Newsnight convinces the numpties

[chazwin]

If you were watching Newsnight on 16/11/09 then
you have just witnessed the cheapest conjuring trick ever devised by
TV. Not even Derren Brown could have pulled off such a feat. ALL the
dopes on the set were bowled over.
Here is what happened---
Introduce a large amount of CO2 into an empty water bottle and watch
the temperature soar!!
But what you saw was quite simply a lie.
Not one serious sceptic denies that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the
argument is if it IS A SIGNIFICANT greenhouse gas. The mount of CO2
that was put into the bottle, which incidentally only increased the
temperature by 4 degrees, if extrapolated to the earth atmosphere
would require the burning 10 times the amount of coal and oil that now
exists on earth.
The simple fact is that there is only 0.038% of CO2 in the atmosphere
and has only increased by 0,01% in over 100 years. This is what is
called a TRACE amount. The amount used in the "experiment" was massive
by comparison.
In the "experiment" no one stood by to assess the amount of CO2 that
the nice science lady had spent time generating, but if you dump a
spoonful of bicarb into vinegar you could easily introduce a
significant percentage into a 5 litre empty bottle.
THis was a cheap trick and totally unworthy of the BBC which seems to
have joined the faithful throng, by toeing the government line that is
being uses as yet another excuse to tax, tax and tax again.

[archytas]

The Beeb is very weak on science generally Chaz. I can't remember any
significant showing on television of the climate change science - the
real stuff. I can remember a good summarising book back in 1994 by
Hubert Lamb, but since then I've given up on the media coverage.
There are eight potential greenhouse gases of any significance, but
the key issue should be about climate stability and serious questions
about the quality of human life and what we can establish about past
ecocides and learn from them. Newsnight is generally a spent force -
the last good stuff from them I saw was the Nico Bento case and they
stopped short on the real questions in that. The general shit they
give us follows the same tired format of a few differing opinions that
could never go anywhere. It's all as scientific as a story of post-
apocalypse stuff in which I have 'space-workers' returning to Earth
seeing the venting effects of intentionally controlled ozone holes at
the poles. All we can know for certain is the reporters get fat
salaries.

[chazwin]

It was amazing to watch though. It makes me feel a bit creeped-out
over how easily people were swayed by a couple of empty water bottles,
a thermometer and a desk light - scary stuff.
Have you seen my other posting about the evidence for CO2 on this NG?
I have posted in across 3 other NGs. The responses have been
shockingly disappointing. All answers fall into a few categories:
insults, pasting irrelevant shit from various website, accusations of
right wing politics, support by the right, accusation of using
difficult language, mis-understanding of the question both deliberate
and not, one or two argumentum ad verecundium, and just plain anger.
But nothing of substance!
They have already made up their minds about GW, but none of them have
yet asked the most basic question.
If I ever needed any evidence that science was a religion then here it
is. It has its orthodoxy and its heretics, but none of them can prove
the existence of god, and there god is that 0.038% of CO2 in the
atmosphere is going to kill us all, whist the heretics "know" it is
bullshit.
Personally I don't know, but want to find out.

[archytas]

In May 1859, six months before the publication of On the Origin of
Species, Irish physicist John Tyndall proved that some gases have a
remarkable capacity to hang onto heat, so demonstrating the physical
basis of the greenhouse effect. He was familiar with the notion of the
"greenhouse effect", first mooted in the 1770s and developed in the
1820s by Frenchman Joseph Fourier, one-time secret policeman, governor
of Egypt and physicist. Fourier pondered the question of why the Earth
was warmer than physics suggested it should be, and concluded that
while the light from the sun penetrated the atmosphere easily and
heated the Earth, the heat radiated by the Earth couldn't pass back
through the atmosphere quite so easily. He suspected that the
atmosphere blocked the passage of radiant heat - infrared radiation -
from the Earth, preventing its escape into space. A few years later,
another Frenchman, Claude Pouillet, speculated that certain gases in
the atmosphere were responsible for trapping radiant heat. The BBC
'experiment' was a piss-ant repro of this stuff.
"On the origin of 'the greenhouse effect': John Tyndall's 1859
interrogation of nature" by Mike Hulme (Weather, vol 64, p 121). Mike
Hulme's new book Why We Disagree About Climate Change is published a
couple of months ago by Cambridge University Press.
Your basic concern is that the small amounts of CO2 in percentage
terms are claimed to have such a big effect, let's say like a tenth of
a teaspoon of lemonade screwing a decent Riocha into Sangria. A fair
question. But what do we know of the complex spreadsheets about
global temperature and how these molecules absorb radiation and at
what frequencies and so on? We'd grant that small changes sometimes
create big ones, that catalytic presence is often 'trace' and so on.
If CO2 was removed from the atmosphere, only 15% less infrared would
be absorbed. If CO2 was the only greenhouse gas, it would absorb 26%
of the infrared currently absorbed by the atmosphere. A simplified
summary is that about 50% of the greenhouse effect is due to water
vapour, 25% due to clouds, 20% to CO2, with other gases accounting for
the remainder. The question remains as to how the 'piss-ant' levels
of CO2 can make such significant difference.

The spreadsheet is complex, as what's in the atmosphere overlap in
terms of what they take out. We assume the water-cycle is stable, but
the CO2 one ain't. The question becomes how much energy the CO2
absorbs that other atmospheric components won't, which can be worked
out from the tonnage we can measure and what we know of it chemically
as an absorber. This retained energy is assumed to have effects and
so we can see what could cascade. I assume the shit spreads out
(Boyle) as a bubble, and the thicker it is, the more heat is retained,
at least in certain bits of the atmosphere, which is complex.
We know a 10 degree rise more or less doubles chemical reactions, so
should be worried if these trace amounts have significant effects and
unlike the water-cycle are building because the balances don't work.
If they have the 20% figure right - that is already a serious effect
based on 'trace' levels, so small increases in parts per million are
serious.

The general problem in this area and many others is that there is
science, but we need a lot of background to understand it. It's much
easier for most to go with the media crap and take sides rather than
learn. I'm reminded a lot of the creationist twaddle in all this, say
with some cretin asking 'where are the transition fossils' because he
read some 100 year old turkey entrails and hasn't read the growing
evidence. This is not a tilt at you mate - I suspect we are both
exasperated because people with the resources to draw up a convincing
picture and let us ask our questions let us down. Some serious
scientists remain unconvinced and I certainly don't think I'm in the
know. The patronising Beeb can engage in sex and travel. I go with
Lomberg at the moment in believing the carbon stuff is a sideshow, at
least in the way we are treating it.

On 16 Dec, 23:27, chazwin <chazwy...@yahoo.com> wrote:

[Georges Metanomski]

--- On Mon, 12/21/09, chazwin <chaz...@yahoo.com> wrote:

=================

G:
Have a look at
http://findgeorges.com/ROOT/WRITINGS/ESSAYS/global_warming.html

On the other hand, I started the thread "Second Enlightenment" which,
after a few of historical introductory posts is supposed to
deal with manipulation and conditioning of masses. If you feel like
it, watch thge introductions and join the discussion of the concluding
post "Second Enlightenment (S4, S5).

Georges.
===============

[chazwin]

Well that is the best answer yet.
I'm all for restricting the usage of fossil fuels and always have
been. It does not really matter if we have reached peak levels - we
will at some point and we are nowhere near ready to live without them.
As well as conservation there is the serious problem of pollution.
My difficulty with the whole 'debate' is that CO2 is a one trick pony
solution to a much wider and more important set of issues. There are
far more potentially dangerous 'solutions' than is suggested by the
problem in the first place - Such things as the further destruction
of rainforests to re-plant with so-called 'bio-fuels' seems more
harmful in comparison to what its limited scope could ever solve; the
expense and inefficiency of other alternatives such as wind, and the
growing movement towards nuclear power which has its own problems and
inevitably will soon be demanded by many other countries world-wide to
compensate for their restrictions on CO2 usage; countries whose
standards for monitoring and safety might be be as good as out own (as
bad as they are!).
In political terms I see a new criterion for massive taxation, a tax
regime which can be used to re-pay the current recession/depression

[archytas]

Now, you are spot on Chaz. The CO2 'debate' after the basic science
is one of wit between unarmed opponents. Indeed, a one trick pony.
You'd get support from MIT specialists on that and from Lomberg's more
economic analysis and Diamond's social history of ecocides. We have
to ask why the science is so deeply hidden 'even' from me and you.
There are other questions as to our expectations of the science, lack
of understanding of approximation in it, the role of very basic
concepts still not understood widely and of argument meant to be
defeasible amongst people genuinely stating what they believe and the
evidence. I'd even say we miss the whole point of the green argument
as attempting to produce as sustainable economics in place of casino
capitalism, whether run under democratic or state dictatorship myths.
Einstein worked with the results of a lot of small-scale experiments
and with the grand theories, concluding that if one trusted the
experiments and the theories, something had to give - this being an
under-pinning kinematics. He didn't invent 'relativity', this was
already in the mix. More than 100 years on, most of us have no clue
about Maxwell, the relativity in Galileo and Newton and how to do the
thinking he and others did. We are generally as clueless on green
science. I doubt we can hope for a widespread enlightenment through
public grasp of the science - Sue keeps turning up articles with it in
that are as old as the hills. Think of how many turkeys still think
relativity was a 'new paradigm', yet have no clue of the real science
involved. Of the green couple somewhere in Cornwall (beloved of BBC
numpties) who are well-meaning but can't grasp the scale. I think the
science works approximately, but is used as a 'great white hope' -
just the kind of thing the votaries need to avoid the real problems.
They use it in much the same way as they use 'crime' to gain political
leverage through promises that never merge into practice.