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srid  7mo ago (cafeamericainmag.com)   Edited 7mo ago   4095 thread views

The Vacuity of Climate Science

cafeamericainmag.com

There has been a lot of CW discussion on climate change. This is an article written by someone that used to strongly believe in anthropogenic global warming and then looked at all the evidence before arriving at a different conclusion. The articles goes through what they did.

I thought a top-level submission would be more interesting as climate change is such a hot button topic and it would be good to have a top-level spot to discuss it for now. I have informed the author of this submission; they said they will drop by and engage with the comments here!

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as that same reasoning was used to predict it had the same temperature as Earth.

Yeah, and Lord Kelvin estimated age of Sun to be about 32 million years (IIRC). Noone claims that scientists are always right.

For an adiabatic lapse rate on Venus description see: https://youtube.com/watch?v=_4KG0-2ckac ,

Can you provide anything supporting this claim in text version? Crankery existing only in video format tends to be extraordinarily low quality and lame.

Yeah, and Lord Kelvin estimated age of Sun to be about 32 million years (IIRC). Noone claims that scientists are always right.

You're missing the point, perhaps deliberately?

The question centers around why experimentation is important. Anyone can observe something and then make a model up to explain that observation. This does not, and cannot, demonstrate the model is correct. Scientists were wrong about the surface temperature of Venus before it was measured -- yet they made models that perfectly predicted their (incorrect) surface temperature. That their model matched their prediction did not corroborate the model in any way, as is obvious by the fact that it was wrong.

Since then, scientists have measured the temperature of Venus. And now... they have made models to perfectly predict that (correct) surface temperature. Because this time around the temperature is correct, it feels like the model is thus more correct (on this basis) than the previous one. In a sense it is, in that it gives the right temperature. But it is no more (or less) validated by this than the incorrect model! The evidentiary value is exactly the same. You can always make a model fit certain data points, it doesn't mean the model is correct.

Obviously, since we learned about actual Venus temperature any models are expected to predict correct results there.

Doing anything else would be deeply silly.

Specifics how models are build/used/validated are depending on a model. But not rejecting reality and what we learned is hardly indictment of science.

I'll second the request for something not a video.

I've collected these links as well, albeit they are more technical than the video. Will I next be asked to provide a simpler one? :)

  1. "Venus: No Greenhouse Effect" https://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html
  2. "Why does this simple equation predict the Venus surface temperature so accurately?" https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/508573/why-does-this-simple-equation-predict-the-venus-surface-temperature-so-accuratel

Looking around a little online, I found some people arguing online that of course temperature and pressure make sense together, by the ideal gas law. But they were saying that this doesn't suffice to say that pressure suffices to explain the temperature, as it could be (for example) that temperature affects pressure, rather than the other way around.

What is your evaluation of that argument?

I would say observe that whenever a gas is compressed, the result is both higher pressure and temperature. Gravity compresses a gas as it pulls it to the ground, so this will of course heat it up as well as increasing the pressure.

"Why does this simple equation predict the Venus surface temperature so accurately?" https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/508573/why-does-this-simple-equation-predict-the-venus-surface-temperature-so-accuratel

See answers posted to that question?

Also, how it even relates to how supposedly "adiabatic lapse rate" can explain Venus' temperature being much higher than would be predicted from blackbody equilibrium?

adiabatic lapse rate here is effect of GHE on Venus. If GHE does not exist, why Venus is much hotter than blackbody equilibrium would predict?

The adiabatic lapse rate falls naturally out of the force of gravity, and non-radiative properties of gases. For the dry adiabatic lapse rate it's actually just the strength of gravity and the heat capacity of the air. You can find a derivation here: http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/fall10/atmo551a/AdiabaticLapseRate.pdf .

For the moist rate you have to factor in phase-change considerations of the water. This decreases the rate, i.e. the air cools more slowly when water is involved.

Any GHE would have to be on top of/in addition to this. But if the adiabatic lapse rate alone nearly perfectly explains Venus's temperature distribution...

I found those readable enough. Thanks!

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