January 2014 - mathfun@mailman.xmission.com

[math-fun] carbon taxes
by Warren D Smith 02 Jan '14

02 Jan '14

To Mike Speciner & Ch. Greathouse -- suggest instead of complaining, you acquire more data and find out answer yourself. Cross-country comparisons like this are always problematic due to criticisms like those you said (since all countries differ, you never can get an exact apples-to-apples comparison, and there is always some way to speculate some other factor might have explained it...) but in the present case I certainly did not do the optimum job, and you can improve it, and I'd welcome you doing so instead of complaining. -- Warren D. Smith http://RangeVoting.org

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[math-fun] carbon taxes
by Warren D Smith 02 Jan '14

02 Jan '14

>>ES: Taxes won't reduce CO2 emissions, just raise the cost of energy. >--WDS: cross country comparisons refute you. >ES: Citation please. --well, as of Dec 2013, here are gasoline prices including taxes in various countries: http://www.eia.gov/countries/prices/gasolinewithtax.cfm http://www.kiplinger.com/article/cars/T009-C000-S001-gas-prices-around-the-… US$ per gallon, Nov 1996: Belg Fran Germ Ital Neth .UK. USA 3.95 3.93 4.07 3.89 4.32 3.20 1.27 US$ per gallon, Dec 2013: Belg Fran Germ Ital Neth .UK. USA Cana Turk 7.86 7.79 8.05 9.00 8.78 8.08 3.61 5.56 9.96 Saud Astl Chin Japa Braz Vene 0.61 5.41 4.54 6.62 5.98 0.08 Now compare with "Road sector gasoline fuel consumption per capita (kg of oil equivalent)" from http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.ROD.SGAS.PC 2009-2013: Belg Fran Germ Ital Neth .UK. USA Cana Turk 111 113 223 160 239 241 1108 901 28 Saud Astl Chin Japa Braz Vene 651 592 50 336 86 410 and Motor Vehicle count per 1000 people http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.VEH.NVEH.P3 2009-2013 Belg Fran Germ Ital Neth .UK. USA Cana Turk 559 580 572 679 527 519 797 607 155 Saud Astl Chin Japa Braz Vene .??. 695 58 591 .??. .??. What do we conclude from this comparison? Well, really, you want data over a 50-year span since it takes around 50 years for economies to readjust to energy prices. The USA should have had high carbon taxes for 50+ years, if only we'd had a brain. I think most of the Euro countries have had high taxes on this for that timespan, while the USA has had near zero by contrast. USA and European economies and pop.densities similar, so you can compare to see what effect that pricing had. Prices: USA lowest except for Saudi Arabia & Venezuela (where govt subsidizes, basically a negative tax). Turkey highest. Europe over 2X of USA prices. Canada, Japan & China: intermediate between Europe & USA. Consumption: USA highest. Turkey lowest. Motor vehicles: the high price countries consume less per vehicle and if economies comparable also have fewer vehicles. I haven't tried to be very careful about this, but it looks to me like if you make taxes doubling the price of gasoline, and give 50 years to adjust, then it is reasonably safe to say consumption will reduce to one-third or maybe even less. -- Warren D. Smith http://RangeVoting.org

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[math-fun] Another strong candidate for ignobel prize
by Warren D Smith 02 Jan '14

02 Jan '14

http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/pdf/1742-9994-10-80.pdf

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Re: [math-fun] How Do Greenhouses Work?
by Henry Baker 02 Jan '14

02 Jan '14

To a first approximation, greenhouses simply cut down on air movement, so warmed air doesn't escape. This is why covering plants at night to prevent frost works. Ditto for parkas, which keep warm air from escaping, and you can control the air exchange by controlling how loose/tight your collar is. There's lots of 'greenhouses' here in Santa Barbara County (home of flower growers, among other plants); almost all of them are covered in various kinds of plastic -- not because plastic is more (or less) effective, but because it is considerably lighter & cheaper. The major difference between plastic & glass isn't in the IR bands, but in the UV bands. Plastic is pretty good at filtering and/or downconverting UV, whereas glass tends to pass it through. Perhaps some of this downconverted UV light is converted into IR with plastic. The little bit of plastic in your car windshield still does a pretty good job of filtering out the UV. Back in the old days, only car windshields had to have the plastic, whereas the side windows didn't have it. You could tell how much UV came through each by how much bleaching action happened on the top of the dashboard v. the seat covers. At 12:00 PM 1/1/2014, Bill Gosper wrote: >WDS>You can (and I have) built a small greenhouse yourself, mine is made out >of wire, sheet plastic, and a wood frame. It works pretty well to keep the inside warm. >I forget but I think it keeps inside about 20F warmer than the outside on a sunny day. >The reason is the same -- plastic and glass both are pretty transparent to visible but opaque to IR. >----------- >This can't be right. The outbound, reradiated IR heats the plastic? >No matter how thin? Bounces off? >(There are hundreds of ridiculous diagrams in Google images depicting this.) >Claim: Greenhouses work just as well sheathed in material 100% transparent >to IR. They work because they are made of AIR! > >http://www2.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF8/817.html >--rwg

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[math-fun] Is this the Guinness record refraction index?
by Bill Gosper 01 Jan '14

01 Jan '14

WDS> It is estimated that heat produced in sun core takes 200K years to escape, http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1992ApJ...401..759M/0000760.000.html since the sun's gas is a thick layer of insulation that slows down radiative transfer.<WDS "The average velocity of the photon between the center and the inner edge of the convective zone is v = ... = .97 cm/s". ! Can someone save me researching what inhibits convection inside this zone? --rwg

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[math-fun] Elementary climate change explanations?
by Warren D Smith 01 Jan '14

01 Jan '14

>E Salamin: CO2 has a very strong absorption band around 15 μm from the bending mode. CO2 and H2O have complementary absorption bands, so their effects are additive. --ok, good. And here's somebody trying to make pictures: http://clivebest.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/595px-atmospheric_tran… http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/image71.gif >There's no H2O left in the atmosphere of Venus. UV radiation breaks up the H2O, the hydrogen is lost into space, and the oxygen is too reactive to remain. --right again. Venus 95% CO2, H2O is only 20 ppm. But whatever. Point is, there is big greenhouse effect on Venus. >Nuclear --I think Nuclear and breeder rectors have to become very important. It will happen. The problem is, when it does, there will be many years less research that there should have been. >Carbon taxes without nuclear is pretty useless. --if carbon taxes, then nuclear more attractive, hence will happen more. (Duh.) Also, other things less attractive, like long automobile commutes, uninsulated houses. >Taxes won't reduce CO2 emissions, just raise the cost of energy. --cross country comparisons refute you. >Gosper: Greenhouses work just as well sheathed in material 100% transparent to IR. They work because they are made of AIR! http://www2.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF8/817.html --interesting. Probably even true, now I think about it. The major heat loss mechanism is probably convection not IR radiation hence the sheeting cuts off the convection, and voila. Anyway, the larger point is: insulation. Sunlight comes in, but heat has more trouble getting out, so hotter inside. Whether the insulation works by cutting off convection, conduction, or radiation, still get the same heating effect. In the case of greenhouses with glass, all 3 are cut off, especially with 2-pane thermal glass insulated black-interior "hot boxes," which can really get hot inside.

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[math-fun] Elementary climate change explanations?
by Warren D Smith 01 Jan '14

01 Jan '14

> Bill Gosper: > Warren, can you point me at an explanation how raising CO2 raises temps? > > I think both sides agree that only ~10 meters of air is effectively opaque > to the (IR) CO2 absorption frequencies, so the argument must be subtle. --I don't agree, that far as I know is nonsense. > E.g., if the opacity claim is true, then why don't the CO2 notches in > the spectrum http://i.stack.imgur.com/lfbu9.png clip at 0? Reradiation? > Is the Nature article claiming that more CO2 will somehow deepen these > notches? --the usual explanation is, sunlight at temp=5800K falls to earth. The amount hitting earth is essentially unaffected by CO2. Then earth reradiates the same amount of energy as it received, but now using photons at 288K. Your spectrum picture shows sunlight is mainly "visible" say 500nm. Meanwhile the earth in trying to lose heat is mainly in the IR at say 9000 nm = 0.9 micron. (This is way off the right side of your picture, which hence for this purpose is pretty useless.) This attempt by the Earth to lose heat is frustrated by CO2 which is opaque to some of those photons. E.g. CO2 has big absorption bands at about 2, 3, and especially at 10-11 microns. As a result of this frustration, the earth in order to lose the same amount of heat as it receives, has to get a little hotter. Hence: more CO2 causes a "greenhouse" effect causing Earth surface to get a higher steady state temperature. This already was known by the late 1800s when CO2 and other absorption spectra were measured. You can (and I have) built a small greenhouse yourself, mine is made out of wire, sheet plastic, and a wood frame. It works pretty well to keep the inside warm. I forget but I think it keeps inside about 20F warmer than the outside on a sunny day. The reason is the same -- plastic and glass both are pretty transparent to visible but opaque to IR. The greenhouse effect is very important in determining planet temperatures. Venus has a huge atmosphere (about 90 times Earth's) containing mostly CO2 and water vapor, and as a result its surface is extremely hot, about 740K. If Venus had the same atmosphere as Earth, then its temp would only have been about 1.18 times Earth's and would be livable. The Earth's moon (with no atmosphere) has mean surface temp about 200K, well below Earth's 288K. If moon had same atmosphere as Earth its temp would be the same. > And why aren't those huge H2O notches surrounded by error fuzz, reflecting > the variability of humidity? Is this variability only near the surface? --H2O does cause a lot of noise. In fact the weather changes day to day, in case you did not notice. However over large times and large geographic areas, the noise averages out. > And how the heck many ppm was the "prehuman" level? --the pre-human level of CO2 is known from ice core measurements (old air trapped in bubbles in old ice in antarctica and mountain glaciers). In fact here is a plot of CO2 level versus time going back to 400 Kyr ago from Vostok ice cores: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/vostok.co2.gif the present day level is about 400 ppm, but the Vostok levels plotted were 180-300. --also temperature vs time records are available too based on various "historic thermometers" e.g. based on isotope ratios. They track the CO2 levels pretty well http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record > What is the optimal climate? If warming is bad, is cooling good? Or is > all change bad? --I do not know these answers. But I think a change this large and this fast (+4C in 100 years), will be pretty devastating. It should yield large sea level rise and large ecological effects. We're adapted to the old earth. Re-adapting will be painful. Steven Sherwood (an author of latest sim study) was quoted in the Guardian "[the 4C rise] would likely be catastrophic rather than simply dangerous. It would make life difficult, if not impossible, in much of the tropics, and would guarantee the eventual melting of the Greenland ice sheet and some of the Antarctic ice sheet", with sea levels rising by many meters as a result. > The major thorn in the side of warming proponents is probably > http://www.jpands.org/vol12no3/robinson600.pdf . --Art Robinson is a nut. http://nelsnewday.wordpress.com/2013/09/14/oregons-own-wacko-art-robinson/ There's books about climate change deniers which prominently feature him and describe some of the weird aspects of his so-called career and funding sources. --I think the real thorns are (or should be) the questions of: What will climate change do? How much is its economic impact versus impact of climate protecting moves? I do not see many answers to those. Nor do I see much rationality from our so-called leaders, such as canceling USA breeder reactor research was a huge mistake. Not implementing large carbon taxes, is another huge mistake. These two mistakes have been ongoing for about 30+ years. If Art Robinson truly were the most important thorn in the side of "warming proponents" (whatever that meant), they would have already totally won. I do not think it is tenable to deny CO2-caused climate change. Too much evidence. It is, however, entirely feasible to influence the US congress to do nothing. One of the more important criticisms was the global temperature record over the last 150 years or so was called into question based on "urban heat island" effect, but a recent re-study by skeptic Richard Muller to examine this question concluded the dataset was fine and the compensation methods they'd been using, worked well.

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[math-fun] Earth without atmosphere
by Warren D Smith 01 Jan '14

01 Jan '14

You can get a decent idea of that by considering the conditions at 16 km altitude, i.e. above exactly 90% of the atmosphere: AvgTemp = 217 Kelvin = -56 celsius = -70 Fahrenheit This is a 71 Kelvin drop versus average temp. at 0 altitude; the greenhouse effect is the main reason. I think, as RWG pointed out, the "greenhouse effect" is poor nomenclature since greenhouses don't actually work that way, so this just deceives suckers like me. Better name would be the "atmospheric insulation effect." More insulation with same heating power ==> you get hotter, that is all it is.

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[math-fun] Art Robinson, nut
by Warren D Smith 01 Jan '14

01 Jan '14

>> The major thorn in the side of warming proponents is probably >> http://www.jpands.org/vol12no3/robinson600.pdf . > --Art Robinson is a nut. --actually, just examining this 2007 climate-denial paper cited by Gosper, I observe: 1. It is by ARTHUR B. ROBINSON, NOAH E. ROBINSON, and WILLIE SOON all from "Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine," [OISM] 2251 Dick George Road, Cave Junction, Oregon 97523. http://www.oism.org None of these 3 authors have any training in climate science. OISM describes itself as "a small research institute" that studies "biochemistry, diagnostic medicine, nutrition, preventive medicine and the molecular biology of aging" headed by Arthur B. Robinson. Unlike most nonprofits, OSIM does not disclose its funding sources via, e.g. 1099 forms on its website. OISM also markets a home-schooling kit for "parents concerned about socialism in the public schools" and publishes books on how to survive nuclear war. It did "the Petition Project" obtaining the signatures of more than 31,000 American scientists opposed, on scientific grounds, to the hypothesis of "human-caused global warming": http://www.oism.org/pproject/ http://www.petitionproject.org/ Unfortunately according to the latter only 9029 of these "scientists" have PhDs, which seems a remarkably small percentage. Further, of those fewer than 50 were in climate science fields. OISM's 8 faculty members are currently (2013) listed as 1 Martin D. Kamen 2 R. Bruce Merrifield 3 Fred Westall 4 Carl Boehme 5 Jane Orient 6 Arthur B. Robinson 7 Noah E. Robinson. 8 Zachary W. Robinson Of these (1) died in 2002 after long residence in CA nursing home. (2) died in 2006 in NJ. (3) dunno about him. (4) Actually lives in Boise Idaho. (5) actually lives in Tucson AZ. (7,8) both sons of ABR. 2. It is published in Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 12,3 (2007) 79-90 which would seem an odd venue for climate science. The "Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons" is not listed in major academic literature databases such as MEDLINE/PubMed nor the Web of Science. The U.S. National Library of Medicine declined repeated requests from AAPS to index the journal, citing unspecified concerns. It is published by The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) a politically conservative non-profit association founded in 1943 to "fight socialized medicine and to fight the government takeover of medicine." It claimed to have 3000 members in 2011 the executive director is Jane Orient, a "faculty member" of ABR's OISM. The AAPS opposes mandated evidence-based medicine and practice guidelines, criticizing them as a usurpation of physician autonomy and a fascist merger of state and corporate power where the biggest stakeholder is the pharmaceutical industry. Other procedures that AAPS opposes include abortion and over-the-counter access to emergency contraception. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons 3. ABR himself claims to be a "professor of chemistry". He got a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California, San Diego in 1968. He then worked for UCSD until resigned in 1972. He then worked for Linus Pauling until fired. He then founded OISM in 1980. Oddly for a PhD in biochemistry, ABR disbelieves Darwinian evolution and instead advocates Christian Creationism, and signed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scientific_Dissent_from_Darwinism a petition by the creationist "Discovery institute." 4. Examining the paper itself, fig1 "Surface temperatures in the Sargasso Sea"is irrelevant. This is 1% of the Earth and a highly unrepresentative region temperature-wise. fig2 shows yearly consumption of fossil fuels (not cumulative) versus "glacier shortening" (as opposed to world average temperature). I.e. useless plot, but seems to support global warming. Many other plots depend on temperatures in specially selected subregions, or other goofy measures, not global. Had enough yet?

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Re: [math-fun] Go forth & multiply !
by Adam P. Goucher 01 Jan '14

01 Jan '14

Referring to the snake, `an adder' was originally `a nadder' (derived from the Old English word `naedra', meaning `serpent'), but the `n' jumped from the noun to the indefinite article. The time that this happened is an upper bound on the age of the pun. Sincerely, Adam P. Goucher http://cp4space.wordpress.com > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Dan Asimov > Sent: 01/01/14 09:58 PM > To: math-fun > Subject: Re: [math-fun] Go forth & multiply ! > > A joke ending with that punchline was published in VooDoo when I was an undergrad. At the time I thought it hilarious and laughed for a long while. > > --Dan > > P.S. I wonder how old the basic pun is. > > > On 2014-01-01, at 1:46 PM, Tom Rokicki wrote: > > > I always prefer telling this one with the punch line > > > > "Even adders can multiply with a log table" > > > > reworking the lead-in as appropriate. > > > _______________________________________________ > math-fun mailing list > math-fun(a)mailman.xmission.com > http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun

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