A pretty exhaustive story on global warming in the WaPo Sunday magazine. Entitled, “The Tempest“, it fills almost 8 full pages of the magazine, a leviathan of a piece. It’s written by Joel Achenbach, who has been alternately described as a “satirist” and an “explainer of he inexplicable.” Achenbach, with his own blog, the “Achenblog“, is not exactly the guy you want writing a serious piece on a serious subject. Still, he gets his bat on the ball a time or two, but his sarcasm shows through when talking about the many skeptics of global warming, the subject of his article. Here’s a link to the full article. Bill Gray, Professor Emeritus at Colorado State, who has spent his live studying climate change, is more or less the star of the piece. His skepticism is backed by science, of course. He has a great line in the article, noting that the computer models used by the global warming adherents can’t predict the weather in two weeks, much less in 100 years. Good point. Pat Michaels, climatologist at University of Virginia — and the state climatologist for Virginia — is also mentioned. Achenbach spends a fair amount of time with the folks over at CEI as well.
The bottom line is he spelled everyone’s name right (or so we think), and at least introduced the fact that there are scientists on the other side of the hysteria.
More importantly, Achenbach will be doing an on-line chat about this article at 11 a.m. today (EDT) at washingtonpost.com/liveonline. We hope you’ll log on, ask a few questions of our favorite satirist cum global warming expert, or just to say “bravo” for letting on that there are skeptics.
[UPDATE] Here’s a link to the transcript of the on-line chat. Makes for some interesting reading.
November 30th, 2006 on 3:19 pm
A missed vector.
If you lay out a diagram of the gravitational forces at work within earth you findââ¬âhorizontal forces and a vertical force. But, horizontal forces did not receive earlier consideration; because earth scientists thought Sir Isaac Newton had calculated the gravitational forces at work within the earth and found horizontal forces cancel each other out.
Newton never calculated gravitational conditions within the earth. He confined his work to the flight of cannon balls and orbits of satellites. He sidelined horizontal gravitational forces because they had no effect on orbiting objects. This led to a misunderstanding that caused earth scientists, who were trying to determine earthââ¬â¢s moment of inertia to identify the vertical gravitational force as the only force needed to be overcome by the outward push of earthââ¬â¢s rotation to cause her to flatten. Subsequently, they concluded that earthââ¬â¢s low moment of inertia requires the bulk of her mass to be located in her core. Thus, they abandoned the cold-core model for a hot-core modelââ¬âwherein heavy materials sink deep into her molten coreââ¬âdriven there by the pull of vertical gravity.
Gravity is a strange phenomenaââ¬âit always pulls. Earthââ¬â¢s gravity pulls the moon toward earth with the same amount of force that moonââ¬â¢s gravity pulls the earth toward the moon. It is an elastic force that can best be visualized as an invisible rubber cord pulling equally on the two bodies in question. Since it is an elastic force, it can never be cancelled out by another elastic force (balanced, but never cancelled out).
Applying gravityââ¬â¢s elastic nature to gram masses inside the earth, suggests gravityââ¬â¢s horizontal forces work in a manner similar to the pull exerted by molecules in the skin of a rubber balloon. It seemed reasonable then that the strength of pull (packing effect) by a gram mass at any depth within an orb would be obtained by rerunning Newtonââ¬â¢s calculations that were used to show that an orbââ¬â¢s total mass can be considered to be located at the orbââ¬â¢s centerââ¬âa very tedious trigonometric calculation.
While calculating the gravitational pulls on gram masses located at various depths within an earth model of constant density, an interesting relationship popped up. At all depths, the absolute value of vertical gravity plus the absolute value of horizontal gravity equals twice the absolute value of vertical gravity on the orbââ¬â¢s surface. This means that the surface of the earth has more than one gravitational force that must be overcome before her outward push will cause the earth to flatten. The determining component in the flattening equation is: the equatorial ratio of her outward push to her gravitational pull. That ratio must be modified to include the packing effect of horizontal pulls. Since vertical and horizontal gravities are of equal strength in the earthââ¬â¢s surface, the vertical gravitational pull of gravity at the earthââ¬â¢s equator can be doubled to account for the packing effect of horizontal pulls. Doubling that force changes the value of earthââ¬â¢s moment of inertia to allow the location of the bulk of her mass in her bonded shells. Hence, a condensed, cold-core model of the earthââ¬â¢s interior is not only feasible, but is physically and mathematically acceptable. Since a cold-core model, with a hydrogen crystal in its core, evolves a natural heat pump cycle of Ice Ages followed by warming periods; we can conclude that we are not responsible for global warming.
At the risk of violating the no commercial rule, I am providing a personal web space that gives the details of my calculations: http://members.cox.net/nchristianson3/part0.ppt
June 11th, 2006 on 5:51 pm
I’m sorry I gave the wrong address for my web post. It should be http://members.cox.net/nchristianson3/Newton.ppt
or http://members.cox.net/nchristianson4/Ancients.ppt
June 11th, 2006 on 5:39 pm
ARE WE RESPONSIBLE FOR GLOBAL WARMING? It all depends on which model of Earth’s cross section you use; the current hot-core model or the ancient cold-core model. The cold-core model was taught for over 5000 years, until it was replaced by the hot-core model. I believe the cold-core model has scientific merit and point that out in my web post at: http://members.cox.net/nchristianson3/Ancients
May 30th, 2006 on 7:38 pm
So, did you read the article? It wasn’t exactly kind to the skeptics – some of whom aren’t even skeptics anymore like Pat Michaels. My favorite part is when Prof. Gray compares Al Gore to Hitler – now there’s a way to convince people you’re credible! I guess Goodwin’s law applies off the internet as well.