486 replies to this topic

[Seven of Nine]

Pete Tattum, on 27 July 2011 - 08:56 , said:

So, we are still at the stage where there is absolutely zero evidence around, suggesting that an Ice Age is imminent? Very strange, IMO, given that so many folks feel able to categorically state that the Earth is currently cooling...when it isn't! At least, not unless those who 'know' it is [cooling] have reset their clocks again - from 1998 to 2010?

It's not cooling, but then again it's not warming. Temps have flatlined over the last few years, were they go from here is anyone's guess, but if solar predictions are right then we should see evidence for cooling within the next few years, albeit a small decrease.

Edited by Seven of Nine, 27 July 2011 - 09:36 .

[Boar Wrinklestorm]

Sparticle, on 27 July 2011 - 05:38 , said:

No such thing as a 'global temperature'

Well, at least not one derived by the arithmetic mean. I guess, of course, you could be a super-intelligent being that can break the laws of physics and produce thermodynamics at a distance, but, on the balance of probability I must assume that you are not God.

I suppose you must also believe in the divination of average exchange rates (across currencies), and average phone book numbers?

Bugger. It looks like I am some 4 years late to the party, here. Someone's already had that idea, and it seems to have already been rebutted. Still, thought I was onto something for a couple of days there

Edited by Sparticle, 27 July 2011 - 09:42 .

[Seven of Nine]

Some evidence of an impending ice age, as such.

 Ice age threat should freeze EPA global warming regs The Examiner Op Eds Washington Examiner.htm   224.37K   50 downloads


More of a political rant really.

Edited by Seven of Nine, 27 July 2011 - 09:45 .

[Solar Sausage]

Seven of Nine, on 27 July 2011 - 09:27 , said:

It's not cooling, but then again it's not warming. Temps have flatlined over the last few years, were they go from here is anyone's guess, but if solar predictions are right then we should see evidence for cooling within the next few years, albeit a small decrease.

I'll buy that, Seven of Nine.

[songster]

Sparticle, on 27 July 2011 - 09:42 , said:

Bugger. It looks like I am some 4 years late to the party, here. Someone's already had that idea, and it seems to have already been rebutted. Still, thought I was onto something for a couple of days there

To be honest, it's confused enough not to need rebutting. Parts of your body are at different temperatures. No part of your body is at equilibrium with any other part, nor are you at equilibrium with your surroundings. You cannot therefore conclude that your body does not have a temperature, nor that fever / hypothermia are not identifiable medical conditions.

[Solar Sausage]

songster, on 27 July 2011 - 10:06 , said:

To be honest, it's confused enough not to need rebutting. Parts of your body are at different temperatures. No part of your body is at equilibrium with any other part, nor are you at equilibrium with your surroundings. You cannot therefore conclude that your body does not have a temperature, nor that fever / hypothermia are not identifiable medical conditions.

I was debating [internally] the likely paradox that viewing this issue from a non-Popperian paradigm might cause...So, over to you, Sparticle!

[Boar Wrinklestorm]

songster, on 27 July 2011 - 10:06 , said:

To be honest, it's confused enough not to need rebutting. Parts of your body are at different temperatures. No part of your body is at equilibrium with any other part, nor are you at equilibrium with your surroundings. You cannot therefore conclude that your body does not have a temperature, nor that fever / hypothermia are not identifiable medical conditions.

Well, I didn't think so. :confused:

The premise is pretty straight-forward, I think: during calculations one must retain context (Claude Shannon's information theory) An arithmetic mean calculation requires that you add up all the temperatures of the world before you divide by the quantity of measurements. The first part of the calculation gives you a nonsensical number (context is lost) therefore the calculation is faulty.

What I missed is that that is not what is going on (CRU are perhaps guilty of mis-titling their charts - perhaps) Nobody is actually meaning to say this is the mean temperature of the Earth - it is the mean anomaly. Which makes sense.

I still think averaging intensive properties (temperature etc) is a very dangerous thing - but it's not what is going on in climate science.

BTW - your body does not have an average temperature that is meaningful - as you said, a body has different temperatures that are locally useful, but the global arithmetic mean isn't - perhaps the anomaly from the mean of your body is useful ...for instance let's say one part of your body is 37.5C, your heart, say, and an another part, the lobe on your ear is 4.5C. The average of the two numbers is 21C, room temperature, so one might be able to say that since your body is at room temperature you are effectively ... dead.

Pete Tattum, on 27 July 2011 - 10:14 , said:

I was debating [internally] the likely paradox that viewing this issue from a non-Popperian paradigm might cause...So, over to you, Sparticle!

I prefer to be wrong only once a day, Pete!

Edited by Sparticle, 27 July 2011 - 10:56 .

[songster]

Sparticle, on 27 July 2011 - 10:45 , said:

BTW - your body does not have an average temperature that is meaningful - as you said, a body has different temperatures that are locally useful, but the global arithmetic mean isn't - perhaps the anomaly from the mean of your body is useful ...for instance let's say one part of your body is 37.5C, your heart, say, and an another part, the lobe on your ear is 4.5C. The average of the two numbers is 21C, room temperature, so one might be able to say that since your body is at room temperature you are effectively ... dead.

Fair enough, let's talk about the temperature of the heart - the body's "core temperature". Would you accept that this is meaningful? If it goes up too much, you die. If it goes down too much, likewise. But what is that "core temperature"? It's nothing but the average of the left ventricle, the right ventricle, the auricles, and the blood contained therein. Surely it must therefore be meaningless, by your logic. So now let's say we only care about the temperature of the left ventricle. That is only an average of the temperatures of each individual cubic millimetre of heart muscle...

This is drivel! Temperature is an average. Inherently, and by definition. It is the averaged randomised kinetic energy of a group of particles. By your cockeyed logic, there's no such thing as temperature at all. Codswallop. You can average across one set of particles (your heart) just as validly as you can any other (the molecules in my cup of tea, the atoms in the sun, your car's windscreen, or the surface of the Earth). What matters is whether that average is useful. The planetary temperature plainly is useful: if it's changing, it tells you something about the net energy balance of the system. More localised temperatures are also useful, and likely more so in most cases - when predicting the likely future of Arctic ice, say, or deciding whether it's safe to get into your bath. The key is to use any given temperature measurement in the area for which it is useful. When assaying the global effects of greenhouse gas release, global temperature is one type of useful measurement.

Sparticle, on 27 July 2011 - 10:45 , said:

I prefer to be wrong only once a day, Pete!

Ah, but you were wrong ten minutes ago, you were wrong nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds ago, you were wrong nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds ago... best average them together, at least that way you'll only be wrong once. :-p

Edited by songster, 27 July 2011 - 11:12 .

[mike Meehan]

Sparticle, on 27 July 2011 - 10:45 , said:

BTW - your body does not have an average temperature that is meaningful - as you said, a body has different temperatures that are locally useful, but the global arithmetic mean isn't - perhaps the anomaly from the mean of your body is useful ...for instance let's say one part of your body is 37.5C, your heart, say, and an another part, the lobe on your ear is 4.5C. The average of the two numbers is 21C, room temperature, so one might be able to say that since your body is at room temperature you are effectively ... dead.
I prefer to be wrong only once a day, Pete!

I think this shows how measurements by temperature alone can be misleading - temperature is merely a measurement of the level of heat and not the measure of the amount of heat which can be different.

In this case we could measure to total number of calories in the body and use this against the total number of calories in the ear lobe then average these two figures out then the answer would be very much different - so in fact you would not be dead after all.

[mike Meehan]

songster, on 27 July 2011 - 11:10 , said:

Ah, but you were wrong ten minutes ago, you were wrong nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds ago, you were wrong nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds ago... best average them together, at least that way you'll only be wrong once. :-p

So would this be the difference between passé parfait and passé imparfait?

[Snow Leopard]

Interesting article:

Link here

[Solar Sausage]

Sparticle, on 27 July 2011 - 10:45 , said:

I prefer to be wrong only once a day, Pete!

Just to keep you updated, Sparticle: so far, my intense level of internal thinking has yielded nothing. And I don't think that that claim is falsifiable in any way at all...

[Cheese Rice]

What is interesting to note is that despise a dramatic rise in CO2 emissions global temperatures didn't correlate with a significant change. IF there is indeed a direct link then why did global temperatures decrease from 1930 to 1970? I suppose one argument is that emissions stagnated between 1935 and 1945, causing global climate to reassert itself, yet when global emissions started to increase again global temperatures began to rapidly fall.



Global temperatures have definitely stagnated from 1999 onwards. 1998 seems to be the peak of warming over the last century. What is evident is that although global temperatures are at an all time high they haven't risen from its peak despite a rapid rise in global CO2 emission. In answer to the thread question, no the earth hasn't cooled, any dips are just variation of the current stagnated trend.





EDIT: Images haven't loaded when posted but loaded when typing my post.

Edited by Cheese Rice, 11 August 2011 - 18:35 .

[Cloudman]

The globe has, of course continued to warm since 1999, the warmest year on record so far is 2010. Of course. the warming since 1999 is not satisitically significant, with an underlying warming rate of about 0.2 C per decade due to AGW and ENSO fluctuations of a similar magnitude it takes about 20 years to establish significance at the 95% level.

[anvilhead]

hey all
As I ride out the fifth non continental style summer, cant help wondering about the temperature anomolies around us - i Just stumbled on the met office model's prediction for twice the co2 as we have now, and its not a million miles away in principle to the 'weather' the planet has expierenced in the last 5 years imo - http://www.scienceph.../160492/enlarge.
Saying that, I'm still yet to be convinced that warming is happening, but the anomolous nwerly every summer for us is making me worry!

sam

[mike Meehan]

Everybody speaks about temperatures but this merely indicates a level of heat and not the amount of heat itself and it is more simplistic- if we say the earth is cooling then it is losing heat, or if it is warming it is gaining heat, therefore would it be more accurate to calculate the heat energy in therms?

[Alan Robinson]

mike Meehan, on 29 August 2011 - 18:09 , said:

Everybody speaks about temperatures but this merely indicates a level of heat and not the amount of heat itself and it is more simplistic- if we say the earth is cooling then it is losing heat, or if it is warming it is gaining heat, therefore would it be more accurate to calculate the heat energy in therms?

It took me a little while to work that one out Mike, but I'd say you are right, only therms is an old unit. Today we use SI units, and the correct unit of measurement is the Joule.

This is however where the whole climate debate starts, because according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, a cool body cannot give heat energy to a warmer one without the aid of an external heat pump; so we become embroiled in all manner of speculation and disagreement about what exactly is going on. I am still waiting for the climate debate to include explanations why the earth's core remains molten after all these millions of years, when one could reasonably expect its energy to have dissipated into space by now. Something extraordinary is going on beneath our feet I'd say. Who knows just what the earth's internal energy is?

[mike Meehan]

Alan Robinson, on 30 August 2011 - 04:51 , said:

It took me a little while to work that one out Mike, but I'd say you are right, only therms is an old unit. Today we use SI units, and the correct unit of measurement is the Joule.

This is however where the whole climate debate starts, because according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, a cool body cannot give heat energy to a warmer one without the aid of an external heat pump; so we become embroiled in all manner of speculation and disagreement about what exactly is going on. I am still waiting for the climate debate to include explanations why the earth's core remains molten after all these millions of years, when one could reasonably expect its energy to have dissipated into space by now. Something extraordinary is going on beneath our feet I'd say. Who knows just what the earth's internal energy is?

Sorry about the use of old parlance giving away my age.

James May did a fascinating series of programs for the telly aimed at uneducated masses like myself examining the Earth from the surface to the core - as far as the core was concerned he spoke of a nuclear process going on, which I understood to be similar to the "hot" spots in the granite of the west country which are caused through an atomic decay in the process of converting one substance to another but on a much larger scale with a half life of 4.5 billion years. Under normal atmospheric pressure the core would be molten but under enormous pressure it is solid again with an intervening layer of liquid basalt, which has been heated by the core and having a circulation which powers the "continental drift".

It is very important because it also powers the magnetic field which in turn protects life on earth from the more dangerous of the sun's rays. I think I heard somewhere that some of the smaller planets of the solar system no longer have a magnetic field which would indicate that their core has cooled to an extent it can longer support one but with a half life of 4.5 billion years we should be ok for the next few years.

We also have some practical problems in getting down to that depth in order to verify the theories.

I understand we have some involved in earth science on the forum who would have a far greater knowledge than myself or James May.

Edited by mike Meehan, 30 August 2011 - 09:34 .

[Cutty Dyer]

The poll asked: Do you believe the world is Cooling or Heating up?

My vote went to “seems to be decreasing”.
I’m basing this on my own experience within my own little world, shuttling between the UK & US.
For US graph see:

For UK graph see:

Both US & UK graphs show a very steep decline over the last 1/2 decade.
Interesting correlation between the temp graphs and this solar activity graph:

Data Sources:
http://data.giss.nas...raphs/Fig.D.gif
http://www.metoffice...rs_uptodate.gif
http://www.solarham.com/sunspots.htm

Edited by Cutty Dyer, 31 August 2011 - 14:42 .

[keithlucky]

The IPCC had told us that the Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035.

Later admitted that the figure 2035 was created by permuting digits in the figure 2350 which was casually mentioned in an interview with a random mediocre alarmist as the earliest moment when the bulk of the glaciers in the Himalayas could be melted.Not true infact the opposite is occuring
Forget global warming: Scientists discover glaciers in Asian mountain range are actually getting BIGGER by Ian Garland
Sunday, April 15th 2012, 5:40 PM EDT

Photos taken by a French satellite show glaciers in a mountain range west of the Himalayas have grown during the last decade.

The growing glaciers were found in the Karakoram range, which spans the borders between Pakistan, India and China and is home to the world's second highest peak, K2.

The startling find has baffled scientists and comes at a time when glaciers in other parts of the region, and across the world, are shrinking.

French scientists from the National Centre for Scientific Research and the University of Grenoble, were forced to rely on satellite images, to study the region - because much of the Karakoram range is inaccessible.

They compared observations made in 1999 and 2008 and found a marginal mass increase.

They estimated the glaciers had gained between 0.11 and 0.22 metres of ice each year.

Edited by keithlucky, 16 April 2012 - 21:14 .