Short version

Short version
Water vapor is a gas, a GHG. Always present in the atmosphere.
It is the largest GHG by a considerable margin
Other GHG, chief among which is of course CO2 , are considered as a forcing.
H20 , as a GHG is therefore also a forcing.
Has to be, variable, because it varies a lot more with temperature and pressure, but nonetheless a forcing while there are any molecules in the atmosphere.
It is always resident in the atmosphere at its saturation level for that temperature and pressure.

“And what do you think would happen on Earth if there were no non-condensing GHGs, chief among which is of course CO2?”

So many earth’s to choose from.

Which one would Tony Banton care to use?
Let us take the view that it is the earth as it is now with the unreal assumption that no CO2, Methane and the other minute trace GHG are available or possible. A lifeless* rock with lots of water and Oxygen and Nitrogen. No life or possibility of life like we know it. Unreal.

But this is science. No GHG , no life but atmospheric temperatures.
Life removed, we have a rocky silicon and iron planet with oceans atmosphere and a heat source the sun.
Might be a bit more in the Zeke knowledge range now.

We would have the same planet, the same atmosphere, and the same seas.
The temperature of the world would be the same at the TOA .
Energy in equals energy out.

The atmosphere would be hotter during the day under the sun and colder at night with a marked range of extremes.
More of the earth would be covered with ice starting from the north /south boundaries where the temperature is always below zero.
The average temperature, thanks chief, on a slowly rotating planet like this, would be more or less the same as today.

Long term there would be drastic changes as the compounds would have to find new ways to achieve stability.

*A lifeless rock Tony as basically it would have to be carbon free to be CO2 free.

Alarmists use two false arguments to claim that water vapor is not a forcing.
Your argument.
The first is that water vapor does not have a residence in the atmosphere because it rains.
The falsity here is that rain does not remove water from the atmosphere. It just removes excess water for that temperature and pressure.
T
The second is that without CO2 forcing all the water in the world would remain as ice and that CO2 was necessary to allow water vapor to get into the atmosphere.
The point is that the earth has come from a hotter to a cooler planet and the water vapor was already in the atmosphere when the earth was much warmer. Pulling the coming out of an Ice age trick does not work either. A drop of 10-12 C could never freeze all the water in the world.
The claim that it was well below zero without an atmosphere does not work either. If one had water on the moon it would be ice on the dark side and steam on the sunny side at well over 100 C. The same argument applies to water on the Earth. Wherever the sun was water would heat up, go into the atmosphere and then exert its GHG effect.

David Appell | September 3, 2021 at 1:34 pm | Reply

angech wrote: The claim that it was well below zero without an atmosphere does not work either.

Without an atmosphere?? What relevance does that have to a discussion of water vapor?

angech | September 3, 2021 at 1:15 am | Reply

David
Short version Water vapor is a gas, a GHG. Always present in the atmosphere.
Water is therefore a GHG just like methane and CO2.
You consider them to be forcing so by your own logic H2O is also a forcing.

ATTP

ATTP “I actually don’t have much of a problem with this. I don’t think we should rewrite history, but I don’t see any real reason to laud people who did things that, today, would be regarded as objectionable.”

I don’t think we should rewrite history, but …. I do.
An interesting discussion up blog with an inevitable conclusion.
One does not have to rewrite history when we continually repeat it.
Thank you for putting up the clip.
A bit like reading the book then seeing the film.
I was not even close in my assumptions.

black swan

The second part of the talk will be on understanding probability also at the edges.
The Black Swan Event refers to those exceedingly unlikely events that somehow seem to occur all the time.
Nasim Taleb wrote a book on what they are and how to cope with them. The Black Swan is a book on the occurrence of rare or unexpected events.
It is so named because the existence of a black swan was speculated on in the Northern Hemisphere.
None were ever seen and it was thought they could not exist.
Until Europeans arrived in Western Australia.

There are a lot of rare events that have occurred through history. The existence of Tsunamis was another.
Although well documented in medieval Japan such events were virtually unheard of in Europe.
Two reasons , the lack of as much volcanic activity and the utter destruction wreaked when such an event occurred as in Sicily in the early 1900’s.
Asteroid impact is another.
Extremely remote as a possibility the Gulf of Mexico event was thought to have nearly wiped out life on earth.
Volcanic eruptions such as Pompeii and Krakatoa caused massive local damage and in the latter case had effects around the world.

Disasters figure in our literature, such as the great flood in the Bible .
Man made weapons of destruction such as Hiroshima are another that was never predicted.
Plagues and Pestilence. The potato Famine. The invasion by Genghis Khan.

As do the mysteries of life.
None more so than the origin of the universe and the possible existence of god.
Neither of these can lay claim to being an expected or repeatable phenomenon.

Black Swan events are by their very nature unpredictable, like the great stock market collapse.
They are theoretically extremely rare.
But they happen much more frequently than people expect and with sometimes devastating consequences.
As such they form part of the rich tapestry of prediction and possibility.

Questions
Why do rare events seem to occur frequently.
The answer to this lies in the fact that rare events in any one particular field are rare but there are many ,
many fields and there are many different types of rare event.
If we lump all the individual rare events of different types together it becomes almost commonplace to have a rare event somewhere in the world every day.
We notice the rare events because they stand out so dramatically above the background noise that they get our full attention, even though there are millions of normal things happening.

I like to quote the American Professor Feynman, one of those who helped invent the Atomic Bomb.
Speaking to a class like this he said I noticed a car in the car park today with the number plate ARN996.
There is probably only one like that in Australia. How unusual and exciting was it that I should see that number plate today.
The point he was making is that every event, every one of us is unique in our own special way.
A rare event is just like every other event. It has a small but finite chance of happening and today might just be your lucky day.
The fact that it happens out of kilter with our expectations is no reason for it not to happen.
The point is that a lot of us take results that stand out as being noteworthy without realising that statistically there may not be anything special about them at all.
The example he gave was of a thousand American companies that managed stock portfolios. Every year the hundred best ones are listed. The following year ten are listed and the next year 2.
Which one should you choose to invest with?
Statistically one of them has made it purely on the luck of the draw.
Statistically both of them might have made it by luck alone.
Yet the impression left is that these two gurus are astute knowledgeable traders able to out see and outperform their peers.
This is a form of bias that attracts our minds.
We reward results that might reward us without paying due attention to the reasons behind the result.
The Black swan event here is often a mirage.

Worse it carries over to a lot of events that happen in our daily lives.
Our Dentists, Our doctors, our beauticians.
Are they the best or did they just get lucky somewhere along the line at school?
True greatness resides in more than just a few good results, outstanding though they may be.

In deference to financial issues, shares and stockmarkets he offers this prescient advice.
You cannot avoid making bad, or goo decisions but bad outcomes trouble you a lot more than good ones.

Plan a little for contingencies and hard times.
Back your feelings and mood but do not put the house on any or several events.
Keep a little powder dry and ready for the bad times when they come.

The moral statistically is in another sense.
We tend to look for patterns in data and data interpretation.
Expecting it to be there.

Recipes in Italian

Today I am going to translate a description of making my favourite Tomato soup into Italian
So lets make some piping hot Heinz Big Red Tomato Soup right now.
I take a of tomato soup.
Open it by pulling on the ring tab.
Then I pour it into a saucepan and put it on moderate heat.
I add a tin of warm water stirring slowly.
When it is warm enough I add a little butter, then pour it into two bowls.
I add a little parsley and a small dash of milk

Cosi proprio adesso facciamo una casseruola di zuppa di pomodoro, Heinz zuppa di grande pomodoro rosso.
Prendo una lattina di zuppa di pomodoro.
Aprilo tirando l’anello.
Poi lo verso in una casseruola e lo metto a fuoco moderato
Aggiungo una lattina di acqua tiepida mescolando lentamente
Quando è abbastanza caldo aggiungo un po ‘di burro, poi lo verso in due ciotole.
Aggiungo un po ‘di prezzemolo e un goccio di latte

Interesting
Right now or already can be translated in many ways depending on the mood of the sentence.
Gia,adesso, proprio adesso, in questo momento.
So can be Cosi or Quindi.
The word for saucepan is a lot more difficult than I thought, una casseruola.

The Nature of Time.

Before you go to Darwin, could you please compose a paragraph for the newsletter on your next talk about The Nature of Time.

The nature of time is that the proper time will disappear into the past before you know it, unless you travel to Darwin at the speed of light. Time flies like an arrow!


The nature of time discusses the most important dimension we are able to perceive, the aptly named 4th dimension.
While seemingly simple to those of us stuck in it, it is actually a lot more complex.
Understanding it better is what has led us to the next scientific world , that of quantum mechanics.
This will be a light hearted look into the window of the physics of the future.

As Allan wrote time is an arrow.
It allows us to fit events that happen to us into the past, present and future.
What can we say about time generally?
[audience for insight]. Might find some new ideas here.
Comments. which where when why what how and who. are good questions for any scientist.

1. Time is perception, you cannot separate the two. how
2. Time is a severely local occurrence and current occurrence [when- now]. [where]
3. It is an observable but not repeatable phenomenon [cue Omar Kyam
“The moving hand writes and having written moves on.”] perception
4. Time seems to go only in one direction, from the past to the future.
often called entropy or decay and strangely related to heat or energy.

5. It describes rates of change between objects leading to the concepts of speed and mass.
Indeed this is often how it is measured. rate of change what
6. Events that recur regularly enable us to measure it by the frequency of how often they occur compared to other events.
But this is of course at our scale and with our human perception. [measurable]

5. We can discuss time at a human body level.
How many breathes we normally take in a minute.
How fast our pulse is in a minute.How many steps we can take in a minute.And we do.
These events occur to objects at a human speed and size.

Yet if we move up just a few scales or down a few scales time seems to change dramatically.
Objects at an atomic level move extremely rapidly in time, albeit over minute distances.
A computer can go through a hundred million actions during 1 heart beat. Far faster than the human mind can observe.
A star in the Sky will still be in the same position relative to most of the other visible stars during a human lifetime.
Yet this is all relative to our human sense of proportion.
Once we go either way far enough we find that time is not the same at other scales as it is at ours.
At one end we have the quantum effect. We can no longer predict whee and when an observable event will happen.
At the other end we can see our distant past but have no idea of the current state of objects far away.

2. A digression on local time
Time is measured by local phenomenon and events around us on the earth.
The initial concept was of day and night representing the 24 hour rotation around the earth.
The passage of the sun overhead throwing shadows that increased and decreased led to the sundial and a division into a 12 hour day [and assumed night].
Hour glasses of sand then enabled the hour to be broken into minutes and the minutes into seconds.
Clocks were a late invention 1500s? that enabled even more rapid and accurate measurement until we had the stopwatches of today with hundredths of a second.
Now time can be measured by the breakdown or radioactive caesium atoms, almost a true atomic scale.

At the same time physical properties were slowly being explored. The three dimensions classically are length, width and height.
Typically referred to as space.
If one were to use vectors for direction I would actually think there are 6 such dimensions as everything goes in a mirror direction [the other way] as well.
Time runs with vectors [or vice versa] and again always one way.
Mass and Gravity and electricity also exist but are not part of the four dimensions other than existing in them.
Gravity itself, but not mass, is actually a byproduct of time and space that does not exist as a real force even though we are held to the floor here by it.

The use of dimensions to describe nature is fraught.
We all have a basic understanding of what the first three are in a sense of measurement, and direction.
Time however lacks both measurable length and solidity.

It is all around us and part of us but untouchable.
We can only observe it through its effects on us and other objects.
That is why it is not included in the 3 dimensions.
Yet other things are measurable and palpable but undefinable.The jolt of electricity.
The sudden pull of a magnet and the feeling of mass from soft and squidgy or a breath of air to dense and impenetrable.
This raises the questions of are there other dimensions connected in some way to these other quantities.

* How many dimensions are there? Theoretically infinite
Practically how many of them exist that we may be able to detect in some way.Here is where maths and physics interconnect.
The multidimensional lobby invented string theory where the different dimensions, acting on mathematical principles, interact with each other.
Amazingly there are mathematical predictions and models which suggest it may be real.
Sub atomic particles [in name only] have spins and vectors positive and negative charges, matter and antimatter which follow these rules.
I would like to point out this interesting observation. A 2D creature can never directly see a 3D creature.
We can design cubes in the fourth dimension and yet are unable to represent them in 3D space.
Yet we can see both 3D and 2D in our minds and analyze them.This ability to perceive both space and time by necessity implies
that thought, the mind, is actually working in a 5th Dimension with 4D representation.

Time travel.
There is a simple way for observation to go back in time. Due to the marvels of video cameras we can rewind and replay past sequences.
The egg falling and breaking always breaks the same way.Yet always unscrambles perfectly on rewind.
No two eggs will break in exactly the same way.
This process of action going in one direction only is the definition of time passing.
There is an interesting notion of parallel worlds where every event can spiral off in a new pathway for ever.
Like the Sliding Doors film but on an unimaginable continued eternal program.
This would be a case of different time events as well.Ripples in time.
If it is feasible and if it is happening it would lead to changes that would most likely mean that it was impossible or totally probable.
Let me know if you ever find out so I can adjust the glitch.

Computer worlds or Sims.Another infinite mirrors paradox.
If it is possible then we must be living in a Sim.
Like Neo in the film.And here the concept of time takes on a new meaning A computer program can be paused [stopping time].
Rewound [Going back in time].And even reformatted [Changing the past] so the egg does not drop.
As you can see having proved it is impossible we can also prove that it is real. The definition of a Quantum state.

Now to try to achieve what Professor Hawking could not.
A simple explanation of time and relativity.
The laws of physics are invariant in all frames of reference
Postulate 1: The laws of physics must have the same form in all inertial frames of reference.
Postulate 2: The speed of light through a vacuum is constant, regardless of the motion of the source or observer.
Forget the clocks running at different speeds.
The person going into space at near light speed returning young while everyone else is getting old.
For all practical purposes time and space actually work together.
What effects them is the presence of mass and motion
Mass can only exist if it has dimensions in both time and space.
Time and space can only exist where mass is present.
If a mass moves away from another mass [speed] it develops more mass [extra energy counted as mass] and becomes shortened[like a blue shift.
This is known as
As masses move apart [distance] time speeds up. As they move together it slows down.
If they move at the same speed, in the same vicinity they come closer to having the same time.
This is being close or relative to each other. Hence the theory of relativity.
The bigger a mass is the more it both slows and distorts time space near it.
Time passes faster atop a mountain than at sea level due to the mass of the earth.

Done!

Unusual examples.

Strange but true .
If we look at just the sun and the moon going through space together with no other planets or objects.
Just the two of them. At the same distance apart.
what can we say about them and their movement and forces?
1. The earth is rotating about the sun? ie in orbit
2. the sun is rotating about the earth? ie in orbit
3. The earth is also spinning in its rotation about the sun?
4. The sun is spinning in its rotation about the earth.
5. The two objects will crash into each other due to gravity?
6 The two objects will go in different directions but come back to each other?
7. The two objects will go in different directions and never return?
8. The two objects will come back together at some indeterminate time if they last long enough.
9. the earth has less mass than the sun.
10 . the sun has less mass than the earth.
11 They are both traveling through space in a straight line?
12. They are both traveling through space and time in a straight line?
13. They both are moving?
14. They both are not moving?
15. If they are both not moving do they have any velocity?

According to Newton an object moving through a direction in space will continue to move in a straight line unless acted upon by a force.
Hence both the sun and the moon must be moving in straight lines. [If they are moving.]
So how does the earth go around the sun if it is moving in a straight line?
The answer is that the volume of space and time that the earth is moving in is altered.
Due to both the mass of the earth and the sun on the space time continuum.
As an independent and unrelated observer we see the earth appear to orbit the sun.
To some one on the earth they are traveling in a straight line through their time space volume.
The line however is bent mathematically both in direction and time.
Continually changing with the mass effect.

If I can show a video of the famous trampoline example.
It gives an idea in 3D of what is actually happening in 4D which are minds are unable to visualize.On a flat surface the ball will just roll across and off the trampoline.
With the mass distortion of the bowling ball to the surface the other ball goes into a circular orbit.
Here the forces are friction and resistance from the altered trampoline surface.
In 4D the effect is the same without any force.

Philosophy, Heavy stuff.
Physics and maths describe effects which we perceive.
We can see a ball traveling through the air, estimate its path. Feel its impact on our fingers and hear its impact with out ears.
Yet virtually everything that we use to describe the mechanics can be broken down into a simple binary code of dots and dashes.
We do not need the ball to exist to describe time, length, height, width volume acceleration on a computer printout.
The mind works on or in different levels or dimensions to that of the physical world.
It is in one sense outside of them or inside of them to be able to perceive them which it is able to do for want of a better word by our senses.
We cannot find an analogy to to think of or explain perception other than that we know that we do it.

Time is a part of of our ability of perception.
We can describe it mechanically in terms of changes in other objects that we perceive.
Our perception depends on time passing and going in one direction.
We are able to augment our limited human senses with other devices that the world, just like a Road runner cartoon, supplies when the time is right.
We have a much better understanding of the codes that describe our physical world.
Yet like a mobius band or a blind person reading braille we can only go around in the meaning of the code.
Not understanding how or why it is written.

When discussing time we are discussing its nature and attributes in the physical or real world.
When we get down to the fine print there appear to be inconsistencies.
This is due to the Brownian motion effect. Our inability to be able to see the actual interactions without affecting them in our attempts to do so [microscopically]
or to be able to act at all on the macroscopic level.
We also lack the ability to tie concepts of mass and energy and electricity and magnetism together in a satisfactory way.
Quantum theory describes mathematics in 4th, 5th and higher dimensions.
If such concepts exist mathematically . They do.
Then giving mass and energy motion and dimensions demands that they exist at higher levels and that the parts visible in our dimension
have other qualities in the other dimensions.
Which they do.
Hence the power of the atom and the incredible forces bound up in tiny rotating and moving particles.

Rocket science

‘Time is elastic’: Why time passes faster atop a mountain than at sea level Place one clock at the top of a mountain. Place another on the beach. Eventually, you’ll see that each clock tells a different time. Why? Time moves slower as you get closer to Earth, because, as Einstein posited in his theory of general relativity, the gravity of a large mass, like Earth, warps the space and time around it.

Scientists first observed this “time dilation” effect on the cosmic scale, such as when a star passes near a black hole. Then, in 2010, researchers observed the same effect on a much smaller scale, using two extremely precise atomic clocks, one placed 33 centimeters higher than the other. Again, time moved slower for the clock closer to Earth.

1 and 2 Neither the Sun nor the Earth rotate about the other.
Explanation: ? Both the Sun and the Earth orbit around the centre of mass of the solar system which is known as the solar system barycentre.
Imagine two donut-shaped spaceships meeting in deep space. Further, suppose that when a passenger in ship A looks out the window, they see ship B rotating clockwise. That means that when a passenger in B looks out the window, they see ship A rotating clockwise as well (hold up your two hands and try it!).
From pure kinematics, we can’t say “ship A is really rotating, and ship B is really stationary”, nor the opposite. The two descriptions, one with A rotating and the other with B, are equivalent. (We could also say they are both rotating a partial amount.) All we know, from a pure kinematics point of view, is that the ships have some relative rotation.
However, physics does not agree that the rotation of the ships is purely relative. Passengers on the ships will feel artificial gravity. Perhaps ship A feels lots of artificial gravity and ship B feels none. Then we can say with definity that ship A is the one that’s really rotating. [depends on definition of gravity]
So motion in physics is not all relative. There is a set of reference frames, called inertial frames, that the universe somehow picks out as being special. Ships that have no angular velocity in these inertial frames feel no artificial gravity. These frames are all related to each other via the Poincare group.

For the Earth going around the sun and vice versa, yes, it is possible to describe the kinematics of the situation by saying that the Earth is stationary. However, when you do this, you’re no longer working in an inertial frame. Newton’s laws do not hold in a frame with the Earth stationary.

This was dramatically demonstrated for Earth’s rotation about its own axis by Foucalt’s pendulum, which showed inexplicable acceleration of the pendulum unless we take into account the fictitious forces induced by Earth’s rotation.

Similarly, if we believed the Earth was stationary and the sun orbited it, we’d be at a loss to explain the Sun’s motion, because it is extremely massive, but has no force on it large enough to make it orbit the Earth. At the same time, the Sun ought to be exerting a huge force on Earth, but Earth, being stationary, doesn’t move – another violation of Newton’s laws.

So, the reason we say that the Earth goes around the sun is that when we do that, we can calculate its orbit using only Newton’s laws.

you may describe the motion from any reference frame, including the geocentric one, assuming that you add the appropriate “fictitious” forces (centrifugal, Coriolis, and so on).

But the special property of the reference frame associated with the Sun – more precisely, with the barycenter (center of mass) of the Solar System, which is just a solar radius away from the Sun’s center – is that this system is inertial. It means that there are no centrifugal or other inertial forces. The equations of physics have a particularly simple form in the frame associated with the Sun.
M1d2/dt2x? =GM1M2(r? 1?r? 2)/r3+…
There are just simple inverse-squared-distance gravitational forces entering the equations for the acceleration. For other frames, e.g. the geocentric one, there are many other inertial/centrifugal “artificial” terms on the right hand side that can be eliminated by going to the more natural solar frame. In this sense, the heliocentric frame is more true.

ust one thing! One mustn’t neglect the non-idealities of the barycenter itself, which has a location in the Milky Way that biases it gravitationally at least. On the surface this is splitting hairs, but the greater point is that the idealness of any reference frame is also relative, and no “ultimate” frame exists.

[Wittgenstein] once greeted me with the question: “Why do people say that it was natural to think that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth turned on its axis?” I replied: “I suppose, because it looked as if the sun went round the earth.” “Well,” he asked, “what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth turned on its axis?”

A rotating frame is distinguishable from a nonrotating frame, without reference to anything external. This is true both in Newtonian mechanics and in special and general relativity. There are various ways to tell if you’re in a rotating frame, including a Foucault pendulum, a mechanical gyroscope, or a ring-laser gyro of the type used in commercial jets. The Foucault pendulum as a proof of the earth’s rotation dates back to about 1850. (Long before then, heliocentrism had become accepted among physicists on less definitive grounds, such as the fact that Kepler’s laws have a simple form in a heliocentric frame.) As a relativistic example, the analysis of the famous Hafele-Keating test of general relativity required the introduction of three effects: kinematic time dilation; gravitational time dilation; and the Sagnac effect, which is sensitive to the rotation of the earth.
From the perspective of general relativity, there is something wrong per se with using a geocentric point of view to describe the entire universe. While coordinate systems are global in Newtonian mechanics, they are local in general relativity. Coordinate systems are local charts on Riemannian space-time in general relativity. They do not have universal extent. A mandated geocentric perspective does not make sense in terms of general relativity.
4 In fact, our gaseous sun is divided into different zones and layers, with each of our host star’s regions moving at varying speeds. On average, the sun rotates on its axis once every 27 days. However, its equator spins the fastest and takes about 24 days to rotate, while the poles take more than 30 days. The inner parts of the sun also spin faster than the outer layers, according to NASA.
All told, the Sun loses a total of 4 million tons of mass via Einstein’s E = mc² with each new second that passes. This mass loss, however small it is, adds up over time. With each year that goes by, the loss of this mass due to nuclear fusion causes the Earth’s orbit to outspiral by 1.5 cm (0.6 inches) per year. Over its lifetime so far, the Sun has lost the equivalent of the mass of Saturn due to nuclear fusion.

The straight line is in 4 dimensional space!! Seeing the 4th dimension earth curves a light beam goes much straighter due to velocity.

Your question suggests that you are using the term “spacetime” to mean just “space”. “The Earth is travelling in a staight line in spacetime” is a way of expressing Newton’s First Law of motion in four dimensional spacetime. Actually, they only move in straight lines if spacetime is Euclidian. I.e. If the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. In general, they move on trajectories that represent the shortest distance in four dimensions. This will generally be a curved path because spacetime is curved. Specially near a black hole.

Italian

The problems with learning a new language.

1. Learning new words for the ones we use.

Most language is repetitive and very few words are used.
The spellchecks and interpretive functions on I phones prove this.
It is often stated that a basic vocabulary of 3000 words or 5000 or whatever is all that one needs but this is a woeful simplicity.
Being able to use these 3000 words successfully involves possible variations of up to several million variations in general usage.
Worse language is not merely words but shrugs, facial expressions, rapid arm and hand movements or slow ones.
A rising volume or inflection can indicate a question even though the same words are also a statement.
Worse is the use of idiom, a saying in Italian can have quite a different meaning to the same words in English.
Not to mention dialects.
Not to mention different tenses that are often skipped over in English.
Not to mention the changed sounds of all the vowels.

2. The inability to immerse fully in a new language setting such as living only with Italians speaking Italian in Italy.

3. The length of time we are able to devote to learning a new language.

Most children learn a language and are reasonably adept within 3 years of total immersion.
People who go overseas into a new culture can often become proficient within 6 months.

4 Self belief doubts

Often the task seems to big and daunting and people start to believe that they cannot learn and hence they stop trying mentally if not physically.
Language however is just a skill like juggling or music.
It takes a lot of time to develop a little proficiency but once a barrier is crossed speed picks up rapidly.
Just that there seem to be a lot of barriers.

Setting achievable and realistic goals
Aim for the stars and you might reach the moon.
A trite but practical way of saying ignore the barriers and go for as much as you can do.
You may surprise yourself.

1. practice.

There are many different ways.
Play an Italian song on your music source.
Look at the news in Italian for a couple of minutes.
Watch an Italian film with and without subtitles.
Bore your Italian friends to death by constantly trying out your newest phase [Actually this is not a good way].
But above all read.
Books, Newspapers, Dictionaries and Italian language dictionaries.
Finally take Italian lessons, with friends or in a group

2 Practice.
Did I already say that? ” L’ho già detto?”
Ask yourself every day while you are committed have I learnt a new word or expression?
Have I practiced an old word or expression?
Good luck! Or “In bocca al lupo”

3. Find an interest in part of the vocabulary and practice this in different ways until you become familiar with it.
One technique is looking for the English words that have the Italian word in them but not obviously.
An example is the word light or la luce or la lampada.
Here we see the word lamp which is now old fashioned. The luce though exists in other words
such as lucent [shining[ and translucent letting light through.

500.

Welcome everyone to 500 today.
It is one year since we first ran a series of 6 classes.
The classes are billed as teaching how to play but in practice most people were well aware of how to play the game/
The few newcomers to the game picked up the ideas very quickly.

Keeping this in mind the sessions will run in a similar format to the last time.
As you arrive please introduce yourselves to others and sit at an available table to partner up.
Pairs are able able to sit together as a partnership. Games will run within a 50 minute time frame.
Pairs will be asked to swap tables for the next round of 50 minutes.
Hopefully this will accommodate a 4.00 o’clock start and a 6.00 finish.

A short break will occur at the 50 minute mark, new players will be introduced to everyone.
A drinks and rest break of 5 minutes and a short period where questions can be asked on the game and some tactics will be taught.

As an aside house rules apply which can be clarified by the Director.
We try to stick as close to the original 500 format as much as possible.

Misere is a special part of the game where one tries to lose all the tricks.
It is useful but overused can detract from the fun of the game.
I would specifically ask no more than 2 misere bids per partnership per game.
Part of the game is also to get the bidding to go every round if possible.
To this end I would encourage the first person in every hand to make an opening bid of 6 spades unless they have a proper bid to make.
This encourages the less daring to get used to making bids.
The spade bidder is under no obligation to bid again or to have any points in their hand.

Tips and cautions.
Misere has to be bid only after a seven level bid has been made and cannot be made if the person making it has already passed.
Extra tricks can be saved by discarding a weak side suit completely.
[Ask at the halftime break!]
For the novices Spades is the lowest bid suit followed by clubs diamonds and hearts.
A completed bid of 10 hearts, 10 no trumps or open misere for a side with a non negative score wins the game.
Otherwise one can only pass 500 and win by making a successful bid, not by defeating an opponents contract.
If nobody is making a bid the Joker is probably in the kitty!

Have fun and see you next week as well.

BOM Adjustments

Climate Driver Update
Climate drivers in the Pacific, Indian and Southern oceans and the Tropics
2 February 2021
The 2020–21 La Niña has likely passed its peak, with all of the international climate models surveyed by the Bureau anticipating NINO3.4
will return to borderline or neutral values by mid-autumn.
Fascinating.
The graph shows 7, count them, Climate models.
BoM,CanSIPS,ECMWF,JMA,METEO,NOAA,UKMO.
A change from the 19/1/2021 Climate Driver Update which featured 8 international climate models.
Missing?
Only NASA.
Why? Surely not because NASA correctly predicted the moderate La Nina and had the temerity to predict
that it would keep going for at least 4 months
The opposite to BOM.
The sea surface temperature anomaly was predicted to go to -2.4 C for February, 2.6 C for March and 2.4 for April.
I am at a loss to fathom why they would drop the most highly respected data set, NASA after relying on it for years.
Perhaps someone could use the wayback machine on it.
I certainly feel they need to offer an explanation even if it is only a technical error.
It does seem a rather crude attempt to not publish data that disagrees with theirs.

ocp black swan

“What postmodernist relativism has wrought is, rather, something more insidious: by devaluing the concept of objective truth, it has undermined our own ability to combat objective untruths.”

We only know layers of truth at any one time.
When we go deeper into the layers we come across the paradox that our view which we thought was right is actually misplaced or wrong.

[As far as manipulation of the US election is concerned both sides do their best to manipulate results.]

I have found this at levels of science.
The atomic theory we were taught in school with electrons buzzing round a solid nucleus.
With chromosomal transfer of genetic traits, not that straight forward.
Physics itself, Newtonian physics was a truth, until it wasn’t.

So is there such a thing as objective Truth?
Only in a rigidly defined system which allows no exceptions.
As Bertrand Russell found out with mathematics, surely one of the most rigorous defined sciences there is no absolute truth.

I would say that the best we can do is have a [shudder] consensus on what is true until the inevitable OCP occurs.-
*An Outside Context Problem or OCP is a challenge utterly outside a given group’s (organisation, society, culture or civilisation) set of experience. Because an OCP is something that has never happened before, the end result is unpredictable.

viewpoint.

One of the most intriguing parts of the Climate debate is how people on both sides blindly follow some past concepts
and argue vehemently about others using precepts that may not be right.
There are many contrary things in Climate science that do notwork in the obvious way.
Today I wish to discuss the concept of World Temperature rises going up and down due to the effects of El Nino, La Nina.
Standard cause and effect.
The starting point to arguing whether these changes augment or distort Climate warming and as to whether there actually is
global warming or merely natural variation.

My contention is that neither El Nino or La Nina actually do anything.
They simply reflect where the heat currently is, they do not cause a temperature rise or fall.
Thus a La Nina actually reflects the fact that the earth’s sea and atmosphere is cooling.
An El Nino reflects that the earth’s sea and atmosphere is heating up.
In so doing there is a natural change in the temperatures of the oceans as they are part of the system gaining or losing energy,
not causing it to happen.

Where does that leave us?
For one it helps us to focus on the important changes in energy flux occurring to cause these variations in the earth’s temperature.
Which are not the observable phenomenon but the causes of the phenomenon.
Here is where the science knows what is happening but is curiously quiet on investigating it.

There are very few variables that actually count in determining temperature input and output on a daily basis.
The sun is the primary energy source.
The earth provides a steady and important minuscule backdrop of internal energy.
This varies depending on orbital position.
Radiation from all other areas in space is so much smaller again though not nil.

Perhaps someone could comment on gravitational forces and wave energy creation,
but if and what they are one presumes they are basically pretty constant.

That leaves changes in surface and atmospheric reflection which sum up as albedo changes.
Whether one is a believer or not the variation in temperatures is independent of the warming potential.
CO2 does not vary day by day enough to create temperature variations.

Water vapour and ice in the air in the form of clouds are the biggest variables in both GHG effect and albedo effect.
Here is where one of those seems obvious but is wrong factors comes into play.
El Nino is associated with increased global temperature.
At the same time El Nino is characterized by increased cloudiness at the equator.
La Nino is associated with colder temperatures but has much clearer skies at the equator.
There is the puzzle.
The more energy that hits the earth directly, the colder the atmosphere gets.
The less energy that gets through the more warm the atmosphere gets due to trapping of that lower energy in the atmosphere under the clouds,
warming both the air and sea.

Leaving that aside for the moment we could concentrate on the amount of water in the atmosphere.
Here the surprising fact is that this is almost invariant as well, at least it has much less fluctuation than most people think.
People who espouse the GHG theory do not like to admit this. The talk of the short residence time of water in the atmosphere
is a crutch to distract from the fact hat water is by far and away the greatest GHG by volume and is permanently in the air,
just like O2 CO2 and Nitrogen.
How does a fairly constant amount of water vapour in the atmosphere come to play a major role in the variability of the earth’s temperature?
The answer is in the amount of cloud formed by the water vapour and where and when it is formed.
This is one of the major areas that needs to be explored and documented more fully.
Cloud formation is seasonal, aerosol dependent and both ocean and atmospheric current dependent.
There may be other more exotic theories and practicalities in cloud formation but these are the main ones.

How does it work? Again counterintuitively.
The more clouds there are, the less actual energy reaches the earth’s surface but this lower amount of energy persists longer
and causes a higher atmospheric temperature than clear skies and no clouds.
When we talk about the temperature of the world increasing due to cloud formation or lack of
we are measuring the wrong parameter in terms of global warming.
The actual temperature changes are not related to the GHG effects of CO2 or water
but rather the amount of cloud induced warming of the lower atmosphere.

The actual warming due to CO2 increase is real and both known and unknown.
We know what the warming should be, usually expressed in terms of doubling of CO2.
But we do not know the nature of the feedbacks.
The simple positive feedback due to an increase in CO2 and water vapour in the atmosphere is countered by the effects of more cloud cover.
The height at which the cloud cover appears, The amount of actual energy that enters the system.
Which is lower due to increased albedo from the clouds, greening due to vegetation and lower if less ice is present.
Counter intuitively more albedo may lead to a higher atmospheric temperature.
While less albedo might lead to more energy returning to space and a lower temperature.
The opposite of that we naively expect.

How to sort out the conflicting ideas?
The first thing to realise is that Climate Change is
in some senses a zero sum game.
That is that any change which provokes an increase or decrease in temperature of the atmosphere is almost immediately countered by
an array of feedbacks that negate the increase.
Easy to say and easy to prove.
Any changes in forcing that could lead to a runaway GHG temperature increase has had the equivalent of 3 billion years to do so in.
And yet the hottest the globe has been able to reach in 3 billion years of trying is a mere 4 degrees higher than today and is quite compatible with life.
How do we know?
Because you are alive today and reading these words.
In other words it has never been able to get hot enough to wipe out life on this planet.

Is the reverse true?
Sadly not.
A lot of mechanisms exist that can decrease the temperature of the earth.
While water vapour increase heats the earth up [33 degrees] dust provides an increased albedo with no heat retentive properties.
Snowball earth has been a reality several times with life existing by virtue of underground life forms and Equatorial temperatures
still consistent with life.
The planet as a whole is cooling slightly but life will be able to continue to exist
in the nexus between the cold of space and the underground warmth of the plane for aeons.

The conundrum we are faced with today is that human activity is increasing the potential temperature of the earth slightly.
There are a lot of feedback mechanisms that in the past have averted any catastrophe of warming.
Warming overall is good for life, we are energy dependent depending on the sun
producing enough heat for plants to thrive and provide oxygen to keep us alive.
The chances of any harmful increase in temperature are remote.
Life just moves to the region which has the right temperature and enough of it to sustain it.

What is more important is recognizing the potential of human activity to produce short term deleterious effects on the planet.
This end is shared by warmists and skeptics alike though they both seem to deny it at times by their shortsightedness.
Some green measures are desired by everybody.
Less pollution for a start.
More care for our shrinking wild life.
As many curbs on human overpopulation as possible.

There is no excuse for abusing science and the scientific process in achieving this however.
No matter how much one wants to save the planet.
Ignoring the realities of Climate having many short term changes and long term variability in order to push a concept that
every change in the weather is due to CO2 increase is not noble.
When it fails, the consequences on trying to do something sensible about the planets problems will be much more difficult.
If it succeeds, by ignoring science and probability and frightening people, the type of world it will produce is not one that
is helpful.

One of the most intriguing parts of the Climate debate is how people on both sides blindly follow some past concepts and argue vehemently about others using precepts that may not be right.
There are many contrary things in Climate science that do notwork in the obvious way.
Today I wish to discuss the concept of World Temperature rises going up and down due to the effects of El Nino, La Nina.
Standard cause and effect.
The starting point to arguing whether these changes augment or distort Climate warming and as to whether there actually is global warming or merely natural variation.

My contention is that neither El Nino or La Nina actually do anything.
They simply reflect where the heat currently is, they do not cause a temperature rise or fall.
Thus a La Nina actually reflects the fact that the earth’s sea and atmosphere is cooling.
An El Nino reflects that the earth’s sea and atmosphere is heating up.
In so doing there is a natural change in the temperatures of the oceans as they are part of the system gaining or losing energy, not causing it to happen.

Where does that leave us?
For one it helps us to focus on the important changes in energy flux occurring to cause these variations in the earth’s temperature.
Which are not the observable phenomenon but the causes of the phenomenon.
Here is where the science knows what is happening but is curiously quiet on investigating it.

There are very few variables that actually count in determining temperature input and output on a daily basis.
The sun is the primary energy source.
The earth provides a steady and important minuscule backdrop of internal energy.
This varies depending on orbital position.
Radiation from all other areas in space is so much smaller again though not nil.

Perhaps someone could comment on gravitational forces and wave energy creation,
but if and what they are one presumes they are basically pretty constant.

That leaves changes in surface and atmospheric reflection which sum up as albedo changes.
Whether one is a believer or not the variation in temperatures is independent of the warming potential.
CO2 does not vary day by day enough to create temperature variations.

Water vapour and ice in the air in the form of clouds are the biggest variables in both GHG effect and albedo effect. Here is where one of those seems obvious but is wrong factors comes into play.
El Nino is associated with increased global temperature.
At the same time El Nino is characterized by increased cloudiness at the equator.
La Nino is associated with colder temperatures but has much clearer skies at the equator.
There is the puzzle.
The more energy that hits the earth directly, the colder the atmosphere gets.
The less energy that gets through the more warm the atmosphere gets due to trapping of that lower energy in the atmosphere under the clouds,
warming both the air and sea.

Leaving that aside for the moment we could concentrate on the amount of water in the atmosphere.
Here the surprising fact is that this is almost invariant as well, at least it has much less fluctuation than most people think.
People who espouse the GHG theory do not like to admit this. The talk of the short residence time of water in the atmosphere is a crutch to distract from the fact that water is by far and away the greatest GHG by volume and is permanently in the air,
just like O2, CO2 and Nitrogen.
How does a reasonably constant amount of water vapour in the atmosphere come to play a major role in the variability of the earth’s temperature?
The answer is in the amount of cloud formed by the water vapour and where and when it is formed.
This is one of the major areas that needs to be explored and documented more fully.
Cloud formation is seasonal, aerosol dependent and both ocean and atmospheric current dependent.
There may be other more exotic theories and practicalities in cloud formation but these are the main ones.

How does it work? Again counterintuitively.
The more clouds there are, the less actual energy reaches the earth’s surface but this lower amount of energy persists longer and causes a higher atmospheric temperature than clear skies and no clouds.
When we talk about the temperature of the world increasing due to cloud formation or lack of
we are measuring the wrong parameter in terms of global warming.
The actual temperature changes are not related to the GHG effects of CO2 or water
but rather the amount of cloud induced warming of the lower atmosphere.

The actual warming due to CO2 increase is real and both known and unknown.
We know what the warming should be, usually expressed in terms of doubling of CO2.
But we do not know the nature of the feedbacks.
The simple positive feedback due to an increase in CO2 and water vapour in the atmosphere is countered by the effects of more cloud cover.
The height at which the cloud cover appears, The amount of actual energy that enters the system.
Which is lower due to increased albedo from the clouds, greening due to vegetation and lower if less ice is present.
Counter intuitively more albedo may lead to a higher atmospheric temperature if it is due to clouds trapping IR.
While less albedo might lead to more energy returning to space and a lower temperature in a GHG environment without clouds of IR trapping GHG.
The opposite of that we naively expect.

How to sort out the conflicting ideas?
The first thing to realise is that Climate Change is in some senses a zero sum game.
That is that any change which provokes an increase or decrease in temperature of the atmosphere is almost immediately countered by an array of feedbacks that negate the increase.
Easy to say and easy to prove.
Any changes in forcing that could lead to a runaway GHG temperature increase has had the equivalent of 3 billion years to do so in.
And yet the hottest the globe has been able to reach in 3 billion years of trying is a mere 4 degrees higher than today and is quite compatible with life.
How do we know?
Because you are alive today and reading these words.
In other words it has never been able to get hot enough to wipe out life on this planet.

Is the reverse true? Sadly not.
A lot of mechanisms exist that can decrease the temperature of the earth.
While water vapour increase heats the earth up [33 degrees], dust provides an increased albedo with no heat retentive properties.
Snowball earth has been a reality several times with life existing by virtue of underground life forms and Equatorial temperatures still consistent with life.
The planet as a whole is cooling slightly but life will be able to continue to exist
in the nexus between the cold of space and the underground warmth of the plane for aeons.

The conundrum we are faced with today is that human activity is increasing the potential temperature of the earth slightly.
There are a lot of feedback mechanisms that in the past have averted any catastrophe of warming.
Warming overall is good for life, we are energy dependent depending on the sun
producing enough heat for plants to thrive and provide oxygen to keep us alive.
The chances of any harmful increase in temperature are remote.
Life just moves to the region which has the right temperature and enough of it to sustain it.

What is more important is recognizing the potential of human activity to produce short term deleterious effects on the planet.
This end is shared by warmists and skeptics alike though they both seem to deny it at times by their shortsightedness.
Some green measures are desired by everybody. Less pollution for a start.
More care for our shrinking wild life. As many curbs on human overpopulation as possible.

There is no excuse for abusing science and the scientific process in achieving this however.
No matter how much one wants to save the planet.
Ignoring the realities of Climate having many short term changes and long term variability in order to push a concept that every change in the weather is due to CO2 increase is not noble.
When it fails, the consequences on trying to do something sensible about the planets problems will be much more difficult.
If it succeeds, by ignoring science and probability and frightening people, the type of world it will produce is not one that is helpful.

The views expressed here are my own and are contestable.
I try to get the science right but acknowledge that some of the scientific comments here may be due to misunderstanding on my part.
Please correct them as soon as possible .

Sent in to WUWT but unlikely to be published Needs some work.