Major analysis confirms global warming is real

On 10/12/2011 01:28, Peter Webb wrote:

"Martin Brown" wrote in message
...
On 09/12/2011 11:20, Peter Webb wrote:

"Martin Brown" wrote in message
...

Rubbish!!! The limit as h - 0 only exists in symbolic algebra and
pure mathematics.

No, its used constantly throughout real science. In real science, you
establish that a rate exists by measuring over shorther and shorter
timeframes until you are certain that reducing the timeframe does not
change the rate which is calculated. Otherwise you don't call it a rate.

For example, the rate of expansion of the Universe. We measure this over
time baselines of about 10^-9 seconds and do so repeatedly and get
identical answers; we know it can therefore be approximated as a linear
function over periods of decades. Because we can form the limit if not
to zero but at least to 10^-9 seconds, we can condifently talk about the
rate of expansion of the Universe. If this fluctuated wildly at the
timescale of 10^-9 seconds, astronomers would not and could not talk
about te rate of expansion of the Universe.

Lets see evidence of these measurements of the cosmological expansion
of the universe using a time baseline of 10^-9 seconds or 1ns.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshif... terpretation


The baseline for Doppler measurements is of the order of the frequency
of the light whose redshift is being measured.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_effect

That is why (for example) Doppler radar can detect changes to speed
which are (from a human perspective) absolutely instantaneous.

True enough. But to reach us the photons from cosmological distances
have been travelling for a substantial fraction of the age of the
universe. To observe them with sufficient signal to noise to make any
inference of the speed of the original object requires between 10
minutes and 10 hours of observing time depending on the magnitude of the
target and the dispersion of the spectrograph. All the stars in a
distant galaxy have their own peculiar velocities, and the galaxy itself
is often gravitationally bound in a cluster.


Most cosmologically distant objects are very dim and will not provide
enough photons to even detect on this short timescale.

It took Hubble about 10 years to accumulate enough points on his graph
and 10 years against the roughly 10,000,000,000 years age of the
universe is not that bad an approximation to epsilon. And for some of
his points he had to watch Cepheid variables through a couple of
cycles to determine their period and hence absolute luminosity.


Whereas the resolution that can be obtained using Cepheid variables is
of the order of the frequency of their cycle, which is far less than the
frequency of the light being emitted.

You are trying to tell the time using a calendar. Use something with
much finer resolution.

The point here is that the data which goes into any plot of the Hubble
expansion typically covers a decade or two of the latest observations.
You misrepresent the facts to suit your agenda.

The cosmological expansion does provide a useful illustration of how
science deniers, lying dittoheads and creationists would argue though.

[fake claim I] The Andromeda galaxy is blue shifted and actually
coming towards us so clearly there cannot be any expansion.

[fake claim II] It is all a trick by Mr Hubble et al to get more grants.


I see you would much rather try and defend astronomy than try and defend
climate "science".

And who could blame you?

This is an astronomy group. It is reasonable to illustrate my points
using examples taken from astronomy.

To the best of my knowledge all serious determinations of the Hubble
constant rely on the results of many days of observational
spectroscopy and photometry on extremely faint and distant objects
spread out over several years and many observers. A handful of
exceptions occur when the distant galaxies obligingly display a bright
enough supernova standard candle to allow quicker determinations.

Still defending astronomy?

Since you are attempting to attack that too then yes.

Another classic case is where astronomers determine rate of expansion
of supernova remnants and again to get anything meaningful you need
the largest telescopes operating at the highest resolution and a
baseline of a few years to allow the object time to expand. For
example the secular expansion of Cass A between 1978 and 1994 was by a
whopping 1.3%. Luckily it is large and just fits in the VLA field of
view at 6cm.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/np...3720d85a605246


In this case the average expansion was measured over 16 years - a nice
MPG movie of it has been made. In this case a baseline of about 5
years is sufficient to observe secular differences with sufficient
spatial resolution to allow the expansion rate to be measured adequately.


Still defending astronomy?

Why?

Because here is illustrated an example where astronomers determine
expansion velocity of the supernova shell by measurements made over a
finite time baseline. Something you have declared is impossible.

I actually believe astronomy to be a real science. I have in fact
already used it as an example of such.

So why are you generating all of this material in support of the
expansion of the Universe, which we both agree is happening?

Typical crank response: just completely change the topic to something
irrelevant if you can't give a scientific justification.

You are the crank and no-one reading this exchange will think otherwise.

It does not exist when you have noisy experimental data although you
can still determine the gradient of a graph.

Not of the data itself, no. It is not a continuous function. You can
determine billion figures for the gradient, depending on how you choose
to calculate it.

Most physics and engineering students are taught how to use a ruler
and a pencil to construct the gradient of a set of plotted data
points. Apparently you skipped that class or as seems more likely you
pretend that is it impossible because it suits your purposes.

I was always taught to use a numerical method which best approximated
the definition of the gradient for that set of points.

You missed out then.

Unless that is you are a lying dittohead with an agenda.

Like proving the earth is warming?

There is no doubt at all about that unless you are a lying dittohead

You even talk like a crank.

You only have to look at the temperature data to see that the Earth is
warming or go and visit some of the polar regions. The glaciers in the
US Glacier National Park are already becoming rather scarce.

http://www.nrmsc.usgs.gov/research/glacier_retreat.htm

And there is a choice of how to model the derivative and they will
give slightly different answers. The quick and dirty method as I
described is easily seen to be good enough

Good enough for what?

To see the trends in raw climate data by applying a low pass filter.

How low and why?

Choose any low pass filter you like. It doesn't have to be much more
than 5 years boxcar average to suppress the sharp inter annual
variations from El Nino, La Nina and other short lived transients.

So I can use a formula for global warming which is

Rate at time t = (T(t) - T(t-5))/5

Is this the formula which you say is acceptable?

You know damn well it isn't and I have given you correct definitions
before. You are determined to wilfully misinterpret everything.

If not, could you supply it?

*READ* *THE* *THREAD* instead of parroting your dittohead position.

I will not repeat it again just because you chose to use gratuitous
repetition as one of your sophist debating tactics.

How long does weather last, anyway?

Seasons are observed over 12 months. The longest of the well known
periodicities driving the Earth's climate is the 11 year sunspot cycle.

How long does weather last, anyway?

I know how long seasons last, and the sun's sunspot cycle. I was asking
about weather, a word which is notably absent from your "answer".

Ten years is good enough to take out all the common short term
components that affect weather.

I suspect that there are a couple of other terms around the 60 year
and 93 year mark which represent lunar solar tidal effects. See the
Keeling Tides papers for details - the favoured model today is
non-linear oceanic currents as the preferred explanation.

Or are you trying to remove more than just weather?

Weather and short term transient oceanic currents. The object is to
get something that shows only the slow baseline variations.


Weather *and* oceanic currents! The rules now change (again).

How long does weather last?

How long do "short term transient oceanic currents" last? And why do you
want to remove them? Aren't ocean currents an important determinant of
climate?

Their long term behavious is. The high frequency components are noise
when you are trying to estimate long temperature term trends.

The instantaneous rate of change is pretty well useless for planet
Earth. It is far too noisy

No. It has no noise at all.

It is entirely noise by any reasonable definition ignoring the
practical difficulties of measuring it in the first place.

No.

The practical difficulties of measuring it do not introduce noise.

Actually they do. We could not measure global average temperature with
sufficient precision to get an estimate of the instantaneous rate of
change with any measurement network now or in the future.

You have to measure the gradient over a period long enough that the
change due to AGW is larger than the noisy interannual variation (which
is typically of the order of 0.1K).

and we cannot measure it adequately.

Yes.

However, that doesn't prevent us measuring more slowly varying
components.


And your motivation for doing this is what?

Because you can?

Why do you think this better approximates the "global warming rate"?
Could you give us the definition of the global warming rate, so we can
work out what manipulations to the data best approximate this quantity?

The amount by which the average global temperature changes over a
timescale of 30 years. Usually expressed in terms of K/century.

30 years?

How long does weather last again?

Perhaps if you were to *define* weather first, then you would be able to
define a numerical technique which best removes it? This is how things
like this are done in science. You work out what you are trying to
approximate, and then you work out what numerical method best
approximates it. They don't just invent a numerical method and use it
because it gives them the answer they want.

You are once again trying to slur climate researchers fro political
ends. Anyone who *ACTUALLY* looks at the climate temperature record can
see that there has been warming. That was what started this thread.

BEST at Berkely have *CONFIRMED* that HADCRUT, GISS and NOAO time series
for temperature are real and quality datasets of the Earths temperature
and that they show systematic global warming.

Changes on a decadal scale or longer.

"Or longer" ?

20 million years?

Or is it that the period can be anything, as long as it shows global
warming?

And why 10 years? Weather doesn't last 10 years, not as I know it,
Melbourne can have fours seasons in one day and the weather can be
completely different a 1,000 kms away, using the central limit thereom
(because weather is independent over timescales of a few weeks) these
will average out very quickly. Weather is not a 10 year phenomenum.

So, why 10 years or greater?

It is a reasonable compromise to show the underlying climatic trends
of the average global temperature. I am not all that attached to it as
a number - indeed I prefer odd length convolution kernels.

How do you decide which is the better approach?

In real science, you would start with a definition of what you are
trying to approximate, and *then* devise the numerical method which best
approximates it. You seem to have just simply invented a numerocal
method with no concept of what it is supposed to be approximating.

You keep on repeating this mantra as if it makes any difference. The
exact answer might change slightly depending on the precise choice of
definition for determining the rate of change but the graph of
temperature is so clear an unambiguous that only complete cranks and
delusional nutters now claim there is no evidence of global warming.

You are right out there with Venusatic Guth ball, Andrex and Oriel.

For about the tenth time, I urge you to learn the concept of a limit,
and in particular a crazy little thing we like to call epsilon delta.

Relevant in pure mathematics of continuous functions and algebraic
manipulation only.

If only this were true.

It is true.

You can define and measure a meaningful rate of change over a baseline
of finite extent provided that you specify the start and end points.

That is true, but not what we are discussing. We are discussing whether
your formula approximates the instantaneous rate of chnage. Clearly it
doesn't. So what is it approximating?

The average rate of change over a specified period.
*HOW* MANY MORE TIMES MUST I REPEAT THIS.




The original diagram from Hubble's famous paper illustrates this point
rather nicely (fig 1 online in a paper at PNAS). Look how crude his
original data points and lines are compared to a more modern version.

http://www.pnas.org/content/101/1/8.full


The difference derives from random measurement errors.

These are very substantial in radio astronomy, and effectively zero in
the temperature record for the last 150 years. We have a *lot* of
independent data points.

There was an overwhelming systematic error by a factor of about 3x in
the original paper. It didn't invalidate the result, but it did alter
the size and age of the universe when it was corrected.

Celebrating landmark papers published in PNAS (and elsewhere)

Hubble's paper is good science.

So clearly you would prefer discussing that, rather than climate "science".

This is an astronomy group.

Regards,
Martin Brown

"Martin Brown" wrote in message
...
On 10/12/2011 01:28, Peter Webb wrote:

"Martin Brown" wrote in message
...
On 09/12/2011 11:20, Peter Webb wrote:

"Martin Brown" wrote in message
...

Rubbish!!! The limit as h - 0 only exists in symbolic algebra and
pure mathematics.

No, its used constantly throughout real science. In real science, you
establish that a rate exists by measuring over shorther and shorter
timeframes until you are certain that reducing the timeframe does not
change the rate which is calculated. Otherwise you don't call it a
rate.

For example, the rate of expansion of the Universe. We measure this
over
time baselines of about 10^-9 seconds and do so repeatedly and get
identical answers; we know it can therefore be approximated as a linear
function over periods of decades. Because we can form the limit if not
to zero but at least to 10^-9 seconds, we can condifently talk about
the
rate of expansion of the Universe. If this fluctuated wildly at the
timescale of 10^-9 seconds, astronomers would not and could not talk
about te rate of expansion of the Universe.

Lets see evidence of these measurements of the cosmological expansion
of the universe using a time baseline of 10^-9 seconds or 1ns.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshif... terpretation


The baseline for Doppler measurements is of the order of the frequency
of the light whose redshift is being measured.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_effect

That is why (for example) Doppler radar can detect changes to speed
which are (from a human perspective) absolutely instantaneous.

True enough. But to reach us the photons from cosmological distances have
been travelling for a substantial fraction of the age of the universe. To
observe them with sufficient signal to noise to make any inference of the
speed of the original object requires between 10 minutes and 10 hours of
observing time depending on the magnitude of the target and the dispersion
of the spectrograph. All the stars in a distant galaxy have their own
peculiar velocities, and the galaxy itself is often gravitationally bound
in a cluster.

I will put aside the minor errors in this, and point out that 10 minutes or
10 hours is still a *very* small fraction of the age of the Universe, and
more to the point the expansion is seen as linear over timescales ranging
over ranges from 10 hours to ten years, and so you can unambiguously talk
about a rate.

That is *definitely* not true the same sort of approach when used by climate
"science"; the climate "science" measurements of temperature are *not* taken
in a region (annual baselines) where the curve is anywhere near linear, and
hence it cannot be used as an approximation of a linear rate.




Most cosmologically distant objects are very dim and will not provide
enough photons to even detect on this short timescale.

It took Hubble about 10 years to accumulate enough points on his graph
and 10 years against the roughly 10,000,000,000 years age of the
universe is not that bad an approximation to epsilon. And for some of
his points he had to watch Cepheid variables through a couple of
cycles to determine their period and hence absolute luminosity.


Whereas the resolution that can be obtained using Cepheid variables is
of the order of the frequency of their cycle, which is far less than the
frequency of the light being emitted.

You are trying to tell the time using a calendar. Use something with
much finer resolution.

The point here is that the data which goes into any plot of the Hubble
expansion typically covers a decade or two of the latest observations. You
misrepresent the facts to suit your agenda.


No, you don't understand the difference between a measurement and a
synthesis of this into a plot, report or paper. The individual measurements
have very short baselines; scientists use lots of increase confidence.

Climate "scientists" do a similar thing when they combine many temperature
readings to form a global average. Unfortunately, when climate "scientists"
do this, they do not get a curve which is anything like linear, and so
cannot meaningfully use these measurements to determine rate in the normal
sense used in terms like "the rate of expansion of the Universe".

The cosmological expansion does provide a useful illustration of how
science deniers, lying dittoheads and creationists would argue though.

[fake claim I] The Andromeda galaxy is blue shifted and actually
coming towards us so clearly there cannot be any expansion.

[fake claim II] It is all a trick by Mr Hubble et al to get more grants.


I see you would much rather try and defend astronomy than try and defend
climate "science".

And who could blame you?

This is an astronomy group. It is reasonable to illustrate my points using
examples taken from astronomy.

But not to pretend that the analogy is appropriate. The concept of the rate
of expansion of the Universe is legitimate because the phenomenum we are
measuring is sampled at a rate where the function is linear. This is not
true of annual measurements of average global temperature.




To the best of my knowledge all serious determinations of the Hubble
constant rely on the results of many days of observational
spectroscopy and photometry on extremely faint and distant objects
spread out over several years and many observers. A handful of
exceptions occur when the distant galaxies obligingly display a bright
enough supernova standard candle to allow quicker determinations.

Still defending astronomy?

Since you are attempting to attack that too then yes.

No, I made no attack on that at all; indeed, I have constantly illustrated
how it uses correct scientific principles and held it up as a laudable
example of a real science.

You would just rather point out how scientific astonomy is (which I agree
with) than try and defend climate "science".




Another classic case is where astronomers determine rate of expansion
of supernova remnants and again to get anything meaningful you need
the largest telescopes operating at the highest resolution and a
baseline of a few years to allow the object time to expand. For
example the secular expansion of Cass A between 1978 and 1994 was by a
whopping 1.3%. Luckily it is large and just fits in the VLA field of
view at 6cm.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/np...3720d85a605246


In this case the average expansion was measured over 16 years - a nice
MPG movie of it has been made. In this case a baseline of about 5
years is sufficient to observe secular differences with sufficient
spatial resolution to allow the expansion rate to be measured
adequately.


Still defending astronomy?

Why?

Because here is illustrated an example where astronomers determine
expansion velocity of the supernova shell by measurements made over a
finite time baseline. Something you have declared is impossible.

No, I did not declare it impossible.

So, again, why are you illustrating yet more ways in which astronomers can
check their measurements and methodologies using the scientific method,
rather than showing us how climate science has used independent rate
calculations to verify their figures for the earth's global warming rate?

The more you point out how solid the science behind astronomy is (which I
already know), the flimsier the science behind climate "science" appears in
comparison.




I actually believe astronomy to be a real science. I have in fact
already used it as an example of such.

So why are you generating all of this material in support of the
expansion of the Universe, which we both agree is happening?

Typical crank response: just completely change the topic to something
irrelevant if you can't give a scientific justification.

You are the crank and no-one reading this exchange will think otherwise.

It does not exist when you have noisy experimental data although you
can still determine the gradient of a graph.

Not of the data itself, no. It is not a continuous function. You can
determine billion figures for the gradient, depending on how you choose
to calculate it.

Most physics and engineering students are taught how to use a ruler
and a pencil to construct the gradient of a set of plotted data
points. Apparently you skipped that class or as seems more likely you
pretend that is it impossible because it suits your purposes.

I was always taught to use a numerical method which best approximated
the definition of the gradient for that set of points.

You missed out then.


What were you taught to use? The first idea that popped into your head? Use
that kind of approach, and all statistical analysis would consist of using
linear boxcar averaging programmed in Excel.




Unless that is you are a lying dittohead with an agenda.

Like proving the earth is warming?

There is no doubt at all about that unless you are a lying dittohead

You even talk like a crank.

You only have to look at the temperature data to see that the Earth is
warming or go and visit some of the polar regions. The glaciers in the US
Glacier National Park are already becoming rather scarce.

http://www.nrmsc.usgs.gov/research/glacier_retreat.htm


Yeah, drowning polar bears and all that.

The question is whether this is anything unusual. It appears not.



And there is a choice of how to model the derivative and they will
give slightly different answers. The quick and dirty method as I
described is easily seen to be good enough

Good enough for what?

To see the trends in raw climate data by applying a low pass filter.

How low and why?

Choose any low pass filter you like. It doesn't have to be much more
than 5 years boxcar average to suppress the sharp inter annual
variations from El Nino, La Nina and other short lived transients.

So I can use a formula for global warming which is

Rate at time t = (T(t) - T(t-5))/5

Is this the formula which you say is acceptable?

You know damn well it isn't and I have given you correct definitions
before. You are determined to wilfully misinterpret everything.

Well, I just used your latest definition, given a few lines above.

Why don't you standardise on one definition, as occurs in real sciences?





If not, could you supply it?

*READ* *THE* *THREAD* instead of parroting your dittohead position.

Many, many definitions. Its like trying to get a rigorous definition of
"talk dark handsome stranger" as an astrology conference.



I will not repeat it again just because you chose to use gratuitous
repetition as one of your sophist debating tactics.

And I don't think you have repeated any so far. As far as I can work out,
every definition has been different.




How long does weather last, anyway?

Seasons are observed over 12 months. The longest of the well known
periodicities driving the Earth's climate is the 11 year sunspot cycle.

How long does weather last, anyway?

I know how long seasons last, and the sun's sunspot cycle. I was asking
about weather, a word which is notably absent from your "answer".

Ten years is good enough to take out all the common short term components
that affect weather.

Well, so you say. But you have left off your calculation of how you derived
that.

The approach that would be taken in a real science is that you define how
long a "weather event" is, and you work out the global temperature impact
(as it is often the case that we are having heatwaves in Sydney when Europe
has blizzards), and then you use a baseline which is appropriate to removing
it

My understanding of weather is that it lasts weeks at most, and is
comparatively geographically limitted (compared to the surface are of the
earth). This aligns with my personal experience of hurricanes and heat
waves, and I daresay most people's. It is also a very reasonable scientific
definition, as most people believe weather cannot be predicted more than a
couple of weeks in advance even in principle, because by this stage any
correlation is lost.

That will give us a baseline to eliminate "weather" of a few months at most.

And definitely not 10 years.

So where did 10 years come from? Pull it out of your arse?




I suspect that there are a couple of other terms around the 60 year
and 93 year mark which represent lunar solar tidal effects. See the
Keeling Tides papers for details - the favoured model today is
non-linear oceanic currents as the preferred explanation.

Or are you trying to remove more than just weather?

Weather and short term transient oceanic currents. The object is to
get something that shows only the slow baseline variations.


Weather *and* oceanic currents! The rules now change (again).

How long does weather last?

How long do "short term transient oceanic currents" last? And why do you
want to remove them? Aren't ocean currents an important determinant of
climate?

Their long term behavious is. The high frequency components are noise when
you are trying to estimate long temperature term trends.


Because you define them as noise?

They are signal. If you cannot model them, that is a failure of your model.


The instantaneous rate of change is pretty well useless for planet
Earth. It is far too noisy

No. It has no noise at all.

It is entirely noise by any reasonable definition ignoring the
practical difficulties of measuring it in the first place.

No.

The practical difficulties of measuring it do not introduce noise.

Actually they do. We could not measure global average temperature with
sufficient precision to get an estimate of the instantaneous rate of
change

Yes we can.

The international network of temperature stations comprises thousands of
locations. Each has thermometers with less than 0.1 degrees of random noise.
The standard deviation of the average (using your friend and mine the
Gaussian approximation of the binomial distrinution) is measured in
thousandths of a degree.

The problem is not precision of measurement; it is the frequency which is
required.


with any measurement network now or in the future.

You have to measure the gradient over a period long enough that the change
due to AGW is larger than the noisy interannual variation (which is
typically of the order of 0.1K).

It is not noise. It is signal. The "noise" is almost non-existent, because
the temperature data is derived from thousands of independent measurements
averaged together.

You appear to have a great deal of trouble with this concept. You can't
simply classify signal as noise without explaining where the noise is
supposed tom derive from. It certainly doesn't derive from measurement
errors.




and we cannot measure it adequately.

Yes.

However, that doesn't prevent us measuring more slowly varying
components.


And your motivation for doing this is what?

Because you can?

Why do you think this better approximates the "global warming rate"?
Could you give us the definition of the global warming rate, so we can
work out what manipulations to the data best approximate this quantity?

The amount by which the average global temperature changes over a
timescale of 30 years. Usually expressed in terms of K/century.

30 years?

How long does weather last again?

Perhaps if you were to *define* weather first, then you would be able to
define a numerical technique which best removes it? This is how things
like this are done in science. You work out what you are trying to
approximate, and then you work out what numerical method best
approximates it. They don't just invent a numerical method and use it
because it gives them the answer they want.

You are once again trying to slur climate researchers fro political ends.
Anyone who *ACTUALLY* looks at the climate temperature record can see that
there has been warming. That was what started this thread.


No political ends from me, I am afraid; I respond to AGW Believers,
astrologers, and people who claim SR is internally inconsistent in the same
general manner and for the same reasons.



BEST at Berkely have *CONFIRMED* that HADCRUT, GISS and NOAO time series
for temperature are real and quality datasets of the Earths temperature
and that they show systematic global warming.


But not currently, of course.


Changes on a decadal scale or longer.

"Or longer" ?

20 million years?

Or is it that the period can be anything, as long as it shows global
warming?

And why 10 years? Weather doesn't last 10 years, not as I know it,
Melbourne can have fours seasons in one day and the weather can be
completely different a 1,000 kms away, using the central limit thereom
(because weather is independent over timescales of a few weeks) these
will average out very quickly. Weather is not a 10 year phenomenum.

So, why 10 years or greater?

It is a reasonable compromise to show the underlying climatic trends
of the average global temperature. I am not all that attached to it as
a number - indeed I prefer odd length convolution kernels.

How do you decide which is the better approach?

In real science, you would start with a definition of what you are
trying to approximate, and *then* devise the numerical method which best
approximates it. You seem to have just simply invented a numerocal
method with no concept of what it is supposed to be approximating.

You keep on repeating this mantra as if it makes any difference. The exact
answer might change slightly depending on the precise choice of definition
for determining the rate of change but the graph of temperature is so
clear an unambiguous that only complete cranks and delusional nutters now
claim there is no evidence of global warming.

I am more focussed on the question of whether this is atypical. People seem
to think it is, and justify this by saying the earth is currently warming at
a higher rate than in the past. To see if this is true, I need a definition
of the "global warming rate".

I have been given half a dozen formulas which supposedly approximate this,
but they all produce different answers. To work out which is the best
numeric approximation, I have to know what we are supposedly trying to
approximate.



You are right out there with Venusatic Guth ball, Andrex and Oriel.

For about the tenth time, I urge you to learn the concept of a limit,
and in particular a crazy little thing we like to call epsilon delta.

Relevant in pure mathematics of continuous functions and algebraic
manipulation only.

If only this were true.

It is true.

You can define and measure a meaningful rate of change over a baseline
of finite extent provided that you specify the start and end points.

That is true, but not what we are discussing. We are discussing whether
your formula approximates the instantaneous rate of chnage. Clearly it
doesn't. So what is it approximating?

The average rate of change over a specified period.
*HOW* MANY MORE TIMES MUST I REPEAT THIS.

So the statement "the earth is globally warming" is meaningless?






The original diagram from Hubble's famous paper illustrates this point
rather nicely (fig 1 online in a paper at PNAS). Look how crude his
original data points and lines are compared to a more modern version.

http://www.pnas.org/content/101/1/8.full


The difference derives from random measurement errors.

These are very substantial in radio astronomy, and effectively zero in
the temperature record for the last 150 years. We have a *lot* of
independent data points.

There was an overwhelming systematic error by a factor of about 3x in the
original paper. It didn't invalidate the result, but it did alter the size
and age of the universe when it was corrected.

But it was always believed to be linear, so the concept of rate was
applicable. Global tempertures are demonstrably *not* linear at an annual
sampling frequency.




Celebrating landmark papers published in PNAS (and elsewhere)

Hubble's paper is good science.

So clearly you would prefer discussing that, rather than climate
"science".

This is an astronomy group.

Fair enough. No law saying you have to be on topic for the thread.



Regards,
Martin Brown

On Dec 12, 10:21*am, "Peter Webb" wrote:

I will put aside the minor errors in this, and point out that 10 minutes or
10 hours is still a *very* small fraction of the age of the Universe, and
more to the point the expansion is seen as linear over timescales ranging
over ranges from 10 hours to ten years, and so you can unambiguously talk
about a rate.

You are not talking of an expanding Universe,you are talking of
viewing the evolutionary timeline of the Universe directly and that is
astonishing for all the wrong reasons.It takes a person to do
something they haven't really done before,to remove themselves from
the conclusion and actually take a wider view of the matter from the
perspective of their own individual history,that of their community or
nation and shade off into biological and geological evolution thereby
maintaining a normal continuity between past and present.

It is not that any of you knowingly show disrespect for your own
history,that of the human race and all life on the planet nor the
terrestrial and celestial sciences but a 'big bang' idea that puts
yourselves outside the evolutionary framework ,and this is what 'big
bangers' try to do,is extremely unhealthy.

On Dec 10, 12:42*pm, Sam Wormley wrote:
On 12/10/11 2:15 PM, Brad Guth wrote:

Obviously our physically dark and by far the biggest moon per planet
ratio that we know of, isn't responsible for cooling us off, but than
I'm not a ZNR certified parrot like yourself.

* *Brad you have been informed more than once that the solar
* *radiation darkens the lunar rock surface and that the lunar
* *rocks are essentially that same chemistry of rocks on the
* *earth.

Not made the least bit darker according to your NASA/Apollo and their
rad-hard Kodak film era, and supposedly they even utilized a polarized
optical filter in order to further darken surface glare (guess it
didn’t work all 6 times). If anything the exposed lunar bedrock was
kind of scarce plus kind of a pastel gray or passive guano like
retroreflective material that oddly wasn’t the least bit UV reactive
nor otherwise anticathode worthy, and they didn’t even find any
surface trace of sodium. So, which side of the FUD-master fence are
you on today?

Geophysics certified as moon meteorites which are in fact physically
dark, worth 3.5+ g/cm3 and rather nicely metallicity paramagnetic, are
nothing at all like wussy Earth basalt.

http://translate.google.com/#
Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / “Guth Usenet”

On Dec 10, 2:01*pm, Sam Wormley wrote:
On 12/10/11 1:44 PM, Brad Guth wrote:

How fast was Earth rotating before we got a moon?

How much seasonal tilt did Earth have prior to getting a moon?

* *No record, Brad. No way of knowing, Brad.

* *Just after the moon was formed, the earth rotating once every six
* *hours.

Your purely subjective swag of for times faster is a lot of spin to
get rid of. But you said the solar wind was never an issue, so where
did all that rotational energy go?

On Dec 10, 2:04*pm, Sam Wormley wrote:
On 12/10/11 2:08 PM, Brad Guth wrote:

The global modulation of our mostly inner fluid Earth is perhaps worth
a tad more energy transfer or interaction induced heating due to those
interior frictions taking place, than the tidal equations that
mainstream accepts as is. *Perhaps if Earth’s crust were as thick,
metallicity tough and fused solid as that of our moon (meaning as
having none of these tectonic plates giving us grief), whereas then
much less global modulation flex or mantel and surface plate agitation
of our global surface and innards would be taking place, other than
affecting surface oceans. *I think these global flex or modulated
distortions continually caused by the moon are in fact causing our
planet to remain as more geologically active and/or unstable, and
relocating our moon to Earth L1 would improve on this by way of
greatly reducing though still not eliminating this global modulation.

* *Define "global modulation", Brad.

Whole Earth modulation from tidal binding forces (mostly from the moon
and roughly a third from our sun)

On 12/13/11 11:21 AM, Brad Guth wrote:
Not made the least bit darker according to your NASA/Apollo and their
rad-hard Kodak film era, and supposedly they even utilized a polarized
optical filter in order to further darken surface glare (guess it
didn’t work all 6 times).

What's your evidence that a polarizing filter was used. The moon's
surface has no need of a polarizing filter.
http://www.myspacemuseum.com/apollocams.htm

On 12/13/11 11:28 AM, Brad Guth wrote:
On Dec 10, 2:01 pm, Sam wrote:
On 12/10/11 1:44 PM, Brad Guth wrote:

How fast was Earth rotating before we got a moon?

How much seasonal tilt did Earth have prior to getting a moon?

No record, Brad. No way of knowing, Brad.

Just after the moon was formed, the earth rotating once every six
hours.

Your purely subjective swag of for times faster is a lot of spin to
get rid of. But you said the solar wind was never an issue, so where
did all that rotational energy go?

Start with today's angular velocity (and the rate change) and
work backwards in time, Brad. The distance of the moon (which
also changes with time) must be considered, among other minor
variables.

On 12/13/11 11:30 AM, Brad Guth wrote:
On Dec 10, 2:04 pm, Sam wrote:
On 12/10/11 2:08 PM, Brad Guth wrote:

The global modulation of our mostly inner fluid Earth is perhaps worth
a tad more energy transfer or interaction induced heating due to those
interior frictions taking place, than the tidal equations that
mainstream accepts as is. Perhaps if Earth’s crust were as thick,
metallicity tough and fused solid as that of our moon (meaning as
having none of these tectonic plates giving us grief), whereas then
much less global modulation flex or mantel and surface plate agitation
of our global surface and innards would be taking place, other than
affecting surface oceans. I think these global flex or modulated
distortions continually caused by the moon are in fact causing our
planet to remain as more geologically active and/or unstable, and
relocating our moon to Earth L1 would improve on this by way of
greatly reducing though still not eliminating this global modulation.

Define "global modulation", Brad.

Whole Earth modulation from tidal binding forces (mostly from the moon
and roughly a third from our sun)

Do you mean internal friction due to tidal flexing?

On Dec 13, 9:48*am, Sam Wormley wrote:
On 12/13/11 11:28 AM, Brad Guth wrote:

On Dec 10, 2:01 pm, Sam *wrote:
On 12/10/11 1:44 PM, Brad Guth wrote:

How fast was Earth rotating before we got a moon?

How much seasonal tilt did Earth have prior to getting a moon?

* * No record, Brad. No way of knowing, Brad.

* * Just after the moon was formed, the earth rotating once every six
* * hours.

Your purely subjective swag of for times faster is a lot of spin to
get rid of. *But you said the solar wind was never an issue, so where
did all that rotational energy go?

* *Start with today's angular velocity (and the rate change) and
* *work backwards in time, Brad. The distance of the moon (which
* *also changes with time) must be considered, among other minor
* *variables.

Yes, so why can't the independent simulations make that work?

Are you saying that only the public-funded simulations as run with
only the variables you select, is as good as it gets?

Obviously if I were Hitler, I'd have to 100+% agree with those of your
kind. Problem is, parrots and FUD-masters like yourself do not really
know anything other than whatever you're taught to remember and parrot
on demand.

Tell us, if your good buddies GW Bush, Dick Cheney and Kissinger never
lied to us about those Muslim WMD, would we have gone to war and
having paid such a horrific price that isn't over until the fat lady
sings?

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