The Dangers of Junk Science.

[trysail]

Water vapour is a gas. A gas is chemically defined as that state of matter that has neither definite volume nor definite shape. A liquid has definite volume but no definite shape, and a solid has both definite volume and definite shape.

You're no doubt thinking of the state of water at what we call STP--Standard Temperature and Pressure, or normal earth conditions--which is a pressure of 1 atmosphere (760 torr) and room temperature, or 23 degrees C (296 degrees Kelvin). In this state, water is a liquid.

Water vapor is the most common greenhouse gas, but there's a limit to how much water the atmosphere can hold before condensation occurs. There's no limit to how much CO2 the atmosphere can contain. In any case, the atmospheric concentration of water at the relevant altitudes is quite constant over geological time. The amount of CO2 is not, and a subtle but critical feedback effect occurs when CO2 traps extra heat in the atmosphere. The heat increases the amount of water vapor in the stratosphere, which increases the greenhouse heating, which increases the amount of water in the stratosphere, which again increases the heating, etc. etc. This is the "runaway greenhouse effect" that many scientists are so worried about.

Meanwhile the oceans warm slightly, and start disgorging huge amounts of dissolved CO2. (The solubility of a gas in a liquid decreases as temperature increases, unlike the solubility of most solids, which increases as temperature goes up. That's why your beer makes bubbles as it sits in the glass getting warm.) The permafrost starts to melt and massive amounts of methane from formerly frozen rotting vegetation swamp the atmosphere. Methane is an even more efficient greenhouse gas than water vapor or CO2. This accelerates the overall heating process.

At some point, the whole system passes the tipping point and it's too late to do anything to reverse the heat acceleration of the system. No one knows precisely where that tipping point is in terms of atmospheric CO2 levels, but scientific consensus is that we're very close to it and will get even closer or perhaps hit it at the rate we're going well within the next 50 years.*

Will this be the end of civilization as we know it? No. Overall we're talking about an increase in mean global temperature of a few degrees. But this is sufficient to cause massive economic damage as sea coasts flood and weather patterns and ecosystems are violently disrupted--pH and salinity of the oceans changed, currents displaced, farm land becoming desert and deserts blossoming.

At this point, the decision is: do we want to take this seriousy and do something about it while we still can? Or do we want to bet that it won't happen and do nothing. Do we want to err of the side of caution or recklessness?
==================

* This is a very simplified picture of the phenomenon. It neglects things like changes in the earth's albedo (the amount of solar energy absorbed vs. the amount of energy reflected into space) caused by melting ice caps and increased cloud cover that more atmospheric water vapor would produce; whether certain levels of excess CO2 will accelerate plant growth which will in turn use up more CO2; what effect the increased acidity of rain (CO2 dissolved in rain water makes it more acidic) will have on this plant growth (will actually kill a lot of vegetation) and on carbonate rock (it'll free more CO2), and a host of other factors.

That being said, most scientists are in agreement about the essential validity of the phenomenon and the trend it's going in.

Thank you, Zoot. I am not going to enter into debate with buffoons who assert that water vapor isn't a gas.

I also thank you for your candid admission that you have provided a simplified description of the process and that simplification includes neglecting "a host of other factors."

It is possible that nuclear Armageddon could occur tomorrow. It's possible that an asteroid could hit the earth. It's possible that Yellowstone could explode. Are these likely? You tell me. Should one spend their life worrying about these possibilities? Should humanity arbitrarily divert immense resources that are otherwise contributing to the commonweal in an attempt to forestall these possibilities in the face of any number of other pressing problems?

Climate change is the natural order of things. The climate has been changing for hundreds of millions of years. No one disputes the existence, historical fact and continuation of climate change. There is absolutely no proof, whatsoever— not one iota, not a single piece— that the causes of climate change are any different than they were in the Eocene epoch.

And that is the whole problem for those who assert otherwise. Whenever someone starts yelling "It's different this time," demand proof and guard your wallet.

I don't give a flying fuck if it's Republican or Labor or Martian or Liberal or Socialist or Marxist or Green or Tory, if it can't be proved using scientific method, it remains a hypothesis.

I have seen absolutely no proof. None. Zero. Nil. Nada.

While I hope I am not mistaken, I believe you are far too smart to suggest a bunch of computer-based models, forecasts and simulations as proof of any hypothesis.

Show me proof.

 

[Epmd607]

"In addition to such ice changes--accelerated melting in Greenland, western Antarctica and from mountain glaciers throughout the world--scientists have improved their understanding of the atmosphere's workings. For example, the tiny particles known as aerosols are far better understood, says atmospheric scientist Piers Forster of the University of Leeds in England andalso a lead author. "We estimate that their total radiative forcing is around -1.3 [watts/meter2]," which is a cooling effect, he says. "Because of this and a better understanding of how forcing terms add up, we are able to sum the radiative forcings and, for the first time, come up with the statement that we have very high confidence that humans have had a warming influence since preindustrial times." That influence continues via greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, and other sources; the temperature forcing from carbon dioxide levels has jumped 20 percent in just the last 10 years."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-change-science-mo

"These observational improvements also extend into space, all the way to the sun, where scientists have used satellite data to better understand the amount of solar energy--and its impact here on Earth. "We therefore can make a comparison statement for the first time and say it is likely that solar forcing is at least five times smaller than the combined human influence," Forster continues. "Over the last 50 years, in particular, the natural forcing (solar plus volcanic) is most certainly negative. Meanwhile we've seen this large positive forcing from greenhouse gases."

"There are now three or four satellite temperature time series of the atmosphere, six years ago there was one. This duplication helped uncover some errors," adds lead author Thomas Peterson, a climate analyst with the U.S. National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "Correction of that error made the time series show more warming and is part of the reason why you no longer hear skeptics say that satellites don't show any warming."

 

[Epmd607]

"How can we be sure that humans are responsible for these increases? Some greenhouse gases (most of the halocarbons, for example) have no natural source. For other gases, two important observations demonstrate human influence. First, the geographic differences in concentrations reveal that sources occur predominantly over land in the more heavily populated Northern Hemisphere. Second, analysis of isotopes, which can distinguish among sources of emissions, demonstrates that the majority of the increase in carbon dioxide comes from combustion of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas). Methane and nitrous oxide increases derive from agricultural practices and the burning of fossil fuels."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=science-behind-climate-change

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Thanks for the lesson Doc. Helps explain the process much better. Overall, we're in a heap of shit and only a few seem to want to shovel it away, while the rest just keep piling it on. It has to stop somewhere, but when. The more we harmonize with nature and the elements, the better we'll understand how to keep check of what we're doing to the planet and make corrections as needed.

how the hell would you know shit from shinola?

 

[Huckleman2000]

how the hell would you know shit from shinola?

Staring in the mirror again?

 

[trysail]

...Not being willing to surrender what you have earned to other people who have done nothing to earn it is, indeed, common sense...

The last I heard sitting around "dropping acid" was not considered a skill that society held in particularly high regard.


The Natural Law of Supply and Demand

Scientist Monkeys Around With The Economy
by Alex Blumberg
October 23, 2009

A primate ethologist asked what would happen when a low-ranking monkey is trained to do things high-ranking monkeys can't do? The answer in human economic terms: The new skills translated into a much bigger income.

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

... Most groundbreaking experiments in economics are performed by economists, as you would expect. But a scientist called a primate ethologist has added to the sum total of economic knowledge, at least as it applies to monkeys and maybe to us. Alex Blumberg of our Planet Money team has the story.

ALEX BLUMBERG: You're on the low end of the social order. You toil and toil, yet make hardly any money for your efforts. Is there a way for you to improve your lot, bump up your earning potential, if you're monkey?

Dr. RONALD NOE (Primate Ethologist, University of Strasbourg): We were trying to answer questions about whether monkeys are able to behave in an economic way.

BLUMBERG: This is Dr. Ronald Noe, a primate ethologist at the University of Strasbourg. His question specifically was what would happen if you trained a low-ranking vervet monkey to do things that other vervet monkeys, even high-ranking monkeys, couldn't do.

Now, a vervet monkey society is pretty hierarchical: high-ranking monkeys get groomed a lot, but hardly ever have to groom other monkeys. Low-ranking monkeys groom others, but never get groomed themselves. Dr. Noe's team trained a low-ranker to open a container with bits of apples in it, a skill that no other monkey had. Would it be worth anything, he wondered, in monkey money -otherwise known as grooming.

Dr. NOE: It has some aspects of money. The higher-rankers can give other services that low-rankers can't give, such as support in a fight or a tolerance around a food site or something like that. And they get rewarded for that by grooming of them.

BLUMBERG: I see, okay. Tolerance around the food site, in other words, they let - they can…

Dr. NOE: They can decide whether or not the low-ranker is allowed to feed next to them or not. If they don't like it, they hit them over the head. If they like it they…

BLUMBERG: So it's a protection racquet in a certain way.

Dr. NOE: We see it in a slightly more positive way. They are nice to each other and groom each other. But of course, they also hit each other over the head once in a while, that's for sure.

BLUMBERG: Sure enough, when they trained a low-ranking monkey to open the container, just as any technical college advertisement will tell you, the new skills translated into a higher income. Roughly an hour after she'd open the container for everyone, she was getting groomed a lot more, as much as a high-ranking monkey, and she no longer had to do hardly any grooming herself. But that was not the most spectacular finding.

Dr. NOE: So what then did, is we got a second low-ranking female, trained her to open a second container with apples in it, and then we saw that the value of the first provider dropped, more or less, to the half of what she had before. So now we had a competition between two animals. Both of them could provide this good, so these apples, and so the value of the first one dropped down again. And of the second one who was very low at the beginning of the experiment, she went up and they ended up both in the middle so to speak.

BLUMBERG: So when there was a monkey monopoly on the skill, the monkeys paid one price. But when it became a duopoly, the price fell to an equilibrium point, about half of what it had been. And this all happened despite the fact that we're talking about monkeys here. Monkeys can't do math.

Dr. NOE: Animals that cannot form binding contracts, animals that cannot talk about what they want to do or cannot offer verbally or anything; they, nevertheless, are quite accurate in adapting their behavior to what the market gives them.

BLUMBERG: Dr. Noe says that monkeys arrive at these economic outcomes not through sitting down and negotiation, but through feeling and emotion. Monkeys develop positive associations toward a container-opening member of the society and they just want to groom her. But once another monkey can open the container, the skill isn't as unique, the positive feelings diminish, and grooming goes down. It's the law of supply and demand played out along the neuro-hormonal pathways that deal with emotion in the monkey brain...


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114068638


Copyright ©2009 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only,

 

[JackLuis]

Just had the thought you could have easily titled this thread as

"The Science of Junk Dangers,"

and it would have meant the same thing.

"Very Interesting"

 

[WRJames]

By which I mean the global warming denial crowd as well as the Intelligent Design crowd, among others. You know, the ones who can't accept empirical data because some rogue pseudo-scientist offers them an alternative.

How dangerous are they? I believe them very dangerous, because they bring reality into dispute and cast doubt on empirical facts.

I think the string of posts shows how shallow this original comment is.

The "empirical data" for random evolution is not at all clear cut, as Dr. Mab so elegantly pointed out.

And the "empirical data" for global warming is, upon examination, rather ambiguous.

Reality may not be quite so easy to pin down.

 

[DeeZire]

I think the string of posts shows how shallow this original comment is....

I would like to apply the statement "the dangers of junk posts" to Trysail's last contribution to this thread. "Droppping Acid" is so off topic, it makes me wonder what Trysail has been smoking this evening. If he was referring to the 10% unemployment rate, that has nothing to do with dropping acid, unless he wishes to post a colorful graph supporting his claim.

 

[WRJames]

I can say with assurance that you can't provide us with any scientific data that refutes global warming and the human impact as put forth by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

We in the Northeast have been freezing our asses off all "summer." The whole season ran at least five to ten degrees below normal. So far this fall we are "a month or two ahead" on our approach to winter -- in other words we've been getting late November weather already.

Meanwhile, the snow is already falling elsewhere. Actually. we've already had snow flakes here.

 

[amicus]

Well, hell, if no one else will express appreciation for Trysail's Monkey Tale, I will, as it was delightful and informative.

It is further a valid comparison with human characteristics and DeeZire's bleeding heart concerns for the poor. Seeing as how anyone can develop a skill that is valuable to others and be compensated for it regardless of status.

Cute...wish I had thought of it...

I even heard of some black athletes making it through college and into high paying professional sports without ever having to had to learn to spell? Imagine that!

Amicus

 

[Epmd607]

We in the Northeast have been freezing our asses off all "summer." The whole season ran at least five to ten degrees below normal. So far this fall we are "a month or two ahead" on our approach to winter -- in other words we've been getting late November weather already.

Meanwhile, the snow is already falling elsewhere. Actually. we've already had snow flakes here.

The last few days in my area of Upstate New York has ran uncharacteristically into the 70s, anecdotal evidence does not make for scientific theory.

"Random evolution"? That's a catchphrase of ID. There's not much about evolution that's random, mutation is a background singer, when an environment changes an organism adapts to meet the new challenges or if it can't make the right changes it disappears into the Newtonian Aether...er, the fossil record.

 

[Huckleman2000]

[...]I even heard of some black athletes making it through college and into high paying professional sports without ever having to had to learn to spell? Imagine that!

Amicus

Thank goodness you said that about black athletes - my worldview would have been shattered if I'd ever considered that something like that happened with white athletes.

 

[Epmd607]

I even heard of some black athletes making it through college and into high paying professional sports without ever having to had to learn to spell? Imagine that!

Amicus

The singer/acquitted pedophile R. Kelly, in theory never knew how to read or write. Yet, he's credited with writing some of the most notable songs of the 1990s. I'd say it's ingenious getting everything you've ever wanted in life without having any real form of schooling. Same thing with an athlete. Education isn't valued in our society unless it ends up generating revenue. Would that first round draft pick make more money in the NFL if he actually did the work to get that political science degree?

 

[WRJames]

The last few days in my area of Upstate New York has ran uncharacteristically into the 70s, anecdotal evidence does not make for scientific theory.

"Random evolution"? That's a catchphrase of ID. There's not much about evolution that's random, mutation is a background singer, when an environment changes an organism adapts to meet the new challenges or if it can't make the right changes it disappears into the Newtonian Aether...er, the fossil record.

I wasn't implying that direct experience could possibly outweigh learned scientific opinion. Heaven forfend!

As for evolution -- here is what Dr. Mab, certainly a true believer in evolution if there ever was one, had to say in his very learned post:

"So all in all, when faced with this seemingly impossible amount of complexity, it's very difficult to imagine how this could have happened by blind chance, all at once, all in the same place, and perfect the first time. It's very hard to believe this wasn't created by design by some extremely ingenious and knowledgeable biochemist."

The same, by the way, is true of the fundmentals of physics.

My point is that skepticism about evolution, at least the mechanisms of evolution (no reasonable person could doubt a common descent of all living things on this Earth) is not in defiance of the "empirical evidence".

 

[JackLuis]

Perhaps "The Junk of Dangerous Science?"

Or "The Junk of Science's Dangers"

 

[Epmd607]

I wasn't implying that direct experience could possibly outweigh learned scientific opinion. Heaven forfend!

As for evolution -- here is what Dr. Mab, certainly a true believer in evolution if there ever was one, had to say in his very learned post:

"So all in all, when faced with this seemingly impossible amount of complexity, it's very difficult to imagine how this could have happened by blind chance, all at once, all in the same place, and perfect the first time. It's very hard to believe this wasn't created by design by some extremely ingenious and knowledgeable biochemist."

The same, by the way, is true of the fundmentals of physics.

My point is that skepticism about evolution, at least the mechanisms of evolution (no reasonable person could doubt a common descent of all living things on this Earth) is not in defiance of the "empirical evidence".

I actually would question Dr. M what he means by 'blind chance' and 'all at once, all in the same place'. We don't really know how amino acids formed, how the first life formed. There's reason to believe that life began in different parts of the ocean at different times, and even cellular life may have begun separately. And then there's the whole billion years of bacteria, not very complex at all for the time frame. There are the same problems with the big bang and a period of time after, there's just no usable information. If we find bacteria on mars or on some moon in our solar system it should show that life/genetic information isn't rare at all.

Yes, physics has similar problem and it has at least a few hundred years on biochem, thousands of years of detailed observation before Galileo and Newton. And physics gets pretty screwy for the first 100,000 years after the big bang. Evolution can map changes in bacteria/virus, is probably fifty years away from Laws ala Newton's for motion and those of thermodynam.

Evolutionary theory makes predictions about the fossil record and about future developments. The problem is the amount of time it takes for changes, that's why bacteria is so important. The mechanisms of evolution are: Adaptation, Genetic drift, Gene flow, Mutation, Natural selection, and Speciation. If you doubt the mechanisms of evolution you have to speak to these directly. The first four are measurable, have modern applications, the last two are still in classical terms. As we know with physics, gravity doesn't fit in the quantum picture with the other three forces. Physics deals with incomplete theories and so does biology, but people don't doubt gravity, people doubt Speciation because it conflicts with their silly solipsistic dogma.

Edit: Speaking of doubting gravity, most people who follow astronomy news probably believe the universe is expanding and doing so more rapidly. Why can't physics explain an ever expanding universe? Dark matter? It would seem it's an important question to the fundamental understanding of the universe but all we get are placeholder theories. There's more and better empirical information for the origin of you than that of the universe and how it functions.

 

[Epmd607]

"Women are getting shorter and fatter, according to research into the future of the human race.

They are also likely to evolve healthier hearts and lower cholesterol, and will start the menopause later than they do now, researchers say.

The predictions come from a study which claims to have the strongest evidence yet that humans are continuing to evolve."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...e-shorter-fatter-healthier.html#ixzz0UwAn3aNm

Here's a light, topical story on evolutionary prediction.

"If the trend continues for ten generations, the researchers calculate that the typical woman in 2409 will be 2cm shorter and 1kg heavier than today's average."

I like short, pretty girls. I'm an evolutionary mechanism.

 

[ishtat]

You can estimate the probability of all this happening at a given time, and the numbers are staggering, simply astronomical, like one out of the-number-of-atoms-in-the-universe.

Clearly there are aspect of Evolutionary Theory that we don't understand yet, and a lot we don't know about biochemistry and the biology of the cell.

But given all this, the great preponderance of scientific evidence still comes down on the side of Evolution. It's just that, there's still a lot we don't know.

Your first statement perhaps needs the qualification "given our current state of knowledge" indeed you appear to make it yourself tho' I would like to add emphasis. As each unknown is resolved no matter how small, the mathematicians can always shorten the odds dramatically. It could perhaps be contended with greater validity that the odds are not astonomical because it has happened. The odds only appear to be astonomical because of the lack of data.

Mathematically it is equally as reasonable to produce a model to contend that complex life is inevitable or that it is astonomically unlikely. In reality they are the same model but both lack data. However, new data always seems to support the former contention never the latter.

It has been said later in the thread that life existed in a very simple form for billions of years before it became complex. That is true and presents a conundrum but I wonder what your thoughts are on whether large multi celled organisms are fundamentally so much more complex bio-chemically than single cell bacteria. I am now out of my depth!

 

[WRJames]

Your first statement perhaps needs the qualification "given our current state of knowledge" indeed you appear to make it yourself tho' I would like to add emphasis. As each unknown is resolved no matter how small, the mathematicians can always shorten the odds dramatically. It could perhaps be contended with greater validity that the odds are not astonomical because it has happened. The odds only appear to be astonomical because of the lack of data.

Mathematically it is equally as reasonable to produce a model to contend that complex life is inevitable or that it is astonomically unlikely. In reality they are the same model but both lack data. However, new data always seems to support the former contention never the latter.

It has been said later in the thread that life existed in a very simple form for billions of years before it became complex. That is true and presents a conundrum but I wonder what your thoughts are on whether large multi celled organisms are fundamentally so much more complex bio-chemically than single cell bacteria. I am now out of my depth!

But, to go back to the original contention that Intelligent Design is ignorant psuedo-science in gross contradiction to empirical evidence -- aren't you saying that we lack the data also to say that ID is specious?

 

[Epmd607]

But, to go back to the original contention that Intelligent Design is ignorant psuedo-science in gross contradiction to empirical evidence -- aren't you saying that we lack the data also to say that ID is specious?

ID is ignorant psuedo-science, but I don't think anyone said it is in contradiction to empirical evidence...ID provides no empirical evidence, it tries to pick apart the first fifty years of evolutionary theory without dealing with the last fifty years. ID doesn't use the Bible, it specifically doesn't use the language of Creationism. The language of ID is pure psuedo-science in response to actual science -- Darwinian Theory and the 19th century instead of biochem/genetics/gene flow of the 21st century.

I think we got on ID because I, or someone else, mentioned that ID was a similar psuedo-science to that of the folks against anthropogenic climate change.

 

[amicus]

I think we got on ID because I, or someone else, mentioned that ID was a similar psuedo-science to that of the folks against anthropogenic climate change.

~~~

I think what you fear is the the psuedo-science of Global Warming Hysteria equals Intelligent Design. Just as faith requires the suspension of thought, so too, does, 'faith' in anthropogenic climate change as there is no evidence to support it.

ID=GW a new forumula for youse all...

Amicus

 

[Huckleman2000]

But, to go back to the original contention that Intelligent Design is ignorant psuedo-science in gross contradiction to empirical evidence -- aren't you saying that we lack the data also to say that ID is specious?

ID is specious not for lack of data, but for lack of a scientific method. Its central argument is an article of faith; we can't prove or disprove the existence of an ID god.

Even though we don't understand all of the steps, there is still a lot of data supporting evolution theories as an accurate description of natural processes.

 

[amicus]

"Women are getting shorter and fatter, according to research into the future of the human race.

They are also likely to evolve healthier hearts and lower cholesterol, and will start the menopause later than they do now, researchers say.

The predictions come from a study which claims to have the strongest evidence yet that humans are continuing to evolve."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...e-shorter-fatter-healthier.html#ixzz0UwAn3aNm

Here's a light, topical story on evolutionary prediction.

"If the trend continues for ten generations, the researchers calculate that the typical woman in 2409 will be 2cm shorter and 1kg heavier than today's average."

I like short, pretty girls. I'm an evolutionary mechanism.

~~~

Without realizing it, I just posted a thread quoting the entire article you referenced but put forth by Yahoo News...interesting...

amicus

 

[ishtat]

But, to go back to the original contention that Intelligent Design is ignorant psuedo-science in gross contradiction to empirical evidence -- aren't you saying that we lack the data also to say that ID is specious?

No the fact of evolution is all around us. What is less understood is the how, the mechanism if you will.

ID is not junk science it is just junk. In most other contexts it could be considered fraudulent.