Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[Corsair 115]

Sure...

Then why even mention those points since they apply to both planets? The way you phrased the comment made it seem as if those items were unique to Mercury and thus explains conditions there.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

It doesn't matter. It's variable so two striking different concepts like mass and weight end up being even different quantities..

Look, (x a-units) /(y a-units/year) = (hx b-units/(hy b-units per year) =x/y years whether "_-units" is pounds or slugs, kilos or newtons.

There's at least one honest person on the believers' side of this discussion:...

...With the levels of precision that we are talking about you are correct that it wouldn't change the figures significantly. Can't we now please forget this and get back to discussing climate?

...

Your problem is conceptual, to say the least. But I can understand how someone who fail to grasp such evident conceptual difference may think that the change in value doesn't matter. It's even predictable[/QUOTE]

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Then why even mention those points since they apply to both planets? The way you phrased the comment made it seem as if those items were unique to Mercury and thus explains conditions there.

Because that consideration does not apply equally to both planets. Mercury gets to cool down on the night side.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Which is why I (and probably you) learnt to use the term mass in a scientific context (except, perhaps, when explaining the difference between mass and weight). Malcolm Kirkpatrick lacks that instinct, which explains a lot.

Someone who's so glib about a few orders of magnitude while insulating his worldview from model projections by the simple expedient of calling them inexact is just as predictable, if you know how dense they are and how closely bonded to their worldview.

Meanwhile it's all going to pot in the real world.

Anybody see anything about measurable physical variables in the above?

 

[jimbob]

Because that consideration does not apply equally to both planets. Mercury gets to cool down on the night side.

And Venus doesn't... Because of its greenhouse effect.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Beware your continued ignorance about Skeptical Science's commitment to describe a little thing called climate science and actually includes citations to the science that you are ignoring...

...Studies from around the world show no signs of bleaching dating back many thousands of years, until recent decades (Abram 2003), (Aronson 2003)...

...

This is baloney. Darwin mentioned bleaching (in Voyage of the Beagle or On the Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs. I don't remember which. I last read __...Coral Reefs__ decades ago and __Voyage a few years ago.). Reef corals die (and turn white) whenever a year-record low tide coincides with a sunny midday. Also, that first link (Abram) does not support the statement "no signs of bleaching dating back many thousands of years, until recent decades". It describes coral death as a result of a periodic event (Indian Ocean oscilation) and exceptional terrestrial event (forest fire).

Beware your continued ignorance about Skeptical Science,

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

And Venus doesn't... Because of its greenhouse effect.

That's our argument, isn't it? I mean, let's take an extreme case: put four rocky spheres (say, 50 meters in diameter) into an orbit around the sun that takes, say, six Earth months. Orient them so that the axis of rotation is perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. Rock is a decent thermal insulator, right? I have handled without gloves lava cinders that glowed red on one side. Put two thermometers on each sphere, at the equator and at the pole. Set them spinning such that two keep the same face to the sun and two rotate every 24 hours. Cover one slowly-rotating sphere with a 1-meter coat of a metal that melts on the sunward side of the rapidly-rotating sphere. "Greenhouse effect" doesn't apply, right? Wouldn't you expect smaller equator-to-pole difference on the spheres with a liquid-metal coat?

Look, Ma, no insults!

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Um more bad news for corals, warm temps one of the three top reasons for the decline of the Great Barrier reef
http://news.yahoo.com/half-great-barrier-reef-lost-past-3-decades-191029428.html

This looks more like evidence of cooling than warming. From your link: "They did find some local differences, with the relatively pristine northern region showing no decline over the past two decades."
Reef corals thrive in warm water. Sure, there's an upper limit but the surface temperature at the North end of the Great Barrier Reef isn't it. If warming was killing cold-adapted varieties of reef-building corals at the South end of the reef, warm-adapted varieties would move in.

Look, Ma, no insults!

 

[Acleron]

Just one aside, pounds and tons are measures of mass in the imperial system. (the pound force is a unit of force).

Being British I am fairly familiar with both the metric system and parts of the imperial system.

Just a second aside, wasn't the imperial measure of force the poundal?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Just one aside, pounds and tons are measures of mass in the imperial system. (the pound force is a unit of force).

Being British I am fairly familiar with both the metric system and parts of the imperial system.

Engineering toolbox:...

The British Gravitational System - BG
The British Gravitational System (Imperial System) of units is used by engineers in the English-speaking world with the same relation to the foot - pound - second system as the meter kilogram - force second system (SI) has to the meter - kilogram - second system. For engineers who deals with forces, instead of masses, it's convenient to use a system that has as its base units length, time, and force, instead of length, time and mass.

The three base units in the Imperial system are the foot, the second, and the pound-force.

In the BG system the mass unit is the slug and is defined from the Newton's Second Law (1). The unit of mass, the slug, is derived from the pound-force by defining it as the mass that will accelerate at 1 foot per second per second when a 1 pound-force acts upon it:

1 lb = (1 slug)(1 ft/s2)

In other words, 1 lb (pound) force acting on 1 slug mass will give the mass an acceleration of 1 ft/s2.

The weight of the mass from equation (2) in BG units can be expressed as:

w (lb) = m (slugs) g (ft/s2)

With a standard gravity - g = 32.17405 ft/s2 - the mass of 1 slug weights 32.17405 lbf (pound-force).

The English Engineering System - EE
In the English Engineering system of units the primary dimensions are are force, mass, length, time and temperature. The units for force and mass are defined independently

the basic unit of mass is pound-mass (lbm)
the unit of force is the pound (lb) alternatively pound-force (lbf).

 

[Reality Check]

This is baloney. Darwin mentioned bleaching ...

That is quite ignorant. Of course bleaching existed before global warming because El-Nino events (local warming) are not new!
How global warming is driving mass coral bleaching

On a world scale coral reefs are in decline. Over the last 30-40 years 80% of coral in the Caribbean have been destroyed and 50% in Indonesia and the Pacific. Bleaching associated with the 1982 -1983 El-Nino killed over 95% of coral in the Galapagos Islands and the 1997-1998 El-Nino alone wiped out 16% of all coral on the planet. Globally about 1% of coral is dying out each year.
...
Looking only at bleaching though, we find that the incidence of mass coral bleaching increases dramatically in the last few decades. Despite modern records being biased by better monitoring and reporting in recent times, there seem to be little evidence of mass coral bleaching further back in time when examining long-lived coral communities. Studies from around the world show no signs of bleaching dating back many thousands of years, until recent decades (Abram 2003), (Aronson 2003). In the Caribbean there are no signs of previous mass bleaching dating back 220,000 years (Pandolfini & Jackson 2006)

Global warming though causes a global increase in ocean temperature (and AFAIK deepens the El Niño–Southern Oscillation). This leads to mass bleaching as in the cited papers.

Also, that first link (Abram) does not support the statement "no signs of bleaching dating back many thousands of years, until recent decades". It describes coral death as a result of a periodic event (Indian Ocean oscilation) and exceptional terrestrial event (forest fire).

Also you cannot read
Abram 2003 and Aronson 2003 are about "no signs of bleaching dating back many thousands of years, until recent decades".

In the Caribbean there are no signs of previous mass bleaching dating back 220,000 years (Pandolfini & Jackson 2006) is about "no signs of bleaching dating back many thousands of years, until recent decades".

Beware your continued ignorance about Skeptical Science,

Beware your continued ignorance about Climate Science: How global warming is driving mass coral bleaching

 

[jimbob]

Just a second aside, wasn't the imperial measure of force the poundal?

I believe it has been called that, however I am more aware of its name as a "pound force", but then the only imperial unit I actually need for work (as opposed to metric equivalents) is the "thou", or what Americans call a "mil". I think there are regional and generational differences in the terms... mind you the UK still hasn't fully metricated - my son at primary school mentioned a model being a "couple of inches" long, which it was.

Engineering toolbox:...

Yes... and?

pound to kilogram conversions are still converting from and to pounds as units of mass, not pound-force. Conversion tables are fine doing that.


The term "pound force" is sometimes shortened to "pound" but it was not in the conversion tables you were talking about.

A conversion table between mils and degrees will be concerned with the angular units that have those names, not between a unit of length and any of the many other uses of the "degree" unit.

This whole discussion is outwith anything to do with global warming, but your statements are technically wrong; I am simply correcting them for the sake of the the "E" in JREF.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Why call this statement "fantasitc"?
People made claims for the effect of the atmosphere's insulation on Earth's surface temperature, so it's relecant to consider what insulation van and cannot do. Seems to me anyway.

I'm going to suppose some of your terms are misspellings. Why would all the participants in this thread be interested in some fantastic notions about "atmosphere's insulation" you are talking elsewhere with other people?

 

[Reality Check]

Reef corals thrive in warm water. ...

The linked blog entry is Half of Great Barrier Reef Lost in Past 3 Decades

...
Cyclones and starfish
The reef’s decline, detailed this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, can be chalked up to several factors, they found. The biggest factors are smashing from tropical cyclones, crown-of-thorns starfish that eat coral and are boosted by nutrient runoff from agriculture, and coral bleaching from high-temperatures, which are rising due to climate change. (Coral bleaching happens when ocean temperatures rise and cause the corals to expel their zooxanthellae — the tiny photosynthetic algae that live in the coral's tissues.)

So Dancing David was right:

Originally Posted by Dancing David
Um more bad news for corals, warm temps one of the three top reasons for the decline of the Great Barrier reef
http://news.yahoo.com/half-great-bar...191029428.html

You can say that global warming is responsible for two of the major factors for the Great Barrier Reef die off:

• GW intensifies tropical storms which smashes reefs up.
• GW increases ocean temperatures thus more coral bleaching.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Look, (x a-units) /(y a-units/year) = (hx b-units/(hy b-units per year) =x/y years whether "_-units" is pounds or slugs, kilos or newtons.

There's at least one honest person on the believers' side of this discussion:...
...

Your problem is conceptual, to say the least. But I can understand how someone who fail to grasp such evident conceptual difference may think that the change in value doesn't matter. It's even predictable

The purpose of your calculation is irrelevant. You could have used the sum of all the electric charge of electrons and the result would have given exactly the same as masses, but different from weight. Anyway, both charge and weight is conceptually wrong for this case, what bring us again to my words you're quoting which you fail to reply.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Studies from around the world show no signs of bleaching dating back many thousands of years, until recent decades (Abram 2003), (Aronson 2003)...

That is quite ignorant. Of course bleaching existed before global warming because El-Nino events (local warming) are not new!

Take that up with the ignoramuses at Skeptical Science. We agree.

 

[Reality Check]

Take that up with the ignoramuses at Skeptical Science. We agree.

We do not agree.
I will take it up with you beacuse you seem ignorant of the difference between

• local, temporary coral bleaching caused "whenever a year-record low tide coincides with a sunny midday" and
• the permanant mass coral bleaching caused by events such as golbal warming.

Beware your continued ignorance about Climate Science: How global warming is driving mass coral bleaching

The stupidity of calling the people at Skeptical Science ignoramuses is obvious. They are not the ones researching the science behind mass coral bleaching. They are reporting the results as published in the scientific literature. So the people you are actually calling ignoramuses are climate scientists .

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

...pound to kilogram conversions are still converting from and to pounds as units of mass, not pound-force. Conversion tables are fine doing that.

The term "pound force" is sometimes shortened to "pound"...

So it's correct to use a unit of force as a unit of mass? Again, here's the Engineering toolbox:
"w (lb) = m (slugs) g (ft/s2)".
The "pound" is a unit of force in the English system. The slug is the unit of mass in the English system. The kilo and igram are units of mass in the SI (International or metric) system. The newton and dyne are units of force in the SI system. That does not stop anyone from constructing conversion tables: kilos to pounds, because we understand we're talking about measurements we take at the Earth's surface. It does not stop anyone from expressing "weight" classes for boxers and wrestlers in kilos.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

We do not agree.
I will take it up with you beacuse you seem ignorant of the difference between

• local, temporary coral bleaching caused "whenever a year-record low tide coincides with a sunny midday" and
• the permanant mass coral bleaching caused by events such as golbal warming.

Beware your continued ignorance about Climate Science: How global warming is driving mass coral bleaching

The stupidity of calling the people at Skeptical Science ignoramuses is obvious. They are not the ones researching the science behind mass coral bleaching. They are reporting the results as published in the scientific literature. So the people you are actually calling ignoramuses are climate scientists

a) They claimed "no evidence of coral bleaching until recent decades" and we both agree this is false.
b) The cite (Abram) does not support their claim. I can cite Bohr (1921) in support of anything, and if you don't look it up, won't I look erudite?

 

[aleCcowaN]

That does not stop anyone from constructing conversion tables: kilos to pounds, because we understand we're talking about measurements we take at the Earth's surface.

Your planet is called the same as ours! But what differences our earths is yours being perfectly spherical, even and shallow, and that your planet doesn't rotate on any possible axis. In our Earth we have to be more careful about these concepts.

By the way, would you care to answer how much does a kilogram of CO2 weight in the barycentre of your Earth.

It does not stop anyone from expressing "weight" classes for boxers and wrestlers in kilos.

Yes. Anyone.