Which skeptic do you find the most and least tolerable? - Page 7

That "thwack" you hear?  It's your head hitting a wall. 

gncp,

I'm not sure I was saying I was hurt, more that you are adding nothing by being aggressive. Obviously my typo was supposed to read F_tot is linear w.r.t z not F_net (as defined in his paper). Second, you are dead wrong about a FIRST ORDER ODE having more than one boundary condition. Although we have added to the number of free parameters by creating F+ and F-, it does not help your case - you can't even start to use the Neumann conditions until you get to F+ and F-. I'm not going to claim that you don't know math, because you clearly do. That does not stop the fact that you have this incorrect. Go look up the uniqueness theorem. We've overdetermined this equation. No matter what one of the boundary conditions is wrong. I chose the one that's undefined.

I can just as well claim (and more correctly so) that the Radiative Equilibrium condition degrades near the TOP OF THE ATMOSPHERE which makes the Neumann boundary condition at the top incorrect. In a real atmosphere, rather than F_tot going from linear to constant, there will be a change as Radiative Equilibrium degrades. You are addicted to your non-physical interpretation of RTE at the surface because you have made up your mind and nothing will convince you otherwise. Funny thing is, my boundary conditions correct both errors in the "problems" section - but you won't even approach that.

I also must say, I enjoy the fact that you say:

Shepard's section is actually titled "Problems with the pure radiative model" which implies that in a real atmosphere, more is going on than radiative heat transfer.

Implying that LTE does not hold near the surface (if I remember correctly, we'd decided earlier that it did). You are full of contradictions yet are so stubbornly addicted to your belief system that you fail to see them. If you're done, I guess I'm done.

To sum up my original point: I'm am skeptical about the science of global warming because the "fundamental physics" provides contradictory results. I'm not saying the conclusions are wrong, just that the science is not settled.

Ok, I *think* I have you figured out now, at least the level of where you are objecting to the science as not being settled.  You're still nearing crackpot status, but at least I know why.

You are arguing that because there is a temperature discontinuity at the surface, the whole idea of radiative transfer must be wrong.  That at the surface LTE can't hold because of the temperature discontinuity, and if it doesn't hold at the surface, there is something drastically wrong with the whole idea of a longwave surface forcing from radiatively active trace gases.  Correct? 

The resolution to your surface discontinuity issue is that a one-d purely radiative transfer model is not a physical reality, it is a gedanken experiment.  The reason there can be a temperature discontinuity in a purely radiative model is that the surface is not in physical contact with the atmosphere as far as the mathematics are concerned.  Because there is no method for heat conduction, which is the formal thermodynamic definition of temperature (and temperature equilibrium), there is no requirement that the surface temperature has to match the atmosphere temperature at the surface. 

This doesn't make sense for a real system, but we both agree that a purely radiative model is insufficient to describe what happens in a real atmosphere with gases that can move.  Therefore, it should be no surprise that the pure mathematical model is aphysical in some respects, it doesn't describe the complete physical system.  However, concerning the included physics, the radiative component, that is correct.  That a radiative model with convective adjustment comes very close to simulating reality suggests the radiative portion of the theory really is settled. 

As far as your LTE objection, in the context of radiative transfer that applies to the atmosphere itself, each individual layer has to be in LTE.  Because there is no physical contact with the surface (the only coupling is through radiative transfer), it makes no sense to talk about LTE for an interface (either at the top or bottom), since there is no physical contact for the surface and gas molecules to exchange energy kinetically (which is the basis for LTE).  And each layer, up to the top, and down to the surface, is in LTE.  Even you agree that is true. 

I suspect the TOA boundary condition is reasoned along similar lines, but I don't care anymore because you're going to reject the discussion above.  Like I said, you like to believe radiative transfer theory that has been pored over for a century is wrong at a very frehsman level.  You have "smart guy, no self-evaluation circuitry" syndrome.  In other words, you lack the capacity to consider your own opinions in the context of "I might not be thinking about this the correct way."  If I'm aggressive it's because denialists like you are irritating.  You sit there smugly thinking you are so brilliant and have stumbled on a mistake so obvious in a fundamental theory, yet you haven't done even the basics of thinking through why the theory might be in fact correct and you are wrong.  You have no objective basis for denying the theory of the planetary greenhouse effect is incorrect, and continual discussion of this point by you is done with the knowledge there is a perfectly adequate physical explanation showing why you are wrong. 

Now I'm done.

I guess you weren't done. 

I'll admit, my argument about surface LTE is weak (and I wish I hadn't directly stated it). What I wanted to say was this: The dF_net/dTau term cannot be 0 if the Maxwell temperature is not equal to the Planck temperature which means that if we add terms for convection dF_net/dTau ~= 0. I'm simply suggesting that we allow this to happen in the region where we observe it to happen. In fact, all of my sources acknowledge that LTE holds below a certain altitude (usually the 60 km given) but does not hold above that. This makes perfect sense in the "real world" problem of the discontinuous derivative boundary at the TOA - it's not discontinuous because dF_net/dTau is not 0 (LTE is broken). 

You're basically saying that there's no point in evaluating other alternatives to the surface boundary condition. I'm basically saying we should try it and see if the 'fundamental physics' makes a little more sense. What if the solution comes even closer to what we observe in our atmosphere? I think I've done a pretty good job laying out a reason to explore this and you come back with "I'm right because I can't be wrong". Honestly, which of the two of us is suffering from "smart guy, no self-evaluation circuitry" syndrome.

Also, I think you're being a little too generous to freshmen - the "mistake" is at least a junior level one. By the way, there's actually a reason that this mistake could have been made without anyone noticing it, but I assume you don't care.

You miss the point, the temperature of the atmosphere at the surface is the temperature of the atmosphere in the surface layer.  The temperature of the surface is the temperature of the surface.  At no point in the pure radiative model do you have a situation where the radiative temperature (what you call the Planck temperature) of a layer of the atmosphere is not equal to its Maxwell temperature.  Certainly not at the surface.  The reason is that in the pure radiative model there is no contact between the surface and the air above it.  It's like there is a thin layer of vacuum between the surface and the atmosphere so that the only way energy couples between the two is through radiation.  You're confusing the idealized radiative model with the physical reality and can't get over the apparent problem, but people who do this understand the distinction between the idealization and reality.  If you add convection to the model as you suggest, it's no longer a pure radiative transfer model, and you have to solve the Navier-Stokes equations for the fluid motions along with the radiative transfer.  So while you are free to explore different boundary conditions, adding in convection changes the problem to something that is distinctly different than a radiative transfer model. 

Anyway, I suggest you write your theory up and submit it for publication.  If you choose the appropriate journal for submission, I can almost personally guarantee your paper would get a fair and open peer review.  You can even suggest referees.  Good luck. 

I thought this was kind of funny.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-horton/dui---denying-under-influ_b_389887.html

Good post there!

You do have to admit though that the loony green fringe is just about the same.

Well, maybe not quite as stupid but just as irrational and very, very loose with 'facts'.

Fortunately, the Huddle has very few of the loonies from either side but a decent representation across the spectrum in between. 

Agreed, Russ.

This paper from Fred Singer, denier-in-chief, is absolutely worth a read.  I guess if one thing is for sure he's been consistent in his wrongness!

Pegminer gets a shout-out for a great one-liner here:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Aq_rkB4etDgKB7IvmZAKyi7_5nNG;_ylv=3?qid=20100204072538AA6pkV7

Nicely done. 

Let's just toss in all of FOX for the fun of it.www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/264085/february-10-2010/we-re-off-to-see-the-blizzard

Yeah I'll tell ya, Fox News practically writes The Daily Show and Colbert Report for them.  All they have to do is show clips of Fox News shows!  Makes up for Bush not being in office anymore.

The debate is over. We're already past the tipping point. What's to discuss? They deny because

they work for coal/oil or other big corporations that don't want to spend a penny on making

this a better world for the next generation.

Paraphrasing jerkweed from bp-"I want my life back"

Yeah right. Yachts and drinking with bikini clad bozos.

Why is it that 2010 is turning out to be the hottest on record?

92 degrees today and it's mid September?

Gimme a break.

I find none of these sock puppets tolerable. They are shilling for a greedy industry at the expense of our children and grandchildren, and every generation yet to be born. Selling crack to 5th graders would put one on slightly better moral ground that what these individuals are doing.

 

George Monbiot has a good theory of why they are so obnoxious and why they repeat the same partisan talking points in this post: http://www.monbiot.com/2010/12/13/reclaim-the-cyber-commons/ This jumpped out at me: "...instead of contesting the issues I raise, many of those who disagree bombard me with infantile abuse, or just keep repeating a fiction, however often you discredit it. This ensures that an intelligent discussion is almost impossible – which appears to be the point.

The second pattern is the strong association between this tactic and a certain set of views: pro-corporate, anti-tax, anti-regulation. Both traditional conservatives and traditional progressives tend be more willing to discuss an issue than these right-wing libertarians, many of whom seek instead to shut down debate."

 

Sound familiar? I think I know why. As Jim Hoggan of DeSmog blog puts it, "the trick to executing a good PR campaign is twofold: you figure out what people are thinking already; and then you nudge them gently from that position to one that is closer to where you want them to be" The PR agents who are concocting these talking points lace them with keywords to attract libertarian wingnuts who will vociferously repeat the talking points all over the internet. But the ultimate strategic goal is not just to attract the religious devotees of the free market. They are merely a tool. The real goal is to skew search engines so that their denial talking points are viewed by the majority of the public who have spent all of about 15 minutes researching the topic. All they need to do is plant doubt in their minds and buy more inaction. That's right, they are after SEO.

 

So how do you combat this? The old saw "don't feed the trolls" just plays into their strategy. Instead, link them to the truth. Debunk their faked "sciency" disinformation with links from skepticalscience.com and expose the front groups and sock puppets at sourcewatch.org and Joe Romm's excellent blog climateprogress.org Peel back the curtain on how the PR campaign works at desmogblog.com and show the money trail that leads to our elected officials at opensecrets.org  The last thing propaganda campaigns want is daylight.