Re: OT: Post Turtle

On Sat, 21 Jun 2008 14:45:01 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I'm not attacking anyone. I was just interested to see if you are a
theorist or a practitioner when it comes to AGW. Sounds like you are
not a big part of the problem.

When people ask me a series of question as you did, in fast order like
that, it is almost always because they are looking for something
personal to go after as though that makes a hill of beans of a
difference in terms of the science, itself. As I said, I've been
lucky. I've been lucky to have been born in the US, lucky to have
been born in probably the very best rain forest of the world --
western Oregon. And just plain lucky in terms of moving from a
childhood of working in the fields to survive to a fantastic acreage
with a huge, 5000 sq ft home, thousands of sq ft of auxiliary
structures, and probably some of the best soils around that can exist
somewhat above (about 800' above sea level) the surrounding area so
that floods cannot possibly come close to reaching me. Every single
day of my life when I walk out on my land, I feel such a deep sense of
fortune that I cannot possibly have deserved. It humbles one,
profoundly, and I cannot but want to share some of what I've been
lucky enough to fall into. Nothing brings that home quicker than
helping a mother and her child, who escaped by pretending to be dead
under the bleeding bodies of her other children and family, find a
safer place to survive. If seeing the stark contrasts of fortune like
that can't get through to someone, nothing ever will.

There is little possibility for one individual to be a "big" part of
the problem. Not for most of us who have little control over others,
anyway. So I cannot imagine how I could be a _big_ part of it. But I
also don't think it matters what you think about me on that point.
Most of us will try and be good people, I think, and few know the
details of how we feel we must live our lives. Very few are in a
position to judge either you or me, on that score. So I sincerely
felt your questions, the chain of them in a kind of slam, bam, thank
you ma'am way, couldn't possibly bear on anything regarding the
science. My behavior has nothing to do with science knowledge and in
any case it's only a very few of us who may completely control our
lives on the basis of Spock-like impersonal, unemotional, and dry
logic. So many things impinge and our skills to cope are limited in
their own ways. There is no judgment about the science to be had by
that investigation.

You say you were just interested. I still see no legitimate reason
why, unless you just like to delve into personal lives.

Egregious? Because I'm skeptical about the state of climate science?

No, that's a silly strawman, John. I carefully focused on exactly why
and I quoted you, as well, to help make the point clearer to you.
Somehow, it still seems to escape you. Worse for you, you did me the
great favor of compounding your errors in one of your own replies. I
find it striking that you would now pretend to not understand what I
was dressing you down over. I think you know exactly what I'm talking
about. Being "skeptical" is decidedly not the reason. And you know
it isn't.

I'm skeptical about any science that's not verified by experiment and
has a history of fudging data. Egregious because I ask for numbers
about pressure broadening as a contributor to GW, and don't get them?

The calculations for a human like me to do in reasonable time, like
many, involve a number of simplifying assumptions. Which of those
would you even understand, let alone accept from me? I might instead
choose to modify a parameter in a model and then tell you what I got
from that... but would you believe any of it from me or anyone else?

No. I don't believe you would accept anything from anyone here. If
for no other reason because it is also quite obvious that you don't
respect pretty much anyone else in physics or chemistry dealing with
the theories and figures.

Which pretty much leaves you with taking on the job, yourself. No
problem. I think my link should be a great help to you, John. A lot
of it is right there for you.

However, it's my conclusion that you aren't being honest with yourself
or anyone else and you don't care to be, either. And there is the
real problem.

So, given that man dumps, say, 100 PPM additional CO2 into the air,
how much does that increase IR retention by water vapor?

It's in the theories and models, as well. In fact, I think I gave a
link to a page that directly deals with a broader understanding of the
interactions. No single human sits down to do the exact calculations,
though. The global climate models do the reasonable thing -- they
break up the atmosphere into a 3D system -- perhaps hundreds of layers
and each layer divided into thousands of grid areas. Scientists
program the computers using carefully crafted code for both speed and
to reduce the accumulation of floating point errors and they apply
best practices regarding what is theoretically known together with
data that has been empirically measured and analyzed carefully. Then
they don't just assume things work. They verify, every chance they
get. When Pinatubo erupted, they used it to test the models in the
early 1990's. Etc. First principles physics are used to compute
cloud formation in small, isolated areas of the globe (since it isn't
possible to do, globally, with current compute capacities of the
entire Earth combined) and these calculations are then compared with
actual observations. Differences are examined for reasonableness with
expected errors and the process never ends.

I know you don't really care. If I were to quote you an exact number
(should I be a God, for example, and could produce it for you
exactly), you would just ignore it, anyway. You have no intent to
find out for yourself and you really don't care about the question.
Not sincerely. You only care to ask it, rhetorically. So why should
anyone seriously struggle hard just for your entertainment?

I think if you were to seriously engage yourself to bridge a part of
the gap, you'd find people willing to help you put the pieces
together.

Cripes, I've no idea why I have to explain all this to you, John. It
feels like talking to a child, really, and I know you aren't one. If
someone were to show up here in sci.electronics.design and tell
everyone here that they don't know squat about electronics, that
everything in the books is wrong, that nothing in them has been proven
to be true at all, and that it's all a hoax... and then had the balls
after all that to dare ask for "how many millivolts will the base-
emitter of a BJT rise if the drain current of a FET elsewhere in the
circuit is forced to increase by 10 milliamps?" What would you expect
the reaction to be? Polite compliance? Perhaps some help with
refining the question better? Or... "go take a flying leap?"

I think I can guess.

I keep discussing facts, or disputing what other people consider to be
facts, and some people, yourself included, respond with personal
insults. Big deal.

Beyond what is manifest from your own comments here, I've tried to
refrain from saying anything overly personal. Part of the reason is
that I respect you and it would be unnatural for me to feel like
insulting you. You help a lot of people with your time and do it
sincerely. That is very kind and generous. So why would I just
insult you? I've no motive for that.

What I've addressed is your own statements, not who you are. I'd
appreciate it if you'd stop accusing scientists of hoaxes and making
false statements on the science facts of a subject you know very
little about. But if you don't, I don't see any reason to apologize
for sometimes saying something about your egregious behavior or to
stop pointing it out, on occasion when I've a moment to care one way
or another.

To make this abundantly clear, you don't seem to be able to discuss
the facts of global warming, at all, John. If someone told you that a
BJT works like exactly like a faucet does, insisted that anyone that
said it worked at all like the Ebers-Moll model or any further
refinements provided by physicists was part of a devious hoax, and
clearly didn't even know what the Ebers-Moll model was and hadn't read
any of the science with an attempt to understand any of it, what would
you say?

I think, if you were able to constrain yourself and be overly polite
about it, you'd try and get them to at least read a bit before telling
everyone they were wrong. And I don't think you'd accept the "I'm
just being skeptical" as an excuse for their ignorant and offensive
behavior telling physicists who actually studied the subject of BJTs
that they are wrong and pulling a hoax, when they haven't even
bothered to seriously engage the subject first.

Oh, well. That's probably all I've time to say for a bit on it. I've
got my volunteer work looming next week, and I'm still out berming
cold storage and digging drainage on the acreage here, so probably
won't have a lot more time to encourage you to see yourself more
clearly. I like who you are and I like the time you spend encouraging
imagination and helping others when you think you have something to
say. Those are the parts of you I like and I probably wouldn't go as
far as I did yesterday and today, if I didn't respect that side of you
and have some hope that you can see just how thoroughly unsound you
are being on this topic.

So there it is. Best wishes and, again, my very sincere thanks to you
for your help to others in .basics. No matter what you say or do on
this topic, nothing will take that away from you.

Jon
.

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