Jesse Mazer <[email protected]> on Sat, Mar 15, 2014 wrote: > I think debate is like a sport where it's OK to be aggressive within some > very circumscribed bounds, do you see it differently?
No I agree. And I don't mind if you call me an asshole but don't call me a creationist, that's going too far. > > Do you think I am incorrect in saying that your list does NOT look like > the "general policy recommendations that most of those who see an urgent > need to curb global warming could agree on"? > Yes. > >> And if it is bad should we do something about it now or wait until we >> find a solution that doesn't cause more problems than it solves? You seem >> to think that doing something right now is the safe conservative approach >> but it's not because any dramatic reduction in fossil fuel without big >> increases in nuclear power will kill millions of people and impoverish >> billions. >> > > > How do you define "dramatic reduction"? > I would define a dramatic reduction in fossil fuel emissions as anything that will make a measurable reduction in global warming by 2100 according to those very climate models you love so very much. The moderate stuff you keep talking about like the 100 billion dollar stuff Germany is doing or even the suggestions of the Kyoto Protocol are all just gestures according to the very computer models that you like and are far far too small to have any notable effect on the climate by the end of the century. By the way, implementing the useless Kyoto Protocol would cost 432 billion dollars EACH YEAR, if we spent the same money on clean water in just 8 years every human on earth would have clean potable water and this would stop 2 million deaths and prevent a billion illnesses EVERY YEAR. But if you really believe that the climate models are correct and you believe that science and technology will not find far better ways to deal with the problem in the next century as technology improves, and if you believe that nuclear energy is too dangerous to be used, and if you believe that the resulting global warming poses a credible existential threat to the human race if not life on the entire planet then it's time to forget about cheap gestures and moderation and gradualism and get serious and immediately put the world on a energy starvation diet and be brave enough to face the fact that there is no way 7 billion people can be kept alive on such a diet and no way to keep more than a very tiny fraction of them happy and prosperous. But before you do anything that dramatic you'd better be correct! So I repeat my question, are you willing to bet your life and that of billions of your neighbors that you're not just sure, but also correct? > > you can see that the average expected rise of all the model runs for > RCP4.5 was around 2 degrees by 2100 > Big deal. I doubt if a 2 degree temperature rise would kill billions of people, but a starvation energy diet, the only solution to global warming environmentalists say we should even consider, most certainly would. > > I repeat--do you have some reason to think climate scientists are using > a "bad explanation" in terms of their claims > And I repeat it's not my responsibility to provide evidence that climate models are bad, it's climate scientists responsibility to provide evidence that they're good; although I will say that a year ago those same climate scientists predicted that the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season would be much more active than average, but it turned out to be the quietest season in a century. That might not prove they're totally full of shit but it does make me reluctant to bet my life that their next prediction will be better. > >> I said entropy is proportional to the LOGARITHM of the number of states >> > > > OK, I was speaking loosely and really meant something more like "a > function of" rather than "proportional to", I certainly didn't mean to > suggest your error was thinking it was directly proportional when actually > it's proportional to the logarithm. Rather, the error I was pointing to > here was that you repeatedly argued that the entropy depended on "the > number of ways a state could be generated", implying that it depends on the > number of PAST histories that could lead up to the present state, when > actually it depends only on the number of possible PRESENT microstates the > system might be in > > Today the deepest understanding of entropy comes from the study of Black Holes. From: http://www.phy.olemiss.edu/~luca/Topics/bh/entropy_origin.html "S [entropy ] is the log of the number of quantum mechanically distinct ways that the black hole could have been made, or information lost in the creation of the black hole" I would even more strongly recommend physicist Kip Thorne's masterful Book "Black Holes and Timewarps". From page 446: "A Black Hole's entropy is the logarithm of the number of ways that the hole could have been made" > > this error > There was no error. > >led you to argue that in the Game of Life cellular automaton, a > macrostate consisting of 100% white squares and 0% black would have a high > entropy since there are a lot of past histories that could all end in a > state of all white squares Assuming that by a "white square" you mean a dead cell then that is correct, lots and lots of different configurations can evolve into the same macrostate of nothing but a universe of dead cells. For the same reason physicists say that Black Holes have more entropy than any other known object because lots of things can produce a Black Hole that results in the exact same simple macrostate that only needs 3 numbers to completely describe, mass, spin and electrical charge. > >>> or your idea that spacetime curvature is judged differently by >>> different observers >>> >> >> >> Show me where I said that! Come on I dare you, show me! I'll tell you >> what I did say on February 21: >> "All observers will agree that spacetime inside the elevator is curved >> but they might not know if the curvature was cause by rockets or a >> gravitational field". >> > > > Apologies, I misremembered this argument a bit. But judging by the above > quote your actual argument is still quite wrong: if there is no significant > mass/energy to create gravitational curvature > You can't accelerate an elevator without energy. And by the way, according to General Relativity in addition to mass and energy pressure and tension can curve spacetime too. > > then all observers who measure the spacetime curvature will agree it is > flat, even if they are accelerating. > If you put a gun to my head I couldn't say what that means. > > Also, your suggestion above that "all observers will agree that > spacetime inside the elevator is curved" is even stranger than the position > I thought you had been arguing > So first you say I was wrong because you claim I said curvature DOES depend on the observer (although I didn't say anything of the sort), and now you say I'm wrong when I say curvature DOES NOT depend on the observer. Make up your mind. > > do you really mean to say that an *inertial* observer would measure > spacetime to be "curved" if he happened to be inside an accelerating > elevator? > If he's inside the accelerating elevator then he's not a inertial observer, but it doesn't matter because anybody inside or outside the glass elevator can measure the 3 angles formed by 3 laser pointers anchored at 3 points on the elevator. If the angles of the resulting triangle add up to exactly 180 degrees then all observers will know that the spacetime is flat, if it doesn't they will know it's curved. > > Even based on your incorrect technique for measuring spacetime curvature > using light to form a triangle and measuring its angles (which might > potentially be a way of measuring the curvature of *space* in a certain > simultaneity surface, but definitely isn't a valid way of measuring > *spacetime* curvature) > In physics straight lines are defined as the path that light takes, so if spacetime is curved then triangles formed by light beams don't have 180 degrees. But it you don't like light beams and triangles for some reason then how do you determine if spacetime is curved or not? What's your technique? > > it still doesn't make sense to say the inertial observer would measure > curvature. > For a inertial observer or any other sort of observer for that matter, what part of "measure the 3 angles of a triangle and add them up" doesn't make sense? > > Suppose the elevator has an open top and bottom, and as it accelerates > an inertial observer first enters through the top, passes through the > middle, and exits through the bottom. Then they are in 2 very different > reference frames and one is accelerating and one is not. > Correct, and BOTH observers will agree that a triangle made by 3 Laser pointers mounted at 3 points on the wall of the accelerating elevator does NOT contain 180 degrees. And BOTH observers will agree that a triangle made in a similar manner on the wall of your smaller non accelerating elevator DOES contain 180 degrees. No contradictions, everybody agrees. > > are you somehow suggesting that the results of this inertial observer's > local experiments to measure curvature will differ depending on whether he > happens to be passing through an accelerating elevator or not? > No. Everybody agree about what is curved and what is not. > >> Are really you so confident they did it correctly that you are quite >> literally willing to stake your life on it? You'd better be because that's >> what you're asking us to do. >> > > > are you willing to risk the possibility that you have an eternal soul > which will be damned forever if you don't accept the literal truth of the > Bible? > Yes. > > my answer is "yes, I am willing to stake my life, and by 'willing to > stake my life' I mean I don't believe my life would be risked in the > slightest by this bet > Why are you so confident that you will be among the lucky third of the population that won't starve to death because of policies recommended by environmentalists. > >>> Can you point to some mainstream climate scientists who think a rise >>> of 3 or 4 degrees has a significant chance of being a "good thing"? >>> >>> >> >> http://www.stanford.edu/~moore/Boon_To_Man.html >> > > > I asked for mainstream climate scientists, this guy is a "senior fellow > at the Hoover Institution" whose background seems to be in economics. > If the question isn't "what will the climate be in the year 2100?" but "given that the climate in the year 2100 will be X what will be the consequences for the human race" then the person to ask is an economist not a climate scientist. > >> scientists don't get much better that Freeman Dyson >> > > > He's not a climate scientist, > Besides having a boiling water IQ he's made computer models about the climate at the core of giant stars and in H-bombs and knows the limitations of such models. And do you really think Dyson is wrong, do you really thing global warming is the most important problem facing humanity today or is even in the top ten? John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
