[ExI] A Nobel laureate and climate change

[Dennis May]

My grandfather used to take the temperature readings for Unionville Missouri.
His data point represented the ground data for a few hundred square miles
even though the temperature over that much area can vary several degrees or
even as much as ten degrees when a storm front is moving through.  His house
was located on a high spot next to a state highway.  Shade trees came and went,
the nearby garden varied over the years, houses nearby were torn down and 
replaced, a restaurant was located across the street, and traffic increased several 
hundred percent over the years.  Since he was on a high spot he didn't record
the low areas in the hills nearby that are often 5 degrees colder in the mornings.
 
His data was still better than much of what was collected in heat island
cities or when the actual collection spots representing thousands of square
miles have been moved.  Never mind those located next to roof AC units,
black tar roofs, exhaust vents, and any number of problem spots.
 
Ocean temperature data has just begun - yet the oceans hold huge amounts
of heat readily changed out with the atmosphere.
 
All of this is besides the point that the modeling is no where near sufficient
to make any of the ever changing claims made to date.  Every year or so
another huge variable is discovered to have been modeled inadequately,
not at all, or in reverse of its actual effect.
 
Political science - the APS should retract its statement and wait for the
science - which is only now beginning and has a long ways to go before
making predictions.
 
Dennis

From: spike <spike66 at att.net>
To: 'ExI chat list' <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2011 11:06 AM
Subject: Re: [ExI] A Nobel laureate and climate change


 
 
From:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes
Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2011 8:22 AM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] A Nobel laureate and climate change
 
>…Ah, I stand corrected as to their claim.  Thanks.
>>…2011/9/15 Tim Halterman <timhalterman at gmail.com>
APS provided some additional commentary on this policy in mid 2010.  You can read the full policy and the additional commentary here:
http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/07_1.cfm

I find encouraging the way climate science seems to be heading.  This comment is from the APS site:
 
“…The second sentence is a definition that should explicitly include water vapor. The second sentence is a definition that should explicitly include water vapor…”
 
It seemed to me a huge oversight in the past climate science that they didn’t really say much about the greenhouse effect of water vapor.  Perhaps I was tuned into that because of where I lived in my 20s: in the Mojave Desert.  Out there, most people didn’t have air conditioners: they were too expensive to operate and they would be overpowered by the ferocious desert heat.  The common form of house cooling was with evaporative coolers, also called swamp coolers.  On the hottest days, it was also bone dry, so the evaporative coolers worked great.
 
Over the decades, more residents moved into the area and had lawns.  I recall hearing the old timers note that swamp coolers were not working as well as they once did.  I also knew that if a neighbor turned on a sprinkler in the middle of the day, one’s swamp cooler would lose a degree or two delta.  I used to keep data on this kind of stuff for a side business: emergency swamp cooler repair and high performance swamp coolers.
 
It stands to reason to me that increased irrigation could result in slight increases in water vapor in the air, which would trap additional heat.  Most of us have been in out on a cool clear evening when a cloud cover rolled in and felt the temperature rise as the cloud trapped radiated heat.  We know the effect can be localized.  It is easy to imagine some of the historic temperature monitors being effected by nearby irrigation.
 
spike
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