations and tribal rank to have done so .
          These four ran the entire settlement.
          My brother’s job was to see that the refugees became self supporting in food production within three years and they did.

          The settlement was run under the tripartite Tanzanian Christian Refugee resettlement program , the UN and the Lutheran World Federation.

          My brother had / still has nothing but contempt for the bureaucrats the UN in Geneva sent down to check on the camp and to select new sites for more camps in western Tanzania, a job they promptly roped my brother, a farm boy with an Ag degree, in to do while they enjoyed the good life in the flesh pots.

          That was all in the first half of the 1970’s and the UN has got a whole lot worse in the calibre or complete lack of in it’s bureaucrats of today and it’s levels of corruption since then.

          The UN doesn’t have tentacles. Tentacles are too coarse to describe what the UN has done over time.

          The UN is like parasitic fungus.
          It has a whole massive array of almost unseen filaments that penetrate into every level of politic, economic and societal structures, all the while sucking, like a parasitic fungus, resources out of a society and an economy while trying through it’s all pervasive penetration of a nations basic political , economic and societal structures to modify that nation’s structures to reinforce and increase it’s own power and influence.
          Just like a parasitic fungus which just keeps it’s host alive, just, while gorging itself on the nutrients that it’s reluctant host is desperately generating in an attempt to stay alive and to get rid of the deadly parasite.

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          • #
            KinkyKeith

            A great comment!!

            The world would be a better place without the UN.

            KK

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            stan stendera

            If I said here what I really think of the UN with the language I would feel compelled to use Jo would ban me forever from even reading her wonderful blog.
            So, I’m just going to shut up. A useful ability in anyone’s life.

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          • #
            Winston

            4 Practical pragmatic people on the ground can achieve far more than 1000 bureaucrats happily ensconced in far off lands, with their collective trotters up to their elbows in the trough.

            The UN has been a rank failure- impotent when its power is needed, slow and inefficient and counterproductive in a crisis when rapid response and decisiveness is required, and its subsidiaries at best band-aid and, I would argue, propagate and perpetuate any problem rather than solve it. Like all bureaucratic frameworks, they are not solution driven, often those at the top of the tree are tin pot Napoleons lording over their fiefdoms, and often appointed on the basis of nepotism, corrupt affiliations, naked ambition and Machiavellian tendencies rather than competence, intelligence and practical experience.

            What has the UNHCR done, other than increase the scope, the numerical and the logistical problem of stemming the flood of refugees by advocating for, rather than providing obstacles to, the blanket continuation of illegal cross border migration? UNESCO has “successfully” white-anted a generation or three of Western children’s education through ideologically driven “global citizenship” and “social inclusiveness” (i.e. lowest common denominator) teaching subverting the previous successful paradigm of sensible, meritocratic teaching which at least produced people who were literate and able to add/subtract, multiply and divide without the benefit of a calculator, and a top 40-50% of students (at least) who are able to look at a problem from first principles and pragmatically solve problems of mild to moderate complexity even outside their supposed field of expertise. Then we have my favourites, the IMF and the World Bank- who instead of helping African and other disadvantaged nations out of poverty, do their level best to enslave them with unserviceable debt, making them ripe for corporate exploitation by multinational firms whose colonialist mentality means that these countries natural resources are exploited, and the population sees nary a penny toward improving their meagre existence, instead their lives remain solidly encased in a tomb of poverty, violence, disease and death.

            Now with that litany of failure, you’d think the UN would gently fade off into oblivion, like a boxer with an 0-20 record, having kissed the canvas more times than he ever landed a blow in anger. But, no. Instead the UN feels this record of unexpurgated failure makes them a suitable candidate to micromanage the world. Wow.

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      Bob Massey

      I agree RW, they need the Vacuum Cleaner of Destiny (because I believe it is inevitable) that this sad and toothless organisation is cleared of all the insects in the corners.

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      tom0mason

      North Korea show be given membership as a P6 (vetoing) member, just for the bloody-mindedness of it.

      🙂

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        tom0mason

        Oops
        North Korea should…

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      • #
        Roy Hogue

        North Korea show should be given membership as a P6 (vetoing) member, just for the bloody-mindedness of it.

        Don’t even think it. The world has enough mindlessness as it is.

        If the UN has any real interest in protecting the environment they ought to start with North Korea, not CO2. The place is trashed from one end to the other. The people, after several generations of indoctrination are mindless puppets following the party line. I expect that’s why the UN likes North Korea enough to put it on their useless human rights commission.

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      Truthseeker

      I think most members of the UN would probably have to consult a map to find out where New Zealand is …

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        Greg Cavanagh

        Isn’t it also true that most Americans couldn’t find Australia even with a map?

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        • #
          NielsZoo

          … and the reverse is true for Australians finding America. That’s what happens when you let Socialist (leaning or outright) politicians write laws and rules empowering petty nanny bureaucrats to decide what is taught in compulsory State run, union staffed penal educational institutions our children are forced to attend for over 72 percent of their lives under the age of 18. My three blind dogs are better educated than half of the “graduates” of public schools worldwide. How do you think these politicians manage to stay in office… ignorance, pure and simple.

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          Roy Hogue

          I assure you that I can find both New Zealand and Australia on a map of the world, notwithstanding being an American and the victim of a public school education. 😉

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            RogueElement451

            You know that on the brand new exciting world maps ,they have shifted our colonies to the left of the page and not the right?
            This is obviously some sort of perverse action which tries to eliminate the UK as being the centre of the Universe , which of course ,we know it is.

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            • #
              Rereke Whakaaro

              What is placed at the centre of the map, is determined by where the map is destined to be sold.

              On the wall of my office I have two world maps, one political and one physical. Both are centred on the International Date Line, which puts New Zealand at the centre of the world (even if down near the very bottom).

              The guy in the next office has one with Mecca at the centre (even though he is not Muslim), and one of my other colleagues has an upside down map showing Australia upside down (looks very odd).

              The only valid reason for putting the UK in the centre of a map is a) for the UK sales, and b) because that is where GMT is measured from.

              “In space, there is no direction of ‘UP'”, Orson Scott Card.

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                Ted O'Brien.

                Greenwich was where they started measuring from. Probably because to get most anywhere from England you have to sail out of sight of the land. Their necessity was greater than other peoples’.

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      • #

        Truthseeker says here:

        I think most members of the UN would probably have to consult a map to find out where New Zealand is …

        I wonder how many members of the UN actually know that New Zealand is actually right at the very topmost point of their own UN Logo.

        Link to Image of UN Logo

        Tony.

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          Roy Hogue

          I wonder if being at the top, or even anywhere on the UN logo is something desirable. It makes you a target these days.

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      C.J.Richards

      ” What value is the U.N. itself? ”

      A big stick with which to threaten belligerent nations, until they call your bluff. Then you either back down (if they’ve got nukes) or bomb them into oblivion, removing any functioning authority to leave a wasteland ripe for colonising by radical extremists.

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      NielsZoo

      Our world would be a far better, richer and more peaceful place without the UN. Nation states should speak to each other directly. The main reason I am rooting for serious Global Cooling and a quick return to Norther Hemisphere glaciation is the hope that a 1,000m thick ice sheet will push the damned thing off Manhattan Island and into the East River… ideally very quickly and while it is in session. The entire purpose of the UN is to redistribute wealth to corrupt officials, their friends, terrorists and the petty dictators it empowers and supports. I am unaware of ANY successful mission or program they have run that would not have been done faster, better, cheaper and more humanely by private charity and private industry.

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  • #

    A thought of mine.

    The Global Warming Consensus is based on “everybody” who is “anybody” agreeing with everyone else who is “anybody” and claiming that those who question what “everybody” who is “anybody” accepts is a nobody. But the source of the knowledge that “everybody” who is “anybody” agrees with is nobody.

    What do you think?

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      Graeme No.3

      I don’t know if the source is nobody, but certainly a lousy scientist.

      Otherwise I look at, with shuddering, the Royal Society. Successive Presidents have laid down “the science” without much knowledge or investigation of the subject. Obviously relying on someone else’s word.

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      • #

        To unpick my conundrum requires answers to two questions.
        The first question is what is it that “everybody” agrees upon?
        If “everybody” it is the 97% consensus, then it is with trivial propositions, such as there is a greenhouse effect. But what it is inferred, but never stated, is the consensus agrees upon three propositions
        (a) There is overwhelming evidence for CAGW.
        (b) There are an unambiguous and workable set of policies to combat this problem.
        (c) There is a political elite capable of enacting these policies.
        The way that articulating these propositions is avoided is by highlighting the “nobodys” – those who allegedly disagree with the trivial propositions – as a means of shutting out questions about the non-trivial moral and political propositions.

        The second question follows from the first. What qualifies you to be an “anybody“?
        If it is being able to state the greenhouse effect, then being a climate scientist, or memorizing a definition, gives qualification to be an anybody or an expert.
        But if it is for the implied propositions, there is no single area of expertise. The consensus consists of people with shared beliefs, all assuming that others know the answers. But to questioning that implied consensus is to be ostracized as a “nobody“.

        This conclusion came about from listening to John Cook last month. Cook admitted the 97% consensus paper is all about acceptance of a banal form of global warming. Further, Cook dismissed as “fake experts” the 31,000 American Scientists who signed a petition condemning the Kyoto treaty.
        So, on Cook’s terms, qualifying as an anybody is sometimes being a expert scientist (to exclude those who disagree), and at other times being an anybody is accepting the consensus without question.
        But when Barak Obama quoted the consensus paper, it was in the belief that there is an expert consensus about the wider propositions. This confusion, through not raising basic questions, is also behind exclusion of other beliefs from the media.

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      jorgekafkazar

      I think we’re going to need a body count. How many people has the consensus killed, so far? Between fuel poverty and biofuel starvation, how many have died to support the AGW meme?

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      Bob Massey

      Can you repeat that I got lost after “The”

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      tom0mason

      Kevin,
      By your definition I would like it known I am an nobody.
      As such I will employ my vote to try and ensure that all the ‘“everybody” who is “anybody”’ influence is minimized in my life.

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  • #

    How are those peak vs abiotic oil price predictions going?
    A few quick searches on the net show methane levels fluctuate on nearly every planet and moon in the solar system. A bit more of a search finds that atmospheric methane only lasts about a decade before it all breaks down. So how can it be a “fossil fuel” in these places?

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  • #
    handjive

    Regular commentator Eric Worrall has a piece @WUWT.

    Eric Worrall writes about “The Conversation” Austalia’s favorite hangout of climate doomers:

    As the great unwinding of the more extreme climate alarmist positions gathers momentum, “The Conversation” provides us with a hilarious new excuse for some of the wild claims made by climate scientists over the years. Apparently they weren’t lying or exaggerating, they were “oversimplifying”.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/18/we-werent-lying-we-were-oversimplifying-the-conversations-latest-dog-ate-homework-excuse-for-climate-insanity/

    The Cult of 97% of Doomsday Climate Science can’t help itself:

    More urgent than Ebola, climate change is a bigger threat and we need to act now

    “If we don’t, be prepared for famine, extreme weather and disease on a biblical scale.”

    http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/more-urgent-ebola-climate-change-4462651

    Worse apocalypse

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      the Griss

      ““If we don’t, be prepared for famine, extreme weather and disease on a biblical scale.””

      They are quite correct. But it will happen because of the moronic alarmista and their degradation of the world’s energy supply systems. All that money wasted on unreliable, irregular “non-alternatives” could have been used lifting the poorer countries up a bit by the provision of at least some solid reliable coal or gas fired electricity.

      If we have cooling, as many non-trough scientists predict, then we will have more extreme weather and more famine.

      But we can still start to repair this situation…

      … just stop demonising the building block of all life on Earth !!!

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      the Griss

      ““If we don’t, be prepared for famine, extreme weather and disease on a biblical scale.””

      They are quite correct. But it will happen because of the stupidity of the alarmista and their degradation of the world’s energy supply systems. All that money wasted on unreliable, irregular “non-alternatives” could have been used lifting the poorer countries up a bit by the provision of at least some solid reliable coal or gas fired electricity.

      If we have cooling, as many non-trough scientists predict, then we will have more extreme weather and more famine.

      But we can still start to repair this situation…

      … just stop demonising the building block of all life on Earth !!!

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        the Griss

        sorry about the double post, the first one went to moderation because of a naughty word. 🙂

        I did email the mods to not post it.

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      Andrew McRae

      More urgent than Ebola, climate change is a bigger threat and we need to act now

      New lies from New Labour.

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  • #
    pattoh

    Guys

    Just picked up the weekend aus.

    A front page article quotes a Dr Cleugh:-

    “Measurements across the oceans & Earth system as a whole
    show the warming has continued unabated “throughout this period ”

    Have the boffins from the giant round-a-bout ( Canberra ) found the missing heat?

    Have they discovered how it got to where it is hiding without affecting temps of what it passed through on the way there?

    I must have missed the announcement.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      Anybody who feels the need to append the word “Scientist” onto the end of what they do, is either an Applied Scientist (which would make them an Engineer, in my book), or potentially a charlatan.

      We already have “Meteorologists”, and “Climatologists”, and even “Atmospheric Physicists”, so in what way are “Climate Scientists” different?

      Perhaps it is because they feel more closely aligned with “Computer Scientists” than any of the other three disciplines. That would make sense. I have long suspected, that the Climate Models might derived from Computer Gaming Minimax algorithms.

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        tom0mason

        In my house I am the Unapplied Scientist enforcing Local Equipment Sanitation Services (USeLESS).

        Which is why this household’s trash is always correctly sorted for recycling.

        🙂

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    Margaret Smith

    Glad to know that despite Greenpeace trying to make Patrick Moore a un-person, he will not quietly drop out of sight, and his status as Founder Member just will not disappear.

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    Geoff Sherrington

    Here is a call for help from experienced physicists.
    I’ve spent too much time on it and have addled my brain.
    Topic is heat conduction in shallow earth crust. There is an equilibrium geothermal gradient whereby temperatures measured down drill holes increase roughly 25 deg C for every vertical km.
    Suppose the equilibrium is perturbed by the ground/air interface getting warmer – let us assume an instant step change for simplicity here.
    A new gradient wiill establish itself because there is a new temperature at one end.

    The question is, what governs the rate in time for the new gradient to develop?
    One model is like dc electric circuits, where voltage changes instantly over the whole system when resistance is changed at constant current, Ohm’s Law.
    The other model is that the temperature at any point along the gradient will change at a rate determined by the thermal diffusivity equation, which in rock is a far slower rate than in the dc current example.

    The question arises in the context of proxy temperature reconstructions from borehole logging. All the literature I have found ducks the issue by saying things like ‘some time after the step change, once a new equilibrium has been reached, heat flow equations are as follows ….’
    I am interested in that period before the new equilibrium. How long does it take to equilibrate? The answer is probably forever because of asymptote concepts, but I’m seeking a practical engineering type explanation.
    My email is sherro1 at optusnet dot com dot au
    Thanks in advance, Geoff.

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      TdeF

      Geoff, good luck with that. Steady state is easy and you have your equation. What is never known is the time to achieve it. Consider a weight on a spring at rest. Disturb it. When does it stop bouncing? The answer has to do with many things which have nothing to do with the final equilibrium position at rest. Air resistance, mechanical losses, internal friction, heat dissipation. The final position is dependent only on two things, but the time to rest on many. What is needed is an event, like a volcanic event and measure the time to restore equilibrium temperature, so vulcanologists would have a measure.

      If you are talking about Global Warming, the small change in average temperature is a manufactured average and would get lost in the noise and errors in the calculation. It is really not a practical number which is true anywhere.

      I suspect you want to work with the very small delta in average temperatures for global temperatures. This is going to be very tricky as the real earth temperature varies by 100C from the tropics to antarctica and this dwarfs the small delta. It is a very big planet and there is no such thing as an average temperature really. It is a manufactured number like an average time and exactly like a stopped clock, will be right twice a day but largely useless. There is also probably no such thing as a consistent composition of the mantle. Physics only works well in homogenous situations with as few variables as possible. It is only a guide in most cases.

      We have the same equilibrium sitatuion with man released CO2 from fossil fuels, an exponential decay to reestabilish or maintain equilibrium levels of CO2. It too has a response time to return to steady state, a massive equilibrium with the sinks, especially the oceans which cover 2/3 of the planet. The IPCC say the deep oceans are disconnected so most of the ocean doesn’t count, but is that true for gas?

      C14 decays very slowly but was suddenly doubled in the 1960s, a huge step function in C14 tagged CO2. One in a trillion CO2 molecules was C14. A perfect experiement. The rapid return with exponential decay to the 10,000 year historical asymptotic level of C14O2 means the extra CO2 with no C14 is nearly gone and secondly it is vanishing with a half life of only 14 years, not the 80 years multiplier used by the IPCC to amplify Green house gases and demonise CO2. There is a third conclusion that the log of the decay is straight, so it is a single not compound curve so only one huge sink is dominant with only only decay constant. This shows how wrong ‘expert guesses’ can be. So the extra 50% of CO2 in the last century is categorically not from fossil fuels. This is such simple science, I cannot believe no one uses it. Is this wilful silence or does someone actually disagree. We can radio carbon date the CO2 in the air and prove without equivocation the man made global warming is nonsense.

      So good luck with that. Observation will give you the answers that theory will not and cannot. You need a measured decay time not hypothesis or static models for ridiculous pure state homogeneous undisturbed non circulating systems, like the ones used for the warming effects of CO2. Observation over twenty long years tells us they were wrong, or as they put it so defensively, they may have overestimated the sensitivity of the system to CO2. Ha! So a barely plausible doomsday hypothesis is proven to have little or no merit in the real world or a turbulent atmosphere across many climates around a huge planet. Oops? What greenhouse?

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        Geoff Sherrington

        Thank you, Tour de France,
        The analogy with the spring is good.
        Some progress, but IT am still missing the answer to my main Q.
        Re bomb test C14. do look up the Euan Mearns blog.
        Cheers. Geoff.

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      Ted O'Brien.

      Dear Geoff, I’m only an old farmer, but you’ll damage your brain with that one.

      1. Just as with the Climate/Weather, chaos rules there. You will be dealing with hugely variable and chaotic conductivity which will apply to a great depth.

      2. Even if you can achieve this “equilibrium”, by the time you do chaos at the top end will have given you a new set of data to work with.

      I’d recommend an educated guess backed up by long term opportunistic observation. Don’t invest too heavily in it. Nobody else’s argument is going to be any better than yours.

      I must say, that for a bloke who has never ventured more than a few metres below the surface, that 25 degrees per kilometre is surprising. Again I would expect a lot of variation with locality.

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        JohnRMcD

        Ted,
        There is a map showing, broadly, the geothermal gradients for Australia. I saw it some years ago; it was a coarse analysis so it may not be too precise. Where is it? Maybe the Australasian Institute of Mining & Metallurgy might be a place to seek this chart. I can recall that, many years ago, the geothermal gradient ranged from a high of 1 degree F per 94 feet (vertically)(in the Mt Isa area), to a low point of around 1 degree F per (almost) 200 feet. It may be more accurately determined these days. BUT it is not constant for the whole country. There is no magic average.

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          Geoff Sherrington

          John,
          Thanks for your comment.
          I am interested in how long it takes a geothermal gradient to arrive at a new value after the temperature is changed at the air end. Also the mechanism, also the applicable heat flow conditional equations. It is not as easy as it looks.
          Cheers. Geoff.

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          Ted O'Brien.

          Thanks, John.

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        Geoff Sherrington

        Thank you Ted O’B,
        I am specifically interested in what governs the rate at which equilibrium is approached in any material whose temperature is perturbed. Then I can start looking at materials like rock.
        Cheers. Geoff.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      Geoff,

      Link your requirement to Climate Disruption, and apply to UNEP for a huge grant.

      Receiving a grant won’t move you any closer to finding an answer to your question, but you might as well be puzzled in comfort.

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      Graeme No.3

      Geoff,
      the builders of sub-teranian homes say that 6 metres down there is no temperature variation between summer and winter. So any change at the surface takes roughly 6 months to penetrate that far. Don’t know if that helps.

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        TdeF

        Yes, which is why in US homes (outside California), a basement is built first. Simple and cheap with yellow machines. This is not only as storage but as shelter from extreme temperatures and weather like blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes and more and all the wiring and piping is underground where the water does not freeze. It is a very different life in winter, even to England.

        The temperature is always 12C just 4 metres under the ground surface even if the surface is -40C. I have lived in these conditions, aka winter in Colorado. Given the mass density between the earth and sky and the poor thermal conductivity of dirt, this is not surprising. The atmosphere is only as thick relatively as the rubber on a balloon. The water is also 4km deep but far denser, 400x as massive (1 atm per 10 metres). We humans live in a very thin layer 4 metres of dirt at most and in a very narrow range of altitudes, temperatures and air pressure. We have come from the oceans and need salt, water and oxygen and protection from the UV of the sun. However our food is made from CO2 and apart from water, we are near 80% carbon by weight. I do not know why humans have suddenly decided we control the planet. It seems the height of human arrogance from reaching the South Pole in 1911 and climbing Mt Everest in 1953 to knowing everything.

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        Geoff Sherrington

        Thanks G#3,
        Yes, all inputs help to get a feel for the problem.
        Geoff.

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    LevelGaze

    Went to hear Brian Cox last night in Melbourne (because I was gifted a ticket), good to see very many young people there.

    I was intrigued – he mentioned CO2/AGW just in passing, but spent a lot of time on Milankovitch cycles. I didn’t really quite expect that.

    Another observation: – Adam Spencer is really irritating!

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      Yonniestone

      Adam Spencer irritating? surely not!, considering the professional scientific reception he gave Lord Monckton in 2011 I find this very difficult to believe. /end sarc.

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        LevelGaze

        Ok, thanks for that. I suppose I must now amend my original comment to this:
        “Adam Spencer, acting as the (too frequent pop-up wind-up guy) was predictably and consistently bloody irritating”

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    Yonniestone

    Having fun? well considering we were kept awake until 4 am this morning by inconsiderate neighbors who thought that playing loud thumping bass music inside their garage was OK for everyone else to listen to, amazingly after my third visit everything went quiet, I was very diplomatic, I suppose things could be worse.

    Speaking of trying to get a message through The Age ran this piece on opening new coal fields in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley with everything from political, environmental, sustainable and even a tiny dose of reality ‘Grattan Institute energy director Tony Wood said alternative uses to power generation had not been successful.’ it’s taking more than 3 visits from sanity to get the message through to inconsiderate fools who believe their own bulls$t is good enough for everyone else, Victorians can knock louder this November by not voting Labor/Greens, if they have the guts to complain.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      I used to live in the upstairs apartment in a two-storied house. My landlady, who was in her late eighties or early nineties, lived downstairs. Next door was a house that was rented out to a bunch of University Students.

      One night, in the middle of summer, they had a particularly loud party, that went on, well past 2.00 am. I got up to close my windows (even though it was very hot weather), and noticed my landlady outside on the street. She was dressed in a summer housecoat, over her night dress, and was wearing rubber gloves and rubber gumboots.

      She was carrying a long handled tree pruner, which she used to cut the overhead power supply to the building next door.

      Of course their lights went out, and the music stopped, and it took the students a while to find and check the fuses, by which time my landlady had gone back inside. that was the end of the party, especially next day when they discovered why they had no electricity, and had to pay the power company to come and reconnect the line.

      When I next went to pay my rent, I grinned at her and said, “I liked what you did the other night”. She replied, with a straight face, “I have no idea what you mean”. “Oh”, I said, “Well you just need to be careful, around power lines, that is all I am saying.” She looked at me with a perfectly straight face, and said, “Some things get easier with practice.”

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    TdeF

    In the runaway warming scenario of man made global warming, the idea is that weather systems are fundamentally unstable or that there are ‘tipping points’ with positive feedback leading to catastrophe. There is no evidence for this in what history we have even back millions of years. Besides modern man only left Africa 80,000 years ago, so we have not been around a long time, but apart from the one ice age, we have seen few catastrophes and none linked to CO2.

    Every long term stable system has cycles and feedback. This is never discussed. Say CO2 went up, plants would grow better until it went down again. If temperature went up, evaporation would go up, forming clouds which would shield us from our heat source. H2O is the other product of burning fossil fuels and a greater and more prolific green house gas, but no mentions it because that would be silly to suggest water was deadly pollution. Carbon sounds dirty, especially coal. Are diamonds dirty? No one has seen CO2 anyway, except as dry ice.

    However the three greatest factors determining temperature are the hot planet (Geoff Sherrington’s interest), the output of the sun and water, in ice, liquid or vapour form. These clearly have provided stability for hundreds of millions of years. So there are feedback systems in place in any stable systems or they would run away until it was true.

    Consider the Sahara to illustrate a non intuitive climate change. We now know that in pre Egyptian times it was a lush area, perversely because it was much hotter. This meant monsoons came and inundated the area, as with India. In fact it was the cooling which created the deserts across Northern Africa. Hotter does not mean less fertile, less livable. Most deserts exist in cold latitudes or high mountains where there can be water, but not liquid. Heating would not be catastrophic, but would produce a cycle of rainfall which could dramatically improve the planet, but all we hear are disaster scenarios.

    It has been a hard twenty five years listening to science challenged Al Gore’s inconvenient Truth, which looks more and more like convenient lies. Then you get the carpetbaggers, sadly some of them scientists who do know better.

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    TdeF

    CO2 is given a half life of 80-100 years in the atmosphere, before it vanishes into the huge ocean reservoirs. This is a figure supported by the IPCC.

    It just occured that they have to say this, or the whole business is a sham. They would have no explanation for the 50% increase in CO2 over the last hundred years. They would have to explain why CO2 has increased and that would be very interesting.

    In the C14 graphs of the last century it is obvious to a scientist that CO2 in the atmosphere has a half life of 14 years, that it is disappearing utterly somewhere (Guess) with e-kt and this decay plots as a lovely straight line on a log graph, so all the CO2 is all going into one huge sink, not a complex multi sink equilibrium with the biosphere as in the Bern diagram. It this happens to C14 tagged CO2, one in a trillion atoms, it is happening to all CO2. Almost all fossil fuel CO2 is gone.

    If anyone disagree with this simple conclusion, please point out where it is wrong?

    So regardless of the sensitivity of the world temperature to CO2 concentrations, if mankind is not responsible for increasing the CO2, there is no man made Global Warming or Climate Change or Extreme events and never was. The ants are not in charge of the golf course, despite their egos.

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    pat

    18 Oct: UK Daily Mail: Hugo Duncan: Fears of winter blackouts as repairs to mend boiler cracks shut EDF nuclear plants for two years
    Work to prevent high temperatures causing further cracks at ageing plants
    Move will lead to increase in the risk of power shortages this winter and next
    The nuclear power reactors have been in operation since the early 1980s
    Two of Britain’s nuclear power plants closed in August over safety issues will not be fully up and running for another two years – triggering fears of blackouts this winter…
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2797966/fears-winter-blackouts-repairs-mend-boiler-cracks-shut-edf-nuclear-plants-two-years.html

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    pat

    covering all the bases:

    18 Oct: The Weather Network: Scott Sutherland: Tornadoes are clustering in the US, and climate change may be to blame
    If you’ve been keeping track of the news about tornado outbreaks in the US over the past few decades, you may have noticed a trend – fewer outbreaks, but at the same time each one appears to be worse than the last. According to a new report, it’s probably not your imagination. In fact, it could be due to climate change…
    Now, a study by scientists from NOAA – the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – is showing evidence of this trend.
    “When people ask, ‘Are we getting more tornadoes, are we getting fewer tornadoes, are they later, are they earlier?’ – the answer to everything is yes,” said Harold Brooks, the lead study author from NOAA’s Severe Storms Laboratory, according to Ecowatch.com…
    http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/tornadoes-are-clustering-in-the-us-and-climate-change-may-be-to-blame/38102/

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    pat

    can’t recall anyone posting this:

    17 Oct: The Conversation: Climate ‘uncertainty’ is no excuse for climate inaction
    by Richard Pancost & Stephan Lewandowsky
    Scientific uncertainties over future climate are widely used by ‘sceptics’ to justify a policy of no response, write Richard Pancost & Stephan Lewandowsky. But this reflects a deep misunderstanding: outcomes may end up much more severe than expected – and we should prepare for worst case scenarios.
    Former environment minister Owen Paterson has called for the UK to scrap its climate change targets…
    Uncertainty is not the same as ignorance
    This argument is incorrect – uncertainty does not imply ignorance. Indeed, whatever we don’t know mandates caution. No parent would argue
    “I accept that if my child kicks lions, this will irritate them, but a range of factors will dictate how the lions respond; therefore I will not stop my child from kicking lions.”
    The deeper the uncertainty, the more greenhouse gas emissions should be perceived as a wild and poorly understood gamble. By extension, the only unequivocal tool for minimising climate change uncertainty is to decrease our greenhouse gas emissions.
    http://theconversation.com/why-climate-uncertainty-is-no-excuse-for-doing-nothing-32924

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      Graeme No.3

      Pat:
      the usual garbage.

      We didn’t prove that CO2 causes global warming, before demanding that you do what we want.
      We haven’t proved that CO2 causes global warming, but demand that you do what we want anyway.
      We have no proof that global warming is continuing, so just ignore all those who don’t believe us, and do what we want.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      Totally bonkers!

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        Graeme No.3

        Me, you or the people who ignore actual measurements because a computer gives a different figure?

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        Rereke Whakaaro

        I have no idea how my comment on the article Pat mentioned suddenly became appended to your response. I do apologise.

        But I concur that it is the people who ignore actual measurements who are totally bonkers.

        [Good time to stop digging, Rereke].

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      Lucky

      ‘we should prepare for worst case scenarios.’
      This point has some merit.
      The worst case scenario is cooling rather than the amount of warming the alarmists go on about.
      Cooling is far worse for human comfort and food production and is more likely.

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    pat

    18 Oct: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: Ed Miliband and Baroness Worthington, the most expensive man and woman in Britain’s history
    The Climate Change Act could cost the UK £1.3 trillion over the next 36 years
    Less well known, however, is the extraordinary story of how this most expensive Act ever put on the statute book originated in the first place…
    The Bill passed the Commons by 463 votes to three, after a debate in which not a single MP asked how such an ambitious target could in practice be achieved without destroying virtually our entire economy…
    But this is what at last one senior politician, Owen Paterson, dared to question in his lecture last week to the Global Warming Policy Foundation…
    There was, of course, a knee-jerk howl of derision from the likes of Lord Stern and Lord Deben, along with a blizzard of personal abuse across the Twittersphere. But the more thoughtful among them, such as the BBC’s Roger Harrabin, tried instead to ride with the punch, by claiming that Decc was already looking at all the parts of Paterson’s “Plan B” for keeping our lights on….READ ON
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/11171445/Ed-Miliband-and-Baroness-Worthington-the-most-expensive-man-and-woman-in-Britains-history.html

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  • #
    janama

    OMG – the fairies at the bottom of the garden, and all the Greens, are celebrating because:

    Austin: Solar Now A Default Energy Source.

    http://cleantechnica.com/2014/09/12/austin-chooses-double-solar/

    So you get a facebook title claiming:

    “The city of Austin in Texas recently made solar its default energy source – based purely on economics!

    The state capital has set a target of producing 65% of its energy from solar by 2025 as a way to attain an affordable, stable energy supply.”

    So you try to point out the sine wave curve of solar production and a good link for that is the University of Queensland’s solar array output site but! they’ve changed it so the link doesn’t work.

    Check ‘Live Data Feed.’

    http://www.uq.edu.au/solarenergy/

    Oh dear.

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    C.J.Richards

    UK ‘s ex Enviroment Minister Owen Patterson getting airtime on the BBC.
    http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29643977
    coming out against the Cimate Change Act

    Followed up in UK Telegraph
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/11169831/Britain-needs-political-climate-change-to-cut-soaring-energy-bills.html

    This is mainstream airtime & media coverage like never before.

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     D o u g   C o t t o n 

    The biggest error of all the errors in the physics of the radiative greenhouse conjecture is that they “explain” the surface temperature of 288K using Stefan-Boltzmann calculations based on the direct solar radiation PLUS about TWICE as much supposed thermal energy input from the colder atmosphere. The real solar flux of about 161W/m^2 would “warm” an Earth that is fully paved with asphalt to -35C. Yes that is MINUS 35C. It is so blatantly obvious that there has to be a lot of additional thermal energy fed into a planet’s surface by convection and conduction on the sunlit side. I have shown how that is in accord with the laws of physics.

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     D o u g   C o t t o n 

    If a molecule has an upward component in its free path movement between collisions then some of the translational kinetic energy in that molecule (M.Cp.dT) supplies the additional gravitational potential energy (M.g.dH) that it acquires by virtue of its additional altitude. Vice versa for downward motion. Equate the two and you have the temperature gradient dT/dH = g/Cp which should not be hard to understand.

    Because the laws of physics can be used to explain this gravitationally induced temperature gradient, the fact that the surface temperature of a planet is higher than the radiating temperature of the planet is fully explained (and confirmed empirically) by this autonomous temperature gradient. There is no need for any other explanation as is supposedly presented in the false radiative greenhouse conjecture.

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      the Griss

      Your message is slowly starting to gain traction, as people’s minds wake up. ! 🙂

      Keep going, and don’t let the goobers get ya. !!

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       D o u g   C o t t o n 

      Thanks for your support, The Griss

      It’s well known that water vapour reduces the magnitude of the temperature gradient by about a third in our troposphere. But the IPCC want you to believe that it acts as a greenhouse gas and does most of their “33 degrees of warming” of the surface. So get out a bit of paper and draw the new thermal profile based on these two pieces of information.

      Now, as a third piece of information you will find that it is very rare for the difference between incoming and outgoing radiation from the Earth to be more than plus or minus 0.5% of those values.

      So, look at you plot of the new thermal profile which is higher at the surface end and much higher at the tropopause and tell me how on Earth (or in any planet’s troposphere) you can reconcile the IPCC implication of a far higher temperature profile and yet no indication of more than 0.5% difference in net radiation at the top of the atmosphere.

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        the Griss

        Water vapour is one of the main regulating mechanisms.

        It also acts as an energy transfer medium from the surface to higher in the atmosphere.

        Sort of like a loaded truck going up hill. Slower, but carries more.

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           D o u g   C o t t o n 

          Yes The Griss. They don’t use moist air in the gap between double glazed window panes because the “greenhouse gas” water vapour REDUCES the insulating effect. It does the same in our troposphere, as you say. The radiating properties of water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane and other so-called greenhouse gases help the thermal energy to escape, leap-frogging over the slower moving diffusion and convection, but only ever transferring thermal energy from warmer to cooler regions which are higher up in the troposphere – and thence to space. Greenhouse gases are not a “blanket” – they act like holes in a blanket helping thermal energy get out of our atmosphere, not back into the warmer surface.

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            the Griss

            You can tell just how much energy water vapour transfers upwards.

            Just watch a nice convective thunderstorm trying to get rid of some of it 🙂

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      Peter C

      One extra condition of the thermo-gravitational theory is that the effective radiation surface has to be somewhere up in the atmosphere. This is generally referred to as the TOA (top of atmosphere).
      The TOA is an effective radiating level, hence an average temperature of radiating gases in the atmosphere.
      The best evidence for this (in my view) is that the effective radiating temperature of the earth is -18C, as detected by satellites, which is way less than the surface temperature (average 15C).
      http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/EnergyBalance/page6.php
      NASA attributes the higher temperature at ground level to a natural greenhouse effect. However the thermo-gravitational theory makes more sense to me. My doubts about the thermo- gravitational theory were largely dispelled when Ross McLeod demonstrated that observed atmospheric temperatures of other planets in our solar system (as listed on the NASA planetary fact sheet) were correctly predicted, in every case, by the thermo-gravitational theory.
      The Greenhouse theory (as represented by the effective black body temperature) was only close in the case of Mars,(likely because Mars has a very thin atmosphere).

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     D o u g   C o t t o n 

     

    Copy of my email sent to many Australian politicians just now …

     

    Dear PM, MP’s. Alan Jones and Climate Council

    I believe the comments I have posted linked below (and the support I receive) should be brought to your attention regarding precisely what is wrong with the physics pertaining to the greenhouse conjecture. Please take five minutes of your valuable time to read what many Australians are now realising and none can refute my explanation in the comments starting here

    http://joannenova.com.au/2014/10/weekend-unthreaded-53/#comment-1595503

    I sincerely believe it is time for a Parliamentary or Senate enquiry wherein I know I can present evidence against anyone’s argument which purports to support the radiative greenhouse conjecture, because the truth will prevail, the current slight cooling will extend for 30 years from the maximum back in 1998 and, above all, valid physics exposes the glaring errors in the greenhouse conjecture.

    Regards

    Doug Cotton

    Author:

    “Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics”
    “Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures”
    “Why It’s Not Carbon Dioxide After All”

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    the Griss

    Guess who is going to have to fund the clean-up of the abortive Port Kembla wave machine.

    NOT the people who put it there. They have taken the subsidies and run, claiming bankruptcy.

    It seems to be always the way with so-called Green ventures. !!!

    Coal tidies up after itself, leaving highly usable wetland, ad farming areas.

    But never do renewables.

    You just have to look at the rusting masses of defunct wind turbines in the US.

    So who is going to foot the bill to clean up after wind turbines become (even more) useless in Australia, and in other places around the world?

    You can bet the companies that put them there will have lined their pockets and scarpered…

    Its another facet of this scam that really needs to be hung heavily around the necks and wallets of the alarmist scum that are currently profiting marvellously.

    They MUST NOT be allowed to farm off the clean-up bill onto the taxpayer. !!!

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    • #

      Ah!

      Aint renewable power wunnerful?

      This Port Kembla Wave Generator operated for almost 6 weeks, well, sort of operated anyway. It got subsidies from everywhere, as did the South Australian unit which never even made it to where it was supposed to do its work, and consequently never delivered one watt of power.

      Both units are now sitting in shallow water, rusting hulks.

      The total power generated by the Port Kembla unit before it sank was delivered by Bayswater in 5 minutes and 40 seconds ….. seriously.

      Now that is impressive.

      Tony.

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    pat

    has taxpayer-funded ABC overdone its coverage of the Pacific Islanders brought by plane (with their canoes) by Bill McKibben’s 350.org to protest our coal exports?

    ABC: Pacific Climate Warriors in Australia to protest coal industry
    ABC Radio Australia: Pacific ‘climate warriors’ plan to stop Australian coal exports
    ABC: Pacific island and local climate change activists halt ship in Newcastle Port
    ABC: Related Story: Protestors to block Newcastle Harbour
    ABC: Related Story: Protestors to block Newcastle Harbour
    ABC: Map: Newcastle 2300
    ABC: 350.org Video: Australians stand with the Pacific Climate Warriors
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-13/350org-pacific-climate-warriors-vid/5809614
    ABC Local: Hundreds of climate change activists have blocked Newcastle port, … There was a traditional send off for the 30 ‘Pacific Climate Warriors’ as …
    ABC Blog: The Pacific Islanders fighting to keep their countries above water
    ABC: Hundreds of protestors to block coal shipments in Newcastle Harbour
    ABC Radio Australia: ‘Climate warriors’ set to disrupt coal exports
    ABC Radio Australia: Pacific Climate Warriors take on Australian coal industry
    ABC: Climate Warriors in Sydney
    ABC Radio Australia: Pacific Climate Warriors disrupt exports at Australian coal port
    ABC Radio Australia: Pacific Climate Warriors take on Australian coal industry …
    1233 ABC Newcastle (@1233newcastle) | Twitter
    The Climate Warriors from the Pacific Islands have spent the day protesting against the …

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    pat

    re abc –
    last nite was truly CAGW-awful on abc local radio & RN.

    on the Religion prog, Perth-based, self-proclaimed “eco-evangelist”, Jarrod McKenna, from World Vision who is “a regular commentator on the ABC Religion program” according to WV, was going on and on about the great coal protest in Newcastle, organised by Sunday School teacher and all-round great guy, Bill McKibben, etc.
    even Aussie pagans, who worship football and sunshine (?) joined the Pacific Islanders, Jarrod proclaimed, as he and the ABC presenter got all excited.

    later, encountered the first of TWO (OH NO) hourly programs on RN’s New Dimensions program from California: Moving From Despair To Hope In Threshold Times: Part 1:
    a gushing Justine Willis Toms interviewing Paul Rogat Loeb.

    from New Dimensions website on this program, the tags tell the story, especially if u realise it’s actually ALL about CAGW being the biggest stressor in the universe. everything below is somehow intimately connected to CAGW:

    Global Culture, History, Peace / Nonviolence, Social Change / Politics.Tags: Arab spring, Campus Election Engagement Project, climate change, Cornell West, Danusha Veronica Goska, Dave Foreman, despair, Diane Ackerman, Dr. Martin Luther King, E.D. Nixon, Gandhi, hope, Howard Zinn, Jim Wallis, Jr., Keystone Pipeline, Khaled Said, Martin Luther King, Mary Pipher, mothers of the missing, mp3, Nelson Mandela, Paul Loeb, Paul Rogat Loeb, Rosa Parks, Stephen Zunes, Tea Party, the Progressive movement in U.S. history, Thoreau, Tolstoy, unlikely coalitions, Wael Ghonim, woman in black.
    http://www.newdimensions.org/program-archive/moving-from-despair-to-hope-in-threshold-times-part-1-with-paul-loeb/

    this was followed by:

    20 Oct: ABC RN: Margaret Throsby Interview: Professor Emma Johnston
    Professor Emma Johnston is the head of the Subtidal Ecology and Ecotoxicology Research Group at the University of NSW.
    Her research group investigates human disturbances in marine communities…
    She investigates the ecology of human impacts in marine systems.
    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/throsby/professor-emma-johnston/5822650

    Emma informs us CAGW has increased cyclones, increased storms, increased bleaching…etc etc.

    something is horribly wrong at their ABC.

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    pat

    meanwhile, over at SBS tonite, we have:

    17 July: UK Telegraph: Horizon: What’s Wrong with Our Weather? BBC Two, review: ‘complicated’
    Horizon’s attempt to investigate the extremities of our weather was saturated with abstruse theories, says Gerard O’Donovan
    The question of exactly why the jetstream has been behaving so erratically, though, was where things got complicated. Terms such as cold-water hurricane scars, quasi-biennial oscillation and sudden stratospheric warming events began to pepper the conversation as more and more weather scientists piled in with more and more abstruse theories.
    From what I could gather, though, it’s all down to climate change. Or, maybe not. Or only partly. Either way, it certainly has to something do with the Arctic… and the equator… and everything in between. That’s definitely the consensus view; of that I’m almost certain…
    Still, according to the Met Office’s chief scientists Dame Julia Slingo, we are “entering a golden age of climate science” with super-computers capable of making trillions of calculations a second and building wonderful models of weather systems. But it seems they can’t quite explain anything much definitively, or not just yet at any rate.
    In the meantime, it seems only one thing can be said with certainty: that our weather is doomed to remain unpredictable for the foreseeable future.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/tv-and-radio-reviews/10973344/Horizon-Whats-Wrong-with-Our-Weather-BBC-Two-review-complicated.html

    why do I imagine the message received by most will be that CAGW is real? period.

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    pat

    just want to clarify something:

    the New Dimensions’ interviewee, Paul Loeb, linked everything to CAGW ACTIVISM, not CAGW itself. he is just the latest in a long line – from Al Gore to Naomi Klein, who push the meme that CAGW is a civil rights issue.

    in fact, Jarrod McKenna, who was on ABC Religion, has been pushing that meme for years too, it would seem:

    2011: ABC Religion: What would MLK do? Christians and climate change
    Jarrod McKenna, ABC Religion and Ethics
    Many of us find ourselves implicated in the patterns of prevailing culture described by Naomi Oreskes in her brilliant book, Merchants of Doubt. As one of World Vision Australia staff member heard from his mother recently, “Why is World Vision talking about climate change? World Vision works to get children out of poverty. Not save trees!” This reveals two important realities that must not be ignored.
    First, many of us fail to see what World Vision Australia sees all too clearly: climate change is hitting the poorest of the poor the hardest…
    Climate change, like the church’s complicity with racism, calls us to repent and rediscover the fullness of the Gospel…
    http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/01/17/3114379.htm

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     D o u g   C o t t o n 

    Copy of my letter today …

    20 October 2014

    Attention: Adam Cowell
    Dept of Environment
    GPO Box 787
    CANBERRA 2601

    Dear Sir

    In response to your letter I would point out that I am in no way impressed by calls to authority or reference to journals which are well known to reject papers presenting evidence that greenhouse gases like water vapour do not warm the environment. There are indeed many hundreds of peer-reviewed published papers which reveal errors in the greenhouse conjecture but, as is well known, the establishment rejects the whole lot on the grounds that they are not in “respected” journals, even though many are. For my part I rely only on established physics which is well documented.
    If you believe the concept that water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane cause the Earth’s surface temperature to be warmer, then you should be able to provide answers to the questions I have posed. But you cannot, and so it is now likely that you will one day be asked these questions in a Court of Law. If you wish to delegate responsibility to another Australian authority, then obtain their answers. The IPCC does not, and cannot answer these quetions or similar. They cannot prove their conjecture using the laws of physics.
    You, for example, claim assertively that the greenhouse conjecture does not violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics, yet I doubt that you even know what the state of thermodynamic equilibrium referred to in statements of that Law is all about. I doubt that you know that standard physics (Kinetic Theory) allows us to deduce that the state of thermodynamic equilibrium has an autonomous temperature gradient in a gravitational field. Did you know that personally? Do you know that such was first explained by the brilliant 19th century physicist Josef Loschmidt who was first to estimate the size of air molecules?
    Even though both my paper “Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics” and my book “Why It’s Not Carbon Dioxide After All” have both been positively reviewed by a total of four suitably qualified persons, I do not rest my case thereon. I rest my case on the fact that the Second Law of Thermodynamics does imply as a direct corollary that the temperature gradient is the state of thermodynamic equilibrium. In contrast, the IPCC explanation of the greenhouse conjecture assumes, contrary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, that the Earth’s surface temperature would be the same as that in the approximate middle of the troposphere (ie the Earth’s radiating temperature of 255K) if there were no water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane etc.
    So the IPCC has led you people to believe that water vapour causes surface temperatures to be higher – in fact, considerably higher by about 30 degrees due mostly to a mean of about 2% of water vapour in the lower tropophere.
    So my first question is, what is the sensitivity to a 1% increase in water vapour? If you answer that 2% raises the temperature by 30 degrees, and so you say 1% raises it by 15 degrees, for example, then my second question is where is there empirical evidence that regions with 4% water vapour (like rainforests) are 45 degrees hotter than regions with 1% water vapour (like deserts) at similar latitudes and altitudes? My study of 30 years of temperature data from three continents showed regions with higher precipitation had lower mean daily maximum and minimum temperatures than similar but drier regions. Point me to some study proving that the opposite is the case, and that temperature data confirms that rain forests are more than 40 degrees hotter than dry deserts.
    I am fully aware, as you should be, that the IPCC wants the world to believe that we can add to the energy flux reaching the surface from the Sun about twice as much energy flux supposedly going into the surface night and day from the colder troposphere. We are then supposed to be able to use the sum of these fluxes in Stefan Boltzmann calculations in order to calculate the observed mean temperature of the surface, namely about 287 to 288K according to the IPCC.
    Even though the Second Law very clearly states that in no natural process can entropy decrease, the IPCC wants us to believe their special version of the Second Law which assumes we need only consider the end result of two or more independent processes regardless of whether or not entropy did decrease in one of those processes. Well, even though that is not what the Second Law says, the thermal energy transfer between the surface and the cooler troposphere is always from the hotter surface to the cooler troposphere. Only the solar radiation (being from a hotter source) can raise the temperature of Earth’s surface. But Stefan Boltzmann calculations clearly show that we cannot calculate planetary surface temperatures using direct solar radiation alone in such calculations. As I have shown in my book, the only way to calculate such temperatures is using correct physics pertaining to the gravitationally-induced temperature gradient based on the quotient of the acceleration due to gravity and the weighted mean specific heat of the gases involved.
    So Sir, I am firstly giving you the opportunity to obtain answers to these initial questions which you (or whoever writes the answers) can demonstrate obey the laws of physics. I will not accept assertive statements that make no reference to what the laws state. I have many more questions which you will not be able to answer either, but they can wait. In due course you can expect considerable publicity and advertising pertaining to the correct physics I have presented and the valid refutation of what the IPCC has presented.
    If you want a prediction of future climate look no further than the inverted plot of the scalar sum of the angular momentum of the Sun and all planets, which plot (below) clearly indicates the reason for the observed 1,000 year and superimposed 60 year cycles that are entirely natural.

    Yours sincerely

    Douglas Cotton, B.Sc.(Physics), B.A.(Economics), Dip.Bus.Admin.
    Sydney and Macquarie Universities (1963 to 1970)

    copy: The Prime Minister

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    On all planets temperatures in any troposphere get hotter as you approach the base of that troposphere, whether or not there is a surface there, whether or not solar radiation reaches the lower troposphere and quite regardless of whether there is carbon dioxide or water vapour in the planet’s atmosphere.

    There is absolutely no empirical evidence and no valid physics that you can produce which supports the ludicrous concept that radiation from colder regions in the troposphere produces more thermal energy to be transferred by radiation into a planet’s surface than entered the atmosphere at its top. But that is precisely what the K-T and IPCC energy diagrams claim to be the case on Earth.

    Believe it if you’re that gullible!

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    Jeff Conlon on The Air Vent asked: “So you are stating that your idea is not new and are of the belief that Loshmidt had the right answer correct?”

    To this I replied:

    The fact that the temperature gradient forms autonomously at the molecular level (without any specific need for upward convection) was first explained in the 19th century, and has never been correctly rebuked. But this “gravito-thermal effect” has been overlooked by James Hansen et al. Hence 255K is not the right “starting point” and there is not “33 degrees of warming” but more like 10 to 12 degrees of cooling by radiating molecules, mostly water vapour of course, because the radiating properties of these molecules have a temperature levelling effect working against the gravitationally-induced temperature gradient that is not due to any lapsing process..

    But what has not been explained prior to the 21st century is how the necessary energy transfers over the sloping thermal profile just like new rain water falling on a small section of a lake spreads out evenly over the whole lake. This is what happens (and must happen) in planetary tropospheres, and it happens because the Second Law of Thermodynamics is all about thermodynamic equilibrium evolving. Thermodynamic equilibrium has a density gradient (because there must be more kinetic energy per molecule at lower altitudes) and that density gradient thus has a temperature gradient.

    Thermodynamic equilibrium is what it says – an equilibrium state just as much as is mechanical equilibrium, which keeps the surface of a lake more-or-less following the curvature of the Earth. Gravity spreads new rain water over the lake, raising the level all around the lake. Likewise, new thermal energy absorbed in a planet’s upper troposphere or elsewhere (such as in and above clouds) spreads out in all accessible directions by convection, where I use the term to mean both diffusion and advection in accord with normal usage in physics. And that’s how the required energy gets down to the base of the Uranus troposphere to maintain temperatures hotter than Earth’s surface. Likewise on Venus and likewise on Earth because solar radiation directly to the surface is nowhere near sufficient and we would freeze on cloudy days if this downward convection were not a reality.

    Moderator:

    This comment is being posted on about six other blogs as I don’t like wasting my time on just one blog, unless a blog owner runs an article on the content of my book and agrees not to delete any of my comments replying to comments on that thread. I may do likewise with any future such questions and answers in the interests of disseminating correct physics and gradually wearing down the greatest error ever made since the flat Earth garbage.

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    Regarding convection, everyone needs to understand that “heat transfer by bulk fluid flow” is not a bulk flow caused by an external mechanical energy supply. All convection is driven only by a higher level of mean kinetic energy in some region where it is hotter than the state of thermodynamic equilibrium (with its associated temperature gradient) would normally be. So when direct solar radiation strikes an asphalt surface (emissivity 0.92) it can raise the temperature thereof because its intensity may be, say, 450W/m^2 which would support a temperature of about 305K and this causes air molecules at the surface interface to be hotter than what they were in the cool of the pre-dawn hours of the morning – ie near the supporting temperature. So upward diffusion and advection (that is, convection) occur. But warm air does not rise in parcels, and warmed air may even fall – convection is just a net movement of molecules during their normal free path motion between collisions. Extra kinetic energy in the surface “pushes” more molecules away so that “sheets” of warmed air appear to rise, but in fact it is mostly movement of the warmer temperature that gives this effect. A light fan will turn slowly, but the heat transfer can be faster than the apparent movement of the air which is very slow. But extra thermal energy absorbed from solar radiation in the upper troposphere of a planet can drive convection downwards.
     

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