I've seen Brazil.

I don't see Facebook as a binary 'good/evil' service. Much of it is useful, and a lot of their monetization strategies are unethical, but they are the conduit, not the source of the problem. Frankly, I worry more about my usenet history than I do Facebook. The source of the problem is the permanent archive of every keystroke, and this belief that every thought is indicative of intent.

While there will be a certain amount of collateral damage, Facebook users ultimately control what they post, and that is where they can manage what they reveal in on-line surveillance. Admittedly recent tracking methods linking Amazon purchases to Facebook feeds are getting really creepy, but it would be hard for the NSA to have anything suspicious about me considering I post pictures of my kids and a few inoffensive jokes (not that there is anything suspicious).

One observation on this thread, the percentage of ACs are much higher than normal.

The one thing this comment does not recognize is that national debt is not necessarily bad. As long as the debt to GDP ratio is reasonably consistent and less than a year (the US at 0.7 years now), we are not overleveraged.

One of the issues of the paleo diet is which paleo tribe will you follow. While this Scientific American article is a bit antagonistic, the research on the variation of diets was interesting.

There's nothing random about my statements, you're not understanding them. The hypothesis, based on known chemistry that is well supported, is that addition of heat and acid changes the solubility of the massive CO2 inventory in the ocean (the CO2 I discuss in my first post), and the energy (both heat and chemical) are sufficient enough to dominate CO2 inventory changes introduced by man. We've already done enough estimates to show the energies are sufficient for further review.

It's not, and one point that needs to be clarified is that AGW proponents must supply the burden of proof. The null hypothesis is that climate and weather are determined by natural processes, and human effects on that must be proven.

I'm not talking about the CO2 from the volcanoes, it's the heat and acidity. Simple order of magnitude won't work, but to give it a sniff test if you take the total mass of oceans at 1.37e21 kg and the potential variation of volcanic heat at 52,000 TW-h, converting that to Joules 1.872e20 J, then you get the rough dT of 0.13K, or about 0.2 deg F. That assumes uniform energy distribution throughout the ocean.

The argument is the heat and acid from volcanoes disrupts the CO2 equilibrium. Start with the data, and note the data do not have error bars (which is my main point): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Every number in this figure is calculated on an average, and if you want to calculate it effectively, you'd need to use Navier-Stokes, heat convection/diffusion, combined convection/diffusion mass transfer equations with reactions , and thermal radiation integrated simultaneously with known time dependent, boundary conditions. These equations aren't solvable.

Ahem, calculations please.

My two minutes of work showed the lower limit is 0.12 Kelvins, that is significant enough. As for the chemistry, I can direct you to Smith and Van Ness and a physical chemistry text, it takes a little bit of work but I can't put it on a slashdot post (I do numerical chemistry for a living).

It is relevant, remember, AGW needs to prove that it isn't.

Denier is being applied to skilled scientists. That is my objection.

Gotta go to bed, nice chat.

A nice response, and interesting. But if you dig a little deeper, you'll see it's not that trivial.

I would note that your post didn't address the relative orders of magnitude of CO2. My revised argument (I didn't type the following in the earlier post) is that natural CO2 dominates anthropogenic CO2, and any changes we induce to the overall temperature are overshadowed by natural variations. In particular, the variations in chemistry and temperature of the ocean dominate the chemical equilibrium.

What I didn't add about the undersea volcanoes is when heat and acid are added to water, LeChatlier's principle states that the alkaline ocean (remember, ocean pH varies from 7.0 to 8.0) will go slightly more acidic (sulfuric acid is a much stronger acid than carbon dioxide) and push the carbon dioxide out of the water, and increasing temperature raises the dissociation constant of water (or lowers the pKw, take your pick) and also forces out more CO2. Anyone who has drunk a warm, flat beer, or poured vinegar into soda water and watch it fizz, can observe this. The assumed heat added by volcanoes is 525,000 TW-h, [check your numbers too ;-)], and the acidity from sulfuric acid is enough energy (in terms of chemical potential) to affect the solubility and cause the ocean to release more CO2 into the atmosphere, or absorb more if the volcanic activity decreases.

If there is a 10% variation in the volcanic releases of heat and SO4 (or 52,000 TW-h, compared to 142 TW-h from anthropogenic sources), that will affect the environment more than what we add, and it can be argued that from the energy balance difference (recall the worlds energy demand is another way of showing the chemical potential differences between the hydrocarbons and CO2 + H2O). This is significant, and the argument cannot be dismissed by calling me a denier.

It could be dismissed if all volcanoes were identified and their activity cataloged. Then you'd need to start working on the fish population issue, which is a much harder problem.

How can those degrees of freedom be excluded when the data aren't acquired? More importantly, how can any climate model be considered rigorous when all terms of the Navier-Stokes, heat equation, diffusion/convection of mixtures, and radiation equations are non-zero, and hence unsolvable with the most complex numerical methods? I work in multi-dimensional transport modeling, and even relatively simple closed systems cannot be solved...the assumptions made for climate modeling closure negate the functionality of the model at this time. As HPC develops, it will improve.

Note that I'm not saying don't study climate, it's a valid science. But if you are a scientist, you will listen to the criticisms of fellow scientists and address them with demonstrable facts instead of asking the media to label your peers with pejorative terms.

Oh my, thank you for proving my point. Orders of magnitude analysis it is.

Carbon inventory and exchange: we release 10 gigatons of CO2 per year as carbon. Natural inventory in the atmosphere is on the order of 1,000 gigatons (I've seen lower and higher), natural inventory above the thermocline of the ocean is 1,000 gigatons, and below the thermocline it's 150,000 gigatons. Annual interchange from biological ecosystem interactions is estimated at 150 gigatons (90 sea, 60 air). All of these estimates have an error within the annual anthropogenic CO2 release.

Regarding volcanoes undersea, there are an estimated 30,000 of them, and if you look at Klauea, you'll see even a relatively small volcano that is close to the ocean surface could in theory generate 600 MW of electricity, which means that it's about 1.8 GW of thermal energy. Multiply by 30,000 and you have 60,000 GW of heat released to the ocean. Which converts to an annual energy of 525 TW-h, The annual world consumption is 142 TW-h. Variations in that much energy could lead to a tremendous amount of heat added to the ocean, which would affect the global temperature.

That's the back of my envelope, care to share yours that would state unequivocally that it's not a possible contributor? You (or anyone else) can't because the data aren't acquired.

Hence the need for more rigorous science and dropping terms like 'denier.'

The issue with AGW believers (which I assume is the opposite of denier) is that they claim they have demonstrated scientific rigor in their hypothesis test when if their standards were applied to any other physical science they would be laughed out of the room. That claim can be based solely on the degrees of freedom that are assumed constant when it is clear they are not. For example, have we excluded the possibility of rising temperature changes are not affected by:

• Undersea volcanic activity--There are about 30,000 submarine volcanoes, Each of these will introduce significant quantities of heat and sulfuric acid, both of which would cause CO2 to be liberated to the atmosphere and also raise temperatures. There isn't even an accurate accounting of all of them, so it is not possible to say this degree of freedom is constant and can be ignored.
• Adsorption of IR by water vapor--Articles claim this is constant, but if we have had a drought in California for the last three years, undoubtedly that would arise from a local change in humidity, which would affect local attenuation and weather results.
• Variations in fish/plantkon/seaweed population--There are significant variations in local biology populations from year to year, and each of these affects the overall carbon balance. Considering the error estimates of these large values where gigatons of carbon are produced or not, our contribution can be within these error bars.

Note clearly that I'm not saying AGW is wrong or right, proper research is needed, but the politics involved has made it difficult to have actual scientific discussions. Comments like those proposed by TFA only make the situation worse.

Right now, "officially," they will never release the movie. We'll see.

I agree with the movie release freakout, but why would they shelve it completely (no DVD, VOD, etc.)? One person suggested insurance claims (I hadn't heard that prior to my earlier post).

My guess is that the hackers have information that is far more damaging than what they've released so far (if that's possible). As far as why DVDs of TA are in trouble? No idea.

I agree, as long as it is recognized as a tool to assist in defining the confidence, as opposed to a guarantee of confidence. I also wonder what adjustments can be made to 'tune' the result to the desired conclusions.

Nice description. Obviously this one is susceptible to a dead sensor, or stuck value. I run into these issues all the time, which I circumvent by keeping track of the local error (when the error decreases to zero too, I know it's a dead sensor).