On Global Warming----The sun is getting a little hotter

[Roger Clough]

On Global Warming----The sun is getting a little hotter

 

Up to the present day, studies of global warming were

based on CO2 levels in the atmosphere, assumed to be caused by

automobiles (the supposed greenhouse effect). 

But more resent studies show that total solar irradiation (TSI) --

solar radiation coming from outside of the atmosphere-  not CO2 levels--

is  the driving force:

 

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/06/soon-and-briggs-global-warming-fanatics-take-note-sunspots-do-impact-climate/

 

 

C02 levels are not reliable indicators of what causes surface

temperature warming (the supposed greenhouse effect) ?

.

Why ? Because some of the CO2 in the atmosphere is there because as the earth warms, the

oceans warm and CO2 gases sare less soluble in warmer water, so fizle out

into the atmosphere. So it is doubtful to say that current levels of CO2

are entirely from automobiles.

 

So current scientific evalutations as in the graph below do not rely on CO2

measurements, they use solar radiation which is not influenced by C02 levels

and relate that instead to surface gtemperatures.

 

The total solar radiation (TSI) is not obtained from measurements made on earth, so

it isn't supposed to include greenshouse gas effects. It is measured these days by satellite,

but is reconconstructed from pre-satellite days (<1979 ) based on a model

based on the number of sunspots.  

 

http://www.aanda.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/aa/abs/2007/19/aa6725-06/aa6725-06.html
 

"Reconstruction of solar total irradiance since 1700 from the surface magnetic flux
N. A. Krivova, L. Balmaceda, and S. K. Solanki

Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, Max-Planck-Str. 2, 37191 Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany
    e-mail: nat...@mps.mpg.de

(Received 9 November 2006 / Accepted 23 February 2007)

Abstract
Context.Total solar irradiance changes by about 0.1% between solar activity maximum and minimum. Accurate measurements of this quantity are only available since 1978 and do not provide information on longer-term secular trends.
Aims.In order to reliably evaluate the Sun's role in recent global climate change, longer time series are, however, needed. They can only be assessed with the help of suitable models.
Methods.The total solar irradiance is reconstructed from the end of the Maunder minimum to the present based on variations of the surface distribution of the solar magnetic field. The latter is calculated from the historical record of the sunspot number using a simple but consistent physical model.
Results.Our model successfully reproduces three independent data sets: total solar irradiance measurements available since 1978, total photospheric magnetic flux since 1974 and the open magnetic flux since 1868 empirically reconstructed using the geomagnetic aa-index. The model predicts an increase in the solar total irradiance since the Maunder minimum of $1.3^{\rm +0.2}_{\rm -0.4}$ Wm-2. "

 

 

Dr. Roger Clough NIST (ret.) 3/30/2013 

"Coincidences are God's way of remaining anonymous."

- Albert Einstein

____________________________________________________________________

 

 

Dr. Roger Clough NIST (ret.) 6/15/2013

See my Leibniz site at

http://team.academia.edu/RogerClough

____________________________________________________________________
DreamMail - The first mail software supporting source tracking  www.dreammail.org

[smi...@zonnet.nl]

Not assumed to be caused, but known to be caused. The science is clear,
it's only that the vast majority of the population is science
illiterate to the point that many people with university degrees in
economics, engineering etc. don't know much about physics and are
susceptible to the same nonsense as most lay persons.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6002/356.full

ABSTRACT

Ample physical evidence shows that carbon dioxide (CO2) is the single
most important climate-relevant greenhouse gas in Earth¡¯s atmosphere.
This is because CO2, like ozone, N2O, CH4, and chlorofluorocarbons,
does not condense and precipitate from the atmosphere at current
climate temperatures, whereas water vapor can and does. Noncondensing
greenhouse gases, which account for 25% of the total terrestrial
greenhouse effect, thus serve to provide the stable temperature
structure that sustains the current levels of atmospheric water vapor
and clouds via feedback processes that account for the remaining 75% of
the greenhouse effect. Without the radiative forcing supplied by CO2
and the other noncondensing greenhouse gases, the terrestrial
greenhouse would collapse, plunging the global climate into an icebound
Earth state.

It often is stated that water vapor is the chief greenhouse gas (GHG)
in the atmosphere. For example, it has been asserted that ¡°about 98%
of the natural greenhouse effect is due to water vapour and stratiform
clouds with CO2 contributing less than 2%¡± (1). If true, this would
imply that changes in atmospheric CO2 are not important influences on
the natural greenhouse capacity of Earth, and that the continuing
increase in CO2 due to human activity is therefore not relevant to
climate change. This misunderstanding is resolved through simple
examination of the terrestrial greenhouse.

The difference between the nominal global mean surface temperature (TS
= 288 K) and the global mean effective temperature (TE = 255 K) is a
common measure of the terrestrial greenhouse effect (GT = TS ¨C TE = 33
K). Assuming global energy balance, TE is also the Planck radiation
equivalent of the 240 W/m2 of global mean solar radiation absorbed by
Earth.

The Sun is the source of energy that heats Earth. Besides direct solar
heating of the ground, there is also indirect longwave (LW) warming
arising from the thermal radiation that is emitted by the ground, then
absorbed locally within the atmosphere, from which it is re-emitted in
both upward and downward directions, further heating the ground and
maintaining the temperature gradient in the atmosphere. This radiative
interaction is the greenhouse effect, which was first discovered by
Joseph Fourier in 1824 (2), experimentally verified by John Tyndall in
1863 (3), and quantified by Svante Arrhenius in 1896 (4). These studies
established long ago that water vapor and CO2 are indeed the principal
terrestrial GHGs. Now, further consideration shows that CO2 is the one
that controls climate change.

CO2 is a well-mixed gas that does not condense or precipitate from the
atmosphere. Water vapor and clouds, on the other hand, are highly
active components of the climate system that respond rapidly to changes
in temperature and air pressure by evaporating, condensing, and
precipitating. This identifies water vapor and clouds as the fast
feedback processes in the climate system.

Radiative forcing experiments assuming doubled CO2 and a 2% increase in
solar irradiance (5) show that water vapor provides the strongest
climate feedback of any of the atmospheric GHGs, but that it is not the
cause (forcing) of global climate change. The response of the climate
system to an applied forcing is determined to be the sum of the direct
(no-feedback) response to the applied forcing and the induced radiative
response that is attributable to the feedback process contributions.
The ratio of the total climate response to the no-feedback response is
commonly known as the feedback factor, which incorporates all the
complexities of the climate system feedback interactions. For the
doubled CO2 and the 2% solar irradiance forcings, for which the direct
no-feedback responses of the global surface temperature are 1.2¡ã and
1.3¡ãC, respectively, the ~4¡ãC surface warming implies respective
feedback factors of 3.3 and 3.0 (5).

Because the solar-thermal energy balance of Earth [at the top of the
atmosphere (TOA)] is maintained by radiative processes only, and
because all the global net advective energy transports must equal zero,
it follows that the global average surface temperature must be
determined in full by the radiative fluxes arising from the patterns of
temperature and absorption of radiation. This then is the basic
underlying physics that explains the close coupling that exists between
TOA radiative fluxes, the greenhouse effect, and the global mean
surface temperature.

An improved understanding of the relative importance of the different
contributors to the greenhouse effect comes from radiative flux
experiments that we performed using Goddard Institute for Space Studies
(GISS) ModelE (6). Figure 1 depicts the essence of these calculations,
including the separation of the greenhouse contributors into feedback
and forcing categories.

In round numbers, water vapor accounts for about 50% of Earth¡¯s
greenhouse effect, with clouds contributing 25%, CO2 20%, and the minor
GHGs and aerosols accounting for the remaining 5%. Because CO2, O3,
N2O, CH4, and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) do not condense and
precipitate, noncondensing GHGs constitute the key 25% of the radiative
forcing that supports and sustains the entire terrestrial greenhouse
effect, the remaining 75% coming as fast feedback contributions from
water vapor and clouds.

We used the GISS 4¡ã ¡Á 5¡ã ModelE to calculate changes in
instantaneous LW TOA flux (annual global averages) in experiments where
atmospheric constituents (including water vapor, clouds, CO2, O3, N2O,
CH4, CFCs, and aerosols) were added to or subtracted from an
equilibrium atmosphere with a given global temperature structure, one
constituent at a time for a 1-year period. Decreases in outgoing TOA
flux for each constituent relative to the empty or the full-component
atmosphere define the bounds for the relative impact on the total
greenhouse effect. Had the overlapping absorption been negligible, the
sum of the flux differences would have been equal to the LW flux
equivalent of the total greenhouse effect (GF = ¦ÒTS^4 ¨C ¦ÒTE^4 = 150
W/m2), where ¦Ò is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant. We found the
single-addition flux differences to be overestimated by a factor of
1.36, whereas in the single-subtraction cases, the sum of the TOA flux
differences was underestimated by a factor of 0.734. By normalizing
these fractional contributions to match the full-atmosphere value of
GF, we obtained the fractional response contributions shown in Fig. 1.

Because of overlapping absorption, the fractional attribution of the
greenhouse effect is to some extent qualitative (as shown by the dashed
and dotted extremum lines in Fig. 1), even though the spectral integral
is a full and accurate determination of the atmospheric greenhouse
strength for the specified global temperature structure. Still, the
fractional attribution is sufficiently precise to clearly differentiate
the radiative flux contributions due to the noncondensable GHGs from
those arising from the fast feedback processes. This allows an
empirical determination of the climate feedback factor as the ratio of
the total global flux change to the flux change that is attributable to
the radiative forcing due to the noncondensing GHGs. This empirical
determination leads then to a climate feedback factor of 4, based on
the noncondensing GHG forcing accounting for 25% of the outgoing flux
reduction at the TOA for the full-constituent atmosphere. This implies
that Earth¡¯s climate system operates with strong positive feedback
that arises from the forcing-induced changes in the condensable species.

A direct consequence of this combination of feedback by the condensable
and forcing by the noncondensable constituents of the atmospheric
greenhouse is that the terrestrial greenhouse effect would collapse
were it not for the presence of these noncondensing GHGs. If the global
atmospheric temperatures were to fall to as low as TS = TE, the
Clausius-Clapeyron relation would imply that the sustainable amount of
atmospheric water vapor would become less than 10% of the current
atmospheric value. This would result in (radiative) forcing reduced by
~30 W/m2, causing much of the remaining water vapor to precipitate,
thus enhancing the snow/ice albedo to further diminish the absorbed
solar radiation. Such a condition would inevitably lead to runaway
glaciation, producing an ice ball Earth.

Claims that removing all CO2 from the atmosphere ¡°would lead to a 1¡ãC
decrease in global warming¡± (7), or ¡°by 3.53¡ãC when 40% cloud cover
is assumed¡± [8] are still being heard. A clear demonstration is needed
to show that water vapor and clouds do indeed behave as fast feedback
processes and that their atmospheric distributions are regulated by the
sustained radiative forcing due to the noncondensing GHGs. To this end,
we performed a simple climate experiment with the GISS 2¡ã ¡Á 2.5¡ã AR5
version of ModelE, using the Q-flux ocean with a mixed-layer depth of
250 m, zeroing out all the noncondensing GHGs and aerosols.

The results, summarized in Fig. 2, show unequivocally that the
radiative forcing by noncondensing GHGs is essential to sustain the
atmospheric temperatures that are needed for significant levels of
water vapor and cloud feedback. Without this noncondensable GHG
forcing, the physics of this model send the climate of Earth plunging
rapidly and irrevocably to an icebound state, though perhaps not to
total ocean freezeover.

The scope of the climate impact becomes apparent in just 10 years.
During the first year alone, global mean surface temperature falls by
4.6¡ãC. After 50 years, the global temperature stands at ¨C21¡ãC, a
decrease of 34.8¡ãC. Atmospheric water vapor is at ~10% of the control
climate value (22.6 to 2.2 mm). Global cloud cover increases from its
58% control value to more than 75%, and the global sea ice fraction
goes from 4.6% to 46.7%, causing the planetary albedo of Earth to also
increase from ~29% to 41.8%. This has the effect of reducing the
absorbed solar energy to further exacerbate the global cooling.

After 50 years, a third of the ocean surface still remains ice-free,
even though the global surface temperature is colder than ¨C21¡ãC. At
tropical latitudes, incident solar radiation is sufficient to keep the
ocean from freezing. Although this thermal oasis within an otherwise
icebound Earth appears to be stable, further calculations with an
interactive ocean would be needed to verify the potential for long-term
stability. The surface temperatures in Fig. 3 are only marginally
warmer than 1¡ãC within the remaining low-latitude heat island.

From the foregoing, it is clear that CO2 is the key atmospheric gas
that exerts principal control over the strength of the terrestrial
greenhouse effect. Water vapor and clouds are fast-acting feedback
effects, and as such are controlled by the radiative forcings supplied
by the noncondensing GHGs. There is telling evidence that atmospheric
CO2 also governs the temperature of Earth on geological time scales,
suggesting the related question of what the geological processes that
control atmospheric CO2 are. The geological evidence of glaciation at
tropical latitudes from 650 to 750 million years ago supports the
snowball Earth hypothesis (9), and by inference, that escape from the
snowball Earth condition is also achievable.

On million-year time scales, volcanoes are the principal source of
atmospheric CO2, and rock weathering is the principal sink, with the
biosphere acting as both source and sink (10). Because the CO2 sources
and sinks operate independently, the atmospheric level of CO2 can
fluctuate. If the atmospheric CO2 level were to fall below its critical
value, snowball Earth conditions can result.

Antarctic and Greenland ice core data show atmospheric CO2 fluctuations
between 180 to 300 parts per million (ppm) over the
glacial-interglacial cycles during the past 650,000 years (11). The
relevant physical processes that turn the CO2 control knob on
thousand-year time scales between glacial and interglacial extremes are
not fully understood, but appear to involve both the biosphere and the
ocean chemistry, including a significant role for Milankovitch
variations of the Earth-orbital parameters.

Besides CO2, methane is another potent greenhouse control knob, being
implicated in the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximummass extinction 55
million years ago, when global warming by up to 5¡ãC (12) occurred
because of a massive release of methane from the disintegration of
seafloor clathrates (13, 14). Methane is the second most important
noncondensing GHG after CO2. Of the 2.9 W/m2 of GHG radiative forcing
from 1750 to 2000, CO2 contributed 1.5 W/m2, methane 0.55 W/m2, and
CFCs 0.3 W/m2, with the rest coming from N2O and ozone (15). All of
these increases in noncondensing GHG forcing are attributable to human
activity (16).

Climate control knobs on the solar side of the energy balance ledger
include the steady growth in luminosity since the beginning of the
Solar System (from about 70% of present luminosity, depending on the
postulated early solar mass loss), as hydrogen is consumed in nuclear
reactions in the solar interior (17, 18). Milankovitch variations of
the Earth-orbital parameters, which alter the relative seasonal
distribution as well as the intensity of incident solar radiation
within the polar regions, are another important solar energy control
knob that is intimately associated with glacial-interglacial cycles of
climate change. For solar irradiance changes over the past several
centuries, an increase by about 0.1 W/m2 is inferred since the time of
the Maunder minimum, based on trends in sunspot activity and other
proxies (19).

Of the climate control knobs relevant to current climate, those on the
solar side of the energy balance ledger show only negligible impact.
Several decades of solar irradiance monitoring have not detected any
long-term trends in solar irradiance beyond the 11-year oscillation
associated with the solar sunspot cycle. Large volcanic eruptions can
happen at any time, but no substantial eruptions have occurred since
the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991.

In a broader perspective, CO2 greenhouses also operate on Mars and
Venus, because both planets possess atmospheres with substantial
amounts of CO2. The atmospheric greenhouse effect requires that a
substantial fraction of the incident solar radiation must be absorbed
at the ground in order to make the indirect greenhouse heating of the
ground surface possible. Greenhouse parameters and relative surface
pressure (PS) for Mars, Earth, and Venus are summarized in Table 1.

Earth is unique among terrestrial planets in having a greenhouse effect
in which water vapor provides strong amplification of the heat-trapping
action of the CO2 greenhouse. Also, N2 and O2, although possessing no
substantial absorption bands of their own, are actually important
contributors to the total greenhouse effect because of
pressure-broadening of CO2 absorption lines, as well as by providing
the physical structure within which the absorbing gases can interact
with the radiation field.

The anthropogenic radiative forcings that fuel the growing terrestrial
greenhouse effect continue unabated. The continuing high rate of
atmospheric CO2 increase is particularly worrisome, because the present
CO2 level of 390 ppm is far in excess of the 280 ppm that is more
typical for the interglacial maximum, and still the atmospheric CO2
control knob is now being turned faster than at any time in the
geological record (20). The concern is that we are well past even the
300- to 350-ppm target level for atmospheric CO2, beyond which
dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system would exceed
the 25% risk tolerance for impending degradation of land and ocean
ecosystems, sea-level rise, and inevitable disruption of socioeconomic
and food-producing infrastructure (21, 22). Furthermore, the
atmospheric residence time of CO2 is exceedingly long, being measured
in thousands of years (23). This makes the reduction and control of
atmospheric CO2 a serious and pressing issue, worthy of real-time
attention.



Citeren Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net>:

>
> On Global Warming----The sun is getting a little hotter
>
> Up to the present day, studies of global warming were
> based on CO2 levels in the atmosphere, assumed to be caused by
> automobiles (the supposed greenhouse effect).
> But more resent studies show that total solar irradiation (TSI) --
> solar radiation coming from outside of the atmosphere- not CO2 levels--
> is the driving force:
>
> http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/06/soon-and-briggs-global-warming-fanatics-take-note-sunspots-do-impact-climate/
>
>
>

> C02 levels are not reliable indicators of what causes surface
> temperature warming (the supposed greenhouse effect) ?
> .
> Why ? Because some of the CO2 in the atmosphere is there because as
> the earth warms, the
> oceans warm and CO2 gases sare less soluble in warmer water, so fizle out
> into the atmosphere. So it is doubtful to say that current levels of CO2
> are entirely from automobiles.
>
> So current scientific evalutations as in the graph below do not rely on CO2
> measurements, they use solar radiation which is not influenced by C02 levels
> and relate that instead to surface gtemperatures.
>
> The total solar radiation (TSI) is not obtained from measurements
> made on earth, so
> it isn't supposed to include greenshouse gas effects. It is measured
> these days by satellite,
> but is reconconstructed from pre-satellite days (<1979 ) based on a model
> based on the number of sunspots.
>
> http://www.aanda.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/aa/abs/2007/19/aa6725-06/aa6725-06.html
>
> "Reconstruction of solar total irradiance since 1700 from the surface
> magnetic flux
> N. A. Krivova, L. Balmaceda, and S. K. Solanki
>

> Max-Planck-Institut f? Sonnensystemforschung, Max-Planck-Str. 2,

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>
>

[Bruno Marchal]

On 15 Jun 2013, at 16:43, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote:

> Not assumed to be caused, but known to be caused.

Hmm.... I agree with the spirit of your post. But we never "known" for
sure, it is still a belief even with serious evidences pointing on
some truth there.

In science we know nothing as such, but some theories are much more
plausible than others, and sometimes they might be true too.


Bruno

>> To post to this group, send email to everything-
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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[spudb...@aol.com]

It's amazing how much damage the Anthropogenic CO2 can do to the Solar Photosphere. ;-)

[meekerdb]

Whenever someone posts an article from a denialist blog like whatsupwiththat which quotes a newspaper opinion piece which purports to quote a scientific paper - instead of directly citing the scientific paper; you know they're trying to pull the wool over your eyes.  The graph below,

which is labelled "Source: University of California-Berkley Earth Surface Temperature Project" is not from that project.  The people running that project know better than to try to cherry pick some variable like "Daylight high temperature in the U.S." to try fit solar radiation.  The whole point of that project was use the most comprehensive possible statistics to estimate the global temperature.  And in spite of the fact that the lead researchers were both sceptical of the IPCC's estimates.  And although they do not include the graph below, they do include this one:





In which a prediction of Earth global average surface temperature based just on CO2 and volcanic activity (and no variation in solar activity) is compared to measured values.  Any comparison to solar irradiance is difficult in any case since prior to satellites we have no reliable data that is not confounded by atmospheric effects.  In fact there is no apparent increase in solar irradiance



Brent

[spudb...@aol.com]

Bret, there was a study from the University of Waterloo which holds, not CO2 but CFC's as the primary villain in AGW. Before this both methane and carbon dust, have been identified as well as your old buddy, CO2. The abatement in global heating may also be coming from the world switching over to natural gas (mee thane  as the UK says it) for electrical generation. Sadly, the abandonment by Germany and Italy since Fukushima 2011, have cause these nukes to be shut down, and their re-started of old coal plants, using US coal. On the CFC evidence, this sort of goes along with the retirement of CFC's from use as a refrigerant in the 1990's, worldwide. The US move to shale gas must be accelerating the cooling of the atmosphere too.

-----Original Message-----
From: meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net>
To: everything-list <everyth...@googlegroups.com>

[Jason Resch]

Coincidentally I came across this wikipage of Freeman Dyson quotes today:

• My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.
  • "Heretical Thoughts about Science and Society", in Edge (8 August 2007)

• I believe global warming is grossly exaggerated as a problem. It's a real problem, but it's nothing like as serious as people are led to believe. The idea that global warming is the most important problem facing the world is total nonsense and is doing a lot of harm. It distracts people's attention from much more serious problems.
  • Interview in Salon (29 September 2007)

• All the books that I have seen about the science and the economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. ... Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion.
  • The New York Review of Books (12 June 2008)

What do others think about his comments?  Are his critiques valid?

Jason

[meekerdb]

On 6/15/2013 3:15 PM, spudb...@aol.com wrote:

Bret, there was a study from the University of Waterloo which holds, not CO2 but CFC's as the primary villain in AGW.

You mean this one:

http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217979213500732

which is pretty thoroughly debunked as mere correlation:

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2013/05/31/qing-bin-lu-revives-debunked-claims-about-cosmic-rays-and-cfcs/

Before this both methane and carbon dust, have been identified as well as your old buddy, CO2. The abatement in global heating may also be coming from the world switching over to natural gas (mee thane  as the UK says it) for electrical generation.

The rest of "the world" may be, but China is continuing to build coal fired plants at a prodigious rate.

Sadly, the abandonment by Germany and Italy since Fukushima 2011, have cause these nukes to be shut down, and their re-started of old coal plants, using US coal. On the CFC evidence, this sort of goes along with the retirement of CFC's from use as a refrigerant in the 1990's, worldwide. The US move to shale gas must be accelerating the cooling of the atmosphere too.

For the increasing CO2 level to NOT cause global warming would imply a revolution in physics; a completely different theory of molecular absorption and emission of radiation.

Brent

No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2013.0.3345 / Virus Database: 3199/6413 - Release Date: 06/15/13

[meekerdb]

On 6/15/2013 3:24 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

Coincidentally I came across this wikipage of Freeman Dyson quotes today:

• My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.
  • "Heretical Thoughts about Science and Society", in Edge (8 August 2007)

He's right that the world is messy.  But climate scientists are out measuring everything they can think of.  And because things are messier than the models doesn't mean they are exaggerating the effects; they can just as well be underestimating the effects.

• 
  

• I believe global warming is grossly exaggerated as a problem. It's a real problem, but it's nothing like as serious as people are led to believe. The idea that global warming is the most important problem facing the world is total nonsense and is doing a lot of harm. It distracts people's attention from much more serious problems.
  • Interview in Salon (29 September 2007)

Since we don't have precise predictions (and such predictions would require predicting what people are going to do) we don't know whether it merely serious or catastrophic. 

• 
  

• All the books that I have seen about the science and the economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. ... Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion.
  • The New York Review of Books (12 June 2008)

That's nonsense.  Environmentalism is not a religion, it's based on evidence of despoiling large parts of the Eartha and on a scientific understanding of the relation of human well being to that of the environment.  It is no more a religion than consumerism - which is the more widely practiced philosophy of life - "Who dies  with the most toys wins" - in the OECD nations and one that is promoted by trillions of dollars in advertising.

Brent

[Jason Resch]

On Sat, Jun 15, 2013 at 6:01 PM, meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net> wrote:

On 6/15/2013 3:24 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

Coincidentally I came across this wikipage of Freeman Dyson quotes today:

• My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.
  • "Heretical Thoughts about Science and Society", in Edge (8 August 2007)

He's right that the world is messy.  But climate scientists are out measuring everything they can think of. 

He makes the point that climat scientists are missing or ignoring important aspects of biology and topsoil, among other things.  From the article:

I will discuss the global warming problem in detail because it is interesting, even though its importance is exaggerated. One of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas. To understand the movement of carbon through the atmosphere and biosphere, we need to measure a lot of numbers. I do not want to confuse you with a lot of numbers, so I will ask you to remember just one number. The number that I ask you to remember is one hundredth of an inch per year. Now I will explain what this number means. Consider the half of the land area of the earth that is not desert or ice-cap or city or road or parking-lot. This is the half of the land that is covered with soil and supports vegetation of one kind or another. Every year, it absorbs and converts into biomass a certain fraction of the carbon dioxide that we emit into the atmosphere. Biomass means living creatures, plants and microbes and animals, and the organic materials that are left behind when the creatures die and decay. We don’t know how big a fraction of our emissions is absorbed by the land, since we have not measured the increase or decrease of the biomass. The number that I ask you to remember is the increase in thickness, averaged over one half of the land area of the planet, of the biomass that would result if all the carbon that we are emitting by burning fossil fuels were absorbed. The average increase in thickness is one hundredth of an inch per year.

The point of this calculation is the very favorable rate of exchange between carbon in the atmosphere and carbon in the soil. To stop the carbon in the atmosphere from increasing, we only need to grow the biomass in the soil by a hundredth of an inch per year. Good topsoil contains about ten percent biomass, [Schlesinger, 1977], so a hundredth of an inch of biomass growth means about a tenth of an inch of topsoil. Changes in farming practices such as no-till farming, avoiding the use of the plow, cause biomass to grow at least as fast as this. If we plant crops without plowing the soil, more of the biomass goes into roots which stay in the soil, and less returns to the atmosphere. If we use genetic engineering to put more biomass into roots, we can probably achieve much more rapid growth of topsoil. I conclude from this calculation that the problem of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem of land management, not a problem of meteorology. No computer model of atmosphere and ocean can hope to predict the way we shall manage our land.

Here is another heretical thought. Instead of calculating world-wide averages of biomass growth, we may prefer to look at the problem locally. Consider a possible future, with China continuing to develop an industrial economy based largely on the burning of coal, and the United States deciding to absorb the resulting carbon dioxide by increasing the biomass in our topsoil. The quantity of biomass that can be accumulated in living plants and trees is limited, but there is no limit to the quantity that can be stored in topsoil. To grow topsoil on a massive scale may or may not be practical, depending on the economics of farming and forestry. It is at least a possibility to be seriously considered, that China could become rich by burning coal, while the United States could become environmentally virtuous by accumulating topsoil, with transport of carbon from mine in China to soil in America provided free of charge by the atmosphere, and the inventory of carbon in the atmosphere remaining constant. We should take such possibilities into account when we listen to predictions about climate change and fossil fuels. If biotechnology takes over the planet in the next fifty years, as computer technology has taken it over in the last fifty years, the rules of the climate game will be radically changed.

When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories. Many of the basic processes of planetary ecology are poorly understood. They must be better understood before we can reach an accurate diagnosis of the present condition of our planet. When we are trying to take care of a planet, just as when we are taking care of a human patient, diseases must be diagnosed before they can be cured. We need to observe and measure what is going on in the biosphere, rather than relying on computer models.

Everyone agrees that the increasing abundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has two important consequences, first a change in the physics of radiation transport in the atmosphere, and second a change in the biology of plants on the ground and in the ocean. Opinions differ on the relative importance of the physical and biological effects, and on whether the effects, either separately or together, are beneficial or harmful. The physical effects are seen in changes of rainfall, cloudiness, wind-strength and temperature, which are customarily lumped together in the misleading phrase “global warming”. In humid air, the effect of carbon dioxide on radiation transport is unimportant because the transport of thermal radiation is already blocked by the much larger greenhouse effect of water vapor. The effect of carbon dioxide is important where the air is dry, and air is usually dry only where it is cold. Hot desert air may feel dry but often contains a lot of water vapor. The warming effect of carbon dioxide is strongest where air is cold and dry, mainly in the arctic rather than in the tropics, mainly in mountainous regions rather than in lowlands, mainly in winter rather than in summer, and mainly at night rather than in daytime. The warming is real, but it is mostly making cold places warmer rather than making hot places hotter. To represent this local warming by a global average is misleading.

The fundamental reason why carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is critically important to biology is that there is so little of it. A field of corn growing in full sunlight in the middle of the day uses up all the carbon dioxide within a meter of the ground in about five minutes. If the air were not constantly stirred by convection currents and winds, the corn would stop growing. About a tenth of all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is converted into biomass every summer and given back to the atmosphere every fall. That is why the effects of fossil-fuel burning cannot be separated from the effects of plant growth and decay. There are five reservoirs of carbon that are biologically accessible on a short time-scale, not counting the carbonate rocks and the deep ocean which are only accessible on a time-scale of thousands of years. The five accessible reservoirs are the atmosphere, the land plants, the topsoil in which land plants grow, the surface layer of the ocean in which ocean plants grow, and our proved reserves of fossil fuels. The atmosphere is the smallest reservoir and the fossil fuels are the largest, but all five reservoirs are of comparable size. They all interact strongly with one another. To understand any of them, it is necessary to understand all of them.

As an example of the way different reservoirs of carbon dioxide may interact with each other, consider the atmosphere and the topsoil. Greenhouse experiments show that many plants growing in an atmosphere enriched with carbon dioxide react by increasing their root-to-shoot ratio. This means that the plants put more of their growth into roots and less into stems and leaves. A change in this direction is to be expected, because the plants have to maintain a balance between the leaves collecting carbon from the air and the roots collecting mineral nutrients from the soil. The enriched atmosphere tilts the balance so that the plants need less leaf-area and more root-area. Now consider what happens to the roots and shoots when the growing season is over, when the leaves fall and the plants die. The new-grown biomass decays and is eaten by fungi or microbes. Some of it returns to the atmosphere and some of it is converted into topsoil. On the average, more of the above-ground growth will return to the atmosphere and more of the below-ground growth will become topsoil. So the plants with increased root-to-shoot ratio will cause an increased transfer of carbon from the atmosphere into topsoil. If the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide due to fossil-fuel burning has caused an increase in the average root-to-shoot ratio of plants over large areas, then the possible effect on the top-soil reservoir will not be small. At present we have no way to measure or even to guess the size of this effect. The aggregate biomass of the topsoil of the planet is not a measurable quantity. But the fact that the topsoil is unmeasurable does not mean that it is unimportant.

At present we do not know whether the topsoil of the United States is increasing or decreasing. Over the rest of the world, because of large-scale deforestation and erosion, the topsoil reservoir is probably decreasing. We do not know whether intelligent land-management could increase the growth of the topsoil reservoir by four billion tons of carbon per year, the amount needed to stop the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. All that we can say for sure is that this is a theoretical possibility and ought to be seriously explored.

 

And because things are messier than the models doesn't mean they are exaggerating the effects; they can just as well be underestimating the effects.

Should we accept policy changes when there are such large gaps in our knowledge?  I would say a similar thing occurred in the 1970s when the US government accepted Ancel Key's unproven and controversial hypothesis (that fat and cholesterol caused heart disease) and made it into a policy recommendation.  Telling people to eat diets low in fat and high in carbohydrates.  Today the evidence suggests heart disease is caused by inflammation (not diets high in fat and cholesterol) and the result of people following government recommendations has been an increase in the incidence of diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.

 

• 
  

• I believe global warming is grossly exaggerated as a problem. It's a real problem, but it's nothing like as serious as people are led to believe. The idea that global warming is the most important problem facing the world is total nonsense and is doing a lot of harm. It distracts people's attention from much more serious problems.
  • Interview in Salon (29 September 2007)

Since we don't have precise predictions (and such predictions would require predicting what people are going to do) we don't know whether it merely serious or catastrophic. 

Over what time frames are the effects projected to be serious or catastrophic?

I ask because if it is well beyond 30 years, it is likely that technology will provide solutions that enable us to adaptively increase or decrease levels of different gases in the atmosphere on demand, and current attempts to address the problem by merely reducing emissions by a few percent aren't going to change anything.  To me that idea seems like like the most naive and unimaginative of technical solutions to the problem.  The problem isn't the level of green house gases, its an unfavorable climate.  We should consider that there are other (possibly far superior) solutions to the problem of an unfavorable climate.

Here are two proposals that would cost pennies on the dollar compared to reducing greenhouse gas emissions:

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2008/sep/04/cloud-seeding-ships-could-combat-climate-change

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/11/05/eco.geoengineering/

Jason

 

• 
  

• All the books that I have seen about the science and the economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. ... Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion.
  • The New York Review of Books (12 June 2008)

That's nonsense.  Environmentalism is not a religion, it's based on evidence of despoiling large parts of the Eartha and on a scientific understanding of the relation of human well being to that of the environment.  It is no more a religion than consumerism - which is the more widely practiced philosophy of life - "Who dies  with the most toys wins" - in the OECD nations and one that is promoted by trillions of dollars in advertising.

Brent

What do others think about his comments?  Are his critiques valid?

Jason

[meekerdb]

On 6/15/2013 5:15 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

The point of this calculation is the very favorable rate of exchange between carbon in the atmosphere and carbon in the soil. To stop the carbon in the atmosphere from increasing, we only need to grow the biomass in the soil by a hundredth of an inch per year. Good topsoil contains about ten percent biomass, [Schlesinger, 1977], so a hundredth of an inch of biomass growth means about a tenth of an inch of topsoil. Changes in farming practices such as no-till farming, avoiding the use of the plow, cause biomass to grow at least as fast as this.

I find this dubious.� Sure the natural biomass/CO2 cycle is huge and so a 1% shift could cancel fossil fuel burning; the problem is that the shift has been going the other way (decreasing the land area used to accumulate biomass, also in Schlesinger 1977) and changing that will require drastic world-wide measures - which deniers like Dyson are going to delay indefinitely by providing excuses as to why no action is necessary.�

Brent

[Russell Standish]

On Sat, Jun 15, 2013 at 08:44:12PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:
> On 6/15/2013 5:15 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
> >The point of this calculation is the very favorable rate of
> >exchange between carbon in the atmosphere and carbon in the soil.
> >To stop the carbon in the atmosphere from increasing, we only need
> >to grow the biomass in the soil by a hundredth of an inch per
> >year. Good topsoil contains about ten percent biomass,
> >[Schlesinger, 1977], so a hundredth of an inch of biomass growth
> >means about a tenth of an inch of topsoil. Changes in farming
> >practices such as no-till farming, avoiding the use of the plow,
> >cause biomass to grow at least as fast as this.
>

> I find this dubious. Sure the natural biomass/CO2 cycle is huge and

> so a 1% shift could cancel fossil fuel burning; the problem is that
> the shift has been going the other way (decreasing the land area
> used to accumulate biomass, also in Schlesinger 1977) and changing
> that will require drastic world-wide measures - which deniers like
> Dyson are going to delay indefinitely by providing excuses as to why
> no action is necessary.
>

I'm not sure that is what Dyson is doing though. If anything, I would
say he is asking for more research into biospheric effects on global
warming.

This is rather different from your average climate change denier who
would prefer that such research was not done at all.

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpc...@hpcoders.com.au
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[meekerdb]

On 6/15/2013 10:16 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

On Sat, Jun 15, 2013 at 08:44:12PM -0700, meekerdb wrote:

On 6/15/2013 5:15 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

The point of this calculation is the very favorable rate of
exchange between carbon in the atmosphere and carbon in the soil.
To stop the carbon in the atmosphere from increasing, we only need
to grow the biomass in the soil by a hundredth of an inch per
year. Good topsoil contains about ten percent biomass,
[Schlesinger, 1977], so a hundredth of an inch of biomass growth
means about a tenth of an inch of topsoil. Changes in farming
practices such as no-till farming, avoiding the use of the plow,
cause biomass to grow at least as fast as this.

I find this dubious. Sure the natural biomass/CO2 cycle is huge and
so a 1% shift could cancel fossil fuel burning; the problem is that
the shift has been going the other way (decreasing the land area
used to accumulate biomass, also in Schlesinger 1977) and changing
that will require drastic world-wide measures - which deniers like
Dyson are going to delay indefinitely by providing excuses as to why
no action is necessary.

I'm not sure that is what Dyson is doing though. If anything, I would
say he is asking for more research into biospheric effects on global
warming.

This is rather different from your average climate change denier who
would prefer that such research was not done at all.

But he's not motivating research by saying global warming is not a big problem and there are more important things to worry about.  And I see not support for his claim that no-till farming will cause "biomass to grow at least as fast" as necessary.  It's certainly not in Schlesinger's paper which is discussing the increase in CO2 due to the loss of world wide biomass.

Brent

[spudb...@aol.com]

I think Dyson is correct. My resentment is from the suspcion that it has been a generated 'rush to judgement.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 16 Jun 2013, at 15:08, Spudb...@aol.com wrote:

I think Dyson is correct. My resentment is from the suspcion that it has been a generated 'rush to judgement.

OK. I can understand. But, locally, we have only one planet here-and-now, so it is a (rare) case where the precaution principle applies, I think. 

Well before anyone get alarmed by the harm we can do to the planet and ourselves, Henry Ford asked why to build car in steel using the non renewable resources for the fuel, when we can do cars entirely with renewable plants (and he proved it, including  the rentability).

So we have plenty of ways to better manage life on this planet, including possible international taxation to offer a living to those exploiting forest, so as to preserve the maximal pool of genes on the planet.

We can do it, so why don't we do it?

Probably because we failed to separate the state from private interests and corporatism.

Maybe people should vote for political programs *only*, then politicians should be man and woman doing a "social service", and would govern following the idea the people voted for, no matter what they have voted themselves.

Something like that. 

But that's for the long run. Today, I don't believe the politics will improve as long as we maintain the criminal prohibition hoax, which makes the whole middle class into hostage of bandits.

Bruno

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com>
To: Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sat, Jun 15, 2013 6:24 pm
Subject: Re: On Global Warming----The sun is getting a little hotter

Coincidentally I came across this wikipage of Freeman Dyson quotes today:

• My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.
  • "Heretical Thoughts about Science and Society", in Edge (8 August 2007)

• I believe global warming is grossly exaggerated as a problem. It's a real problem, but it's nothing like as serious as people are led to believe. The idea that global warming is the most important problem facing the world is total nonsense and is doing a lot of harm. It distracts people's attention from much more serious problems.
  • Interview in Salon (29 September 2007)

• All the books that I have seen about the science and the economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. ... Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion.
  • The New York Review of Books (12 June 2008)

What do others think about his comments?  Are his critiques valid?

Jason

On Sat, Jun 15, 2013 at 5:15 PM, <spudb...@aol.com> wrote:

Bret, there was a study from the University of Waterloo which holds, not CO2 but CFC's as the primary villain in AGW. Before this both methane and carbon dust, have been identified as well as your old buddy, CO2. The abatement in global heating may also be coming from the world switching over to natural gas (mee thane  as the UK says it) for electrical generation. Sadly, the abandonment by Germany and Italy since Fukushima 2011, have cause these nukes to be shut down, and their re-started of old coal plants, using US coal. On the CFC evidence, this sort of goes along with the retirement of CFC's from use as a refrigerant in the 1990's, worldwide. The US move to shale gas must be accelerating the cooling of the atmosphere too.

-----Original Message-----
From: meekerdb <meek...@verizon.net>
To: everything-list <everyth...@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Sat, Jun 15, 2013 1:52 pm
Subject: Re: On Global Warming----The sun is getting a little hotter

Whenever someone posts an article from a denialist blog like whatsupwiththat which quotes a newspaper opinion piece which purports to quote a scientific paper - instead of directly citing the scientific paper; you know they're trying to pull the wool over your eyes.  The graph below,

<mime-attachment.jpeg>

which is labelled "Source: University of California-Berkley Earth Surface Temperature Project" is not from that project.  The people running that project know better than to try to cherry pick some variable like "Daylight high temperature in the U.S." to try fit solar radiation.  The whole point of that project was use the most comprehensive possible statistics to estimate the global temperature.  And in spite of the fact that the lead researchers were both sceptical of the IPCC's estimates.  And although they do not include the graph below, they do include this one:

<agfchgje.png>

In which a prediction of Earth global average surface temperature based just on CO2 and volcanic activity (and no variation in solar activity) is compared to measured values.  Any comparison to solar irradiance is difficult in any case since prior to satellites we have no reliable data that is not confounded by atmospheric effects.  In fact there is no apparent increase in solar irradiance

<ejjgaacb.png>

Brent

On 6/15/2013 6:11 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

On Global Warming----The sun is getting a little hotter

 

Up to the present day, studies of global warming were

based on CO2 levels in the atmosphere, assumed to be caused by

automobiles (the supposed greenhouse effect). 

But more resent studies show that total solar irradiation (TSI) --

solar radiation coming from outside of the atmosphere-  not CO2 levels--

is  the driving force:

 

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/06/soon-and-briggs-global-warming-fanatics-take-note-sunspots-do-impact-climate/

 

<mime-attachment.jpeg>

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Jason Resch]

On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 9:53 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 16 Jun 2013, at 15:08, Spudb...@aol.com wrote:

I think Dyson is correct. My resentment is from the suspcion that it has been a generated 'rush to judgement.

OK. I can understand. But, locally, we have only one planet here-and-now, so it is a (rare) case where the precaution principle applies, I think. 

Well before anyone get alarmed by the harm we can do to the planet and ourselves, Henry Ford asked why to build car in steel using the non renewable resources for the fuel, when we can do cars entirely with renewable plants (and he proved it, including  the rentability).

So we have plenty of ways to better manage life on this planet, including possible international taxation to offer a living to those exploiting forest, so as to preserve the maximal pool of genes on the planet.

We can do it, so why don't we do it?

Probably because we failed to separate the state from private interests and corporatism.

Maybe people should vote for political programs *only*, then politicians should be man and woman doing a "social service", and would govern following the idea the people voted for, no matter what they have voted themselves.

Something like that. 

But that's for the long run. Today, I don't believe the politics will improve as long as we maintain the criminal prohibition hoax, which makes the whole middle class into hostage of bandits.

Good points.  There is actually such a movement in the US for voting on issues directly by the public: http://www.ncid.us/   It seems like passage of such an initiative may be the only way to free ourselves from the current system.  It seems to be little known today, but in the early Roman republic people voted directly on laws themselves (not just their representatives).

Jason

[Bruno Marchal]

On 16 Jun 2013, at 17:28, Jason Resch wrote:

On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 9:53 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 16 Jun 2013, at 15:08, Spudb...@aol.com wrote:

I think Dyson is correct. My resentment is from the suspcion that it has been a generated 'rush to judgement.

OK. I can understand. But, locally, we have only one planet here-and-now, so it is a (rare) case where the precaution principle applies, I think. 

Well before anyone get alarmed by the harm we can do to the planet and ourselves, Henry Ford asked why to build car in steel using the non renewable resources for the fuel, when we can do cars entirely with renewable plants (and he proved it, including  the rentability).

So we have plenty of ways to better manage life on this planet, including possible international taxation to offer a living to those exploiting forest, so as to preserve the maximal pool of genes on the planet.

We can do it, so why don't we do it?

Probably because we failed to separate the state from private interests and corporatism.

Maybe people should vote for political programs *only*, then politicians should be man and woman doing a "social service", and would govern following the idea the people voted for, no matter what they have voted themselves.

Something like that. 

But that's for the long run. Today, I don't believe the politics will improve as long as we maintain the criminal prohibition hoax, which makes the whole middle class into hostage of bandits.

Good points.  There is actually such a movement in the US for voting on issues directly by the public: http://www.ncid.us/   

It seems like passage of such an initiative may be the only way to free ourselves from the current system.  It seems to be little known today, but in the early Roman republic people voted directly on laws themselves (not just their representatives).

Actually, I am not in favor of that (in general). Especially when the media have lost their independence. You can show them a movie or TV show, and makes people voting for any extremities.

You want the death penalty? You do a movie on a sordid serial killer.

 You want do the war against the X, you do the usual propaganda against X, with the usual confusion between "->" and "<-".

 You want Coca Cola illegal, you do ... well, what they did for cannabis. 

Even pools are dangerous and easily manipulable, and such kind of directness can be exploited by those having short term interests. Pools should be illegal some months before election.

 I think we need to give power to some people for some laps of time. People should vote on ideas, with some spectrum for the ways to implement the idea, but also some rules for avoiding corruption or excess of corruption (as democracies cannot avoid them entirely). 

Of course here I criticize direct democraties, like they did implement partially in Switzerland. 

Looking at your link, it is different, but some point there still give me some chilling ... Hmm,  I have to look closer, as this is an attempt to  counteract directly and practically what exists, but then a mention like "Does not modify Congress, the President, or the judicial system" looks disturbing. I don't know. Sometimes the medication makes the disease lasting longer ...

That people can initiate law is nice, though. 

I would like to initiate the prohibition of prohibition. Oops :)

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Jason Resch]

On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 12:04 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 16 Jun 2013, at 17:28, Jason Resch wrote:

On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 9:53 AM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 16 Jun 2013, at 15:08, Spudb...@aol.com wrote:

I think Dyson is correct. My resentment is from the suspcion that it has been a generated 'rush to judgement.

OK. I can understand. But, locally, we have only one planet here-and-now, so it is a (rare) case where the precaution principle applies, I think. 

Well before anyone get alarmed by the harm we can do to the planet and ourselves, Henry Ford asked why to build car in steel using the non renewable resources for the fuel, when we can do cars entirely with renewable plants (and he proved it, including  the rentability).

So we have plenty of ways to better manage life on this planet, including possible international taxation to offer a living to those exploiting forest, so as to preserve the maximal pool of genes on the planet.

We can do it, so why don't we do it?

Probably because we failed to separate the state from private interests and corporatism.

Maybe people should vote for political programs *only*, then politicians should be man and woman doing a "social service", and would govern following the idea the people voted for, no matter what they have voted themselves.

Something like that. 

But that's for the long run. Today, I don't believe the politics will improve as long as we maintain the criminal prohibition hoax, which makes the whole middle class into hostage of bandits.

Good points.  There is actually such a movement in the US for voting on issues directly by the public: http://www.ncid.us/   

It seems like passage of such an initiative may be the only way to free ourselves from the current system.  It seems to be little known today, but in the early Roman republic people voted directly on laws themselves (not just their representatives).

Actually, I am not in favor of that (in general). Especially when the media have lost their independence. You can show them a movie or TV show, and makes people voting for any extremities.

You want the death penalty? You do a movie on a sordid serial killer.

 You want do the war against the X, you do the usual propaganda against X, with the usual confusion between "->" and "<-".

 You want Coca Cola illegal, you do ... well, what they did for cannabis. 

True, but propagandizing a populace is more difficult and expensive than buying a small number of politicians.  Moreover, when the people suffer from the laws they vote for, they are more apt to change them.  With representative government, leaders never want to admit mistakes and the people continue to suffer under bad laws.

 

Even pools are dangerous and easily manipulable, and such kind of directness can be exploited by those having short term interests. Pools should be illegal some months before election.

 I think we need to give power to some people for some laps of time. People should vote on ideas, with some spectrum for the ways to implement the idea, but also some rules for avoiding corruption or excess of corruption (as democracies cannot avoid them entirely). 

Of course here I criticize direct democraties, like they did implement partially in Switzerland. 

Looking at your link, it is different, but some point there still give me some chilling ... Hmm,  I have to look closer, as this is an attempt to  counteract directly and practically what exists, but then a mention like "Does not modify Congress, the President, or the judicial system" looks disturbing. I don't know. Sometimes the medication makes the disease lasting longer ...

The type of initiative system that ncid proposes is quite different from existing initiative programs.  A whole deliberative process is defined where the law and its effects are evaluated, researched, etc. prior to the vote.  There is quite a lot in the details and it is quite interesting.  Here is a short video by the author of the law: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bHEkNtPD4M

 

That people can initiate law is nice, though. 

I would like to initiate the prohibition of prohibition. Oops :)

:-)

What is freedom of speech without freedom of thought?  When we upload ourselves it will be all the more clear that making certain substances illegal is tantamount to making certain computations (thoughts, ways of thinking, and states of consciousness) illegal.

Jason

[Bruno Marchal]

On 17 Jun 2013, at 01:30, Jason Resch wrote:

On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 12:04 PM, Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

snip

 

That people can initiate law is nice, though. 

I would like to initiate the prohibition of prohibition. Oops :)

:-)

What is freedom of speech without freedom of thought?  When we upload ourselves it will be all the more clear that making certain substances illegal is tantamount to making certain computations (thoughts, ways of thinking, and states of consciousness) illegal.

Yes, but we will have to do that. You would certainly not appreciate that I copy you, without noticing to you, and reconstitute you in my super-mac machine, and torture "you", without your consent. You will even less appreciate that my lawyer defends me by saying: "---oh but that is just "running a computation" which in any case already exist in arithmetic". The problem is that by implementing it, I make it relatively "normal" (in the Gaussian sense) to you, and your suffering will be statistically stable from your point of view. So I think you will agree that some computations, done without consent (but that's part of that computation) will and should be illegal.

Freedom of thought and mind do have some limit. Freedom of speech too, like defamation, bullying, all those sort of violence is usually illegal, for not bad reasons, I think. 

Now, we should not penalize non violent crimes, and as nobody complains about the "salvia computation", there should be no reason to make such computation illegal, but again, we cannot dose people, that is,  making them live a computation without their consent (which is the main golden rule). For some people salvia is a bit like a torture ...

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

[Alberto G. Corona]

"Ample physical evidence shows that carbon dioxide (CO2) is the single most important climate-relevant greenhouse gas in Earth¡¯s atmosphere"

 

First phrase, first lie. The single most important climate-relevant blah blah blah is water vapour,  not CO2 by a great margin. It makes about 90% of the global warming effect.

 

I mean that this is a lie because they supposedly are scientists and they must know it.

 

Anyway, this is bad news for those that, like me, receive  Exxon checks, we need more antropogenic alarmists  ;))))

 

This list is becoming truly about  everything.

2013/6/15 <spudb...@aol.com>

--
Alberto.

[Alberto G. Corona]

Can we stop talking about religion?

2013/6/18 Alberto G. Corona <agoc...@gmail.com>

--
Alberto.

[meekerdb]

On 6/18/2013 4:21 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

"Ample physical evidence shows that carbon dioxide (CO2) is the single most important climate-relevant greenhouse gas in Earth¡¯s atmosphere"

 

First phrase, first lie. The single most important climate-relevant blah blah blah is water vapour,  not CO2 by a great margin. It makes about 90% of the global warming effect.

Water has the greatest greenhouse effect, but that doesn't mean it is 'most important' in determining climate.  Water vapor in the atmosphere stays very nearly in equilibrium with ocean surface temperature, so it is a feedback factor not a driver.

Brent