Harry Eagar Tuesday, 21 July 2009 at 18:23

Not just allegedly, really.

It’s a curious situation, because it looks like the reaction speeds up when you lower the total energy of the system, and in fact, that is what happens. That alone would have been worth a Nobel Prize — a truckload of them — but it turns out the situation was more complicated than that and it doesn’t really violate the Second Law. It just looks like it does.

Luckily, greenhouse gases are not a problem, so the solution is not a problem either.

Annoying Old Guy Tuesday, 21 July 2009 at 20:16

Forgive if I harbor some doubts about your accuracy in describing physical processes and applying the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Bret Wednesday, 22 July 2009 at 09:30

Yeah, Harry, perhaps it’s time to start referring to other laws of physics. Like the one about digging holes and gravity, for example. :-)

Harry Eagar Wednesday, 22 July 2009 at 12:12

For some time I have been intrigued by the near-perfect correlation: Give me a man’s stance on politics, AGW or CFC, and I can tell you what he thinks about the other two, although there is no connection among any of them.

This does not suggest to me that people are evaluating evidence.

Annoying Old Guy Wednesday, 22 July 2009 at 12:43

Forgive me if I harbor doubts about your ability to accurately describe my position on CFCs, even at this point.

erp Wednesday, 22 July 2009 at 13:22

Harry, the connection between AGW and CFC’s is they are both part of the mythology of the political left.

Bret Wednesday, 22 July 2009 at 13:56

harry eagar wrote: “This does not suggest to me that people are evaluating evidence.”

Not so, since people have different preferences and are willing to make different tradeoffs. One such subjective preference is a desire for economic liberty which would affect one’s stance of politics, AGW, and the use of CFCs.

Harry Eagar Thursday, 23 July 2009 at 12:45

Economic liberty has nothing to do with it. Well, I guess, it has something to do with your political preferences.

The globe is going to warm or cool whether you approve or not.

‘One might take this as a lesson in hubris and the potential consequences of rushing the implementation of “solutions” to various problems’

One certainly might. What were the consequences of rushing away from ammonia?

Annoying Old Guy Thursday, 23 July 2009 at 13:03

What were the consequences of rushing away from ammonia?

I have written and erased several comments on this, the effort making clear to me that it’s not my responsibility to dig and ponder until I can ascribe some meaning and relevance to your comment. Rather, it should be incumbent on you to provide that. I think that’s because they are embeded deep in your Narrative, for which I harbor doubts that I have any clear understanding. Is this another “restating the obvious in my Narrative” moment?

Bret Thursday, 23 July 2009 at 19:29

Harry Eagar wrote: “Economic liberty has nothing to do with it.”

Why not?

AVeryRoughRoadAhead Thursday, 23 July 2009 at 20:33

Give me a man’s stance on politics, AGW or CFC, and I can tell you what he thinks about the other two, although there is no connection among any of them.

LOL - but aren’t you an exception to your own rule of thumb? You think that FDR’s domestic policy was da bomb, AND that AGW isn’t real. In fact, if I read you correctly, you don’t even believe in GW period.

This does not suggest to me that people are evaluating evidence.

Of course they aren’t.

25% of adults are incapable of complex reasoning, and at least half of the remainder are incurious, regardless of the topic. (Or perhaps I should write that they are only mildly curious, and are unwilling to do anything more than perhaps read an article or two about the subject, in a newspaper or weekly newsmag.) In any case, if there’s a topic that one cares about deeply, and of which one has become an autodidactic expert, one will find many more people with an opinion about the subject than one will with actual knowledge - and among the latter group, one will also find a significant percentage of people who “know” something that isn’t so. I’m sure that everyone here has had the experience of having a Global Warming Cultist tell them to “look at the science” - which is both extremely irritating and darkly amusing, since anyone who actually HAS looked at the science can’t help but be impressed by how very poor is the evidence of AGW, which means that the Cultist herself must not have “looked at the science”. (Or possibly just didn’t understand it.)

But Bret is also right. Complex issues have a range of possible answers, all “correct”, since individuals ascribe differing weights to the various inputs, and have differing opinions about what outcomes/situations they’re willing to live with.

Harry Eagar Tuesday, 28 July 2009 at 14:19

They may have a range of possible responses, but they do not have a range of possible results. Well, they do if they are chaotic systems, but they will in the end have one result, whether we can predict it or not.

The guys at Los Alamos who try to model explosive nuclear reactions are dealing with as much complexity as anybody, but the end result is always the same: BOOM!

AVeryRoughRoadAhead Tuesday, 28 July 2009 at 14:47

But why are they modelling explosive nuclear reactions at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, using the world’s fastest supercomputer, and doing related work at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, using the world’s second-fastest supercomputer?

‘Cause even with nukes, there’s a difference between BOOM! and BOOM!!