cypress

OK let's answer the first question. When you rearrange the formulas to derive the relationship between pH and pKa you get this one: pH = pKa + log ([A-]/[HA]) So at a pH equal to pKa what can you say about the ratio between [A-] and [HA] ? with respect to the amino group on glycine, what is the equivalent of A-? and HA? What can you say about the ability of glycine to buffer OH (donate H+) beyond this point? Once you have this figured let's go the other way and you tell me where we should expect the amino group to stop accepting H+.

Strictly speaking all chemical reactions are capable of achieving an equilibrium state. Some so much favor the product side of the equation they are said to be irreversible. Hope this helps.

I assume when you ask about pK you mean pKa. pKa is small for acids because of the definition. Ka = [H+][A-]/[AH] and pKa = -log10Ka so the greater the disassociation to H+ and A- the smaller the pKa, therefore acids have smaller pKa's than bases. Note that bases have smaller pKb's where Kb = [HB+][OH-]/ and pKb = -log10Kb

Since when is reviving existing function defined as new function? You redefined the question to one easier to answer. No, any time period will do. Molecular biology discoveries have uncovered the precursor elements required for new functional information. They are new protien tertiary structures, new protein binding sites, new expression controls, process controls and developmental controls to name a few. These precursor steps on average involve 5-10 point alterations in gene primary sequences. If mutation and selection account for generation of biological diversity and thus novel functional information, then identifying generation of these precursor elements by this process should be common occurrence. 1) It's not new function, 2) It is a two step process that occurs at the same rate as a random walk, one step off of function and one step back to function Yes, I believe you are confirming that information is generated by blind search and random walk but on average no faster. In this example where any pattern is defined as information, information is generated at the rate equal to the pure random process. When functional information is desired, one also finds that functional information is generated at a rate averaging blind search when random processes are involved. I don't make that claim. Only design has been observed to create functional information faster than blind search. I don't limit this to humans. No. No, I make no claim about the character of this intelligence. I note that biological systems contain vast quantities of functional information that thus far only intelligence has been shown capable of generating at sufficient rates. The challenge to those who advocate for natural processes (including myself) is to identify a natural process capable of generating functional information at a rate consistent with generation of life and diversification of life. The evidence from DNA is that diversification occurred, but the evidence does not give us any indication of how it occurred. Evidence from DNA also indicates that in addition to diversification, some processes also adapt and alter, and damage and repair, existing function, and insert and remove nonfunctional information. Mutation and selection explains the latter nicely, but there remains no natural explanation for original generation and diversification.

Let's not loose sight of the purpose behind constitutional rights in general and free speech rights in particular. Most constitutional rights were designed as limitations on what government is able to impose on citizens, primarily to prevent tyranny from reoccurring. Free speech, freedom to assemble, and freedom of religion were all intended to prevent the government from controlling particular aspects of ones lives and by doing so, allowing the power of government to exceed the ability of the majority from tossing out an unpopular government. This was the kind of free speech that was intended by the constitution. In evaluating free speech one compares the benefit of of this particular speech or expression with respect to limiting government control against the damage it may cause society as a whole. Free speech does not extend to shouting fire in a crowded theater because there is very little or no benefit in terms of limiting government powers while there is huge potential for damage to society. The same logic is used to limit holocaust denial speech. Allowing denial speeches provides only a small benefit in terms of limiting governmental powers, but in certain societies, there is reasonable benefit for the public as a whole to pronounce holocaust denial speech morally wrong and therefore prohibited. Perhaps one day it won't be the lightning rod it is today and prohibition will not be demanded by the majority of that society.

These are very common demonstrations. Just to see, using Google, I was able to find enough information for each of these three observations. Give it a try and let's see what you come up with.

You might start by reviewing the concept of acid dissociation, the dissociation constant and the relationship to pH. Perhaps you might start by indicating what you know of this. You might also start by suggesting which of the four questions you understand best and how you might approach that particular problem. Have you ever worked chemical equilibrium problems?

I see one error here: I get 2.2x10^6 dpm/ul it looks like you did not shift the decimal point far enough since 1ul = 0.067 nmol. So I get 110 ul. I don't see any other issue in your calculations except the minor error of adding 110 ul to a 1000 ul solution. I would think that you would want to add the cold solution to 110 ul of hot stock to make 1 ml total.

I quoted this phrase to describe black carbon warming. "Black carbon is not a GHG. Black carbon warms the earth by directly absorbing reflected solar radiation and also by darkening the surface of snow and ice when it is deposited there (and enhances melting)." I don't know of any serious skeptic that advocates black carbon pollution should not be minimized and ideally eliminated. However warming from carbon soot is not attributable to anthropogenic GHG. I conceded previously that I should be more careful with my words so that they accurately reflect my viewpoint and claims. Serious skeptics take issue with anthropogenic sources of primarily CO2 and the impact CO2 has on global climate. I share their viewpoint. Since carbon black is not a greenhouse gas, the warming attributed to it goes into the category of apparent warming attributed to causes other than anthropogenic GHG's.

You have described what I have already acknowledged. Natural selection is capable of generating adaptations by meandering around a pre-existing function. But rediscovering existing function is like plagiarism. It is not generating novel information. Stylus provides a good illustration of this behavior of localized fitness. Generation of novel information involves movement to new function. Do you have any examples of mutation and natural selection deriving new information faster than a blind search or random walk? In considering undirected causal modes, information entropy must be figured in. By Information Theory, one can demonstrates that information is generated by random processes on average at a rate equal to or less than pure random processes such as a blind search or random walk in proportion to the amount of resources available to perform a blind search or random walk. It is interesting though that genetic engineers have demonstrated that design does generate novel function in biological systems and are rapidly progressing to the point where they will have demonstrated that design is an observed mechanism in operation today that does account for life and diversity of life. In order for natural processes to compete as an alternate explanation, someone soon will have to demonstrate that some observed natural process does accomplish the same. I think there are such a processes, but I doubt genetic error with natural selection is one of them. This conversation regarding generation of information is a good illustration of the limits of mutation and selection because any process capable of deriving observed diversity must be observed deriving large quantities of novel functional information. The fact that mutation and selection has never been observed to have generated large amounts of new information relative to the opportunities to do so is telling. The fact that no natural process has ever been observed to generate large quantities of functional information is a big disadvantage for those who advocate for natural processes.

Knappenberger next attributes 25% of the warming in toto to black carbon deposition. He describes it this way: "... results from Ramanathan and Carmichael published in Nature Geoscience last year. These researchers reviewed the scientific understanding of how black carbon aerosols (aka soot) warm the earth’s climate. Black carbon is not a GHG. Black carbon warms the earth by directly absorbing reflected solar radiation and also by darkening the surface of snow and ice when it is deposited there (and enhances melting). " I will come back to this when I address warming from the mid 1800's to 1950 but for now I will use Knappenberger's illustration and numbers for 1950 through 2009. Warming attributed to carbon black during this time frame is 0.120 C. The graphic Knappenberger chose to illustrate this is below. Of the 0.702 C apparent warming that occurred from 1950-2009, 0.366 is yet unattributed but 0.336 is attributed to causes other than anthropogenic GHG's.

Successful Genetic algorithms have very specific fitness functions that are required in order for the algorithm to succeed as I explained. Are you claiming that Natural Selection includes a very specific fitness function of the same character? If so do you have evidence that your claim is correct? In the case of genetic algorithms they seem to be more than simply optimizations, they seem to be necessary in that when they are removed the algorithms fail to converge on a solution faster than blind search. Can you tell us of an example that succeeds without these features? Evolutionary algorithms that begin with functional system and don't contain the attributes described in 5-7 or optimizers previously described, don't generate novel function faster than bind search. Perhaps you have an observed, confirmed example of natural selection generating novel function faster than blind search. If so I would like to hear of it. I know of generation of nylase but both known cases involved a single step change easily attained by blind search. Proposals are little more than interesting.

you're welcome. Good luck working that out.

The research by Solomon et al, address the methane component. The comments by Solomon and the other authors plus the other researchers (see post 48) all consistently rule out changes in stratospheric water vapor by transport other than changes due to temperature drivers between the critical layer addressed by the research and changes in sea surface temperature in the tropical regions. Observed changes in sea temperature in the tropical region is almost entirely driven by ENSO. Furthermore the effect correlates well with the ENSO index. I would be inclined to accept your argument if you were able to attribute ENSO to anthropogenic causes, but this does not seem to be the case. I am currently addressing the years between 1950 and 2009 based on the articles and arguments of skeptics. I include it only to make it easier to follow the skeptic's argument. I will address the mid 1800's through 1950 afterwards and combine them at that time. I described this approach previously. I also noted that the attribution you refer to would be backed out at that time since, as swansont first noted, it is only significant in the intermediate.

I think I'll try to improve my response to your request. It looks as if some people do not think I addressed it adequately previously. 1) Genetic algorithms that are successful at increasing functional information faster than a blind search use imported or active information to succeed. This active information is inserted by the designer of the algorithm and without this information, the algorithm would do no better than a blind search. 5) Designed algorithms include specifically selected fitness functions and an artificial definition of what it means to be more fit that are coordinated with the mutation step distance to ensure smooth contiguous evolutionary pathways from any beginning point to the predefined target. 6) Designed algorithms reward intermediate results that are not not necessarily functional and thus create artificial pathways that shortcut or bridge what would otherwise represent gaps in functional pathways. They can do this because the designer has foresight into what direction leads to success. The arbitrary definition of fitness that does not require function ensures that all possible combinations can be considered functional and thus ensures that the fitness function contains a multitude of artificial pathways to success. 7) Designed algorithms have a carefully defined goal/target that avoids localized intermediate optimums. Are you suggesting that natural selection or any other natural process share these attributes? If so, what evidence suggests this is true?

For the specific case you describe, only to respond to outside requests, foreknowledge of the gateway is not required since the local path will be included in the addressing header, assuming the network driver initializes and enables listening ports for requests outside the subnet even when it does not consider the network configuration to be complete. This will be the sticking point and it will be dependent on the device driver.

Electrons are able to capture radiation energy in discrete quantities of energy defined by the energy level differences in stable and available electron orbital positions. Thus for any given material, there are limited frequencies that can be converted to electrical energy, the remaining frequencies are reflected, refracted or absorbed by other materials in the solar panel that are not electrically active.

I understand your example and do not see any particular reason to take issue with it because, as I have now said several times, your example and your method is not what I have proposed. I do not use the 1950's bucket or the 2009's bucket. I do not remove anything from the 2009 bucket. I leave them untouched. Instead, I have a single bucket of unattributed cumulative apparent warming from 1950-2009 and at the beginning of my analysis, it is filled to the 0.702 degree C hash mark. From that bucket, I attributed 0.150 C to a measurement error in surface sea temperatures measured by ship-borne sensors and removed that amount from the bucket and placed it in another bucket labeled attributed warming from 1950-2009. Next I attributed 0.066 C to changes in upper atmospheric water vapor driven by tropical moisture that correlates to El Nino Pacific Ocean oscillations of surface sea temperatures, and I place that amount in the attributed bucket. The amount remaining in the unattributed apparent warming bucket is some unknown amount of warming (or cooling) due to any changes in upper atmospheric water vapor from 1950-1980 plus any error in what was attributed between 1980 and 2009, plus all other unattributed causes.

I don't know how to say this any plainer. I am not accounting for all warming or even warming of a particular cause. What I am doing is not covered by your example. I am extracting as much of the apparent warming attributed to known causes other than CO2 into a bucket and leaving warming that is unattributed plus warming that is attributed to CO2 into the other bucket.

DJBruce described a simple form of the expectation value, not the probability..... In his example, the probability of A would of course be close to one, but in the general case it would in fact depend on the probability function, the resulting probability density for the events that would result in outcome A and the opportunities or resources available to cause events that make of the set of events that A is contained within. In DJBruce's example combines all the events that lead to outcome A along with the individual probabilities into an overall probablity P(A) which is fine. In the numerical example though it is expressed as a probability density in the form of probability per day. Then in the example, the probabilistic resources (the opportunities for A to occur) are the number of days for which the events are in play. To obtain the overall probability of a comet striking the earth, we could use this formula, (1-(1-P[C])days)

Attributing warming to known causes when possible is not making a comparison between adjusted and unadjusted data. Your complaint does not apply.

Most reservoirs are not geopresured, in that the rock lattice structure supports the rock over burden. In these cases, the pressure is closely a function of the hydrostatic pressure. Most reservoirs are not closed in from underneath and have a contiguous but tortuous pore space path to the surface generally filled with mineral laden water.

What information is available to identify that conscience is due to physical differences related to inheritance rather than due to social differences that drive different behaviors? I have seen studies that show that the brain functional patterns are different for various behaviors but it does not seem clear that these are driven by genetic factors. If there are physical differences, how can we know they are due to genetic and developmental influences as opposed to changes influenced by behavior?

Take a victory lap if you must swansont. In the future I will choose my words much more carefully. Skeptics primarily take issue with claims about CO2 specifically (as I do) and I am following the skeptics arguments and the approaches laid out in the literature which was the driver for my original post. I will continue to focus on explaining apparent warming using the arguments available. Perhaps you might be, but I am not too concerned if a particular cause of apparent increase in temperature is due to an error in reporting or a natural effect so long as it is not attributed to human sourced CO2. In the end I intend to break out the natural from the other as the discussion proceeds. If you view this as moving the goal post so be it.

I believe I understand your approach. My current goal is accounting for as much of the upward trend in apparent global temperature from 1950 through 2009 to sources other than CO2 from human sources (the primary effluent AGW proponents are advocating must be controlled, and the only one I question) and leaving unaccounted, everything for which I either lack data or for which appears to be a known consequence of human sourced CO2. This is the topic of Knappenberger's article. You seem to be confusing my goal with one of drawing conclusions about the total actual effect (known and unknown) of GHG's between 1950 and 2009. When one focuses on the goal at hand and applies standard practice for experimental statistics, one should conclude that the data provided supports accounting for the warming indicated by the data from 1980 through 2009 as not related to CO2 GHG's (scientific justification for not ascribing it to CO2 was provided in post 48) and not making any accounting for the period from 1950 through 1980 where there is no data. If you continue to take exception to this approach to the goal I have stated, please provide a reference that indicates this approach is wrong and a different approach is correct because I have looked and cannot find any such reference.