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Turkey is a NATO member, the only one to have shot down a Russian jet in the last 6 years, opposes Russian actions in Syria, has condemned the Crimean annex and increasingly sells weapons to Ukraine - especially drones proven effective against Russian artillery. True that Turkey also cooperates with Russia on some fronts, even in Syria at times, but to present this situation as binary is an over-simplification.2 points
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I have been following the fields of climatology and atmospheric chemistry for a couple decades. The acquisition of data has been exhaustive and continually upgraded, because the scientists are constantly testing digital modelings against observational data. And in peer review, they constantly question, ruthlessly poke holes in how data is collected, interpreted, and extrapolated from. Any consensus that now exists is a result of massively unequivocal real-world measurements of the changes going on. Very sad to hear climate science slandered like this. It is a respectable field, and hardly an "industry" as you slurred it in another post. If anything, it is the large fossil fuel companies that are, through sponsorship of denialist groups like The Heartland Institute, cranking out pseudoscience flatulence on an industrial scale. You should crack open a book or two, learn something about the complexities and concepts of climate science, before issuing such flat and dismissive comments.2 points
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I don't see a problem with appointing a black female judge to the SCOTUS. I don't even see a problem with considering someone being from an underrepresented/unrepresented group to hold that as an advantage in the choice. But to announce that you intend to pick from only black females as a limiting criterion is simply wrong IMO, and also kind of dumb, also IMO. He should have just made his choice, and announced her as the best candidate available. Why burden her with a "best available Black Female" label? Why announce to other minorities (or for that matter anyone) that regardless of their qualifications they were not wanted, and ineligible, for a job they may in fact be most qualified for, and have worked hard to become qualified for? Why, but for identity politics and for the purposes of virtue signalling would he announce that? If they, Biden and the Senate, pick one with anything close to the level of integrity of Susan Collins they'll be doing well. ...and as Collins pointed out, a black female should be a welcome addition to the SCOTUS..but Biden has handled it poorly.1 point
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In addition to the test itself, there are no guarantees regarding spread. It depends a lot on the viral load in the infected individuals and there is evidence that in vaccinated folks the viral load is lower on average (though not consistently so) and the risk of a boosted individual to get infected is cut down roughly by half (on average, there is a lot of variability here, too). It is also possible that it was a different variant that they were exposed to, where the vaccination is even more effective against. The whole host-pathogen interaction is subject to many stochastic factors (also including innate immune responses) so it might be impossible to figure out what ultimately happened. But if I were to hazard a guess I would think that having several doses of the vaccine would have played a significant role in it.1 point
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The antigen tests, especially where the omicron variant is concerned, has a lot of false negatives. I am still unsure if the two week infection I just got over (covid like symptoms, much hacking, worst URI ever had) was covid or not, though both my antigen tests (spaced a couple days apart while very symptomatic, per the mfr. recommendation) were negative. You may never know. And now some research suggests the nasal swab doesn't even work for omicron, and a throat swab is really needed because omicron will concentrate more in saliva and throat mucus rather than nose. In the UK, they are recommending throat swabs now.1 point
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I was going by your argument, which you now have changed. Yes, you can cherry-pick individual dates to come up with different answers. But why make this about intellectual dishonesty?1 point
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If you let your bias think for you: one tends to think proof is needed, rather than evidence.1 point
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You can buy it. This isn't Irish, it's from the Ukraine, so you might have to do a deal with Putin : https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/153666279646?hash=item23c73958de:g:0pwAAOSwIvddkqrv1 point
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Yes, they had to treat the wood from the Mary Rose for a year or more with preservative, to stabilise it, although that was salt water. I suppose it depends how stable and how boggy the conditions are. Bog oaks in Ireland vary from 3,000 to 8,000 years old. We had quite a bit of it on our farm. We had a relatively small area of bog where my uncle used to cut turf. I asked him why he didn't burn it and he said that you couldn't cut it without destroying a chain of a chain saw, so it was just left lying around. Wikepedia says : Water flow and depth play a special role in the creation of bog-wood. Currents bind the minerals and iron in the water with tannins in the wood, naturally staining the wood in the process. This centuries-long process, often termed "maturation," turns the wood from golden-brown to completely black, while increasing its hardness to such a level that it can only be carved with the use of specialty cutting tools.[1] You can make stuff out of it though :1 point
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I think you’re misusing “skeptic” here. A skeptic is one who is unconvinced without an examination of the evidence. Which is fine for someone entering a field, when they lack exposure to the evidence and haven’t learned the science. If you instead meant a denialist, then sure - you aren’t likely to enter a field that requires such time and effort if you’ve already decided it was bunk. But people who are saying that something is wrong while not understanding the topic or not being aware of the evidence - they aren’t skeptics. You’re also misrepresenting or misunderstanding scientists when you say all of them entering this field are activists. Some of them might be, but I’d guess that most just want to go and do the science. This is the same BS leveled at other areas of science, e.g. people who think scientists support relativity only because they worship Einstein, when scientists would be ecstatic to discover new science. To make any comparison to self-selection based on belief misses the mark. That’s the price of admission for religion. All that science requires is the ability to make objective assessments of evidence in comparison to models we have of nature.1 point
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Which brings up another good point, and one that seems to weigh on the mind of John Roberts; the power of the Supreme Court comes from its acceptance by the people. The Supreme Court has no power to enforce its decisions. If people don't believe the Supreme Court is a valid institution worthy of respect then they begin to lose the ability to be the final arbiter of constitutional issues. https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/supremecourt/antebellum/history2.html1 point
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The value of 6 used in the graph? It comes from this paper https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/15/22/1520-0442_2002_015_3117_aobeot_2.0.co_2.xml “From the probability distribution of ΔT2× we obtain a 90% confidence interval, whose lower bound (the 5th percentile) is 1.6 K. The median is 6.1 K, above the canonical range of 1.5–4.5 K; the mode is 2.1 K.” See fig. 2. It’s not a normal distribution (closer to a Poisson), so the median is skewed high. Quite high. It makes more sense to use the mode, i.e. the most likely value, of 2.1K. As the graph shows, it’s much more likely the value is around 2 than around 6. Kinda changes the whole argument, but I suspect that was the point.1 point
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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".1 point
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That's because they've been driven out, not because there is any more certainty. Not just people being driven out, but new skeptics being deterred from entering the field. All of the people joining the climate industry now are already convinced activists. What would be your choices, if you were skeptical, and thinking of a career? No skeptic in their right mind would go into climate science. To interpret the consensus of opinion in climate science as some sort of validation is just stupid. The consensus is self perpetuating. It's nothing to do with evidence. It's a bit like the consensus for the existence of god among Catholic priests. Not exactly suprising.0 points
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exchemist, you certainly seem to be happy that the science is settled on climate change and I can live with that. That’s your belief. But I’m not happy with the inconsistencies that still remain in climate science and believe that some of the basics still need re-working. And I’d still like to see a re-working of Tyndall’s experiments (plus much more) with modern equipment and knowledge. You seem to be having trouble allowing me to retain that belief. Judging from the support you have from other members, I think I can safely say that that will never happen. So you can rest easy. I didn’t get an answer from any members about why Tyndall got small (or feeble) deflections of his galvanometer needle with mixtures of hydrogen and nitrogen, and then of oxygen and nitrogen in his apparatus. I’m curious by nature. Maybe the metal in the “tube” acted as a catalyst and converted some of the gases to NH3 or N2O. Maybe there was some contamination with H2O in spite of his attempts to dehydrate his gases? Once again SwansonT, I thank you. I found that reference to the research on the speed of light quite interesting. It was new to me. Certainly the time factor was longer than the 160 years so far on Climate Change since Tyndall. Don’t take this the wrong way because I will be accused of tunnel vision and of seeing only what I want to see to suit my own ideas. But I did notice that men with inquiring minds were getting nowhere whilst trying to determine the speed of light from studies of the solar system, and only achieved some plausible results when they got down to nuts and bolts science at ground level. I suppose the question I ask myself is whether Einstein used any of the data obtained from Fizeau and Foucault, or Michelson to make his calculations. TheVat, I looked through the link you sent on Radiative Forcing. If the radiative forcing from a doubling of CO2 went up to 3.5 Wm-2 or so from 1.7 or so, would it be possible to work out a Climate Sensitivity figure. These crude maths may be totally invalid, and I’ll probably be labelled as ‘ignorant’ again. But my understanding is that our temperature readings are taken from Stevenson Screens about 4 feet from the surface of our planet. It is also my understanding that our global surface temperatures would be -18 degrees C without an atmosphere, and that the atmosphere enables us to have a global mean average temperature of 15 degrees C. So that the atmosphere allows us to stay 33 degrees warmer. As far as I can ascertain, the average daily solar energy that reaches the surface is 156 Wm-2. Does this mean that 1 degree C in the shade equates to 4.7 Wm-2 of solar energy at the surface of our planet? Nah! It can’t be right because that would mean that the 3.5 Wm-2 radiative forcing would account for less than 1 degree C of our temperature.-1 points
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Yes I was considering something like that. Recently someone posted a question about a homemade spectrophotmeter, can't remember the thread now. But looking at Ebay I found a complete monochromator from one for a couple of quid by typing in spectrophotometer. Anyway doogles' beef appears to be that he can't find any reference to people today measuring the absorbance of carbon dioxide relative to concentration. Od course all the constants for that is well documented today and he is asking the question backwards. Many institutes have been measuring concentration from absorbance for decades, for example this New Zealand agency. https://niwa.co.nz/atmosphere/facilities/baring-head/greenhouse-gas-analyses Perhaps we should be explaining that we know the relationship and are using it to measure the concentration, not the other way round, these days. Note there are also establishments using other methods such as mass spectrometry. All that is needed is to type into Google "analysis of atmospheric gas" to find lots of pages of folks doing this.-1 points
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Yes indeed, but our friend won't have done these searches, as he wants to be able to claim there are basic gaps in the science. I get the feeling he may have built a whole house of cards on this notion, which could be why he is reluctant to let it go. But no doubt we will find out.-1 points
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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.-1 points
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Studiot, I did observe your graphs, but I thought they offered nothing new from the dozens of such reports I’ve seen over the last 20 years. ......................................................... You can all stop jumping up and down in indignation, because a couple of posts ago, exchemist furnished a photograph of an infrared analyser. It was new to me. I was quite ignorant of its existence. So you’ve established my ignorance with that post and you can all be proud of yourselves for your acumen. It was the type of thing I have been looking for in the literature -- the IR emitter, the tube with glass at each end at least and a spectrometer. As you know, I kept going back in the literature looking for such a basic research tool. None of the papers published before 1960 mentioned basic data acquired from such equipment. The existence of that piece of equipment has satisfied my curiosity to a large extent. But just looking at the photograph, I think that the tube of the one I had in mind would have been more elaborate. It would have contained a number of ports for the insertion and removal of gases, mixtures at various combinations of gases and measuring instruments. I thank you for that, exchemist. I have given you another thumbs-up for it. I’d like to read more about the exact nature of the research studies performed with that IR Analyser. Would I be pushing my luck to ask if you know of a good starting reference? How’s your sense of humour holding up? ............................................................ SwansonT asked the question of where I obtained the figures for my crude maths. It was a comment generated by the paper on radiative forcing that TheVat provided. Virtually all of the energy we receive on our planet is generated by the sun ultimately and I think it is now general knowledge that the Solar Constant at the edge of the stratosphere is in the order of 1360 Wm-2. The edge of the stratosphere covers a far greater area than the area of the Earth itself, and it is now generally accepted that about a quarter of this targets the Earth -- 340 + Wm-2. But this is only in the daytime, so that the average amount reaching the Earth during daylight hours is theoretically in the order of 170+ Wm-2. But because of the atmosphere and aerosols causing reflection and albedo, the amount actually reaching our surface (where we measure our temperatures in Stevenson Screens) is of the order of 156 Wm-2. Now it is already generally accepted that our overall average temperature without an atmosphere would be -18 degrees C, but that due to the atmosphere, we have an overall annual average of 15 degrees C. This means that the atmosphere, acting as a whole unit, accounts for a reduction of 33 degrees C in our average overall temperatures as a whole. If 156 Wm-2 is reaching the surface and near-surface temps are measured 4 feet of the ground, then each 1 degree C in the shade equates to 156/33 Wm-2, which equates to 4.7 Wm-2 per 1 degree C at the surface. I know that 55 Wm-2 is reflected from our surface as long wave IR and that part of this is reflected back in turn as radiative forcing. The figure given for the CO2 share is 1.7 odd Wm-2 and the paper cited by TheVat for double the CO2 states that it would rise to something like 3.5 Wm-2. The increase would actually be in the order of 1.7 Wm-2. So 1.7/4.7 (0.34) would equate to the temperature increase due to an increased radiative forcing from doubling the CO2. And that would be so only if the effect was linear. As I said, it can’t be right. I have to be overlooking something. I’m always learning, so I would appreciate if anyone can see what must be a glaring fault. I must be different from most people, because when I discover something new, I always realize how little I really know. And I don't mind being corrected. ............................................................... My beef is with the acceptance of even a 3-fold variation in climate sensitivity figures (3-fold is SwansonT's figure). All of you seem to be satisfied with that degree of inconsistency. Of course, the effects of doubling the CO2 to 600 ppm on the temperature-measuring devices in the Stevenson screens would be an increase due to the increased peripheral surface level activity of the GHGs. This seems to be the area of contention because we don’t yet have any real time correlations available for 600 ppm CO2 and temperature. I used the real life figures from Mauna Loa for correlations between CO2 up to 400 ppm and temperatures, to subjectively extrapolate a figure of just under 2 degrees C increase in temperature for increases of CO2 from 300 to 600 ppm. And that seems to be where the available figures are clustering in the graph I uploaded some posts back. How do some researchers come up with figures of 6 degrees C or more if the basic science is flawless? ................................................................-1 points
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That's just stating the obvious. If you declare that something's wrong you are not being skeptical, you're being as unskeptical as people who say that it's right. Especially something as fuzzy and nebulous as climate science. All you get from climate science when you ask for the evidence is "we made this model". A skeptic doesn't declare the model right or wrong. They question the evidence, the method and the conclusions. That questioning is what's missing in CS. There might be some very good work done, but the bad stuff, the over the top conclusions are not questioned.-1 points
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OK. What is the biggest and best piece of evidence you can quote me, for CO2 causing a warming disaster this century?-1 points
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Should have thought isn't science. It's just buying into the constant drip drip. If you look at the graphs of CO2 levels against global temperatures, you will see that there was rapid warming from 1885 ish to 1950. With only very tiny increases in CO2 levels. Which PROVES that you can have rapid warming for other reasons. So you can't just point to warming as some sort of proof that CO2 is the cause. And the link to extreme weather is just someone's hypothesis. There IS no proven link. It's just repeated so many times that people think it must be right. Show me where this link is proved. Anybody ? I could mine the internet for extreme weather in the past, there was plenty of it. Dust bowl? Summer of 1976? Floods of 1947? Big UK freeze of 1963? All of it, if it happened today, would be quoted as evidence for global warming. And anyone questioning it would be called a denier. People bang on about fires in California, quoting global warming as the cause with total confidence. When these fires are occurring not far from (one of) the hottest places on Earth, Death Valley. Wikipedia says : On the afternoon of July 10, 1913, the United States Weather Bureau recorded a high temperature of 134 °F (56.7 °C) at Furnace Creek in Death Valley,[5] which stands as the highest ambient air temperature ever recorded on the surface of the Earth.[6] This reading, however, and several others taken in that period, a century ago, are in dispute by some modern experts.[7] You can see why they would like to dispute it, it doesn't fit the theory. If facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.-1 points
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So nothing from you then? You don't know, but these people do? No surprise there then. That's all you get. "these people think so, so you should too". Their very first claim " The planet's average surface temperature has risen about 2.12 degrees Fahrenheit (1.18 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century" contains the first deception. CO2 levels only started to significantly rise in 1950, but climate alarmists ALWAYS quote the rise from the late 19th century. In fact, the only years that are relevant are from 1950 till now, and they know it, but they want to mislead. I'm afraid your link is a fail, when it starts out by blatantly trying to pull the wool over my eyes. In any case, a temperature rise doesn't prove a CO2 cause. As I proved in my post above. I wouldn't dream of muscling in on your territory. You posted the graph. I commented on it. You have to expect that sort of thing.-2 points