[alancalverd]

Since 1998 it has not warmed up. This is despite more CO2 being produced than their most extreme predictions.

I would be delighted to promote or take issue with this statement, or its converse, if anyone would tell me what "it" is and how it was measured. These are the most fundamental questions of any scientific discussion, yet when it comes to climate change, nobody ever answers them.

AFAIK the only worthwhile data we have are the Vostok ice cores, which clearly show CO2 concentrations following, not leading, the local temperature, for hundreds of thousands of years, and some recent Mauna Loa data that shows the same effect north of the Equator for the last 50 years.

Being a mere scientist, I look at this real data and hypothesise that temperature determines CO2, but clearly minds that think themselves greater than mine are not impressed by facts or motivated by honesty.

[alancalverd]

If you change mass or energy from one form to another according to the first law, you get entropy according to the second law.

You seem to have a consistent problem distinguishing between "first" and "second". This may explain why you think CO2 affects global temperature, when the historic evidence shows otherwise.

You might think us bored and boring old scientists are being unnecessarily pedantic, but athletes also consider the difference between first and second to be significant, and lawyers depend on sequence to establish causality and liability.

[Craig W. Thomson]

Being a mere scientist, I look at this real data and hypothesise that temperature determines CO2, but clearly minds that think themselves greater than mine are not impressed by facts or motivated by honesty.

How dare you compare me to a climate change skeptic. I'm all about facts, I'm tired of the dishonesty about climate change. Most of it is promulgated by corporate interests, and there are a lot of corporate scientists in public forums. Lots of them like to cast doubt on the opinions of people like me. Yeah, I don't have a degree, but I'm not clueless. I know my science.

Being a mere smart guy who is interested in science, I see these data and picture Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Like I said, he was the one leading, but they stayed within the parameters of the dance floor. They didn't go flying up into the rafters.

According to those Vostok ice core sample, when there aren't 7.125 billion people blazing through fossil fuels, carbon dioxide and temperature MOVE IN LOCKSTEP, and they STAY WITHIN CERTAIN PARAMETERS.

Incidentally, those parameters include 320 parts per million as a RECORD HIGH CO2 content over the last 800,000 years. Now, we're "up in the rafters" far above the dance floor, at over 400 parts per million, and the news media keep reporting record high temperatures. That's no coincidence.

So, all this nitpicking gets on my nerves. CO2 is leading, temperature is leading, who cares? There's still a problem that needs to be addressed. I don't believe nitpicking about which came first, the chicken or the egg, is important. Eggs come from chickens. Chickens come from eggs. Those two processes can't be separated. Acting like they are two separate things is silly.

Using combustion to produce heat also produces carbon dioxide that, added to the carbon dioxide that already exists, increase the atmosphere's ability to retain the heat produced by that same combustion process. That makes it warmer, melting permafrost, releasing more CO2, which makes it still warmer, so we turn up the air conditioning, etc. Eggs, chickens, eggs, more chickens, more eggs, even more chickens, etc. That is a fact, no matter how many hairs you split, no matter how many science degrees I don't have, or you do have. This is clearly a feedback loop, and that is dangerous.

[Bored chemist]

No, the 1st law has nothing to do with entropy.

Nonsense. The first law states that mass and energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed from one form to the other, and the second law states that when you do that, there is entropy, or increased disorder in the system.

In other words, burn stuff, and you get disorder. The first and second laws are inextricably linked. That's what the carbon dioxide is: Entropy. All that solar energy and CO2 was bound up in fossil fuels, burning them released it, dissipating not just heat, but distributing carbon dioxide throughout the atmosphere. That's entropy. Learn it correctly, or quit chiming in, flat earther.

Ok, so here's the first law (from wiki)
"First law of thermodynamics: When energy passes, as work, as heat, or with matter, into or out from a system, its internal energy changes in accord with the law of conservation of energy. Equivalently, perpetual motion machines of the first kind are impossible."
Now where does that mention entropy?
Well, clearly it doesn't.

and what I said as that the 1st law has northing to do with entropy.
And guess what! it hasn't.

Source: https://www2.estrellamountain.edu/faculty/farabee/BIOBK/BioBookEner1.html

First Law of Thermodynamics: Energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed. The total amount of energy and matter in the Universe remains constant, merely changing from one form to another.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that "in ALL [emphasis mine] energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state." This is also commonly referred to as entropy.

So, you're wrong again. If you change mass or energy from one form to another according to the first law, you get entropy according to the second law. Apply combustion to fossil fuels, you get entropy. Despite your protests, the two processes are inextricably linked.

The classic example is the burning log. You don't actually lose any mass/energy when you burn a log, the total is still the same, but you lose the potential to do work. You dissipate heat, ashes and smoke into the environment, and those are less usable forms of mass and energy, being in a diffuse state. It would take more energy than you got burning the log to collect all that mass and energy back together into a log. That's the essence of the entropy law. When you apply combustion to fossil fuels, dissipated heat and carbon dioxide in the environment is part of the entropy. All the mass and energy are still there, but they are now in more diffuse, less usable forms.

Guess again; here's the 2nd law together with the bit that says that reversible processes don't have an entropy change.

The second law of thermodynamics states that for a thermodynamically defined process to actually occur, the sum of the entropies of the participating bodies must increase. In an idealized limiting case, that of a reversible process, this sum remains unchanged.

But that's not the point.
Do you realise that the first law is different from the second.
Only one of the laws (never mind the processes) is about entropy
And, since it was the laws we were talking about, you remain wrong.


Re. "How dare you compare me to a climate change skeptic. I'm all about facts,"
No, you quite plainly are not.
every time someone points this out, you ignore it.
For example, all this stuff about entropy is beside the point- at least some combustion reactions(of natural gas, for example) reduce net entropy- it's just that you don't understand this.
Anyway I'm off for Easter - I won't post so much.
I anticipate that you will still be wrong IN BLOCK CAPITALS when I get back.

[Craig W. Thomson]

You seem utterly unable  to read

You seem unable to do math. 15,000/15,000 plus 1/15,000 DOES NOT equal 15,000/15,000.

[Craig W. Thomson]

Do you realise that the first law is different from the second.
Only one of the laws (never mind the processes) is about entropy
And, since it was the laws we were talking about, you remain wrong.

No, I am not wrong. You can't transform mass to energy or energy to mass according to the first law without getting entropy according to the second, EVER. Yes, they are listed as two laws, but they don't operate outside each other's realms. They have everything to do with one another. You can't get entropy without some sort of mass/energy conversion, and you can't perform mass/energy conversion without producing entropy.

If you're saying anything other than that, YOU are wrong. In fact, you said, "Never mind the processes." That's about the most unscientific thing you could possibly say... except you followed that by saying, "some combustion reactions(of natural gas, for example) reduce net entropy." FALSE. That's a blatant violation of the 2nd law. Natural gas is concentrated in reserves, we take that out of the ground, put it in thousands of trucks, ship it around the world, turn it into dissipated heat and waste products that spread throughout the atmosphere. That's taking mass/energy that was in an ordered state and making it so diffuse that it is no longer useful to do work, otherwise known as "entropy."

You are so wrong it's not even funny anymore.

[Bored chemist]

In the real world the 1st law doesn't mention entropy and that's what I said- so I'm still right.
I was also right about CAPITALS becaause you said "FALSE. That's a blatant violation of the 2nd law."
Actually it's not a violation at all.
You are denying the facts about entropy- like I said- you don't understand it.
Combustion of methane produces a net reduction in entropy.
Here is the calculation for you
http://digipac.ca/chemical/mtom/contents/chapter5/chap5_4.htm
It's aimed at students.


So
STOP SAYING THINGS THAT ARE NOT TRUE; YOU ARE UNDERMINING THE ARGUMENTS ABOUT CLIMATE. CHANGE.

[Bored chemist]

You seem utterly unable  to read

You seem unable to do math. 15,000/15,000 plus 1/15,000 DOES NOT equal 15,000/15,000.

I didn't actually say that did I.
Strawman again.
You really are acting like the denialists.

[Craig W. Thomson]

Combustion of methane produces a net reduction in entropy.
Here is the calculation for you
http://digipac.ca/chemical/mtom/contents/chapter5/chap5_4.htm
It's aimed at students.

So
STOP SAYING THINGS THAT ARE NOT TRUE; YOU ARE UNDERMINING THE ARGUMENTS ABOUT CLIMATE. CHANGE.

PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH, HYPOCRITE.

Read at the top of the page you just posted, where it says this in the gray boxed area:

"Second Law of Thermodynamics ... In any change, the entropy of the universe must increase."

That includes the combustion of methane, flat earther. That is the act of taking apart a complex, high energy molecule to get the energy, leaving you with less complex molecules in more stable forms. For someone so arrogant with a science degree, you have some huge gaps in your knowledge. It's pretty sad a layman like me has to point that out.

[Craig W. Thomson]

You seem utterly unable  to read

You seem unable to do math. 15,000/15,000 plus 1/15,000 DOES NOT equal 15,000/15,000.

I didn't actually say that did I.
Strawman again.
You really are acting like the denialists.

From Wikipedia: "A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not advanced by that opponent."

There is no straw man here. You said we're only adding about 1/15,000 of the solar heat budget, and you said that's "inconsequential," attributing warming to CO2 alone. I say you're oversimplifying. Warming from combustion IS a factor. YOU'RE acting like denialists. Again, even cavemen understood that burning stuff creates heat, and that burning lots of stuff creates even more heat. That heat doesn't just disappear as if by magic. It is trapped by the atmosphere, which has properties and contents that want to trap the heat produced by combustion, even if we use scrubbers to remove all the CO2 before it escapes into the atmosphere. We're STILL putting a hundred million years worth of stored solar energy back into the system by applying combustion to fossil fuels, and that's NOT inconsequential AT ALL.

Personally, I think this is specifically BECAUSE of your education. I'm almost tempted to cut you some slack because you're a specialist. You see the chemistry side of things, and you're used to dealing with small, closed systems. That's why you would say something silly like, "Methane combustion reduces entropy." That's why you're focused on things like carbon dioxide in your "what is leading what" arguments, ignoring the mass that changed to heat and dissipated into the environment in combustion reactions. Heat is actually the same thing as light, or electromagnetic energy, or photons. Photons and mass/energy conversion/transfer are more in the realm of physics. You likely have a better understanding of chemistry than I do in general and in far greater detail, but I did take 8 hours of biology for majors, plus, I actually took 8 hours of college physics courses, so I know how the periodic table of elements works, I know how elements get their properties, I can draw a DNA molecule model from memory, double bonds, weak hydrogen bonds, phosphate groups, pentose sugars and all, I know how that DNA builds the plants and animals that become fossil fuels, I could roughly sketch a chlorphyll molecule built in a daisy shape with a Magnesium atom in the middle that absorbs photons, I know how chloroplasts store that energy as mass/binding energy that holds together complex molecules like sugar as per photosynthesis, I know how high energy molecules like those are broken apart to free the binding energy of those photons in combustion, cellular respiration and digestion, I know that one of the properties of carbon dioxide molecules is that they have a tendency to absorb and re-emit infrared radiation, I understand that process is random for each carbon dioxide molecule, so statistically almost half of those emissions would be in a direction back toward Earth's surface, plus, I've been reading all sorts of science books for almost 40 years now in addition to my college biol/phys credits. There's more to climate change than just chemistry. I'm not sure if you can see that, and I think if you did, we might not be having this debate in the first place.

[Tim the Plumber]

Thanks to Alancard and B.chemist.

In order to try to get this thread out of the time wasting but very needed destruction of psudo-science drivel I will try to set out some sort of claims which you can challenge, us being on the opposite side of the warmist/skeptic arguments.

The IPCC's predictions in the AR4 report were based on the 1998 hockey stick graph (it made it to the front cover) and had a range of predictions between (I think) +1c and +4.2c. These were from pre industrial temperatures. Why they chose the little ice age as the best climate for the world is s different point...

Since 1998 it has not warmed up. This is despite more CO2 being produced than their most extreme predictions.

Given that I feel it is reasonable to say (this is the claim) that the top half of the IPCC's range of predictions can be discounted, forgotten. Do you agree or not?

No, I don't agree, and nor do the data.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2014/13/supplemental/page-4
But this is still more useful, and more interesting  than talking about entropy with someone who clearly doesn't understand it..

Since your chosen data set has a trend of +1f per century for the period since 1998 I would call that as close to nothing as makes no difference.

So given that amount of warming about 0.5c (I think) by 2100 would be at the bottom or below the bottom of the IPCC's poredictions. Why do you think that this is at all alarming?

And again why can we not narrow down the range of predictions by now?

[Tim the Plumber]

Er.. no. If the temperature of the cold bits of the ocean was reduced it would expand, as you say because of the weird characteristics of water.

I was actually seeing if he could divide the volume of ice melt by the surface area of the ocean.

Ice is less dense than water, it actually EXPANDS when it gets colder. Water takes up more space when frozen into a crystal lattice.

I know how to do long division, plus I have a calculator. You don't have any business testing anyone until you understand this subject better yourself.

Then kindly demonstrate your ability to work out how much sea level rise would happen due to 200 km³ of ice melting. [2]

[Tim the Plumber]

Since 1998 it has not warmed up. This is despite more CO2 being produced than their most extreme predictions.

I would be delighted to promote or take issue with this statement, or its converse, if anyone would tell me what "it" is and how it was measured. These are the most fundamental questions of any scientific discussion, yet when it comes to climate change, nobody ever answers them.

AFAIK the only worthwhile data we have are the Vostok ice cores, which clearly show CO2 concentrations following, not leading, the local temperature, for hundreds of thousands of years, and some recent Mauna Loa data that shows the same effect north of the Equator for the last 50 years.

Being a mere scientist, I look at this real data and hypothesise that temperature determines CO2, but clearly minds that think themselves greater than mine are not impressed by facts or motivated by honesty.

Well yes but you will not convince anybody who wishes to believe in the great climate change terror by that argument.

Climate can clearly be measured. Understanding that it is silly to measure it to thousanths of a degree involves having enough imagination to be in the skeptic camp in the first place.

In order to kill off this hideously evil bad science it will be necessary to actually get the other side to debate their big points and try to justify them. Onlyh when they are unable to do so is there a chance of changing their mind. Appealing for scientific rigor is not worth the effort.

[Tim the Plumber]

You seem utterly unable  to read

You seem unable to do math. 15,000/15,000 plus 1/15,000 DOES NOT equal 15,000/15,000.

Yes it does. It equals 1.

Wow!!!! You realy neveer did any maths at all did you?

Try it on your calculator.

[alancalverd]

Not on my calculator. Nor I hope on anyone else's.

15,000/15,000 + 1/15,000 = 15,001/15,000 = 1.00007 or thereabouts

Whether the 0.00007 is significant is, of course, another matter.

[alancalverd]

According to those Vostok ice core sample, when there aren't 7.125 billion people blazing through fossil fuels, carbon dioxide and temperature MOVE IN LOCKSTEP, and they STAY WITHIN CERTAIN PARAMETERS.

1. If you look closely, you will see that temperature leads by about 5 - 800 years, always. Lockstep, yes, CO2 causality, no.

2. A parameter is a measure, not a limit. Please do not misuse scientific language.

CO2 is leading, temperature is leading, who cares?

Scientists. It's how we distinguish between cause and effect.

But since you care so little for science, let's turn to literature. T S Eliot (The Wasteland) said "The last temptation is the greatest treason - to do the right thing for the wrong reason." I dare you to disagree!

 

[jeffreyH]

Be warned Alan. You are challenging a man with a vast skill set and a high IQ.

[alancalverd]

That would be a rare and welcome pleasure. Pope Urban VIII, Caiaphas, Lysenko, Goebbels, and many other malign figures in history possesed these qualities. Fortunately, science requires neither: it's all about beng humble in the face of evidence. And I don't think any correspondent in this forum can close his argument with a death sentence.

[Tim the Plumber]

That would be a rare and welcome pleasure. Pope Urban VIII, Caiaphas, Lysenko, Goebbels, and many other malign figures in history possesed these qualities. Fortunately, science requires neither: it's all about beng humble in the face of evidence. And I don't think any correspondent in this forum can close his argument with a death sentence.

That is the best definition of a decent scientist I have ever heard. Obviously being clever is an advantage but the first thing required is the humility to say "I don't know".

I might be too thick to get entroy or how to work the square root of minus one, two of thereasons I droped out of a mech eng degree, but at least I know that I don't have all the answers.

[Craig W. Thomson]

But since you care so little for science, let's turn to literature.

It takes a pretty crappy moderator to flame someone so blatantly.

I love science, and I respect scientists. It's the arrogant blowhards that I have a problem with. Even when I say things I learned from a professor who worked for NASA for 30 years, even when I post direct quotes out of a book written by a PhD, somebody tells me I am wrong. Guess what? I didn't get good grades in the science courses I DID take in college by failing to understand the subject matter, and I didn't take them as electives because I dislike science when I could have taken blowoff courses instead.

http://glossynews.com/author/cwthomson/ <--- I write my own literature. I minored in English composition, not reading other people's stuff.

Again, I'm a smart guy with a solid education. In my estimation, you're a public nuisance, not an expert. You might like science, but you obviously disdain science hobbyists in public forums, even when they are fighting the "good fight" to save humanity from their own screwups, a.k.a. anthropogenic climate change.

That's your problem. But that's not all. You have another problem. You don't use the scientific method. That applies not only to your climate change comments, but your lies about me as well.  Of course I care a great deal for science. You can suck it for suggesting otherwise, moderator or not.

So, kick me out now for expressing myself. That's how this usually goes, right? A moderator and a couple of jerkfaces spread discontent, I react to the flaming, I pay the price, everyone else gets to keep spreading misinformation because I wasn't polite enough. Whatever.

Is there ONE physics forum out there NOT full of jokers?