exchemist

Thanks. But would you mind answering my question, please? What further experimental work were you expecting to find, or do you consider there should be? Because It is not obvious to me that any more experiments would be needed, as the challenge is in the modelling, rather than in the well known properties of the gases involved.

Good luck with Callendar. I hope it is useful. But thinking more about your response, I find myself wondering what sort of experimental work you are hoping to find. I don't profess any expertise in this field, but I'd have thought that the principal challenge is in the modelling of the climate, rather than in gathering data on CO2. Once you have the molar attenuation coefficient of CO2 as a function of wavelength, i.e. a well-characterised absorption spectrum (which is well known), I imagine the other data inputs on CO2 that you need are its concentration, perhaps as a function of altitude, and then it's matter of putting that into the mix with all the other horrendously complex factors to do with radiation intensity, albedo, the effect of the oceans and so on and so on, none of which involve CO2 per se. So what further experimental data on CO2 are you thinking would be needed? As for the comments on the variation between models, I'm not sure that is surprising, bearing in mind the complexity of the modelling. But I note we have convergence, rather divergence, which seems to suggest the modelling process is likely to be valid, plus of course 20 years more of actual experience of climate change since the start of the graph, against which to judge the models.

This distinction you make between motorists, cyclists and pedestrians seems to me a false one, so far as taxation is concerned. Every motorist is also a pedestrian. Most cyclists are all three. The taxation principle, insofar as there is one, is surely not that a class of person pays more or less tax than another, but that an activity that requires costly infrastructure, causes pollution and contributes to climate change should be taxed.

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.

This is about the new UK Highway Code, I presume. I don't think anyone suggests that pedestrians or cyclists should change their behaviour, just because vehicle drivers are now told to treat them with priority. The object, as I understand it, is to improve the safety of the more vulnerable road users. But they should continue to take sensible precautions, as today. I am reminded of the advice given to new boys at my school's rowing club: "In theory, powered vessels give way to sailing craft and sailing craft give way to those propelled by oars. However it is advisable not to test either of these theories too closely."

Ah now I see. Sorry, I was being a bit slow to catch on. Arrhenius seems to have been the founding father, back in 1896: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/121158 though he was thinking about a decrease in CO2, inducing another ice age. From what I read on Wiki it looks as if this idea fell by the wayside and was resurrected in the mid c.20th by Guy Stewart Callendar in 1938 and then by Charles David Keeling in the 1950s And then Manabe....... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science#cite_note-43. But no doubt you've already followed up all the references from there.

Do you mean this sort of thing?: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6174548/

I think the IR spectrum of CO2 is well characterised, isn’t it? So from that one can presumably model things from what radiation a given concentration of CO2 over a given path length would be expected to absorb. Or are you after how the model was constructed?

My understanding is they envisage a stream of fuel pellets, each "ignited" in turn by a laser. As in our previous discussion about tokamaks, there's some way to go before the energy output exceeds the input enough to run the laser. Also I don't know how they extract the energy. I presume it would be by some kind of intercepting shield that gets hot and raises steam.

"Without intellectual honesty", my arse. Several of us have tried really hard to understand what you are trying to do. You, on the other hand, have been almost entirely unhelpful in your responses.

Several people have done so. You claim current theory says a photon spreads and out and "disappears". But current theory does not say it disappears. So your "cohesive force" seems to address a non-existent problem. But in case I have misunderstood, I've asked you about this, and you have failed to respond. The dispersion of wave packets is not a problem, so far as I am aware, but in any case you have denied that dispersion of wave packets is what you have in mind. So if it is not that, I ask again: what problem in physics are you addressing with this idea? If it addresses no problem, it can be dismissed as a scientific hypothesis, by Ockham's Razor.

....and, ahem, not relevant either, for the reasons just expounded by @String Junky 😉 A good historian should be able to review evidence dispassionately, whatever his personal sympathies. Your point about the rules for capital punishment is presumably why the gospel story includes that interrogation of Jesus by Pilate as to whether or not he considers himself a king and why Pilate (in the story) fudges it by inscribing "The King of the Jews" on the cross, to make the execution look legitimate, even though he doesn't believe it.

What are your ideas so far, then?

I have read it and tried to engage you to find out why you say what you are saying. Let me repeat my earlier question to you:- What I am trying to understand is why you think your "cohesive force" is necessary, that's all. What problem in physics does it purport to solve? It seemed, from your description, to be something to do with preventing dispersion, I had thought. If it is not that, perhaps you could explain to me what the problem is that it addresses. Can you do that?

Agreed, except that I would say an "observation" rather than an "experiment", as it is more general: doing "experiments" in astrophysics is not easy. However I think it is instructive to keep in mind that, even in physics, one can only apply mathematics once one has developed conceptions of the quantities to be included in the modelling: energy, momentum, electric charge, velocity, or what have you . To do that, words are required.

But it is not true that all new theories are mere extensions of older ones. There is no way to reconcile the plum pudding model of the atom with the Rutherford-Bohr one. And it is a stretch, to say the least, to reconcile the Ptolemaic astronomical system with the heliocentric one. Sometimes the previous theory is thrown out completely. Another example would be the phlogiston theory of combustion. Or the cooling earth theory of mountain building. I agree that, quite often, new theories can be seen to be related to earlier ones, as with Newtonian mechanics and relativity or QM, but there is no necessity for this to be so.

Item 3 looks to me not only unnecessary but actively wrong. There is no reason why a new theory cannot contradict an existing one, so long as it (a) successfully accounts for all the observations that the old one deals with and either ( b ) accounts for something the old one cannot account for, or ( c) accounts for the same observations but in a simpler and more insightful way. An example of (b) would be the Rutherford-Bohr model of the atom contradicting the plum pudding model. An example of ( c) would be the heliocentric astronomical system contradicting the Ptolemaic one. Item 2 seems to be key: it is the ability to account for observations and predict new ones that is the test of validity.

What I am trying to understand is why you think your "cohesive force" is necessary, that's all. What problem in physics does it purport to solve? It seemed, from your description, to be something to do with preventing dispersion, I had thought. If it is not that, perhaps you could explain to me what the problem is that it addresses. Can you do that?

I have, and I'm struggling to understand what you are on about. You make what looks like a silly assertion, viz. that a photon cannot but diffuse and thereby ends up "disappearing". That is obviously rubbish, so I am paying you the compliment of not jumping to the conclusion that you don't know what you are talking about. I am trying to see if I can make what you have written align with my own understanding. This is that a wave packet indeed tends to disperse, so that the wave function becomes spread out in space. But that does not mean it eventually "disappears", merely that its position becomes less and less well defined. However, If your response is going to be merely: "Please read", that is rude and unhelpful and I won't waste any more time on your ideas.

Sorry I mean dispersion. Is this all about wave packet dispersion? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_packet#Dispersive

I'm wondering if this could be a rather garbled reference to wave packet dissipation. That could be described as a wave form that changes with time, couldn't it?

So what is your argument now? When you arrived, you were maintaining the whole notion of natural, beneficial genetic change was nonsense, because nature could not "code": garbage in garbage out, etc. But now we have established that argument is hogwash. Nature does do this, in viruses, prokaryotes and eukaryotes. I must presume your argument has now changed to be one of not seeing how major changes in organisms can be brought about by this process. Regarding how easy it is to "test" the degree of change it can bring about, what makes you think this is "easy"? It requires many generations. That is easy to do with bacteria, since new generations occur every few minutes. With a more complex organism a new generation may only occur every few months, or years even. So any "test" will have to be over very long periods of time. Have you worked out how long, for any given organism? What tests are you referring to? Can you provide links?

No. You have 2 tanks at different temperatures. Only one of these can be at the" ambient" temperature of the environment. The other must be at a different temperature, either higher or lower, in order for the engine to work. How is that different temperature created?

But look at what we've now established. 1) Nature can create new genetic "code" that benefits the organism. So we can forget "garbage in garbage out". 2) The mechanism works by natural selection of variations. This is exactly what Darwin came up with 150 years ago, before the science of genetic sequencing even existed. So we have an independent confirmation that his theory does work, for real, in nature. As to viruses being a special case for some reason, well, no, not really. I only chose SARS-CoV-2 as a topical example that you could not avoid knowing about. There are DNA viruses too, including smallpox, herpes and papilloma viruses. Secondly and more importantly, we also see evolution at work in the same way in bacterial resistance to antibiotics, and in the way cancer cells develop resistance to chemotherapy drugs. So we know this mechanism operates in viruses, prokaryotes (bacteria) and eukaryotes (cancer cells). That is important, since it follows that we can expect it to operate in all organisms - throughout the living world. It only remains to argue (if you insist) about what this mechanism is capable of, i.e. the degree of change it can bring about over time.

Proteins. @Arthur Smith has explained this in more detail. Also that when we say a code we do not imply there is an intention in it, merely that it is a biochemical template, in the form of sequences of a small number of base pairs, from which proteins are constructed. But to continue my point, now that we agree nature can create new code by variation and natural selection, and that this new code affects the structure and function of the resulting organism, as the virus case shows, you have accepted that this mechanism of evolution has real explanatory and predictive power, i.e. it is a sound scientific theory. Not mumbo jumbo. And clearly "garbage in garbage out"is inapplicable, or it would not work the way that we can see it does. What, then, is your objection to applying it to other cases?