I may take a longer route from work today just so I can listen to it all before I get home 😉

I guess I live in a different part of the country, but no one around here plows anything besides occassional terraces. My dad’s plow is just a huge pile of rust. Everyone no tills pretty much everything. But everyone also sprays the shit out of their fields as well.

That sucks Jack. Obviously I have no clue of their business model, but maybe set their rates at 5% over what their current rates are. Just ideas, and probably bad ones at that.

I just wanted to leave a few notes on wind and what some of the real problems are with it. So that you have a little background on where this is coming from, I work for one of the companies that designs and builds (in the USA!) the protective relays that watch over our nation’s power grid. We don’t benefit directly from one method of power generation or the other, but there are certain methods that are much more challenging like wind. Mind you, this is large scale I’m talking about, not the one you have in your back yard.

Noise, birds dying, size, number necessary, and capacity are not the real problems with wind power. The real problem comes with managing the nation’s power grid. The power that is created must be consumed when it is created which poses a problem for wind since it is not creating when the demand is the highest. Many will argue that when the wind is producing power the other plants don’t have to which reduces the amount of pollutants since the oil/coal plant isn’t burning, but this is largely false. These power plants don’t fire up like the 2k generator you keep at your house. It takes hours for them to start working from a stop so they never stop them (except for maintenance). They might reduce the output, but even this doesn’t happen at the flick of a switch. The same goes for hydroelectric dams. They can change their output, but it is not a quick easy thing.

Wind power also doesn’t reduce the number of coal, nuclear, hydro, etc. plants that we need since wind tends not to produce during peak hours. We still need just as many plants that have to be staffed by just as many people. What does change is the amount of power these plants can put into the system since wind energy gets priority over other power production methods. They also get a premium $$$ as well. This translates into just as many plants working less efficiently.

This will be my last point, and I’ll leave the rest to everyone else to do their research. More plants, more lines, and more methods make it harder and harder to monitor and manage the system. Wind power adds additional fluctuation into the grid that other plants don’t. We can forecast power consumption, but having to try to forecast power creation adds another variable to the equation. I’ll leave it at that for now. End rant.

Actually, yes. I believe in free markets. I know we don’t have one and get that you are trying to work within the current system to fix what you see as a problem, but that’s part of the problem ;).
I still love you though Jack, and I greatly respect your opinions.

This was a refreshing (though strange) show for me. Usually I agree with Jack 99% of the time. In this show, I’d say it was at about 70%. I just can’t get on board with all the regulation & government involvement Jack came out in favor for in the beginning, and I think that California label GMO law is a terrible idea.

Remember the litmus test: 1) is it Constitutional? Well yes, Cali can do that if they want. 2) can California afford it? Hell no, they are broke.

I can also see it coming down on small business disproportionately, driving up the cost of food, etc. The market CAN decide – we’re deciding right now based on voluntary ‘organic’ labels, for example. There’s no reason ‘non-GMO’ can’t also be voluntary, and allow an opportunity for the private sector to offer verification, like QAI, Oregon Tilth, etc. do now. The last thing we need is more government involvement.

And no, you don’t have a ‘right’ to know what’s in your food. You have rights to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and the other rights enshrined as protected in the Constitution. Our creator did not endow us with the right to know what’s in our food. It’s up to us to get off our lazy asses and verify, or trust the voluntary labeling that companies do, based upon third private party certification (or not). Don’t get me wrong, I dislike GMOs as much as anybody, but more Big Government is not the answer.

I want to start with the most important things: backing up claims with data and the scientific method.

I asked you about your claim that the greenhouse effect of CO2 saturates because I didn’t see how to reconcile that with your statement that methane could still increase the greenhouse effect. I am not expert enough to be confident that you are wrong, so I wanted to see the basis for your claim. Because you did not respond to my question, I searched. I was right not to be confident. CO2 and methane have different absorption spectra: http://www.skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect-intermediate.htm. However, it turns out that the saturation effect argument is too simple, and has been refuted long ago: http://www.skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect-advanced.htm.

“A computer model IS NOT SCIENCE.”

Not by itself. A computer model is a hypothesis with bells and whistles. Science comes into it if the computer model can be tested against new observations that you didn’t use to make the model.

For an example, look at this: http://phys.org/news/2012-11-explosions-peculiar-supernovae.html. These people found a discrepancy between the hypotheses (in the form of computer models) they had and observations in the last 10 years. They refined their hypothesis (made a new model), and it predicts new observations that they can now look for to see whether those new data are consistent with the new hypothesis. All proper science, and not an experiment in sight.

“you don’t need a PhD to understand “control group” and “experimental group” do you?”

Here is another analogy to explain the point I was trying to make: Imagine I said that permaculture is not using synthetic fertiliser. I’d be surprised if you told me “Robert, you’re wrong, we do use fertiliser.” I think it is much more likely that you would say “But there is so much more to permaculture that you’re missing, where do I even begin?”

When you said the scientific method is limited to manipulating one and only one variable, and that an experimental design must use one experimental and one control group and when you said you can test a hypothesis only through data from experiments, you missed out much of the scientific method, just as my above example misses much of permaculture. If I claimed permaculture was bunk on the grounds that yields must go down if you take away the fertiliser, and I showed you an experimental and a control group to prove my point, would you believe me?

If you then base your critique of an area of research on such an incomplete definition of the scientific method, then there is no good basis for your conclusions. You may be right, but it would be only by luck. Imagine that I say you are a great guy, and my only reason for believing so is that my telephone is black. Then I may well be right, but I don’t have a good reason for my opinion. As I understand your critique of climate science, it is based on an interpretation of the scientific method that is so incomplete that you lose the basis for your conclusions. I don’t know enough about climate science to say with confidence that your conclusions are wrong. I do believe I know enough about the scientific method to be confident that your arguments about the scientific method are not a good basis for your conclusions.

You wrote: ” You have faith a piece of paper makes anyone qualified to do anything.”

No, that is absolutely not what I said. I quantified the minimum amount of effort I consider necessary to be competent to form an independent judgement about an area of research. Later I said that I think you have equivalent expertise in permaculture, and that it doesn’t need a piece of paper.

You wrote ” All said paper does is prove that the student absorbed the material as it was presented by the teacher.”

That is not my experience or the experience of anyone I know. I even know someone who got her PhD position when, after a presentation, she told the speaker that she didn’t believe a word that he had just said, but that she wanted to work on this. He gave her a position exactly because she wouldn’t just believe what he said. When my students have ideas I haven’t thought of or if they prove me wrong, I congratulate them, and tell the next lot of students about it to encourage them to do more of the same.

“Be sure some assclown leaning to conform sufficiently to be granted a certificate somehow has special powers if you want to”

That, too, is not my argument.

“Conversely permaculture is PROVEN”

I didn’t dispute that. What I have learned about permaculture so far fits with other things I know, so I have no reason to dispute it. Anything you say in defence of permaculture misses the point I was making. That point was that I don’t know enough to form an independent judgement about permaculture, and what I read or hear I have to take on trust. In your terms, my positive opinion of permaculture is an act of faith to a larger degree than it is an act of logic. There is logic in there. I do check what I learn against other things. But because I have very limited knowledge that is relevant to what I have learned about permaculture so far, there is more trust (or faith) than logic behind my opinion.

That point in turn was part of a broader argument. When you attacked those who think human CO2 emissions are the main driver of global warming as basing their opinion more on an act of faith then an act of logic, you seemed to make a categorical distinction. If you argue that an opinion must be either an act of faith or an act of logic, and that it can’t combine both to varying degrees, I dispute that. And I see it as important to the scientific method. If you don’t make such a categorical distinction, just tell me, and we can avoid getting sidetracked.

In summary, I say that opinions and beliefs don’t divide neatly into the categories of acts of faith and acts of logic, but that they always include both to varying degrees. And I say that most of anyone’s opinions are based more on faith than logic, because there is too much knowledge for anyone to independently test the majority of it.

“On the poly spheres. If CO2 increases atmospheric humidity in our atmosphere it should also do so in the sphere. ”

Depends on whether you can reproduce the relevant mechanism. As I understand it, cloud formation is involved. And I think temperature and pressure gradients are important to that. Can you reproduce those in your poly spheres? What is the source of the humidity, and how does it respond to the effects of more CO2? If your poly spheres don’t reproduce the relevant mechanism, then your experiment excludes the very mechanism you postulate. That would make the experiment worthless.

“Why didn’t you know what I just taught you about it actually being humidity vs. CO2”

A misunderstanding. I didn’t say that was news to me. I had come across it before. I said it was not relevant to my question. I was trying not to get sidetracked.

A written exchange is slower than talking. If you are interested both in continuing this discussion and in speeding it up, we could do it on Skype. I have to give my email to leave a comment, I expect you have access to that, so we could exchange Skype names.