"The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact." - KURT GÖDEL
"According to Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth".
A guiding principle for accepting claims of catastrophic global events, miracles, incredible healing, invisible friends, or fill in the blank is:
“extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” - Carl Sagan
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." - H. L. Mencken
I would add irrational and highly delusional to the mix when faith requires one to accept magical violations of the well known, well tested or easily demonstrated laws of Nature. - PWL
"Science is Progress and the Future. Faith is regression to the Dark Ages." - PWL
“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.” - Carl Sagan
"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
"Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness." - Alfred Korzybski
"Science is a search for basic truths about the Universe, a search which develops statements that appear to describe how the Universe works, but which are subject to correction, revision, adjustment, or even outright rejection, upon the presentation of better or conflicting evidence." - James Randi
"Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch." - Novalis
"Nullius in verba. Take no one's word for it." - Motto of the Royal Society
"I'm trying to find out NOT how Nature could be, but how Nature IS." - Richard Feynman
"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." - Thomas Henry Huxley
“A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.” Albert Einstein
"Science is empirical. Knowing the answer means nothing. Testing your knowledge means everything." - Lawrence Krauss
"Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism - and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency." - Stephen Jay Gould
"Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work." - James Randi
The Wicked Greenland Soothsayers of the West say “I’m Melting”, now “How much energy is required to melt all the ice in Greenland?”
by pwl
How much energy is required to melt all the ice in Greenland?
How much ice is there in Greenland?
“The Greenland ice sheet (Kalaallisut: Sermersuaq) is a vast body of ice covering 1,710,000 square kilometres (660,235 sq mi), roughly 80% of the surface of Greenland. It is the second largest ice body in the world, after the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The ice sheet is almost 2,400 kilometres (1,500 mi) long in a north-south direction, and its greatest width is 1,100 kilometres (680 mi) at a latitude of 77°N, near its northern margin. The mean altitude of the ice is 2,135 metres (7,005 ft).[1] The thickness is generally more than 2 km (1.24 mi) (see picture) and over 3 km (1.86 mi) at its thickest point. It is not the only ice mass of Greenland – isolated glaciers and small ice caps cover between 76,000 and 100,000 square kilometres (29,344 and 38,610 sq mi) around the periphery. Some scientists predict that climate change may be about to push the ice sheet over a threshold where the entire ice sheet will melt in less than a few hundred years. If the entire 2,850,000 cubic kilometres (683,751 cu mi) of ice were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 7.2 m (23.6 ft).” Wikipedia on Greenland Ice Sheet.
2,850,000 cubic kilometers of ice in Greenland.
So claim of a 100 years to melt 2,850,000 cubic kilometers of ice. Hmmm… we’ll get back to that.
How much energy to melt ice?
“When ice melts, it absorbs as much heat energy (the heat of fusion) as it would take to heat an equivalent mass of water by 80 °C, while its temperature remains a constant 0 °C.” – wikipedia on ice
2012 arrives 19 months 12 days early! The QUADFECTA of Doomsday:
(1) 8.9-9.0 Earthquake with hundreds of aftershocks which moved the entire island of Japan 8ft and tilted the Earth on it’s axis!,
(1b) not to mention the electrical power outage doomsday, or lack of food doomsday, or lack of emergency responders doomsday;
(2) 10 Meter Tsunamis Surge Waves crushing everything washing away towns and cities,
(2b) not to mention a massive Tsunami Whirlpool sucking ships to their doom;
(3) Multiple Nuclear Meltdown Incidents, caused by the 10 meter tsunamis wiping out the backup power diesel generators, in progress with Impressive Hydrogen Explosions and radiation releases;
(4) and the icing on the cake of 2012 doomsday writ 20 months early, Volcanic Eruption in Japan at Shinmoedake Volcano!
Ring of Fire indeed.
Just how does one defend against each of these “doomsday scenarios”, let alone when they all happen at once?
(1) Earthquake Doomsday.
(2) Tsunami Wave Surge Doomsday.
(2b) Tsunami Whirlpool Doomsday
(2c) Post Tsunami Devastation. Would you really build here again? Really?
(3) Nuclear Doomsday.
Fukushima Unit 1 Hydrogen Explosion
Fukushima Unit 3 Hydrogen Explosion
(4) Shinmoedake Volcano spewing hot magma destruction Doomsday.
The Facebook user “Ecological Internet” makes some rather alarming statements:
“Earth poised to ecologically collapse bringing down biosphere, humanity & most if not all creatures. Avoidable but requires increase in knowledge & immediate biocentric action. – Ecological Internet on Facebook”
“We know Earth dying and being for all creatures coming to an end – deal with it and commit to reversing – or you are the problem.” – Ecological Internet on Facebook
“Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has once again accused the United States of playing God. But this time it’s Haiti’s disastrous earthquake that he thinks the U.S. was behind. Spanish newspaper ABC quotes Chavez as saying that the U.S. navy launched a weapon capable of inducing a powerful earthquake off the shore of Haiti. He adds that this time it was only a drill and the final target is … destroying and taking over Iran.”
Maybe Hugo Chavez is using too much of his country’s local white powdery substances mixed in his coffee.
Any weapon capable of causing an earthquake of a 7.0 magnitude would have itself registered as a bomb detonation on the seismic sensors. Bombs and earthquakes have different seismic signatures in the data streams that are recorded.
As is evident in the first few frames of this security camera you can see the building (reportedly a shopping mall type structure) collapse. That’s extremely fast considering that it basically went down on the first few earthquake wave crests in the first few seconds of this 7.0 quake. It really shows the potent power of The BIG ONE! Imagine what that would do in your city.
At seven seconds into the video the building is standing. The camera starts moving at second 8. Smoke from the collapsing building is visible during second 10 and clearly the building falls by second 11. That’s about three seconds from first wave to catastrophic destruction of the structure. That’s not even enough time to comprehend what is happening if you’re standing in the structure before the roof comes down on your head. Yikes.
Cars driving down the road clearly divert from their lanes. At second 25 a truck appears on the left side of the video and attempts to turn left onto the main road and arcs left losing control – having just missed a car by a second or two – and comes to a stop before hitting the collapsing building. Double yikes.
As you can see from this Google Earth Satellite image below annotated with earthquake symbols, most of which have happened between Jan 10th, 2010 and today, Jan 18th, there is a massive cluster of aftershocks to the west of the hard hit area of Port-Au-Prince. What is of note though is the numerous numbers of low magnitude quakes just to the north of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Some of these are actually under Puerto Rico. Too close for comfort.
(Click image to enlarge).
This is quite the number of aftershocks and also reveals the underlying fault lines.
Do these sets of aftershocks under and to the north of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands provide a warning of dangers lurking or has the pressures on the underlying plates been relieved somewhat so that danger has been reduced? I wonder.
Update 20100119: Additional earthquakes: “It’s one week after the Haiti Earthquake and the World has seen earthquakes in Argentina, Venezuela and most recently Guatemala.” – San Francisco Gate (1). How likely are these additional quakes related to the Haiti quake and aftershocks? Could these be adjustments resulting from the Haiti quake? Hmm….
Update 20100120: The quakes continue in the region with another large one hitting Haiti (5.9 with some reports saying 6.1) today.
The acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize by Barack Obama, the US president, has sparked constroversy. Obama received the prize dedicated to peace in Oslo, pledging to strive for a better world and pursue building a “just and lasting peace”. But critics have attacked the decision to award the prize to Obama, pointing out he is actively leading his nation in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and last week ordered 30,000 more troops to join the Afghan conflict.
The Nobel Prize was created by an arms merchant of death, Alfred Bernhard Nobel.
Thousands of awe-struck Norwegians bombarded the Meteorological Institute to ask what the incredible light — that could be seen in the pre-dawn sky for hundreds of miles — could possibly be.
The phenomenon has been dubbed ‘Star-Gate’ — as the world’s top scientists and the military lined up to admit they were baffled.
I gather a black hole escaped from the LHC!
Or, maybe it’s the Copenhagen Climate Conference Hypnosis Ray Satellite destructing with the Climategate confirmations of science fraud?
However, after a moment, I realized this must be a rocket, most likely spiraling out of control. I don’t understand all the details — I don’t have all the info yet — but a rocket fits what we’re seeing here. First, this was seen all over Norway, so it must have been at a high altitude to be so visible. Second, the blue spiral angling down to the right is clearly due to perspective. A rocket spiraling around, and coming up from the lower right, would appear to make tight spirals when it was far away and bigger ones as it got closer.
The Solaranite Theory of Climate Change starts around 3:00 into the flick.
Solaranite Theory of Rapid Anthropomorphic Climate Change: “Take a can of your gasoline. Say this can of gasoline is the sun. Now, you spread a thin line of it to a ball, representing the earth. Now, the gasoline represents the sunlight, the sun particles. Here we saturate the ball with the gasoline, the sunlight. Then we put a flame to the ball. The flame will speedily travel around the earth, back along the line of gasoline to the can, or the sun itself. It will explode this source and spread to every place that gasoline, our sunlight, touches. Explode the sunlight here, gentlemen, you explode the universe. Explode the sunlight here and a chain reaction will occur direct to the sun itself and to all the planets that sunlight touches, to every planet in the universe.“
The details of the Solaranite Climate Change Theory come to light in this following riveting conversation. Pun intended.
Eros, the leader, confronts a group of skeptical earthlings with the true nature of his plan. The scientific minds of Earth are on a treacherous course of weapons discovery that will eventually lead to a bomb that could explode the whole universe, the “Solaranite Bomb”.
Colonel Edwards: Why is it so important that you want to contact the governments of our earth?
Eros: Because of death. Because all you of Earth are idiots!
Jeff Trent: Now you just hold on, Buster.
Eros: No, you hold on! First was your firecracker, a harmless explosive. Then your hand grenade: you began to kill your own people, a few at a time. Then the bomb. Then a larger bomb: many people are killed at one time. Then your scientists stumbled upon the atom bomb, split the atom. Then the hydrogen bomb, where you actually explode the air itself. Now you can arrange the total destruction of the entire universe served by our sun: The only explosion left is the Solaranite.
Colonel Tom Edwards: Why, there’s no such thing! Why, a particle of sunlight can’t even be seen or measured.
Eros: Can you see or measure an atom? Yet you can explode one! A ray of sunlight is made up of many atoms.
Jeff Trent: So what if we do develop this Solaranite bomb? We’d be even a stronger nation than now.
Eros: “Stronger.” You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
The impassioned plea continues with an appeal to intelligence and metaphor.
Colonel Edwards: You speak of Solaranite. But just what is it?
Eros: Take a can of your gasoline. Say this can of gasoline is the sun. Now, you spread a thin line of it to a ball, representing the earth. Now, the gasoline represents the sunlight, the sun particles. Here we saturate the ball with the gasoline, the sunlight. Then we put a flame to the ball. The flame will speedily travel around the earth, back along the line of gasoline to the can, or the sun itself. It will explode this source and spread to every place that gasoline, our sunlight, touches. Explode the sunlight here, gentlemen, you explode the universe. Explode the sunlight here and a chain reaction will occur direct to the sun itself and to all the planets that sunlight touches, to every planet in the universe. This is why you must be stopped. This is why any means must be used to stop you. In a friendly manner or as (it seems) you want it.
They claim that the C02 greenhouse gas is the biggest challenge to our existence on Earth; if it’s true that C02 is a serious problem then why not a single word from them about the dangers of Water Vapor and Clouds which are the largest greenhouse gas contributor!?
When gases are ranked by their contribution to the greenhouse effect, the most important are:
water vapor, which contributes 36–72%, factoring in clouds up to between 66% and 85%
carbon dioxide, which contributes 9–26%
methane, which contributes 4–9%
ozone, which contributes 3–7%
Since water vapor accounts for the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect, between 36% and 66% for water vapor alone and between 66% and 85% when factoring in clouds, don’t boil that water for your tea or for cooking dinner as you are directly contributing to green house gases with the steam! Don’t bring that water to a boil, don’t do it! DO NOT COOK WITH WATER!!! or you are a greenhouse gas criminal! – pwl
All the politicians and extremist environmentalists want to talk about is how much money it will take to correct the imagined C02 problem. Money to them. Mo-money to them. Give them all your money to solve the C02 problem. That’s what they want, your money. Save the Earth with your money. Nice scam. Why did you vote for them again?
“With five months left to go before Copenhagen, international attention is fixed on coming to an agreement over emissions targets. The failure, at last week’s G8 summit, of the world’s 17 major polluters to agree to specific cuts in greenhouse gases by 2050 only sharpened this focus, as China and India rebuffed a firm commitment in part because industrialized nations have refused to agree to mid-term 2020 goals. But buried beneath the headlines was the other reason negotiations fell through, and the one that could turn out to be the deal breaker in December: cold, hard cash. In recent months, developing nations, with China at the helm, have grown increasingly insistent that wealthier nations should provide poorer ones with financial assistance to help them cope with climate change. This includes funding for so-called “mitigation” efforts that curb carbon emissions and for “adaptation”—the long-term adjustment to rising tides, higher temperatures, drought, and increased infection rates of a warming planet. Despite two long negotiating sessions held earlier this year, however, no country has yet started putting money on the table.” – SEED
Scam… scam… scam… scam… bigger than Madeoff.
The fears about C02 are a complete overblown scam. If you really are afraid of C02 then you should be utterly terrorized about water vapor! Not to mention the real pollution issues that are facing our planet.
The REAL indisputable pollution are things like The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and yet people worry about imaginary things, like AGW which are most likely Natural Cycles in action. Clean up the actual pollution mess and give time for the long term climate science to get some actual standards.
“The way we approach it may be better or worse, but the vast majority of REAL climate scientists have no doubt that it IS happening, and that that tons of gases we put into the air over the past couple of centuries played at least some part. why even subscribe to Seed if you’re gonna listen to the folks who aren’t actually doing the science?” – Brooks Onley, July 13
Take a good long peek at WattsUpWithThat and you’ll see that the so called climate science isn’t as sound as it’s sold to the public to be. Consensus isn’t science by the way Brooks, it’s believe based culture not much different than theology. Water Vapor is by far the biggest green house gas so we should be working to eliminate clouds by the C02 scare logic. Get real.
“Water vapor accounts for the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect, between 36% and 66% for water vapor alone, and between 66% and 85% when factoring in clouds.”
Don’t boil that water for your tea or for cooking dinner as you are directly contributing to green house gases with the steam!
As someone very interested in and dedicated to hard science the more I learn about climate science the less I’m I’m able to accept about AGW due to the many faulty claims made by the fear mongering soothsayers of global doom. The more I learn about climate science the more I see that it’s not a hard science after all but a fledgling science with some hard (yet flawed) data collection but lots and lots of interpretations based upon massaged statistical games, but above all it’s not much better than a lousy guess and not much different than the ancient practice of soothsaying.
For example, clouds are not modeled properly thus the climate models are incomplete.
“The effects of clouds are a significant area of uncertainty in climate models. Clouds have competing effects on the climate. One of the roles that clouds play in climate is in cooling the surface by reflecting sunlight back into space; another is warming by increasing the amount of infrared radiation emitted from the atmosphere to the surface. In the 2001 IPCC report on climate change, the possible changes in cloud cover were highlighted as one of the dominant uncertainties in predicting future climate change“!
Wow, so even the IPCC admits that clouds, aka water vapor in the form of clouds, are one of the dominant uncertainties in predicting future climate change! So climate science is not settled science by their own admission that there are significant areas of uncertainty!
They also have forgotten that the Weather and thus Climate are not predictable systems as these systems are governed by Stephen Wolfram’s Law of Predictability paraphrased here as: waiting till the future arrives is sometimes the only way to predict the future, especially with Natural Systems! Stephen Wolfram proved that in his book, “A New Kind of Science”, Chapter 2.
Added 20090820: Cloud cover is influenced by Cosmic Rays. The Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Institute “investigates the connection between solar activity and climatic changes on Earth”.
“Svensmark proposed that as cosmic rays fell through the Earth’s atmosphere, they formed “condensation nuclei.” Water vapor molecules could then stick to the nuclei and eventually form clouds. More clouds would reflect more sunlight, and the Earth’s temperatures would drop. In contrast, fewer cosmic rays would mean fewer clouds and a warmer climate.” – The Cosmic Climate Connection.
“During the last 100 years cosmic rays became scarcer because unusually vigorous action by the Sun batted away many of them. Fewer cosmic rays meant fewer clouds—and a warmer world.”
The more I learn about AGW the more I focus on REAL pollution as it’s clear that real pollution is a real problem. Pick up your garbage! Reduce your consumption of consumables. Don’t use that bag. Don’t buy that bottle. Reuse.
Leo Simpson explains it quite well here:
“For a start, let’s consider this highly emotive term “carbon pollution” which is constantly being bandied about. It only takes a moment’s thought to realise that there is no “carbon pollution” problem. It did exist 50 years ago, when we had steam trains and diesels with smoky exhausts and coal-burning power stations which had less than complete combustion. It used to be called soot. But it is not a problem now, in most countries. Now I know that some people use “carbon” as shorthand for carbon dioxide but it is sloppy thinking and generates worry in the unthinking masses that we are spewing all this carbon into the air. We’re not.
We are burning tremendous amounts of fossil fuels and that is putting huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that is a big worry, isn’t it? Well, maybe. But all these doom merchants who worry about carbon dioxide never say anything at all about the other greenhouse gas which is produced when fossil fuels are burnt. What is that? It’s called water vapour – the same stuff as in clouds. Is water vapour a problem? Definitely not.
Just in case you don’t believe me, consider the combustion of petrol which is mainly octane, C8H18. When this is burnt, the chemical reaction is:
2C8H18 + 25O2 16CO2 + 18H2O
octane + oxygen carbon dioxide + water
If you calculate the molecular weights of the two combustion products, carbon dioxide and water, you will find that there is more water produced than carbon dioxide. But greenies never mention it. Why? Because they have either forgotten their high-school chemistry or they are completely ignorant of it.
The point is that both water vapour and carbon dioxide are normal components of the air that we breathe. They are not pollution. They are both necessary for life to exist on the planet. If there was no carbon dioxide, plants would not grow (more high-school chemistry – it’s called photosynthesis). Without plants, no animals, including us, can live. It’s a simple as that. If there is more carbon dioxide in the air, plants grow more profusely. In fact, it is common practice to increase the carbon dioxide in greenhouses and aquariums to make the plants grow more vigorously.”
That’s very interesting, especially the point about there being more water vapor produced with the burning of fossil fuels than C02. If you or someone else is freaking out about the C02 produced then they MUST also freak out about the amount of H20 vapor being produced! Both are greenhouse gases!
I’m constantly surprised by so called environmentalists who won’t do anything about real pollution since they are focusing only on their imagined C02 soothsaying fears. Help clean up the real pollution please.
Questions:
I’m wondering how much human activity causes water vapor to enter the atmosphere: cooking, boiling water for cooking and tea, industrial water boiling, nuclear plant steam emissions, vapor from human breath, etc…
Considering that water vapor and clouds are the largest percentage of greenhouse gas (up to 85% of all greenhouse gases) wouldn’t it be better, as in more effective with immediate results, to Ban Cooking and Outlawing Making Tea than limiting C02 to reduce greenhouse gases?
He’s cooking with water, shoot to kill! Making tea, how opulent, destroy and obliterate that house! That puts an end to that particular source of greenhouse gases.
Wouldn’t it be easier technologically and cost wise to take water vapor out of the atmosphere than C02?
Are there any studies that have been done to see how much Water Vapor in the Atmosphere is allegedly from human activity? How does that compare with the amounts of C02 that are allegedly from human activity?
Maybe Nature corrects for too much greenhouse effect by adding more clouds? Any studies on that?
How much water vapor would we need to remove from the atmosphere to compensate for the allegedly human caused C02?
And if we did remove water vapor from the atmosphere using some technology wouldn’t it just be replaced by an equivalent amount of water vapor by Nature? Would we need to terrorform Earth into a desert to avoid Al Gore’s horrific soothsaid Waterworld?
How much does plastic in the oceans effect our world?
Thoughts
Someone replied “that she is with Brooks”, whatever that means.
It really isn’t about who is with who, it’s whether or not the AGW hypothesis is correct or not; if you assume it’s correct and begin terraforming the Earth the wrong way you’ll just make matters worse off. Following the logic of the AGW hypothesis would mean that eliminating C02 could trigger an ice age if you eliminate too much. How much is that? Who knows!!!
How about working on real indisputable pollution problems rather than imaginary and unproven ones for a real change?
Let’s eliminate actual “carbon aka soot” and other nasty particles from coal power stations around the world rather than focusing on the plant food “CO2” that they emit. Plants need CO2 for their life and we need plants to have their CO2 for our life!!! Greenhouses regularly use ~3 times as much CO2 as is in the atmosphere to enhance plant growth!… Read More
Let’s clean the oceans of plastics! That’s cleaning up real pollution.
What other real pollution problems you can work on to solve that involves actual problems?
Someone else was suggesting that people just want money.
I have no plan for your money. Unless… just kidding… really no plans for your money. All I’m asking is that people do something about real pollution rather than do nothing by listening to the fear mongering of the climate of fear soothsayers. Pick up trash. Plant a tree. Don’t toss out that bag without reusing it at least once or thrice. … Walk rather than drive. Cycle without getting yourself killed (difficult in modern cities). Add solar to your dwelling unit if appropriate. Don’t toss your medicine in the trash, return it to a pharmacy for proper disposal. Recycle your electronics. Resell your things or give them away rather than tossing them. Save the oceans from plastic. Hug someone in need. Live a real life rather than one distracted by delusions that can’t be proven.
Know that climate and weather are natural cycles of Nature and that in our arrogance to save our planet we might do more harm than good so there is wisdom in taking solutions slowly; fools rush in.