Name the Major Flaw In This Signal Processing Analysis Probl

[Rune Allnor]

On 12 Des, 14:21, N0S...@daqarta.com (Bob Masta) wrote:

On Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:10:52 GMT, eric.jacob...@ieee.org





(Eric Jacobsen) wrote:
On Mon, 12 Dec 2011 02:56:46 -0800 (PST), fungus
openglMYSO...@artlum.com> wrote:

On Dec 12, 10:37=A0am, Rune Allnor <all...@tele.ntnu.no> wrote:
There are natural phenomena that
govern climate, at least major parts of which could
well be suspected to be cyclic.

...it's just that nobody knows what these 'natural
phenomena' are, how they work, or anything
at all about them.

OTOH we KNOW that atmospheric composition
changes climate. We also know that man is busy
changing the composition of the atmosphere and
what the effects of the change will be (ie. more
sunlight will be trapped).

More things than people change the composition of the atmosphere, and
some of those natural cycles are known or have at least been
previously recognized.   I think it's foolish to assume that because
the system isn't well understood that people must be responsible for
the changes, especially when many of the natural contributors have,
and have over history had, much larger influences.

I am always surprised when I hear sentiments like this.  If
the termperature is really rising (which is almost
universally agreed by the actual climate experts, if not by
the oil industry), then doesn't it make sense to do what we
can to slow it down?   To say that we don't understand every
little detail, therefore we should do nothing, seems more
than a little strange.

It is stupid to do *anything* until you are sure you
understand what is going on. A lot of people here have
compared this to regulating a vehcle's speed by using
brakes. You need to be sure that you just *adjust* the
speeed, and that this adjustment is reversible. Which is
the case in vehicles.

The laternative, when dealing with unknown systems, is
that one pokes at the emergency brakes, which stop the
vehichle but at the possible expense of velding shut.
You stop the vehicle, but in an irrevesible way.

Rune

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

fungus wrote:

On Dec 12, 2:46 pm, Dawlish ?pjg...@hotmail.com? wrote:
? On Dec 12, 9:37 am, Rune Allnor ?all...@tele.ntnu.no? wrote:
?
? ? On 12 Des, 05:52, Bret Cahill ?BretCah...@peoplepc.com? wrote:
? ? There are natural phenomena that
? ? govern climate, at least major parts of which could
? ? well be suspected to be cyclic.
?
? So what are these "natural phenomena"?

Don't hold your breath...

What kind of fungus are you? Nail fungus, or Jock Itch and is there
a cure?


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.

 

[Bret Cahill]

If we are worried about releasing too much CO2, then we should have
fewer babies and cut our population size thereby reducing our need for
resources.

Amen to that! Almost all the technical problems mankind now experiences
are caused or exacerbated by overpopulation. Resource exhaustion and
waste disposal pretty well sums it up.

Still it's amazing how much we've been able to cheat Malthus so far
with science and technology.  It'll be interesting to see how long our
luck holds up.

Bret Cahill

"May you live in interesting times."

-- Chinese curse

"We" ???

Population density is extremely uneven

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Countries_by_population_density.svg

With global trade it doesn't matter so much. If China and India
import a lot of food then Australians will be paying more for food.

Maybe the Australians can do well by selling more food, coal and iron
ore to Asia, but that doesn't change the fact that everyone will be
paying more for food.


Bret Cahill

 

[robert bristow-johnson]

On 12/12/11 3:16 PM, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

fungus wrote:

On Dec 12, 2:46 pm, Dawlish ?pjg...@hotmail.com? wrote:
On Dec 12, 9:37 am, Rune Allnor ?all...@tele.ntnu.no? wrote:

On 12 Des, 05:52, Bret Cahill ?BretCah...@peoplepc.com? wrote:
There are natural phenomena that
govern climate, at least major parts of which could
well be suspected to be cyclic.

So what are these "natural phenomena"?

Don't hold your breath...


What kind of fungus are you? Nail fungus, or Jock Itch

maybe he's a chanterelle.

could someone nice (like Jerry) explain to me what this thread (that
sprouted like a mushroom) is about? i tried to peek at the original
post and the link, and have gathered that it's something about climate
change, but i do not know what the "Signal Processing Analysis Problem"
is to consider its Major Flaw.

not unhappy to jump into the fray, but am quite clueless.

--

r b-j rbj@audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

 

[Tom P]

On 12/12/2011 02:23 PM, Rune Allnor wrote:

On 12 Des, 14:00, fungus<openglMYSO...@artlum.com> wrote:
On Dec 12, 12:10 pm, eric.jacob...@ieee.org (Eric Jacobsen) wrote:

I think it's foolish to assume that because
the system isn't well understood that people must be responsible for
the changes

I'm pretty sure we can accurately measure the
composition of the air and how much oil/coal
people are burning.

The rest is basic arithmetic.

No, it isn't.

The textbook on data analysis by Box, Hunter& Hunter
quotes an example of the relation between the number
of storks in an area, and the human population.

The relation shown is as perfect as can be expected
by measured data, and point strongly in the direction
that the number of storks influence the birth rate,
as per a popular 'myth'.

Having *data* that indicate some co-variance between
two factors, does *not* imply that there is a cause-
effect relation between them.

Rune

I'm sorry to have to point out that if you burn 9 gigatonnes of coal and
oil every year, then the amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere
really is extremely easy to calculate and has nothing to do with babies
and storks - or is that how you balance your bank account?

 

[Tom P]

On 12/12/2011 05:49 PM, Bret Cahill wrote:

Assume the tree ring data is good.

http://joannenova.com.au/2011/12/chinese-2485-year-tree-ring-study-sh...

Bret Cahill

Use of Fourier analysis.

Most would go with the two higher frequencies. The problem is
extrapolating off of the two cycles of the /1300 year frequency.


Bret Cahill

There is another aspect which I cannot understand from the article.
The researchers have presumably found by fourier analysis that there is
some proxy in the tree-ring data that displays the periodic signals
described- all well and good - but how do they determine the correlation
between the proxy and the instrumental temperature record? By Principal
Component Analysis? If so, why are their results any more reliable than
Briffa's?
Maybe someone with access to the paper can clarify?

 

[Tom P]

On 12/13/2011 12:13 AM, Tom P wrote:

On 12/12/2011 05:49 PM, Bret Cahill wrote:
Assume the tree ring data is good.

http://joannenova.com.au/2011/12/chinese-2485-year-tree-ring-study-sh...


Bret Cahill

Use of Fourier analysis.

Most would go with the two higher frequencies. The problem is
extrapolating off of the two cycles of the /1300 year frequency.


Bret Cahill





There is another aspect which I cannot understand from the article.
The researchers have presumably found by fourier analysis that there is
some proxy in the tree-ring data that displays the periodic signals
described- all well and good - but how do they determine the correlation
between the proxy and the instrumental temperature record? By Principal
Component Analysis? If so, why are their results any more reliable than
Briffa's?
Maybe someone with access to the paper can clarify?




Addendum - the paper is accessible, but it refers to yet another paper

for the source of the temperature data for the last 2485 years- based on
tree-ring analysis, lol. Let the paper chases begin!

BTW I'd like to echo Bret's suspicion as well that particularly when it
comes to low frequency signals - meaning cycle time comparable with
sample length - you can prove anything you want with fourier analysis.

 

[Tom P]

On 12/12/2011 07:21 PM, Bret Cahill wrote:

Assume the tree ring data is good.

http://joannenova.com.au/2011/12/chinese-2485-year-tree-ring-study-sh...

Bret Cahill

Use of Fourier analysis.

Most would go with the two higher frequencies. The problem is
extrapolating off of the two cycles of the /1300 year frequency.

Bret Cahill

This is all bs

They claimed that their tree ring data reflected some of the recent
events documented in other places but then they include the un
collaborated 1/1300 year frequency like it means something.

Is it noise or signal?

They haven't even explained how they arrived at decomposition in Fig.
4

Everything is filtered except the three lowest frequencies.

The problem with high pass filtering to pre dynastic China periods is
you must wait 1300 years to determine if the lowest frequency is
noise.

That is not acceptable when it's clear that today's warming is /decade
and that CO2 is the major cause.

This may be more of a study to see what deniers will latch onto than
anything else. Most Chinese scientists know this is junk science.

Bret Cahill

China still burns lots of coal

In the past Chinese climate scientists were independent of Beijing.
That could be changing. China is ready to go to war for the oil in
the S. China Sea.

Burning coal is very very bad (and not just for CO2)

They are about to be joined by Ukraine (currently on the path to stone
ages converting industries from natural gas to coal and already denied
Kyoto's money ...)

When it comes to preserving 02 levels by not burning fossil hydrogen,
natural gas becomes the worst offender.

natural gas is primarily methane, and per joule produces less CO2 than
any other fossil fuel. I wouldn't worry too much about oxygen
depletion, CO2 poisoning will set in first.

Solar power is now dirt cheap. They just need to convert to solar.

Something to hope for. Meanwhile in China hundreds of millions of tons

of coal are burning away in uncontrollable wildfires.

Bret Cahill

 

[Rune Allnor]

On 13 Des, 00:02, Tom P <werot...@freent.dd> wrote:

On 12/12/2011 02:23 PM, Rune Allnor wrote:





On 12 Des, 14:00, fungus<openglMYSO...@artlum.com>  wrote:
On Dec 12, 12:10 pm, eric.jacob...@ieee.org (Eric Jacobsen) wrote:

  I think it's foolish to assume that because
the system isn't well understood that people must be responsible for
the changes

I'm pretty sure we can accurately measure the
composition of the air and how much oil/coal
people are burning.

The rest is basic arithmetic.

No, it isn't.

The textbook on data analysis by Box, Hunter&  Hunter
quotes an example of the relation between the number
of storks in an area, and the human population.

The relation shown is as perfect as can be expected
by measured data, and point strongly in the direction
that the number of storks influence the birth rate,
as per a popular 'myth'.

Having *data* that indicate some co-variance between
two factors, does *not* imply that there is a cause-
effect relation between them.

Rune

I'm sorry to have to point out that if you burn 9 gigatonnes of coal and
oil every year, then the amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere
really is extremely easy to calculate

Yes, it is. But what is *not* easy, is to associate
causes and effects.

and has nothing to do with babies
and storks -

Read up on trivial data analysis. You can find
whatever co-variations you like; you will never
find causes and effects from observational studies.

or is that how you balance your bank account?

Rather on babies and storks, than frauds and amateurs.

Rune

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

robert bristow-johnson wrote:

On 12/12/11 3:16 PM, Michael A. Terrell wrote:
?
? fungus wrote:
??
?? On Dec 12, 2:46 pm, Dawlish ?pjg...@hotmail.com? wrote:
??? On Dec 12, 9:37 am, Rune Allnor ?all...@tele.ntnu.no? wrote:
???
???? On 12 Des, 05:52, Bret Cahill ?BretCah...@peoplepc.com? wrote:
???? There are natural phenomena that
???? govern climate, at least major parts of which could
???? well be suspected to be cyclic.
???
??? So what are these "natural phenomena"?
??
?? Don't hold your breath...
?
?
? What kind of fungus are you? Nail fungus, or Jock Itch

maybe he's a chanterelle.

could someone nice (like Jerry) explain to me what this thread (that
sprouted like a mushroom) is about? i tried to peek at the original
post and the link, and have gathered that it's something about climate
change, but i do not know what the "Signal Processing Analysis Problem"
is to consider its Major Flaw.

not unhappy to jump into the fray, but am quite clueless.

It has no meaning since it's another thread created by a well known
troll.


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.

 

[Orval Fairbairn]

In article <9kngueFj7qU1@mid.individual.net>,
Tom P <werotizy@freent.dd> wrote:

On 12/13/2011 12:13 AM, Tom P wrote:
On 12/12/2011 05:49 PM, Bret Cahill wrote:
Assume the tree ring data is good.

http://joannenova.com.au/2011/12/chinese-2485-year-tree-ring-study-sh...


Bret Cahill

Use of Fourier analysis.

Most would go with the two higher frequencies. The problem is
extrapolating off of the two cycles of the /1300 year frequency.


Bret Cahill





There is another aspect which I cannot understand from the article.
The researchers have presumably found by fourier analysis that there is
some proxy in the tree-ring data that displays the periodic signals
described- all well and good - but how do they determine the correlation
between the proxy and the instrumental temperature record? By Principal
Component Analysis? If so, why are their results any more reliable than
Briffa's?
Maybe someone with access to the paper can clarify?




Addendum - the paper is accessible, but it refers to yet another paper
for the source of the temperature data for the last 2485 years- based on
tree-ring analysis, lol. Let the paper chases begin!

BTW I'd like to echo Bret's suspicion as well that particularly when it
comes to low frequency signals - meaning cycle time comparable with
sample length - you can prove anything you want with fourier analysis.

.... including "hockey stick" tailoffs. If the data are not smooth, the
FFT will go unstable and show a tailoff at the end of the data stream
that does not represent realistic behavior. A common tailoff is the
"hockey stick" shap, popularized by Mann, et. al.

 

[Rune Allnor]

On 12 Des, 19:15, Bret Cahill <BretCah...@peoplepc.com> wrote:

There are natural phenomena that
govern climate, at least major parts of which could
well be suspected to be cyclic.

...it's just that nobody knows what these 'natural
phenomena' are, how they work, or anything
at all about them.

OTOH we KNOW that atmospheric composition
changes climate. We also know that man is busy
changing the composition of the atmosphere and
what the effects of the change will be (ie. more
sunlight will be trapped).

More things than people change the composition of the atmosphere, and
some of those natural cycles are known or have at least been
previously recognized.   I think it's foolish to assume that because
the system isn't well understood that people must be responsible for
the changes, especially when many of the natural contributors have,
and have over history had, much larger influences.

I am always surprised when I hear sentiments like this.  If
the termperature is really rising (which is almost
universally agreed by the actual climate experts, if not by
the oil industry), then doesn't it make sense to do what we
can to slow it down?   To say that we don't understand every
little detail, therefore we should do nothing, seems more
than a little strange.

When your car is careening down hill, you take your foot off
the gas.  You might want to down-shift.  You might even want
to try the brakes.  You focus your best judgement on how to
slow the car, not on who chose the route, or what engineer
made the road so steep.

When your house is on fire, you call the fire department,
not the arson investigators.

Another persistent argument is that "it was warmer before" or
"Antartica was ice free before."  You tell them that a billion people
interested in their own survival weren't living 5' above mean high
tide back then but that never seems to register.

Well, the problem is not the change in sea levels,
but that people live in places where they are
exposed to those changes.

In Norwegian media there are reporst that 2011 will
be a record year, what damage compensation from
weather and other natural events, are concerned.
The comments from insurance companies are unequivocal:
"New building and housing projects are located where
they ought not to be, near waterfornts and in other
exposed areas."

It's the same thing with forest fires in the US
and Australia: The problem is not that the forest
burns - just look at how many species depend on
fires for procreation - but that people have
selected to live where fires tend to happen.

One needs to be very cautious to keep the two
apart.

Rune

 

[Tom P]

On 12/13/2011 06:10 AM, Orval Fairbairn wrote:

In article<9kngueFj7qU1@mid.individual.net>,
Tom P<werotizy@freent.dd> wrote:

On 12/13/2011 12:13 AM, Tom P wrote:
On 12/12/2011 05:49 PM, Bret Cahill wrote:
Assume the tree ring data is good.

http://joannenova.com.au/2011/12/chinese-2485-year-tree-ring-study-sh...


Bret Cahill

Use of Fourier analysis.

Most would go with the two higher frequencies. The problem is
extrapolating off of the two cycles of the /1300 year frequency.


Bret Cahill





There is another aspect which I cannot understand from the article.
The researchers have presumably found by fourier analysis that there is
some proxy in the tree-ring data that displays the periodic signals
described- all well and good - but how do they determine the correlation
between the proxy and the instrumental temperature record? By Principal
Component Analysis? If so, why are their results any more reliable than
Briffa's?
Maybe someone with access to the paper can clarify?




Addendum - the paper is accessible, but it refers to yet another paper
for the source of the temperature data for the last 2485 years- based on
tree-ring analysis, lol. Let the paper chases begin!

BTW I'd like to echo Bret's suspicion as well that particularly when it
comes to low frequency signals - meaning cycle time comparable with
sample length - you can prove anything you want with fourier analysis.

.... including "hockey stick" tailoffs. If the data are not smooth, the
FFT will go unstable and show a tailoff at the end of the data stream
that does not represent realistic behavior. A common tailoff is the
"hockey stick" shap, popularized by Mann, et. al.

The end of the hockey stick since 1900 is instrumental data. No Fourier
analysis involved. The disputed part is the pre-instrumental part
derived by statistical analysis of proxies, in particular using the PCA
technique. AFAIK no Fourier analysis there either. Correct me if I'm
wrong.
PCA analysis relies on a time overlap between instrumental and proxy
data and attempts to determine which factors in the proxies correlate
with the instrumental data. It' not at all clear to me why anyone
should think that the extremely small changes in global temperatures
should have a detectable effect on tree-ring growth compared with the
major changes in annual growth due to rainfall or cloud cover, let alone
the implicit assumption that there is a linear relationship, without
which the PCA analysis is meaningless.

 

[Orval Fairbairn]

In article <9kpfq4FquqU1@mid.individual.net>,
Tom P <werotizy@freent.dd> wrote:

On 12/13/2011 06:10 AM, Orval Fairbairn wrote:
In article<9kngueFj7qU1@mid.individual.net>,
Tom P<werotizy@freent.dd> wrote:

On 12/13/2011 12:13 AM, Tom P wrote:
On 12/12/2011 05:49 PM, Bret Cahill wrote:
Assume the tree ring data is good.

http://joannenova.com.au/2011/12/chinese-2485-year-tree-ring-study-sh..
.


Bret Cahill

Use of Fourier analysis.

Most would go with the two higher frequencies. The problem is
extrapolating off of the two cycles of the /1300 year frequency.


Bret Cahill





There is another aspect which I cannot understand from the article.
The researchers have presumably found by fourier analysis that there is
some proxy in the tree-ring data that displays the periodic signals
described- all well and good - but how do they determine the correlation
between the proxy and the instrumental temperature record? By Principal
Component Analysis? If so, why are their results any more reliable than
Briffa's?
Maybe someone with access to the paper can clarify?




Addendum - the paper is accessible, but it refers to yet another paper
for the source of the temperature data for the last 2485 years- based on
tree-ring analysis, lol. Let the paper chases begin!

BTW I'd like to echo Bret's suspicion as well that particularly when it
comes to low frequency signals - meaning cycle time comparable with
sample length - you can prove anything you want with fourier analysis.

.... including "hockey stick" tailoffs. If the data are not smooth, the
FFT will go unstable and show a tailoff at the end of the data stream
that does not represent realistic behavior. A common tailoff is the
"hockey stick" shap, popularized by Mann, et. al.

The end of the hockey stick since 1900 is instrumental data. No Fourier
analysis involved. The disputed part is the pre-instrumental part
derived by statistical analysis of proxies, in particular using the PCA
technique. AFAIK no Fourier analysis there either. Correct me if I'm
wrong.
PCA analysis relies on a time overlap between instrumental and proxy
data and attempts to determine which factors in the proxies correlate
with the instrumental data. It' not at all clear to me why anyone
should think that the extremely small changes in global temperatures
should have a detectable effect on tree-ring growth compared with the
major changes in annual growth due to rainfall or cloud cover, let alone
the implicit assumption that there is a linear relationship, without
which the PCA analysis is meaningless.

You need the Fourier analysis just to sort through the data scatter --
even with "instrumental" data, which, BTW, has not covered the Earth
until recent times.

 

[fungus]

On Dec 12, 9:16 pm, "Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terr...@earthlink.net>
wrote:

fungus wrote:
Don't hold your breath...

   What kind of fungus are you?  Nail fungus, or Jock Itch and is there
a cure?

You know how I know you don't have any real
arguments or evidence on your side?

 

[fungus]

On Dec 12, 7:54 pm, Bret Cahill <BretCah...@peoplepc.com> wrote:

Play around with an O2 meter sometime.  Hold your breath until you
start to gag and get a reading.  It's nearly impossible to go below
14%.

It's not lack of O2 that causes you to gag, it's
build-up of CO2.

What you need to do is set up a closed system
where the air you breathe is recycled after it's
passed through some lime water to absorb the
CO2. You'll die of hypoxia* without gagging, feeling
out of breath or noticing anything at all is wrong.

PS: All this is basic biology so I take it you
don't know any...yet somehow you're an expert
on climate science?

[*] This big, scary word means lack of oxygen

 

[Androcles]

"fungus" <openglMYSOCKS@artlum.com> wrote in message
news:4c437092-744a-4c2b-91be-3db4d7062e15@c13g2000vbh.googlegroups.com...
On Dec 12, 7:54 pm, Bret Cahill <BretCah...@peoplepc.com> wrote:

Play around with an O2 meter sometime. Hold your breath until you
start to gag and get a reading. It's nearly impossible to go below
14%.

It's not lack of O2 that causes you to gag, it's
build-up of CO2.

What you need to do is set up a closed system
where the air you breathe is recycled after it's
passed through some lime water to absorb the
CO2. You'll die of hypoxia* without gagging, feeling
out of breath or noticing anything at all is wrong.

PS: All this is basic biology so I take it you
don't know any...yet somehow you're an expert
on climate science?

[*] This big, scary word means lack of oxygen
=========================================
Hey shithead!
The Earth isn't a closed system, the Sun shines on it.

 

[Bret Cahill]

There are natural phenomena that
govern climate, at least major parts of which could
well be suspected to be cyclic.

...it's just that nobody knows what these 'natural
phenomena' are, how they work, or anything
at all about them.

OTOH we KNOW that atmospheric composition
changes climate. We also know that man is busy
changing the composition of the atmosphere and
what the effects of the change will be (ie. more
sunlight will be trapped).

More things than people change the composition of the atmosphere, and
some of those natural cycles are known or have at least been
previously recognized.   I think it's foolish to assume that because
the system isn't well understood that people must be responsible for
the changes, especially when many of the natural contributors have,
and have over history had, much larger influences.

I am always surprised when I hear sentiments like this.  If
the termperature is really rising (which is almost
universally agreed by the actual climate experts, if not by
the oil industry), then doesn't it make sense to do what we
can to slow it down?   To say that we don't understand every
little detail, therefore we should do nothing, seems more
than a little strange.

When your car is careening down hill, you take your foot off
the gas.  You might want to down-shift.  You might even want
to try the brakes.  You focus your best judgement on how to
slow the car, not on who chose the route, or what engineer
made the road so steep.

When your house is on fire, you call the fire department,
not the arson investigators.

Another persistent argument is that "it was warmer before" or
"Antartica was ice free before."  You tell them that a billion people
interested in their own survival weren't living 5' above mean high
tide back then but that never seems to register.

Well, the problem is not the change in sea levels,
but that people live in places where they are
exposed to those changes.

You can that that philosophy to its final conclusion if some
[currently unknown] effect from some human activity makes the entire
globe uninhabitable. Then people need to move to another planet.

Moreover, the loss of millions of square kilometers of low lying areas
may not be the biggest threat to human survival. Finally, humans very
slowly evolved to a climate / biosphere and we prefer it that way. We
like the biodiversity. We like low lying areas like the SE and Gulf
coasts of the U. S.

In Norwegian media there are reporst that 2011 will
be a record year, what damage compensation from
weather and other natural events, are concerned.

You have a choice of two kinds of Keynesian economics, rebuilding
Keynesian economics and green tech Keynesian economics.

Which Keynesian economics do you prefer?

The comments from insurance companies are unequivocal:
"New building and housing projects are located where
they ought not to be, near waterfornts and in other
exposed areas."

It's the same thing with forest fires in the US
and Australia: The problem is not that the forest
burns - just look at how many species depend on
fires for procreation - but that people have
selected to live where fires tend to happen.

What about the people grandfathered in _before_ climate change.

It's like a family was on a farm for generations and a super fund site
creating industry decides to build a plant just upstream of the farm
and pollutes the irrigation water.

The only difference is that many of the people destroying your
property's value are on the other side of the planet.


Bret Cahill

 

[Rune Allnor]

On 13 Des, 19:45, Bret Cahill <Bret_E_Cah...@yahoo.com> wrote:

There are natural phenomena that

Another persistent argument is that "it was warmer before" or
"Antartica was ice free before."  You tell them that a billion people
interested in their own survival weren't living 5' above mean high
tide back then but that never seems to register.

Well, the problem is not the change in sea levels,
but that people live in places where they are
exposed to those changes.

You can that that philosophy to its final conclusion if some
[currently unknown] effect from some human activity makes the entire
globe uninhabitable.  Then people need to move to another planet.

You don't get it, do you: The world changes all the time.
It has always done so, and it always will, people or no
people.

There are two new factors to the equation:

1) Over the past two or three centuries, western
civilization type settlements have taken to
dominate the world. That's what's different
in western USA and Australia. The aboriginal
peoples in both places knew the fires, and how
to deal with them.

2) Over the past 50-100 years, people have begun
to make meteorological measurements. It's funny,
but one usually don't know how stuff change
until one actually measure. It's one of the
more disturbing aspects of data analysis that
people mistake 'new measurement' for 'new change'.

Somehow, it seems that the perception is that
whatever parameter strted to change in the same
moment one takes the measurement: "These changes
didn't happen in the past!" should *really* be
"We couldn't _observe_ such changes in the past."

The difference might seem minuscule; the
implications are enormous.

Moreover, the loss of millions of square kilometers of low lying areas
may not be the biggest threat to human survival.  Finally, humans very
slowly evolved to a climate / biosphere and we prefer it that way.  We
like the biodiversity.  We like low lying areas like the SE and Gulf
coasts of the U. S.

Sure. As long as you understand the risks. Re-building
New Orleans is a total waste of $$$ - those kinds of
things will happen again. It's only a matter of time.

The comments from insurance companies are unequivocal:
"New building and housing projects are located where
they ought not to be, near waterfornts and in other
exposed areas."
It's the same thing with forest fires in the US
and Australia: The problem is not that the forest
burns - just look at how many species depend on
fires for procreation - but that people have
selected to live where fires tend to happen.

What about the people grandfathered in _before_ climate change.

There is no 'before'. The climate has always changed,
various ice ages being trivial examples.

The worst climate disaster was the first bacteria which
produced O2 through their metabolism. The O2 bonded
with Fe in water, to form huge deposits of rust on the
seabed. Just about all the rust-brown rocks you see
outdoor are formed this way, some billion years ago.

Only when the Fe was sedimented out from seawater did
O2 start to build up in the atmosphere.

It's like a family was on a farm for generations and a super fund site
creating industry decides to build a plant just upstream of the farm
and pollutes the irrigation water.

The only difference is that many of the people destroying your
property's value are on the other side of the planet.

No. The difference is that in your examle there
is an actual pollutant.

Rune

 

[Jerry Avins]

On 12/13/2011 2:35 PM, Bret Cahill wrote:

Play around with an O2 meter sometime. Hold your breath until you
start to gag and get a reading. It's nearly impossible to go below
14%.

It's not lack of O2 that causes you to gag, it's
build-up of CO2.

CO2 obviously builds up in the lungs of divers that swim straight down
on nothing but a breath of air. The record is something like a 100
meters straight down which is impossible just below the surface. Why
can a diver burn more calories at depth per breath of air with all
this CO2 that he couldn't do just below the surface?

None of this is an argument against carbon abatement or even natural
gas just that burning the H in hydrocarbons esp. in Nat. gas is
lowering the partial pressure of O2 as the C is increasing CO2.

Most animals are sensitive to even small changes in O2, especially if
it's over the entire life span. Studies have shown that people living
at altitude live longer so maybe deniers should try to spin the lower
partial pressure of O2 as one of the health benefits of burning
natural gas.

As a blue water fisherman / medical student said of the study, "yea,
sure, if you want to call being that far from the ocean that
'living'." You don't need a study or a medical background to know if
you reduce O2 to zero then heart disease and cancer rates drop to
zero.

The sea level rise from burning fossil hydrogen isn't a significant,
but since it is being cracked back to O2 more slowly than it is being
formed the drop in O2 partial pressure could become a concern, health
studies notwithstanding.

Where is fossil hydrogen found? What is being "cracked" back to o2?

Jerry
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
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