Leaderboard

The Open University (OU) lists over 900 free short courses in 8 categories. In the Science category you can look at Babylonian Mathematics, Chemical in drinking water, antibiotic resistance, Toys & engineering materials, working on your own in mathematics, telescopes and spectrographs to name but a few. Or you could learn/ brush up a new language in the language section Something to do in theses Covid times for all ?? https://www.open.edu/openlearn/free-courses/full-catalogue

From Axios: Maxar satellite images show an expansion of Russia's buildup near Ukraine's border, with troop tents and shelters now visible at "virtually every deployment location in Belarus, Crimea and western Russia." Evidence of new housing and live-fire exercises suggest pre-positioned units "have increased their overall readiness level."

I'm wondering what on earth more any of us can do more to convince @Doogles31731 that there is not, as he imagines, some crucial gap in the basic data in science, just because nobody has revisited Tyndall's 1859 experiment. I suppose one thing is to provide a picture of an IR gas cell, to show him that in fact what a modern IR spectrometer does is exactly what Tyndall did, with the crucial addition of a means of analysing the absorption as a function of wavelength. So below is a picture of a gas cell. It is in effect Tyndall's tube, with windows at the ends transparent to IR. (To this day, many of these windows are made of rock salt, NaCl, though other minerals can also be used.: Another thing we could do is show how mixtures of gases are routinely analysed by IR, every day. Here is a link to a manufacturer of IR gas mixture analysers: https://www.servomex.com/gas-analyzers/technologies/infrared/ Apart from that, I confess I am rather stumped.

I had in mind the moral high ground it had as a defender of the principle of free and fair elections.(and acceptance of the result) Critically wounded by the obeisance of the Republican party to the Big Lie and its tolerance of the thuggish politics of the last so called President .

Yes, that as well. Bullies, thieves and other miscreants judge others by their own standards of conduct... it's all they know.

I have not spent any time on this thread talking about my supposed "beliefs", as they are not the subject of the thread. I have spent my time trying to understand what was bothering you and trying to fill in what you thought was missing, by explaining the relevant science. (Though I notice that you, by contrast, have started talking about "belief systems", and introducing extraneous issues like 10 year old letters from retired NASA engineers that shed no light on the issue under discussion. Why is that?) Where you are right, though, is that yes, I do have trouble allowing you to retain a "belief system" that relies on ignorance of science. This is a science forum. The people here are here to learn, and spread, knowledge of science. That's what I'm interested in. So in your case, the important thing for me, once I had smoked out where the gaps in your knowledge are, has been to teach you a bit about infra red spectra of gases. To your question, if Tyndall got feeble (but non-zero) deflections with these gases, he may well have had some contamination. Perhaps that the gases were not entirely dry or something. Or maybe it was an artifact of the experimental setup. That happens a lot. But we can't ask him so we will never know. He did very well for a man of his time with the equipment he had. Do not imagine that you can use Tyndall's reports of feeble deflections to cast doubt on what we know, today, about the infra-red spectra of these gases. That would be about as idiotic as if someone were to insist, today, on dropping balls from the Leaning Tower of Pisa* to reconfirm the acceleration due to gravity. *I know Galileo did not actually do that: he used an inclined plane.

A song with high carbon and methane fingerprint, but beautiful nonetheless. Glad Anne didn't adopt dad's stage name to become Anne Dusty. I knew Slim Dusty from his version of Waltzing Matilda. I love this version of Waltzing Matilda explained too:

Slim Dusty and Daughter Anne Kirkpatrick, singing, "Drovin all over this land

I said something about not unilaterally disarming. I suppose if you squint really hard and add some filters to ensure the most negative connotation possible, one might be able to read that as me, “coming to the conclusion that the best course of action, going forward, for your country is 'an eye for an eye' policy, and to try and beat your opponent by being just like them.” 🤷‍♂️

You really ought to read a thread before bumping it and declaring your answer as the only correct one. You’re incorrect on what science says, and that’s been covered over and over and over again already… then,over and over and over again some more. Just let the topic die already.

Oh, I dunno. According to my philosophy, it wouldn't have been so so bad for Europeans to 'stagnate' (read: clean up their own shit) in Europe, when they had the capability to invade and subdue other continents. I think there is some scope for us to make progress on Earth before we take this show on the interstellar road.

I posted Tyndall's paper out of interest, for any other readers of this thread. I thought it was a nice paper and a very impressive piece of work for a man of his time. I'm afraid you are now revealing just how much you do not know of fairly simple science. It's a pity you were not more upfront about that at the beginning. It could have saved a lot of time. I repeat, yet again, that the experiment you propose is a total waste of time, as we already know the results it would give, from widely available data on the IR absorption spectra of the various gases involved. What Tyndall says about a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen absorbing feebly, whereas chemically combined hydrogen and oxygen (water vapour) absorbs strongly, is bloody obvious. They are different molecules!!! Ditto ammonia versus a mixture of hydrogen and nitrogen, or nitrous oxide versus a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen. So of course they will give different results! But in fact there is an interesting point here, in that those gases whose molecules are just pairs of identical atoms do not absorb in the infra red, whereas those which are composed of different atoms will absorb. A hydrogen molecule is H-H, nitrogen is N-N, oxygen is O-O. Whereas water is H-O-H, nitrous oxide is N-N-O and carbon dioxide is O-C-O. The reason for the different behaviour, in very simplified terms, is that the radiation needs a dipole (a degree of separation of electric charge) to interact with, in order make the bonds in the molecule stretch and vibrate. You get this with, say, water because O attracts electrons more strongly than H. So a water molecule has a partial +ve chargeon the hydrogen atoms and a partial -ve charge on the oxygen atom. This allows the oscillating electric field of the radiation to make the O-H bond vibrate. The same goes for the O-C bond in CO2, for the N-O bond in N2O and for the N-H bond in NH3 (ammonia). This is why both both water vapour and CO2 absorb IR radiation in the atmosphere, whereas oxygen and nitrogen are transparent to it (which means they do not absorb it). The greenhouse effect is all about the consequences of that. So you see, there is a whole lot of science here, not known in Tyndall's day, back in 1859. As I told you before, IR spectrometry was developed in the 1940 and 50s and, by the 1960s, when people like Manabe were working, the IR absorption characteristics of these gases were well documented. There are issues in applying these to the Earth's atmosphere, due to things like scattering and pressure broadening of spectral bands, and these have been studied in their own right. There are whole books on that alone: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/pressure-broadening-of-spectral-lines/atmospheric-spectra/F050FF1BA775D29DA09CE7C34D682750 So I'm afraid it is not a matter of two different, equally valid, perspectives and "agreeing to disagree". Your perspective, it is now clear, is a result of ignorance of fundamental science combined with a wish to justify a predetermined view by whatever means you can. You are seizing at random on things you don't understand but which you hope will undermine the validity of climate science. That is not a defensible attitude. There are many arguments to be had over the various climate models, but not at the level you are attempting to have them.

Hmm, I see. Re water vapour, I had always thought it was generally recognised that this is the main greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, but that as the amount is fairly self-regulating it does not lead on its own to a change, whereas it is the CO2 that is changing. In fact I think I have read that one effect of temperature increase due to CO2 is that the amount of water vapour goes up in consequence (not surprisingly, as the sea warms), thereby acting as an amplifier. Tell me, is it early experimental work you are looking for, specifically, or just early attempts at modelling the effect of CO2 on climate? Addendum: I've found a link to Callendar's paper, here, but it only shows the abstract: you have to buy it to read the whole thing: https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/qj.49706427503 I found this from a site called "Carbon Brief" which has a nice timeline you can click on to see various milestones: https://www.carbonbrief.org/timeline-history-climate-modelling I notice also a reference to a Mikhail Budyko, in 1956, which looks as if it might be relevant, but there are others mentioned too which might be worth a look.

Help yourself.

Pedantry I think. They won't find work in the climate field because of incompetence, not because they question; they need to show where and how current understandings and conclusions are wrong and they can't. They need to show their "superior" understanding is correct and they can't.

It is settled, because anybody who questions that fact will never find work again in the climate field. In the real world, science is never settled. It's long-standing, or the latest position, but climate science, the least proved, is the only one that's "settled".

Depends on the idea of the argument, people who see it social will say yes, people who see it a logic(science) will say no. Its a concept that has been in science since forever, which is Does science control our beliefs. Its a open end question for the most part, parts of history will say yes others no. A good example of science v beliefs is the Earth is flat during the medieval era. For the science of the time was seen as witch craft and was also killed for it. But a good one that shows when the scale is tip to science is Nazi Germany during 1940s' they made many things but also ruin people, murder and much more for the name of science, like we didn't know about hypothermia till they did they're reascreach that was cruel. But to answer the question social people will say yes, science says no