[agyejy]

So going by those numbers if the measured warming is 0.8 °C only 0.008 °C came from waste heat which is well below the level that it can be measured. The generation of waste heat is simply not currently relevant to climate change.

I am trying to keep this simple.

Applying combustion to 100 million years worth of fossil fuels produces both heat and carbon dioxide.

SOMETHING about that is causing anthropogenic climate change.

Can we at least agree on that?? Unlike some other discussions I had with you at physforum.com, I appreciate your comments this time. However, I don't care so much about nitpicking the details. I'm concerned about the overall trend.

How is ignoring variables that have no actually measurable impact less simple than including them? If you include them you complicate the math and the explanations bringing a whole bunch of science you wouldn't otherwise have to reference. That just doesn't seem simpler to me at all. Also, we have fairly conclusive evidence the CO2 is the source of anthropogenic climate change from models that completely ignore human waste heat. Why should we complicate those preexisting models with extra parameters that have no measurable impact on the results? The trend clearly comes from the CO2 and any correlation to total human energy use is because a majority of our energy use also results in the release of CO2.

[Craig W. Thomson]

How is ignoring variables that have no actually measurable impact less simple than including them? If you include them you complicate the math and the explanations bringing a whole bunch of science you wouldn't otherwise have to reference. That just doesn't seem simpler to me at all. Also, we have fairly conclusive evidence the CO2 is the source of anthropogenic climate change from models that completely ignore human waste heat. Why should we complicate those preexisting models with extra parameters that have no measurable impact on the results? The trend clearly comes from the CO2 and any correlation to total human energy use is because a majority of our energy use also results in the release of CO2.

I don't know how to explain this to you any differently than I already have, so let me repeat my stance.

I am a layman, not an actual scientist. On the other hand, I've been interested in studying science in some capacity at least since the 4th grade, when free issues of Current Science handed out in class got me interested in things like black holes and DNA. That was the 1978-1979 school year. After that, I took every math and science course possible in Rock Springs, Wyoming and Merkel, Texas in Junior High and High School, graduating with honors. Maybe that's not saying much, but since then, I've LITERALLY read hundreds of pounds of books and magazines on science, and I even took 8 hours of Biology for Majors and 8 hours of introductory Physics as electives in college to supplement my knowledge. Sure, I got a different degree, but I did quite well in those courses.

Now, in order to keep things simple for laymen that don't even have as much scientific background as me, I like to frame this argument in simple terms that anyone can easily understand, such as the statement, "Applying combustion to 100 million years worth of fossil fuels creates a great deal of heat and releases a great deal of carbon dioxide. The NET effect of that is a slight warming of the Earth's atmosphere." As you can clearly see, I did NOT "complicate the math and the explanations, bringing a whole bunch of science you wouldn't otherwise have to reference" as you stated above. I don't do that, until people like you force me to, like when you brought up 3D earthquake propagation in reference to the 2D wave mechanics of photons in Thebox's black hole thread.

At any rate, as I've said before, I didn't learn my science incorrectly. Yet, I have one group of people attacking me, saying the heat we produce from burning fossil fuels is negligible compared to the Sun's energy, and I have another group of people attacking me, saying the carbon dioxide we add to the atmosphere in doing so has a negligible insulative effect compared to things like an eccentric orbit or the Sun drifting through a warmer part of the galaxy.

Somehow, the NET arguments of your camp and the other camp seems to imply that applying combustion to 100 million years worth of fossil fuels really doesn't add up to much of a difference at all. Somebody is wrong, and it isn't me. All I'm saying is that the heat and the carbon dioxide are ultimately important in the equation to some degree, though I couldn't say for exact certainty what percentage is largest by how much, nor do scientists themselves even completely agree on that. Of course, releasing 100 million years worth of stored solar energy and carbon dioxide is an experiment that has never been performed before, so we don't know exactly what to expect.

I don't see how your arguments will convince people we need to stop applying combustion to so much fossil fuel. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying SOMEBODY is, because SOMETHING is responsible, and that something most likely comes from combustion on a massive scale, so you guys need to stop picking apart my general argument, the statement I put in quotation marks several sentences back, because it is generally correct, and you are smart enough to recognize that.

[Craig W. Thomson]

So what is wrong or right about these analyses? I am genuinely trying to get a better grasp of the evidence you feel the consensus is ignoring or misinterpreting. Politics aside, there must be some technical aspect that is the crux of the disagreement. I realize this sounds like a blatant appeal to authority, but the worlds climatologists can't just be entirely pulling this out of their ass.

https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-9-2.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing

I think the people arguing in the forum are the type of people who "can't see the forest for the trees." Not to sound egotistical, but I think I might actually understand things better than some real scientists because they are highly specialized, which narrows their view. For example, Bored Chemist claims he spent 10 years studying hydrology, while I claim to understand the basics of chemistry, biology and physics in general.

The "basics" here that relates the chemistry, physics and biology are this: Sunlight is headed toward earth. It could hit the ground and warm the earth's surface, or it could hit a leaf. That provides shade. That leaves the surface of the earth cooler.

Where did that heat go? That "heat" was the "photon" of physics, a "particle" of energy. If it hit the ground, it would have made a particle of something in the ground vibrate a little faster, and when a lot of photons are absorbed by the ground, or asphalt, or a building, it gets warm in much the same way as you would bombard water molecules in food with a specific microwave photon that makes water molecules vibrate, heating your food with the energy that provides.

In comes biology/chemistry. That photon is stored by photosynthesis. The plant's leaf doesn't "get hot" and burn up from the photons striking it. Chlorophyll molecules have a magnesium atom in the middle, which absorbs photons. The energy is then used to build molecules that store energy. That's what make eating sugar a source of energy. When your body breaks down the molecule, the energy of the photon is released in you. In fact, your body can use that same photon energy it got from the sugar to build a completely different molecule that stores energy in a different form, like fat.

Now, when ancient forests or dead dinosaurs get covered with sediment and turn to oil and coal deposits, that stored solar energy is still in there. When we apply combustion to those fossil fuels, instead of using that energy to power our bodies, eating dinosaur fat or ancient plant leaves, we release that ancient energy to perform work, to power factories, our homes and the economy. Instead of keeping our body temperature at 98.6 degrees, those calories instead make the planet and the atmosphere a bit warmer.

Remember the shady spots under trees? Ancient forests provided a lot of shade and kept the planet cool hundreds of millions of years ago. When we apply combustion to coal deposits, we are quite literally taking the heat that could have made that shady spot warm and letting it do so today.

Getting back to "being able to see the forest for the trees," if we were planting trees on a massive scale, allowing them to take CO2 out of the atmosphere and shade the ground from the Sun's relentless heat, rather than chopping them down to accommodate cities full of CO2-releasing cars and grazing land full of methane-emitting cows, Radiative Forcing would be far less of an issue.

The disappearance of forest lands coinciding with mass production of the automobile and changes in the global diet overall is both CAUSAL and CORRELATED in this context, to use a couple of words Boring Chemist is fond of.

[Tim the Plumber]

I wish this discussion hadn't dissolved into insults. I was getting interested.

If fools are allowed to peddle complete drivel without challenge then we will be back to the age of ignorance. It is necessary to show that there are right answers and all others are wrong.
[/quote]
Lets be clear about this.
As far as I can tell, Tim and I fundamentally disagree about anthropogenic global warming.

I think Tim is wrong.


(Is that clear enough?)
I am pretty much convinced that the temperature is rising; that this rise is largely due to the effect of  CO2 in the atmosphere; and that we are responsible for that CO2.

Tim's view (unless I have misunderstood it) differs, at least in part, from that. (and, just for the moment Tim, if I'm not utterly wrong about that, just leave it- we can get back to details later).[I will reply because this is the best bit of this thread so far! It might get to be an actual debate;]

Where I agree with Tim is that the direct contribution from heat released by burning fossil fuel is tiny.
I pointed out ( a long while back) that it only corresponds to about 1/15000 of the heat we get from the sun.

In post 334 someone (Thanks Agyejy) actually calculated the effective change in temperature that it would give rise to- and it's small (about 0.05 degrees) so it can not possibly be the cause of global warming which is much bigger than that.

So, when Craig continues to protest that the direct effect of heating is what's important (and that Tim was wrong to say otherwise) I will cheerfully stick my oar in in favour of Tim.
Because the one thing that really doesn't help any discussion is someone talking nonsense- whichever side they are on.
Since then Craig has shown a remarkable capacity to get thing utterly wrong.
using a reaction with no entropy change to illustrate entropy is the clearest example perhaps, but there are plenty of others to chose from
[/quote]

I don't know by how much CO2 is the cause of warming. I think it's some but not that much, but that is not all that important. What is important is what effects there are likely to be.

Given that the predictions from the hockey stick graph came out in 1998 and form the basis of the IPCC's predictions (or there abouts) and that since then there has been a lot less warming, well none measurable, than was expected despite the higher than expected CO2 levels surely we can say that the top half of the IPCC's predictions is not going to happen.

Currently tens of millions of people are dying each year due to unnecessarily high food prices. Those will be from the poorest couple of billion people on the earth.

The next couple of billion people are being forced to pay the extra 70% for food that we all pay due to the use of food as fuel. For me it's not significant. I'm very rich in a global scale. All of us on this forum are. But to take away any chance of many people sending their children to school because they cannot afford to due to having spent all their income on food or to deny them the ability to save up for simple cataract surgery forthe same reason is evil unless there is a very compelling case for it.

I would like to see that case.

This is in the hope that a rational discussion can emerge from this noisy mess.

[Tim the Plumber]

So what is wrong or right about these analyses? I am genuinely trying to get a better grasp of the evidence you feel the consensus is ignoring or misinterpreting. Politics aside, there must be some technical aspect that is the crux of the disagreement. I realize this sounds like a blatant appeal to authority, but the worlds climatologists can't just be entirely pulling this out of their ass.

https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-9-2.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing

The science of what wavelengths of IR are absorbed by CO2 or if they have already been done by water is beyond me. And I don't care because I don't see it as important to the real debate.

What do you feel is the most serrious threat from global warming?

[Bored chemist]

Your last statement is the least scientific of all. There is no reaction where entropy is exactly zero, or we would have to throw the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics in the garbage.

No; we would simply need to learn to understand it.
so, once again; here it is (the long version) from WIKI
"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."

and, since the reaction you cited is perfectly reversible it has an entropy change of exactly zero.
And, if you actually understood the nature of entropy, you would have understood that earlier and not tried to use that reaction as an illustration of entropy.

[Bored chemist]

Apparently, you can't recognize the herd instinct being displayed by you, Tim the Plumber, Bored Chemist and Puppy Power. Your little group of mavericks stand in opposition to consensus based on data.

Do you have problems with reading comprehension generally, or is it just here?
You seem desperate to lump me in with Tim et al even though I have made it as clear as I can that I disagree with almost all of what they say.

That's why I think it's some sort of cognitive defect- like the D-K effect.

[Bored chemist]

Lets be clear about this.
As far as I can tell, Tim and I fundamentally disagree about anthropogenic global warming.

I think Tim is wrong.

(Is that clear enough?)

[agyejy]

Now, in order to keep things simple for laymen that don't even have as much scientific background as me, I like to frame this argument in simple terms that anyone can easily understand, such as the statement, "Applying combustion to 100 million years worth of fossil fuels creates a great deal of heat and releases a great deal of carbon dioxide. The NET effect of that is a slight warming of the Earth's atmosphere." As you can clearly see, I did NOT "complicate the math and the explanations, bringing a whole bunch of science you wouldn't otherwise have to reference" as you stated above. I don't do that, until people like you force me to, like when you brought up 3D earthquake propagation in reference to the 2D wave mechanics of photons in Thebox's black hole thread.

This is very wrong thing to do for several reasons:

1) As this thread demonstrates it is remarkably easy to prove that waste heat are negligible. Therefore using this argument is nothing but an open invitation to be debunked by your opponent. Thus your credibility is diminished and your entire argument is weakened.

2) If you know the argument isn't actually correct and still use it you are being less than completely honest. In general people will see it as inherently unethical which again is bad for your argument as a whole.

3) As a proponent of climate change weakening your argument in the ways described above weakens the arguments of all proponents of climate change. Deniers will use you as an anecdote to demonstrate the bad science of climate change. That argument is laughably refutable but the point is that it is something a proponent of climate change should never have to address in the first place.

At any rate, as I've said before, I didn't learn my science incorrectly. Yet, I have one group of people attacking me, saying the heat we produce from burning fossil fuels is negligible compared to the Sun's energy, and I have another group of people attacking me, saying the carbon dioxide we add to the atmosphere in doing so has a negligible insulative effect compared to things like an eccentric orbit or the Sun drifting through a warmer part of the galaxy.

Sometimes you just have to accept that people are jerks and not get upset when the say/do jerky things to you or in your general direction. It just isn't worth the mental or physical energy.

Somehow, the NET arguments of your camp and the other camp seems to imply that applying combustion to 100 million years worth of fossil fuels really doesn't add up to much of a difference at all. Somebody is wrong, and it isn't me. All I'm saying is that the heat and the carbon dioxide are ultimately important in the equation to some degree, though I couldn't say for exact certainty what percentage is largest by how much, nor do scientists themselves even completely agree on that. Of course, releasing 100 million years worth of stored solar energy and carbon dioxide is an experiment that has never been performed before, so we don't know exactly what to expect.

In this case there is no such thing as a net argument in the sense you seem to be using the term. Either anthropogenic climate change is happening due to CO2 or it isn't happening. It can be clearly demonstrated that the impact of waste heat is inconsequential while the impact of extra CO2 heat absorption is a major driving force of climate change through various feedback loops the most prominent of which is H20 concentrations. Every scientists agrees about exactly how much waste heat humanity generates because it is very easy to measure and therefore there is nothing to dispute about how much warming can be accounted for by waste heat once the numbers have been run.

I don't see how your arguments will convince people we need to stop applying combustion to so much fossil fuel. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying SOMEBODY is, because SOMETHING is responsible, and that something most likely comes from combustion on a massive scale, so you guys need to stop picking apart my general argument, the statement I put in quotation marks several sentences back, because it is generally correct, and you are smart enough to recognize that.

The logic is simple. Combustion of fossil fuels increases CO2 concentration and that drives several climatic feedback loops that increase the temperature of the planet. Doesn't get much simpler than that really. If someone brings up waste heat you just say it is too small to account for the observed trends and point to some reference like Skeptical Science.

The biggest issue is not if I or anyone else here is smart enough to recognize what is and isn't correct about your statement. There are two major issues and the first is that you are giving the climate science deniers an easy target that weakens the entire climate change argument. The second is that some impressionable proponent of climate change could pick up your argument and use it somewhere else without realizing that it is technically incorrect and easily refutable. Said proponent will have no way to defend his statements and at best damage the overall climate change argument. At worst finding themselves defeated our hypothetical proponent might find themselves convinced into being a denier because after all that seemingly logical argument they read supporting climate change was so obviously wrong. This worst case scenario is very very bad for climate science. On the whole of it allowing arguments that are only partially correct and generally weak to persist only weakens the arguments for climate change. These weak/incorrect arguments need to be jettisoned as soon as possible.

[Tim the Plumber]

3) As a proponent of climate change weakening your argument in the ways described above weakens the arguments of all proponents of climate change. Deniers will use you as an anecdote to demonstrate the bad science of climate change. That argument is laughably refutable but the point is that it is something a proponent of climate change should never have to address in the first place.

Given that you say you don't like the lying bit would you please point out who has denied any science here.

I ask this as I am sure that I have been part of the group you would describe thus. I feel extremely afronted by the accusation of dishonesty and demand that you either substanciate it or retract it.

Unless of course you choose to do some less than honest stuff yourself.

[agyejy]

3) As a proponent of climate change weakening your argument in the ways described above weakens the arguments of all proponents of climate change. Deniers will use you as an anecdote to demonstrate the bad science of climate change. That argument is laughably refutable but the point is that it is something a proponent of climate change should never have to address in the first place.

Given that you say you don't like the lying bit would you please point out who has denied any science here.

I ask this as I am sure that I have been part of the group you would describe thus. I feel extremely afronted by the accusation of dishonesty and demand that you either substanciate it or retract it.

Unless of course you choose to do some less than honest stuff yourself.

For starters I've personally never considered the word denier as a pejorative term. Certainly I see no direct connection between the act of denying something and dishonesty. As far as I am aware a denier simply says that some statement is not true and there is nothing beyond that. I also certainly didn't imply anyone here was a denier. If we accept denier as a pejorative term certainly there is room on your side of the debate for those who share your views on climate change but are less than civil just as there is on my side. I certainly didn't mean for anyone to take umbrage at my remarks which should be rather clear from my rather reasoned tone.

Now seeing as you clearly have negative associations concerning the word denier I am willing to make an effort to use the word skeptic. Unless, that is, you have reasons to dislike that word as well. In which case I would have to ask you to provide me an acceptable term as those two words pretty much deplete my thesaural reserves in relation to this particular subject and I am not very keen of proceeding via trial and error.

I do wish to apologize again if I accidently gave you the impression I thought you were being dishonest or lying. That was absolutely not my attention although I do feel the need to point out that your reaction seems perhaps a bit on the harsh side. Not that we all haven't been guilty of that from time to time. It is always good to be reminded that everyone here is a human. That is unless AI has advanced much further than the public has been told.

[alancalverd]

I neglected the fact that the growth of vegetation in the northern hemisphere (and thereby the world due to a disproportionate area of land being in the northern hemisphere) increases through July and August causing a massive uptick in carbon absorption which is less correlated with temperature changes.

Alas, the peak rate of growth occurs in May-June for most of the Northern hemisphere. July and august are characterised by ripening, not growth.

[alancalverd]

. I neglected the fact that the growth of vegetation in the northern hemisphere (and thereby the world due to a disproportionate area of land being in the northern hemisphere) increases through July and August causing a massive uptick in carbon absorption which is less correlated with temperature changes.

But according to academic phenological studies and most farmers, growth is maximal in May-June. July and August are times for ripening, not growing.

What about satellite measurements of temperatures in the lower troposphere? There are two widely cited analyses of temperature trends from the MSU sensor on NOAA's polar orbiting earth observation satellites, one from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and one from the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH). These data only go back to 1979, but they do provide a good comparison to the surface temperature data over the past three decades.

I agree entirely - at least up to the point where NOAA keep "adjusting" the satellite data until it fits the hypothesis! There is plenty of good raw data since 1979. My point is that there is almost none of any value before 1920, and even the period 1920 - 1970 is mostly derived from airfields near habitation. The problem is that we have no truly global temperature data before 1979, just lots of proxies and models, all using the same implicit or explicit assumption that CO2 drives temperature. Only a fool would deny that climate changes, but the prevailing consensus of why it changes has no foundation in observation.

I suppose to be exact I should have said global mean temperature or monthly global mean temperature to be even more precise. It should be fairly obvious how one goes about calculating the mean of all temperatures on the Earth over the period of a month. It takes a lot of addition and some division but computers are good at that.

Agreed, but first you need the data points, and until 1979 we had almost none outside the civilised and industrialised 2% of the earth's surface.

[agyejy]

Alas, the peak rate of growth occurs in May-June for most of the Northern hemisphere. July and august are characterised by ripening, not growth.

But according to academic phenological studies and most farmers, growth is maximal in May-June. July and August are times for ripening, not growing.

Actually generally speaking photosynthetic rates peak around late June to early July. As shown here:

http://www.gvsu.edu/rmsc/interchange/2013-september-connections-795.htm <-- you have to scroll a little

So at best you'd call the peak as in June-July. My bad I was slightly off. Add a couple of weeks to account for the time it will take the atmosphere to start responding (anyone that has used a PID system to control sample temperature knows the pain of delayed responses) and another couple of weeks for the changes to actually make it to Hawaii (all reasonable verifiable corrections) and you begin to see the causation. With something as big as the atmosphere it is clearly unrealistic to expect changes to propagate throughout its entirety instantaneously. There is also the competing impact of seasonal temperature fluctuations causing fluctuating amounts of CO2 to dissolve in the ocean which would clearly impact when the minimum occurs.

I agree entirely - at least up to the point where NOAA keep "adjusting" the satellite data until it fits the hypothesis! There is plenty of good raw data since 1979. My point is that there is almost none of any value before 1920, and even the period 1920 - 1970 is mostly derived from airfields near habitation. The problem is that we have no truly global temperature data before 1979, just lots of proxies and models, all using the same implicit or explicit assumption that CO2 drives temperature. Only a fool would deny that climate changes, but the prevailing consensus of why it changes has no foundation in observation.

All of this was addressed in the links I provided in the previous post. If you are not going to read the evidence your opposition provides then I have no choice but to question if you are actually willing to be convinced. Also, pretty much all the raw data is publically available in databases (some of which I linked). If you disagree with the methods of analysis you are free to do it for yourself starting from the raw data.

Agreed, but first you need the data points, and until 1979 we had almost none outside the civilised and industrialised 2% of the earth's surface.

As long as those points are sufficiently spaced out they can still be a representative sample of the Earth's mean temperature. I linked to two data sets that showed the geographic locations of their sensors. The locations within each data set were a relatively good sampling of the surface of the Earth and the locations chosen in one data set were clearly distinct from the locations chosen in the other data set. This makes it highly unlikely that the observed trend is coincidental. (As noted previously analysis of these data sets have been done with and without temperature corrections with no significant change in the trend.) Add in the satellite data and the likelihood of coincidence decreases further. Add in the 173 temperature proxies that were used by another analysis (I linked to both the raw data and the geographic locations which were both in the published paper) and likelihood of coincidence seems pretty implausible. Factor in that these studies were done by different people and organizations two of which only claim affiliation with climate science through personal blogs and I'm not sure how anyone could justify it as coincidence or bad data handling/bias by so many independent groups (some of which have no financial investment into climate science) simultaneously.

[alancalverd]

http://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements-advanced.htm[/i]]http://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements-advanced.htm shows a graph (fig 3) of allegedly measured global mean land surface temperatures since 1900, several years before anyone had actually measured anything inland in Antarctica - or indeed even been further south than the Antarctic coast. Which makes one wonder. "The mean of all the data you have" is not "the mean of what is actually happening", if you know that 20% of the data, itself known to be very different from the mean, is completely absent from your data set. Why 20%? Well it depends on your definition of "land": the north polar ice cap is solid surface, almost equally unexplored in 1900, and the source of much of the continental surface wind in the northern hemisphere, so  it's important.... And according to Shackleton and his colleagues, even the antarctic coastal winters around 1900 - 1917 were exceptionally cold compared with records from previous expeditions.

I'm impressed by the very close fit of all the curves, particularly given the apparent "noise". I wonder why there are such short, sharp peaks in a curve that is the average of several thousand data points, each one the average of at least twelve 2-hourly readings, of a system with enormous thermal inertia? What happened between 1957 and 1960?

The correlation between the different models suggests that either the "noise" is telling us something about the underlying mechanism, or the models are not, in fact, statistically independent. I dimly recall using chi-square analysis to review data where the fit was "too good to be true", and usually led to a discovering a fault in the measuring apparatus, but I think we can assume that umpteen thousand individual thermometers should give us a credible random sample at any moment, so what do you think is going on?       

It's a fascinating subject, and it's good to discuss at last with someone who thinks rather than shouts about it, but it's taking up too much of my time right now. I'll be back in a couple of days, and look forward to continuing!

[Tim the Plumber]

3) As a proponent of climate change weakening your argument in the ways described above weakens the arguments of all proponents of climate change. Deniers will use you as an anecdote to demonstrate the bad science of climate change. That argument is laughably refutable but the point is that it is something a proponent of climate change should never have to address in the first place.

Given that you say you don't like the lying bit would you please point out who has denied any science here.

I ask this as I am sure that I have been part of the group you would describe thus. I feel extremely afronted by the accusation of dishonesty and demand that you either substanciate it or retract it.

Unless of course you choose to do some less than honest stuff yourself.

For starters I've personally never considered the word denier as a pejorative term. Certainly I see no direct connection between the act of denying something and dishonesty. As far as I am aware a denier simply says that some statement is not true and there is nothing beyond that. I also certainly didn't imply anyone here was a denier. If we accept denier as a pejorative term certainly there is room on your side of the debate for those who share your views on climate change but are less than civil just as there is on my side. I certainly didn't mean for anyone to take umbrage at my remarks which should be rather clear from my rather reasoned tone.

Now seeing as you clearly have negative associations concerning the word denier I am willing to make an effort to use the word skeptic. Unless, that is, you have reasons to dislike that word as well. In which case I would have to ask you to provide me an acceptable term as those two words pretty much deplete my thesaural reserves in relation to this particular subject and I am not very keen of proceeding via trial and error.

I do wish to apologize again if I accidently gave you the impression I thought you were being dishonest or lying. That was absolutely not my attention although I do feel the need to point out that your reaction seems perhaps a bit on the harsh side. Not that we all haven't been guilty of that from time to time. It is always good to be reminded that everyone here is a human. That is unless AI has advanced much further than the public has been told.

Thanks, Skeptic is fine.

Denier is definately a term for somebody who is denying the obvious such as a flat earther or a denier of the holocaust.

[Craig W. Thomson]

so, once again; here it is (the long version) from WIKI
"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."

and, since the reaction you cited is perfectly reversible it has an entropy change of exactly zero.
And, if you actually understood the nature of entropy, you would have understood that earlier and not tried to use that reaction as an illustration of entropy.

There is no such thing as a reversible process. That IS the entropy law.

If you understood entropy, you wouldn't confuse an "idealized limiting case" with the way things actually work in the real world, and for the record, that would make you a crappy mathematician as well.

Again, it takes energy to get a process to go in reverse. You can't just collect smoke, ashes and heat back together to make a log you can burn a second time without expending some energy. You can't throw a stack of papers in the air and scatter them, then put them back in order without expending some energy. You can't just snap your fingers and watch all the carbon dioxide molecules in a room go swooshing back down into a bottle of cola and put the lid back on. Water doesn't flow like this:

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1200x675/p02vkdfc.jpg

Cool image, but that's not how entropy works, and you clearly don't understand a damned thing about it if you are suggesting otherwise.

http://www.amazon.com/ENTROPY-INTO-GREENHOUSE-WORLD-Book/dp/0553347179

I have read that book at least four times, and I took 16 hours of physics and biology in college. That's more than enough to have me running circles around an alleged chemist on this specific subject. Now, learn your science correctly, or shut the hell up. If you want to fart around with bogus science and information, at least pick a subject that isn't detrimental to the human race, you selfish lamebrain.

[Craig W. Thomson]

Alas, the peak rate of growth occurs in May-June for most of the Northern hemisphere. July and august are characterised by ripening, not growth.

Alas, this forum is plagued by a moderator that doesn't want us to see the forest for the trees.

Empirical evidence suggests: "This is a deciduous forest."

You: "No, I saw a couple of conifers in the valley, and I see some birds too. Birds aren't deciduous trees. Pesky facts getting in the way of your theory."

[Craig W. Thomson]

Thanks, Skeptic is fine. Denier is definately a term for somebody who is denying the obvious such as a flat earther or a denier of the holocaust.

Whatever, Liquid Drain-O.

[Craig W. Thomson]

All of this was addressed in the links I provided in the previous post. If you are not going to read the evidence your opposition provides then I have no choice but to question if you are actually willing to be convinced. Also, pretty much all the raw data is publically available in databases (some of which I linked). If you disagree with the methods of analysis you are free to do it for yourself starting from the raw data.

Agreed, but first you need the data points, and until 1979 we had almost none outside the civilised and industrialised 2% of the earth's surface.

I linked to two data sets that showed the geographic locations of their sensors. The locations within each data set were a relatively good sampling of the surface of the Earth and the locations chosen in one data set were clearly distinct from the locations chosen in the other data set. This makes it highly unlikely that the observed trend is coincidental. (As noted previously analysis of these data sets have been done with and without temperature corrections with no significant change in the trend.) Add in the satellite data and the likelihood of coincidence decreases further. Add in the 173 temperature proxies that were used by another analysis (I linked to both the raw data and the geographic locations which were both in the published paper) and likelihood of coincidence seems pretty implausible. Factor in that these studies were done by different people and organizations two of which only claim affiliation with climate science through personal blogs and I'm not sure how anyone could justify it as coincidence or bad data handling/bias by so many independent groups (some of which have no financial investment into climate science) simultaneously.

Yes, thank you.