Science and Technology news... :: View topic - OT: interesting global warming quote found elsewhwere

Guest

On Jul 29, 6:41 am, Richard The Dreaded Libertarian <n...@example.net>
wrote:
[quote]On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:58:45 -0500, Kris Krieger wrote:
Richard The Dreaded Libertarian <n...@example.net> wrote in
On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 20:53:29 -0500, Kris Krieger wrote:
Richard The Dreaded Libertarian <n...@example.net> wrote in

This is just more of the same hysteria based on nothing but Al Gore>s
Revealed "Truth".

You>re the one who>s obsessed with every word that Gore utters, not me

Better check your sides here. The only "obsession" I have with Father Al
is noticing that his "global warming" stuff is purest bullshit, based on
flawed models fed flawed data - GIGO through a garbage model gives you
garbage squared.

What I>ve noticed is that, when someone writes something about having
ernvironmental concers, they get painted with teh Al Gore Potatohead
brush. To me, that looks an awful lot like an obsession with him -
obsessive hatred is still obsession, and obsession gets in the way of
rational and *constructive* discussion.

No, I>m obsessed with the truth, and the Scientific Method, none of which
the warmingists seem to be interested in. It>s clearly a religious cult.
[/quote]
You might try diverting some of your obsessive activity to studying
the science involved in predicting anthropogenic global warming - your
idea of the scientific method seems to include an inviolable right of
the pig ignorant to misunderstand the arguments involved.

<snipped more foolish contrarianism>

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Don Klipstein · Guest

In <c522d455-e7fd-4f80-b548-4206022662bf@x29g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,
bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:

[quote]On Jul 28, 3:11 pm, d...@manx.misty.com (Don Klipstein) wrote:
In <78d062ec-67ec-4845-a52c-6dcc612b2...@o40g2000prn.googlegroups.com>,

bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On Jul 28, 4:40 am, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:06:36 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan

jkir...@easystreet.com> wrote:
On Sun, 27 Jul 2008 04:14:24 +0000 (UTC), d...@manx.misty.com (Don
Klipstein) wrote:

snip
If Cat-6 is invented, such storms would only exist where there is
extremely warm water to sustain them.

And consistently or increasingly cool stratospheric temperatures to
help power the engine; I gather hurricanes are essentially an engine
driven by moving heat upwards across a temperature differential.

Which is why the bad ones hit in late summer (Galveston was wiped out
on September 8; Betsy hit New Orleans on Sep 9, Katrina August 29) as
the water stays warm but the atmosphere is cooling. It>s not the warm
water that powers the storm, it>s the differential. So the simplistic
observation that global warming makes the water warm, and warm water
makes for worse hurricanes, doesn>t necessarily follow.

The critical feature for hurricanes is a sea surface that is hot
enough (over 26.5C) to get enough water vapour into the rising air to
release enough heat when it condenses higher in the atmosphere to
drive run-away circulation. Over a hurricane, there are rising air
columns driven by heat from the sea surface, matched by falling air
columns going down to get more water and more heat, so the hurricane
carries its own upper air temperature along with it.

Hurricanes are almost small enough to be mesoscale weather phenomena.
They will weaken or die if the air temperature at pressure level of their
tops a few hundred miles outside their centers is warmer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane

Tropical cyclones reach up to the tropopause, which is to say the
thermodynamic sink for the circulating energy is presumably radiation
to space (from above the "greenhouse" blanket) rather atmospheric
circulation -

The thermodynamic sink in a hurricane is cooling to prevailing
temperatures at the tropopause level of the tropical atmosphere.
Hurricane-prone and hurricane-forming tropical areas tend to have a lot of
convection from surface to tropopause during hurricane season. The global
circulation and prevailing weather lift air in the ITCZ to about 60,000
feet (about 19 km or so) and that air cools during lifting to the
prevailing temperatures in that level of the atmosphere in the tropics.

as it is for mid-latitude hurricanes (at today>s
temperatures - a dose of global warming would enlarge the range of
"tropical" hurricanes).

Hurricanes weaken when reaching mid-latitudes due to running into warmer
air around the 150-100 millibar levels and and also from going over cooler
water. Hurricanes far north in the Atlantic late in 2005 were less tall
than most and relied mostly on temperature difference between sea surface
and the 200-300 millibar level or so. I remember the warmer eyewall tops
of those less-tall hurricanes so far north so late in the season such as
Vince and Epsilon and tropical strorm Zeta - I looked a lot at the
satellite maps with the temperature-color-coded cloud top patterns.
Cooler air at 300 and 500 milibar level compared to typical for tropics
was essential for those storms. It surely appears that air in hurricane
tops moves outside quickly rather than experiences significant radiation
cooling.

There is a huge mass of relatively dense air at sea level in a
hurricane. At any givien moment, half of it is moving up to the
tropopause to dump the heat it has collected from the sea surface. You
talk as if the heat being dumped by this large mass of air is being
dissipated by the much less dense air at and above the tropopause - my
feeling is that most of it has to be going out into space, because
there isn>t enough heat capacity in the upper atmosphere to soak it
up.
[/quote]
Air exhausting from a hurricane just pushes aside the surrounding air.
The air coming from lower in a hurricane rises to the tropopause and
pushes away the surrounding air as long as the air from the hurricane is
warmer than the surrounding air.
Once the air has reached the tropopause, it has already expanded and
conversion of heat energy to mechanical energy is already done.

[quote]Radiation is proportional to the fourth power of temperature, so you
don>t have to warm up the top of the optically thick atmosphere all
that much to boost the local radiation level.
[/quote]
- Don Klipstein (don@misty.com)

Don Klipstein · Guest

In <ro0t8452tp47cpm6veas7t201rrg1lkk64@4ax.com>, Jonathan Kirwan wrote:
[quote]On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:25:13 -0700 (PDT), bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:

On Jul 28, 3:11 pm, d...@manx.misty.com (Don Klipstein) wrote:
In <78d062ec-67ec-4845-a52c-6dcc612b2...@o40g2000prn.googlegroups.com>,

bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On Jul 28, 4:40 am, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:06:36 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan

jkir...@easystreet.com> wrote:
On Sun, 27 Jul 2008 04:14:24 +0000 (UTC), d...@manx.misty.com (Don
Klipstein) wrote:

snip
If Cat-6 is invented, such storms would only exist where there is
extremely warm water to sustain them.

And consistently or increasingly cool stratospheric temperatures to
help power the engine; I gather hurricanes are essentially an engine
driven by moving heat upwards across a temperature differential.

Which is why the bad ones hit in late summer (Galveston was wiped out
on September 8; Betsy hit New Orleans on Sep 9, Katrina August 29) as
the water stays warm but the atmosphere is cooling. It>s not the warm
water that powers the storm, it>s the differential. So the simplistic
observation that global warming makes the water warm, and warm water
makes for worse hurricanes, doesn>t necessarily follow.

The critical feature for hurricanes is a sea surface that is hot
enough (over 26.5C) to get enough water vapour into the rising air to
release enough heat when it condenses higher in the atmosphere to
drive run-away circulation. Over a hurricane, there are rising air
columns driven by heat from the sea surface, matched by falling air
columns going down to get more water and more heat, so the hurricane
carries its own upper air temperature along with it.

Hurricanes are almost small enough to be mesoscale weather phenomena.
They will weaken or die if the air temperature at pressure level of their
tops a few hundred miles outside their centers is warmer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane

Tropical cyclones reach up to the tropopause, which is to say the
thermodynamic sink for the circulating energy is presumably radiation
to space (from above the "greenhouse" blanket) rather atmospheric
circulation -

The thermodynamic sink in a hurricane is cooling to prevailing
temperatures at the tropopause level of the tropical atmosphere.
Hurricane-prone and hurricane-forming tropical areas tend to have a lot of
convection from surface to tropopause during hurricane season. The global
circulation and prevailing weather lift air in the ITCZ to about 60,000
feet (about 19 km or so) and that air cools during lifting to the
prevailing temperatures in that level of the atmosphere in the tropics.

as it is for mid-latitude hurricanes (at today>s
temperatures - a dose of global warming would enlarge the range of
"tropical" hurricanes).

Hurricanes weaken when reaching mid-latitudes due to running into warmer
air around the 150-100 millibar levels and and also from going over cooler
water. Hurricanes far north in the Atlantic late in 2005 were less tall
than most and relied mostly on temperature difference between sea surface
and the 200-300 millibar level or so. I remember the warmer eyewall tops
of those less-tall hurricanes so far north so late in the season such as
Vince and Epsilon and tropical strorm Zeta - I looked a lot at the
satellite maps with the temperature-color-coded cloud top patterns.
Cooler air at 300 and 500 milibar level compared to typical for tropics
was essential for those storms. It surely appears that air in hurricane
tops moves outside quickly rather than experiences significant radiation
cooling.

There is a huge mass of relatively dense air at sea level in a
hurricane. At any givien moment, half of it is moving up to the
tropopause to dump the heat it has collected from the sea surface. You
talk as if the heat being dumped by this large mass of air is being
dissipated by the much less dense air at and above the tropopause - my
feeling is that most of it has to be going out into space, because
there isn>t enough heat capacity in the upper atmosphere to soak it
up.

Radiation is proportional to the fourth power of temperature, so you
don>t have to warm up the top of the optically thick atmosphere all
that much to boost the local radiation level.

All this discussion made me curious enough to do some searches. I
found this, which discusses hurricanes and energy:

http://weather.cod.edu/sirvatka/1115/tropical.meteorology.pdf

It it, I found, "When air radiates to space near the top of the
troposphere, it becomes cooler, losing internal energy and subsides,
thus causing a loss in potential energy." Not a quantitative
statement, but a qualitative one that is suggestive you may be right
about this.

There is a satellite, GERB (Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget
Experiment), that takes measurements and provides false color images
of the outgoing longwave radiation of the Earth. From inspection of
past images, it seems the most intense places for radiation to leave
the Earth are in hurricanes and typhoons. GERB is at:

http://www.ssd.rl.ac.uk/gerb/SCIENCE.HTM

I>m just learning right now, but it seems that from the structures
I>ve looked at (again, see the PDF mentioned above) for hurricanes and
the flows indicated seem consistent with radiation to space being the
dominant method.
[/quote]
I have looked at enough color-coded-by-temperature tropical Atlantic
infrared images. In whatever wavelength range is used for those, the most
intense radiation is coming from warm water without clouds over it.
Hurricane tops and the tops of similarly tall tropical thunderstorms are
at the cold extreme - though clear air at the same altitude somewhat
outside these storms should be slightly colder still in order for air from
these storms to rise to that level.

- Don Klipstein (don@misty.com)

Jonathan Kirwan · Guest

On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:25:13 -0700 (PDT), bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:

[quote]On Jul 28, 3:11 pm, d...@manx.misty.com (Don Klipstein) wrote:
In <78d062ec-67ec-4845-a52c-6dcc612b2...@o40g2000prn.googlegroups.com>,

bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On Jul 28, 4:40 am, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:06:36 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan

jkir...@easystreet.com> wrote:
On Sun, 27 Jul 2008 04:14:24 +0000 (UTC), d...@manx.misty.com (Don
Klipstein) wrote:

snip
If Cat-6 is invented, such storms would only exist where there is
extremely warm water to sustain them.

And consistently or increasingly cool stratospheric temperatures to
help power the engine; I gather hurricanes are essentially an engine
driven by moving heat upwards across a temperature differential.

Which is why the bad ones hit in late summer (Galveston was wiped out
on September 8; Betsy hit New Orleans on Sep 9, Katrina August 29) as
the water stays warm but the atmosphere is cooling. It>s not the warm
water that powers the storm, it>s the differential. So the simplistic
observation that global warming makes the water warm, and warm water
makes for worse hurricanes, doesn>t necessarily follow.

The critical feature for hurricanes is a sea surface that is hot
enough (over 26.5C) to get enough water vapour into the rising air to
release enough heat when it condenses higher in the atmosphere to
drive run-away circulation. Over a hurricane, there are rising air
columns driven by heat from the sea surface, matched by falling air
columns going down to get more water and more heat, so the hurricane
carries its own upper air temperature along with it.

Hurricanes are almost small enough to be mesoscale weather phenomena.
They will weaken or die if the air temperature at pressure level of their
tops a few hundred miles outside their centers is warmer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane

Tropical cyclones reach up to the tropopause, which is to say the
thermodynamic sink for the circulating energy is presumably radiation
to space (from above the "greenhouse" blanket) rather atmospheric
circulation -

The thermodynamic sink in a hurricane is cooling to prevailing
temperatures at the tropopause level of the tropical atmosphere.
Hurricane-prone and hurricane-forming tropical areas tend to have a lot of
convection from surface to tropopause during hurricane season. The global
circulation and prevailing weather lift air in the ITCZ to about 60,000
feet (about 19 km or so) and that air cools during lifting to the
prevailing temperatures in that level of the atmosphere in the tropics.

as it is for mid-latitude hurricanes (at today>s
temperatures - a dose of global warming would enlarge the range of
"tropical" hurricanes).

Hurricanes weaken when reaching mid-latitudes due to running into warmer
air around the 150-100 millibar levels and and also from going over cooler
water. Hurricanes far north in the Atlantic late in 2005 were less tall
than most and relied mostly on temperature difference between sea surface
and the 200-300 millibar level or so. I remember the warmer eyewall tops
of those less-tall hurricanes so far north so late in the season such as
Vince and Epsilon and tropical strorm Zeta - I looked a lot at the
satellite maps with the temperature-color-coded cloud top patterns.
Cooler air at 300 and 500 milibar level compared to typical for tropics
was essential for those storms. It surely appears that air in hurricane
tops moves outside quickly rather than experiences significant radiation
cooling.

There is a huge mass of relatively dense air at sea level in a
hurricane. At any givien moment, half of it is moving up to the
tropopause to dump the heat it has collected from the sea surface. You
talk as if the heat being dumped by this large mass of air is being
dissipated by the much less dense air at and above the tropopause - my
feeling is that most of it has to be going out into space, because
there isn>t enough heat capacity in the upper atmosphere to soak it
up.

Radiation is proportional to the fourth power of temperature, so you
don>t have to warm up the top of the optically thick atmosphere all
that much to boost the local radiation level.
[/quote]
All this discussion made me curious enough to do some searches. I
found this, which discusses hurricanes and energy:

http://weather.cod.edu/sirvatka/1115/tropical.meteorology.pdf

It it, I found, "When air radiates to space near the top of the
troposphere, it becomes cooler, losing internal energy and subsides,
thus causing a loss in potential energy." Not a quantitative
statement, but a qualitative one that is suggestive you may be right
about this.

There is a satellite, GERB (Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget
Experiment), that takes measurements and provides false color images
of the outgoing longwave radiation of the Earth. From inspection of
past images, it seems the most intense places for radiation to leave
the Earth are in hurricanes and typhoons. GERB is at:

http://www.ssd.rl.ac.uk/gerb/SCIENCE.HTM

I>m just learning right now, but it seems that from the structures
I>ve looked at (again, see the PDF mentioned above) for hurricanes and
the flows indicated seem consistent with radiation to space being the
dominant method.

Jon

Jonathan Kirwan · Guest

On Tue, 29 Jul 2008 03:38:55 +0000 (UTC), don@manx.misty.com (Don
Klipstein) wrote:

[quote]In <ro0t8452tp47cpm6veas7t201rrg1lkk64@4ax.com>, Jonathan Kirwan wrote:
On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:25:13 -0700 (PDT), bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:

On Jul 28, 3:11 pm, d...@manx.misty.com (Don Klipstein) wrote:
In <78d062ec-67ec-4845-a52c-6dcc612b2...@o40g2000prn.googlegroups.com>,

bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On Jul 28, 4:40 am, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:06:36 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan

jkir...@easystreet.com> wrote:
On Sun, 27 Jul 2008 04:14:24 +0000 (UTC), d...@manx.misty.com (Don
Klipstein) wrote:

snip
If Cat-6 is invented, such storms would only exist where there is
extremely warm water to sustain them.

And consistently or increasingly cool stratospheric temperatures to
help power the engine; I gather hurricanes are essentially an engine
driven by moving heat upwards across a temperature differential.

Which is why the bad ones hit in late summer (Galveston was wiped out
on September 8; Betsy hit New Orleans on Sep 9, Katrina August 29) as
the water stays warm but the atmosphere is cooling. It>s not the warm
water that powers the storm, it>s the differential. So the simplistic
observation that global warming makes the water warm, and warm water
makes for worse hurricanes, doesn>t necessarily follow.

The critical feature for hurricanes is a sea surface that is hot
enough (over 26.5C) to get enough water vapour into the rising air to
release enough heat when it condenses higher in the atmosphere to
drive run-away circulation. Over a hurricane, there are rising air
columns driven by heat from the sea surface, matched by falling air
columns going down to get more water and more heat, so the hurricane
carries its own upper air temperature along with it.

Hurricanes are almost small enough to be mesoscale weather phenomena.
They will weaken or die if the air temperature at pressure level of their
tops a few hundred miles outside their centers is warmer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane

Tropical cyclones reach up to the tropopause, which is to say the
thermodynamic sink for the circulating energy is presumably radiation
to space (from above the "greenhouse" blanket) rather atmospheric
circulation -

The thermodynamic sink in a hurricane is cooling to prevailing
temperatures at the tropopause level of the tropical atmosphere.
Hurricane-prone and hurricane-forming tropical areas tend to have a lot of
convection from surface to tropopause during hurricane season. The global
circulation and prevailing weather lift air in the ITCZ to about 60,000
feet (about 19 km or so) and that air cools during lifting to the
prevailing temperatures in that level of the atmosphere in the tropics.

as it is for mid-latitude hurricanes (at today>s
temperatures - a dose of global warming would enlarge the range of
"tropical" hurricanes).

Hurricanes weaken when reaching mid-latitudes due to running into warmer
air around the 150-100 millibar levels and and also from going over cooler
water. Hurricanes far north in the Atlantic late in 2005 were less tall
than most and relied mostly on temperature difference between sea surface
and the 200-300 millibar level or so. I remember the warmer eyewall tops
of those less-tall hurricanes so far north so late in the season such as
Vince and Epsilon and tropical strorm Zeta - I looked a lot at the
satellite maps with the temperature-color-coded cloud top patterns.
Cooler air at 300 and 500 milibar level compared to typical for tropics
was essential for those storms. It surely appears that air in hurricane
tops moves outside quickly rather than experiences significant radiation
cooling.

There is a huge mass of relatively dense air at sea level in a
hurricane. At any givien moment, half of it is moving up to the
tropopause to dump the heat it has collected from the sea surface. You
talk as if the heat being dumped by this large mass of air is being
dissipated by the much less dense air at and above the tropopause - my
feeling is that most of it has to be going out into space, because
there isn>t enough heat capacity in the upper atmosphere to soak it
up.

Radiation is proportional to the fourth power of temperature, so you
don>t have to warm up the top of the optically thick atmosphere all
that much to boost the local radiation level.

All this discussion made me curious enough to do some searches. I
found this, which discusses hurricanes and energy:

http://weather.cod.edu/sirvatka/1115/tropical.meteorology.pdf

It it, I found, "When air radiates to space near the top of the
troposphere, it becomes cooler, losing internal energy and subsides,
thus causing a loss in potential energy." Not a quantitative
statement, but a qualitative one that is suggestive you may be right
about this.

There is a satellite, GERB (Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget
Experiment), that takes measurements and provides false color images
of the outgoing longwave radiation of the Earth. From inspection of
past images, it seems the most intense places for radiation to leave
the Earth are in hurricanes and typhoons. GERB is at:

http://www.ssd.rl.ac.uk/gerb/SCIENCE.HTM

I>m just learning right now, but it seems that from the structures
I>ve looked at (again, see the PDF mentioned above) for hurricanes and
the flows indicated seem consistent with radiation to space being the
dominant method.

I have looked at enough color-coded-by-temperature tropical Atlantic
infrared images. In whatever wavelength range is used for those, the most
intense radiation is coming from warm water without clouds over it.
Hurricane tops and the tops of similarly tall tropical thunderstorms are
at the cold extreme - though clear air at the same altitude somewhat
outside these storms should be slightly colder still in order for air from
these storms to rise to that level.
[/quote]
I>ll take that as a suggestion I continue to read more, then.

What you say seems to disagree with my interpretation of what I read
today. There was discussion of "hot towers" (which aren>t hurricanes,
per se, if I followed) said, if I understood, to generally have a
positive influence for the "genesis via subsidence warming" (their
term) around them and the related fall in surface pressure (see
Simpson et al., 1998.) My current ignorance, I suppose, allows me to
imagine that the sections I quoted were relevant and interpreted as
the author intended. So I will do more digging, since I gather you
strongly disagree with what I imagine so far from modest reading,
today.

But to add a little about what I>d read today, there is a "Rapid
Radiative Transfer Model" (RRTM term mentioned below in a citation)
used for longwave radiation parameterization (see Mlawer et al., 1997)
in at least some hurricane modeling. I might have misunderstood. I
was reading just summaries and I need to source the papers themselves.

It>s interesting, regardless of where this takes me.

Jon

Simpson, J., J. B. Halverson, B. S. Ferrier, W. A. Petersen, R. H.
Simpson, R. Blakeslee, and S. L. Durden, 1998: "On the role of 'hot
towers' in tropical cyclone formation." Meteo. Atmos. Phys., 67,
1535.

Mlawer, E. J., S. J. Taubman, P. D. Brown, M. J. Iacono and S. A.
Clough, 1997: Radiative transfer for inhomogenous atmosphere: RRTM, a
validated correlated – k model for long wave. J. Geophys. Res., 102
(D14), 16663-16682.

Martin Brown · Guest

James Arthur wrote:
[quote]On Jul 26, 5:31 pm, bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On Jul 26, 1:06 pm, James Arthur wrote:

bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
James Arthur wrote:
[Climate modeling] is like the stock market and the many, many "models" developed
to profit from it. They all go bust.
"Past performance is not an indication of future results."
--Wall Street disclaimer
And this is for a closed, mildly chaotic system with a
well-established long-term upward trend, with a limited
set of variables, all available with great precision,
in real-time. The entire system is "instrumented,"
documented, and logged on-line.

Sure, but any predictive model of the stock market feeds information
to the participants in the market, who proceed to try and exploit,
thus destroying the model>s predictive capacity.

No, I>m speaking of any number of super-secret attempts by
Wall Streeters to hire PhD statisticians, super computers,
and try to beat the street with models.
They absolutely do not share info with the market.
PBS (Public Broadcast System, public, non-profit TV in the US) has
documented at least one such attempt.

As soon as they buy shares, they share information with the market.

That notion doesn>t follow. To the extent it>s true, it would
increase profits.
[/quote]
Not necessarily - primarily it tends to increase volatility. This is
particularly true if many players have the same algorithmic rules. In
many cases a big sell triggers more sell and big buy triggers more buy.
Machine trading accounts for about 1/3 of US stock trades today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/technology/11reuters.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

The market generally frowns on people who bounce share prices up and
down by spreading unfounded rumours (doesn>t stop it happening though).

If you have a huge number of unwanted and unloved bank shares to sell at
the moment (as two underwriters for a recent recapitalisation do) then
the sector is depressed.
[quote]
Think about it.
[/quote]
LTCM were doing exactly that when they came unstuck and ran out of
liquidity after a chain of very low probability events backfired on
them. Had Warren Buffet bought them he would have had sufficiently deep
pockets to weather the storm. I do find it amusing that Nobel prize
winning economists can cock things up quite so comprehensively.

Didier Sornet appears to have published something fairly well researched
on what makes stock markets crash (sample online)..

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7341.html

The City and Wall Street have been recruiting top statisticians prepared
to sell their soul for as long as I can remember - certainly since the
80>s. Bayesians models can do quite well at it.

Regards,
Martin Brown
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

Martin Griffith · Guest

On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:13:02 -0700 (PDT), in sci.electronics.design
bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:

[quote]On Jul 29, 6:41 am, Richard The Dreaded Libertarian <n...@example.net
wrote:
On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:58:45 -0500, Kris Krieger wrote:
Richard The Dreaded Libertarian <n...@example.net> wrote in
On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 20:53:29 -0500, Kris Krieger wrote:
Richard The Dreaded Libertarian <n...@example.net> wrote in

This is just more of the same hysteria based on nothing but Al Gore>s
Revealed "Truth".

You>re the one who>s obsessed with every word that Gore utters, not me

Better check your sides here. The only "obsession" I have with Father Al
is noticing that his "global warming" stuff is purest bullshit, based on
flawed models fed flawed data - GIGO through a garbage model gives you
garbage squared.

What I>ve noticed is that, when someone writes something about having
ernvironmental concers, they get painted with teh Al Gore Potatohead
brush. To me, that looks an awful lot like an obsession with him -
obsessive hatred is still obsession, and obsession gets in the way of
rational and *constructive* discussion.

No, I>m obsessed with the truth, and the Scientific Method, none of which
the warmingists seem to be interested in. It>s clearly a religious cult.

You might try diverting some of your obsessive activity to studying
the science involved in predicting anthropogenic global warming - your
idea of the scientific method seems to include an inviolable right of
the pig ignorant to misunderstand the arguments involved.

snipped more foolish contrarianism
[/quote]

http://www.funnytimes.com/archives/files/art/20051208.jpg

says it all

martin

Kris Krieger · Guest

Richard The Dreaded Libertarian <null@example.net> wrote in
news:pan.2008.07.28.20.40.02.150426@example.net:

[quote]On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:58:45 -0500, Kris Krieger wrote:
Richard The Dreaded Libertarian <null@example.net> wrote in
On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 20:53:29 -0500, Kris Krieger wrote:
Richard The Dreaded Libertarian <null@example.net> wrote in

This is just more of the same hysteria based on nothing but Al
Gore>s Revealed "Truth".

You>re the one who>s obsessed with every word that Gore utters, not
me

Better check your sides here. The only "obsession" I have with
Father Al is noticing that his "global warming" stuff is purest
bullshit, based on flawed models fed flawed data - GIGO through a
garbage model gives you garbage squared.

What I>ve noticed is that, when someone writes something about having
ernvironmental concers, they get painted with teh Al Gore Potatohead
brush. To me, that looks an awful lot like an obsession with him -
obsessive hatred is still obsession, and obsession gets in the way of
rational and *constructive* discussion.

No, I>m obsessed with the truth, and the Scientific Method, none of
which the warmingists seem to be interested in. It>s clearly a
religious cult.
[/quote]
Well, all I can say is that what I>ve seen of the info has caused me
concern, but as I>ve probably said elsewhere, the things that can be done
to reduce pollution and prepare for lowered oil production/availability
will also reduce CO2, so IMO, the larger issue are those two things,
i.e., pollution, and preparing for lower/more expensive supplies of oil.
What I very much *don>t* like abut the CO2-Global Warming argument is
that it>s distracted so many people from those issues.

[quote]But I have no argument with people that don>t abuse the Earth; after
all, using less resources saves you money.
[/quote]
Yup. I think what people need to do is, in general, not let talking-
heads, "pundits", and potatoheads get in the way of solving the *known*
problems. I think that climate research needs to continue, because
knowning our planet will, I>m convinced, benefit us all in the long run.
But the polarization over one issue is not only unconstructive, it>s IMO
DEstructive.

[quote]
And I don>t dispute the fact that the planet>s getting warmer - it>s
been getting warmer and cooler on and off for millions of years. We
just happen to be on the leading edge this year.

BUT: The idea that human activity has any more than a negligible
effect on planetary/cosmological cycles is nothing more than a weird
combination of arrogance and angst.

Thanks,
Rich

[/quote]
In science, you form a theory, do tests, look at the data, and modifythe
theory, i.e. draw conslusions.

I think that we can>t simply ignore the possibility that human activity
is adding to global warming, however, as above, if people got past
arguing that some Absolute Truth exists, and instead apply all of that
wasted brain-power and human energy to solving the problems we *know*
exist, that would itself reduce CO2.

It>s *so* easy (as I know all too well from personal expereince!) to get
all tied up in, and wound up over, arguing over details - in the case of
AGW, the meaning of this data, presentation of some bit of data that
seems to show a discrepancy, and so on. But it>s a lot like the old
saying "they can>t see the forest for the trees". IMO, sitting back from
the bitter arguments (esp. when it>s reduced to mere name-calling), it
seems to be that the "forest" is pollution overall. I do think that CO2
is part of the pollution problem, and yes, I *am* concerned about global
warming, but as above, if we all put our collective brainpower towards
*pollution* problems, as well as towards problems that are arising and
will arise due to decreased/more expensive petroleum, CO2 would pretty
much take care of itself.

So that>s why I get so darn frustrated not just with polarization and
arguing, but especially, arguing that centers around pronouncements made
by potatoheads ((I>m trying to reduce my use of cuss words, hence,
"potatohead" ;) )) We all - and yes, I of course include myself! - need
to remembner to step back from the high emotions that these arguments
engcourage, and try to see the big picture. It>s not a matter of who is
or isn>t "stupid", it>s a matter of just stepping back and determining
how this or that specific situation (and source of contention) fits into
the big picture.

We all also need to occasionalyl be reminded that good, rational, and
yes, even intelligent, people, can disagree over how to sovle a problem,
and remember that it>s comprimise, not polarized contention, that ends up
leading to solutions. And in fact, solutions are underway all around,
the changes instituted by *individuals*. Bioremediation of the
contaminated soils around Oak Ridge, the investigation into, and scaling-
up useage, of blue-green algae by an Arizona Power company, the fellow
who got an electirc car and "refills" it solely from a rooftop solar
panel on his house, with enoguh energy left over to reduce his use of
grid-provided electricity, people who are dfesigning and building
"greener" homes, and so on, and so forth.

While the potatoheaded "pundits" and politicians act liek a bunch of cats
in a sack, hissing and snarling and clawing, *real people* are out ther
who are doing research, building inventions, making innovations. IMO,
*that* is what we - *not* as "DEmocrats" or "Republicans,",but as
*Americans* - ought to be concentrating on.

OK, I>ll get off my soapbox now...

- Kris

Guest

On Jul 30, 11:37 am, James Arthur <bogusabd...@verizon.net> wrote:
[quote]bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On Jul 29, 4:19 am, James Arthur wrote:
On Jul 26, 5:40 pm, bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On Jul 26, 1:31 pm, James Arthur wrote:
[/quote]
<snip>

[quote]And that work>s already been done.

Yep. It is called agricultural science, and it monitors how summer
follows winter, and the rain falls in close enough to same place in
close enough to the same volume from year to year to let you plant
crops and harvest enough of them to make money out of your
predicitons.

Your chaotic weather systems are unpredictable, but they deliver
roughly the same sort of statistical distribution of weather from year
to year, and you can model them well enough as statistical
distributions.

Sure, there>s a long-term trend to climate: it>s getting warmer, and
has been for nearly 20,000 years:

http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/ice_ages/images/laurentide.mpg

Shortly before the trend was for cooling. But those models were
proved wrong. :-)
[/quote]
Sure. We should be headed back towards the next ice age by now, but
pre-industrial anthropogenic global warming seems to have over-ridden
the small orbital forcing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

if William Ruddiman has got it right

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ruddiman

[quote]Your modeller>s efforts freeze out the atmosphere and melt lead in the
same way that my LTSpice circuits occasionally produce megavolts and
mega-amps. This doesn>t stop more carefully constructed models from
providing useful information.

You don>t get it.
[/quote]
On the contrary, I get it rather better than you do. Like your
informant, I too have worked on computer models (albeit at a pretty
primitive level, back in the 1960>s as part of my Ph.D. project). The
instability your modeller complained about isn>t a fault of the model
as a model of the climate, but a fault of all models that rely on
numerical integration to step forward in time - which is why it shows
up in LTSpice models as well as climate models.

[quote] This person works on *the* models. Likely one
of the ones you base your beliefs on. The comments re: instability
were directed at early GCM (global climate models) in general.
[/quote]
And applies generally to all evolving models - not just models of the
climate. Your informant wasn>t too well-informed, or you didn>t
appreciate what he was actually saying.

[quote]And this person opines the GCM models do not usefully predict
climate.
[/quote]
Your second-hand report of his opinion on that aspect of their
performance doesn>t strike me as decisive, given the preamble.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

James Arthur · Guest

Martin Brown wrote:
[quote]James Arthur wrote:
On Jul 26, 5:31 pm, bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On Jul 26, 1:06 pm, James Arthur wrote:

bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
James Arthur wrote:
[Climate modeling] is like the stock market and the many, many
"models" developed
to profit from it. They all go bust.
"Past performance is not an indication of future results."
--Wall Street disclaimer
And this is for a closed, mildly chaotic system with a
well-established long-term upward trend, with a limited
set of variables, all available with great precision,
in real-time. The entire system is "instrumented,"
documented, and logged on-line.

Sure, but any predictive model of the stock market feeds information
to the participants in the market, who proceed to try and exploit,
thus destroying the model>s predictive capacity.

No, I>m speaking of any number of super-secret attempts by
Wall Streeters to hire PhD statisticians, super computers,
and try to beat the street with models.
They absolutely do not share info with the market.
PBS (Public Broadcast System, public, non-profit TV in the US) has
documented at least one such attempt.

As soon as they buy shares, they share information with the market.

That notion doesn>t follow. To the extent it>s true, it would
increase profits.

Not necessarily - primarily it tends to increase volatility.
[/quote]
Buying/selling stocks shares what information? That the
stock is worth buying/selling.

Buying drives prices up. Since you already bought (based
on your successful model), a rising price benefits you.

Vice versa on the sell side.

So, to the extent you>ve shared information, it benefits
you, contradicting Bill>s explanation.

But I was illustrating the perils of longer-term models of
chaotic systems; maybe he means short-term.

There are other interactions and complications. That was
my point: the stock market, far simpler than climate,
defies prediction except over short spans. Not centuries.
Not even six months.

Even this simpler system has subtleties the modelers can>t
capture. And the global climate modeling problem is worse.

Wasn>t a rash of hurricanes predicted the year after
Katrina? And the next year? Wrongly? And weren>t
they wrong, even updating mid-season? They were.
Why? Because their models /don>t/ predict.

Here>s another analog: we know about plate tectonics,
measure strain and movement, know the history and
long-term trends, yet cannot and do not try to predict
earthquakes.

/That>s/ science. Seismologists have models, but
do not presume to predict what they cannot predict.
Despite huge pressure to do so. Kudos to them.

Cheers,
James Arthur

James Arthur · Guest

bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:
[quote]On Jul 29, 4:19 am, James Arthur <dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Jul 26, 5:40 pm, bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:

On Jul 26, 1:31 pm, James Arthur wrote:
Indeed, maybe we>re in a big relaxation oscillator:
o the plants go nuts, gobble all the precious CO2, driving
us into an ice age,
o the Earth freezes, life fades,
o volcanoes erupt, restoring the depleted, life-giving gas,
o warmth returns,
o and the world sputters on for a time.
Repeat.
There>s your long-term negative feedback.
Some of it. And it constitutes exactly the kind of climate modelling
whose predictive value you>ve just denied.
I agree it constitutes a vital, mitigating influence. But as
I>ve documented in the parallel "OT: Hydrogen economy, not?"
thread, the IPCC models do not include it.
The model pro I communicate with indicates the models are
great tools for understanding the workings of the Earth>s
climate machine, and useful for predictions up to several
months in advance. Beyond that, they diverge hopelessly.
Understanding a butterfly>s wings does not tell you where
the butterfly will go.
I think you are confusing climate and weather. Weather is chaotic.
Climate has regularities.
--
Bill Sloman, Nimegen
Which see-sawing, spikey graph would you point a fellow to, then, to
demonstrate these regularities, and on what time scale do these
regularities apply?

El Nino eludes prediction, despite great effort to model it. Is El
Nino then a weather event?

I note that any given day>s weather is very often much like the
previous day>s, any given minute is usually much like the previous
minute, and I could make a nice model predicting--with great accuracy
when taken overall--that the next second would be like the one before
it.

And then I could extrapolate that result out a few centuries, and I>d
have a climate model projecting out the trends. And it might even be
right. But probably not.

And that work>s already been done.

Yep. It is called agricultural science, and it monitors how summer
follows winter, and the rain falls in close enough to same place in
close enough to the same volume from year to year to let you plant
crops and harvest enough of them to make money out of your
predicitons.

Your chaotic weather systems are unpredictable, but they deliver
roughly the same sort of statistical distribution of weather from year
to year, and you can model them well enough as statistical
distributions.

Your modeller>s efforts freeze out the atmosphere and melt lead in the
same way that my LTSpice circuits occasionally produce megavolts and
mega-amps. This doesn>t stop more carefully constructed models from
providing useful information.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen[/quote]

James Arthur · Guest

bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:
[quote]On Jul 29, 4:19 am, James Arthur wrote:
On Jul 26, 5:40 pm, bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:

On Jul 26, 1:31 pm, James Arthur wrote:
Indeed, maybe we>re in a big relaxation oscillator:
o the plants go nuts, gobble all the precious CO2, driving
us into an ice age,
o the Earth freezes, life fades,
o volcanoes erupt, restoring the depleted, life-giving gas,
o warmth returns,
o and the world sputters on for a time.
Repeat.
There>s your long-term negative feedback.
Some of it. And it constitutes exactly the kind of climate modelling
whose predictive value you>ve just denied.
I agree it constitutes a vital, mitigating influence. But as
I>ve documented in the parallel "OT: Hydrogen economy, not?"
thread, the IPCC models do not include it.
The model pro I communicate with indicates the models are
great tools for understanding the workings of the Earth>s
climate machine, and useful for predictions up to several
months in advance. Beyond that, they diverge hopelessly.
Understanding a butterfly>s wings does not tell you where
the butterfly will go.
I think you are confusing climate and weather. Weather is chaotic.
Climate has regularities.
--
Bill Sloman, Nimegen
Which see-sawing, spikey graph would you point a fellow to, then, to
demonstrate these regularities, and on what time scale do these
regularities apply?

El Nino eludes prediction, despite great effort to model it. Is El
Nino then a weather event?

I note that any given day>s weather is very often much like the
previous day>s, any given minute is usually much like the previous
minute, and I could make a nice model predicting--with great accuracy
when taken overall--that the next second would be like the one before
it.

And then I could extrapolate that result out a few centuries, and I>d
have a climate model projecting out the trends. And it might even be
right. But probably not.

And that work>s already been done.

Yep. It is called agricultural science, and it monitors how summer
follows winter, and the rain falls in close enough to same place in
close enough to the same volume from year to year to let you plant
crops and harvest enough of them to make money out of your
predicitons.

Your chaotic weather systems are unpredictable, but they deliver
roughly the same sort of statistical distribution of weather from year
to year, and you can model them well enough as statistical
distributions.
[/quote]
Sure, there>s a long-term trend to climate: it>s getting warmer, and
has been for nearly 20,000 years:

http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/ice_ages/images/laurentide.mpg

Shortly before the trend was for cooling. But those models were
proved wrong. :-)

[quote]Your modeller>s efforts freeze out the atmosphere and melt lead in the
same way that my LTSpice circuits occasionally produce megavolts and
mega-amps. This doesn>t stop more carefully constructed models from
providing useful information.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
[/quote]

You don>t get it. This person works on *the* models. Likely one
of the ones you base your beliefs on. The comments re: instability
were directed at early GCM (global climate models) in general.

And this person opines the GCM models do not usefully predict
climate.

Cheers,
James Arthur

Martin Brown · Guest

James Arthur wrote:
[quote]Martin Brown wrote:
James Arthur wrote:
On Jul 26, 5:31 pm, bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On Jul 26, 1:06 pm, James Arthur wrote:

No, I>m speaking of any number of super-secret attempts by
Wall Streeters to hire PhD statisticians, super computers,
and try to beat the street with models.
They absolutely do not share info with the market.
PBS (Public Broadcast System, public, non-profit TV in the US) has
documented at least one such attempt.

As soon as they buy shares, they share information with the market.

That notion doesn>t follow. To the extent it>s true, it would
increase profits.

Not necessarily - primarily it tends to increase volatility.

Buying/selling stocks shares what information? That the
stock is worth buying/selling.

Buying drives prices up. Since you already bought (based
on your successful model), a rising price benefits you.
[/quote]
Only if you sell again at or near the peak. Therein lies the problem.
The herd instinct of traders driven by greed and fear in equal measure.
[quote]
Vice versa on the sell side.
[/quote]
However, that "advantage" only holds for the first mover. In the real
market buy/sell decisions trigger additional ones and parasites take up
highly leveraged derivatives or short positions on huge numbers of
borrowed shares in companies they expect to fall in a crippled market.
Several bank shares have been bounced up and down by 20% in the recent
crisis of confidence. The amazing thing is if they win they get huge
bonuses and if they lose like Fanny & Freddie did they are "too big to
fail".

And the recent bounce in oil prices owes much of the overshoot to
speculators driving the price ever higher and product scarcer. It does
nothing at all for the real manufacturing economy.
[quote]
So, to the extent you>ve shared information, it benefits
you, contradicting Bill>s explanation.

But I was illustrating the perils of longer-term models of
chaotic systems; maybe he means short-term.

There are other interactions and complications. That was
my point: the stock market, far simpler than climate,
defies prediction except over short spans. Not centuries.
Not even six months.
[/quote]
Actually the stock market overall is more predictable over very long
investment timescales otherwise there would be no point in putting money
into it. Short term it can bounce about hellishly through speculators
but over the longer term it should reflect actual real economic growth.
[quote]
Even this simpler system has subtleties the modelers can>t
capture. And the global climate modeling problem is worse.

Wasn>t a rash of hurricanes predicted the year after
Katrina? And the next year? Wrongly? And weren>t
they wrong, even updating mid-season? They were.
Why? Because their models /don>t/ predict.
[/quote]
You will always get speculation like that. The only thing that is
certain is that warmer air can carry a lot more water vapour.
[quote]
Here>s another analog: we know about plate tectonics,
measure strain and movement, know the history and
long-term trends, yet cannot and do not try to predict
earthquakes.
[/quote]
Actually it is the Holy grail of modern geophysics to do exactly that.
There are some techniques that are close to being able to sense changes
that signal the unlocking of the faults as may be precursors to the main
quake.

I have been in a couple of moderate quakes. One a shallow very sharp one
(not particularly strong) destroyed every magnetically levitated turbo
pump in the Tokyo area. The amazing thing for me was that I heard it
coming for what seemed about 5s before it arrived. Sounded a bit like a
high pitced train. The jolt was very sharp - the whole world moved an
inch very suddenly.
[quote]
/That>s/ science. Seismologists have models, but
do not presume to predict what they cannot predict.
Despite huge pressure to do so. Kudos to them.
[/quote]
Actually they hope to predict several future quakes and obvious cities
are instrumented for the purpose. The researchers have to be extremely
careful about what they disclose because the mere mention of increased
risk of an earthquake in obvious locations can affect property values
and in a hyper litigious society like the US it gets hairy.

There have been only a handful of successful earthquake predictions to
date. More at USGS:

http://www.geophys.washington.edu/SEIS/PNSN/INFO_GENERAL/eq_prediction.html

The Japanese are still trying pretty hard at earthquake prediction.
http://www.fujitaresearch.com/reports/earthquakes.html
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F01E2D61539F930A25752C0A96E958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

AFAIK some Japanese researchers still keep a few fish that are alleged
to flip their tails when an earthquake is coming.

Regards,
Martin Brown
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

James Arthur · Guest

Martin Brown wrote:
[quote]James Arthur wrote:
Martin Brown wrote:
James Arthur wrote:
On Jul 26, 5:31 pm, bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On Jul 26, 1:06 pm, James Arthur wrote:

No, I>m speaking of any number of super-secret attempts by
Wall Streeters to hire PhD statisticians, super computers,
and try to beat the street with models.
They absolutely do not share info with the market.
PBS (Public Broadcast System, public, non-profit TV in the US) has
documented at least one such attempt.

As soon as they buy shares, they share information with the market.

That notion doesn>t follow. To the extent it>s true, it would
increase profits.

Not necessarily - primarily it tends to increase volatility.

Buying/selling stocks shares what information? That the
stock is worth buying/selling.

Buying drives prices up. Since you already bought (based
on your successful model), a rising price benefits you.

Only if you sell again at or near the peak. Therein lies the problem.
The herd instinct of traders driven by greed and fear in equal measure.

Vice versa on the sell side.

However, that "advantage" only holds for the first mover. In the real
market buy/sell decisions trigger additional ones and parasites take up
highly leveraged derivatives or short positions on huge numbers of
borrowed shares in companies they expect to fall in a crippled market.
Several bank shares have been bounced up and down by 20% in the recent
crisis of confidence. The amazing thing is if they win they get huge
bonuses and if they lose like Fanny & Freddie did they are "too big to
fail".
[/quote]
You>re talking about why the models fail. I was talking about
what secret modeling information is shared by the act of buying
or selling. I.e., Bill>s idea.

[quote]
And the recent bounce in oil prices owes much of the overshoot to
speculators driving the price ever higher and product scarcer. It does
nothing at all for the real manufacturing economy.

So, to the extent you>ve shared information, it benefits
you, contradicting Bill>s explanation.

But I was illustrating the perils of longer-term models of
chaotic systems; maybe he means short-term.

There are other interactions and complications. That was
my point: the stock market, far simpler than climate,
defies prediction except over short spans. Not centuries.
Not even six months.

Actually the stock market overall is more predictable over very long
investment timescales otherwise there would be no point in putting money
into it. Short term it can bounce about hellishly through speculators
but over the longer term it should reflect actual real economic growth.
[/quote]
Obviously, just as global warming is predictable over certain
timespans. We>ve been warming for 18,000 years. And it>s
likely to continue.

The debate is whether we>re warming any faster, diverging
from the trend. Which is akin to the volatility you refer
to in stocks.

[quote]
Even this simpler system has subtleties the modelers can>t
capture. And the global climate modeling problem is worse.

Wasn>t a rash of hurricanes predicted the year after
Katrina? And the next year? Wrongly? And weren>t
they wrong, even updating mid-season? They were.
Why? Because their models /don>t/ predict.

You will always get speculation like that. The only thing that is
certain is that warmer air can carry a lot more water vapour.
[/quote]
It>s all speculation, that>s the problem.

[quote]Here>s another analog: we know about plate tectonics,
measure strain and movement, know the history and
long-term trends, yet cannot and do not try to predict
earthquakes.

Actually it is the Holy grail of modern geophysics to do exactly that.
There are some techniques that are close to being able to sense changes
that signal the unlocking of the faults as may be precursors to the main
quake.
[/quote]
I know it>s their goal. It>s also superficially far simpler than
climate--there aren>t a bunch of competing feedbacks. But we
still don>t know exactly when strained rock deep in the earth
will break, or where. And we can>t predict earthquakes.

[quote]I have been in a couple of moderate quakes. One a shallow very sharp one
(not particularly strong) destroyed every magnetically levitated turbo
pump in the Tokyo area. The amazing thing for me was that I heard it
coming for what seemed about 5s before it arrived. Sounded a bit like a
high pitced train. The jolt was very sharp - the whole world moved an
inch very suddenly.
[/quote]
I>ve been in a few too. Sufficiently far from the epicenter, the roar
gets ahead of the groundwave, hence the warning.

[quote]/That>s/ science. Seismologists have models, but
do not presume to predict what they cannot predict.
Despite huge pressure to do so. Kudos to them.

Actually they hope to predict several future quakes and obvious cities
are instrumented for the purpose. The researchers have to be extremely
careful about what they disclose because the mere mention of increased
risk of an earthquake in obvious locations can affect property values
and in a hyper litigious society like the US it gets hairy.
[/quote]
Again, my point is not the merits or fine points of earthquake
prediction, but that models can>t currently predict even much
simpler systems, much less climate.

Regards,
James Arthur

James Arthur · Guest

bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:
[quote]On Jul 30, 11:37 am, James Arthur wrote:
bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On Jul 29, 4:19 am, James Arthur wrote:
On Jul 26, 5:40 pm, bill.slo...@ieee.org wrote:
On Jul 26, 1:31 pm, James Arthur wrote:

snip

And that work>s already been done.
Yep. It is called agricultural science, and it monitors how summer
follows winter, and the rain falls in close enough to same place in
close enough to the same volume from year to year to let you plant
crops and harvest enough of them to make money out of your
predicitons.
Your chaotic weather systems are unpredictable, but they deliver
roughly the same sort of statistical distribution of weather from year
to year, and you can model them well enough as statistical
distributions.
Sure, there>s a long-term trend to climate: it>s getting warmer, and
has been for nearly 20,000 years:

http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/ice_ages/images/laurentide.mpg

Shortly before the trend was for cooling. But those models were
proved wrong. :-)

Sure. We should be headed back towards the next ice age by now, but
pre-industrial anthropogenic global warming seems to have over-ridden
the small orbital forcing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

if William Ruddiman has got it right

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ruddiman

Your modeller>s efforts freeze out the atmosphere and melt lead in the
same way that my LTSpice circuits occasionally produce megavolts and
mega-amps. This doesn>t stop more carefully constructed models from
providing useful information.
You don>t get it.

On the contrary, I get it rather better than you do.
[/quote]
You don>t understand this person>s position. I do.

[quote]Like your
informant, I too have worked on computer models (albeit at a pretty
primitive level, back in the 1960>s as part of my Ph.D. project).
[/quote]
Your experience re: GCM is and can be in no way comparable.

But like you, I>ve modeled enough things to know the limits of
the technique, and can spy errors of technique and invalid
assumptions, especially when they>re so obvious.

[quote]The
instability your modeller complained about isn>t a fault of the model
as a model of the climate, but a fault of all models that rely on
numerical integration to step forward in time - which is why it shows
up in LTSpice models as well as climate models.
[/quote]
Now you presume to know the cause of the errors. How?

[quote]
This person works on *the* models. Likely one
of the ones you base your beliefs on. The comments re: instability
were directed at early GCM (global climate models) in general.

And applies generally to all evolving models - not just models of the
climate. Your informant wasn>t too well-informed, or you didn>t
appreciate what he was actually saying.

And this person opines the GCMs do not usefully predict
climate.

Your second-hand report of his opinion on that aspect of their
performance doesn>t strike me as decisive, given the preamble.
[/quote]
That report was based on actual testing of certain GCMs.

You believe in GCMs. On what evidence?

Cheers,
James Arthur


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