Author Archives: gymnosperm

Alexa and Chatty Cathy

Posted on April 19, 2017 by gymnosperm

Chatty Cathy was a doll. You could pull this string on her and she would say something random. She was the first electronic fortune cookie. She could say  maybe a dozen and a half different things. Never anything cogent. Some tangy things … Continue reading →

Posted in Human need for Judgdment, Sociology | Leave a comment

The Terribly Tenacious Trough

Posted on April 8, 2017 by gymnosperm

  Humans are prone to emotional conclusions like “the weather has gone crazy”. Last year at this time, even with the normal rainfall in the north half of the state, many asserted that California was in “new normal” permanent drought. … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate | 1 Comment

Effective Radiative Level

Posted on April 2, 2017 by gymnosperm

There is this concept that by averaging all the different radiative spectra that satellites see from earth from very high altitudes an Effective Radiative Level can be derived that has meaning for the radiation balance for the planet. The basic … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate | Leave a comment

The Apology of Chaos

Posted on March 11, 2017 by gymnosperm

One grows weary of the, “it’s a non-linear, chaotic system” apology for human failing to accurately model weather and climate. This idea seems to have stunted roots in the very different worlds of the Lorenz Butterfly, and quantum probability. Never … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate | Leave a comment

Alternate “Facts” and Science.

Posted on February 26, 2017 by gymnosperm

Every “fact” so far that we naked apes have ever believed we have known, has proven to be incorrect at some level. The operative verb in the sentence above is “believe”. Alternate facts discovered by inquisitive people challenge the existing … Continue reading →

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Einstein and Weight Loss

Posted on February 22, 2017 by gymnosperm

Weird idea of the day: why your excessive butt or belly is so unresponsive to exercise, but so responsive to how much you eat. Of course it is the equation. He won the Nobel Prize for something else, but the famous three term equation … Continue reading →

Posted in Chaos, Climate | 3 Comments

Emissivity of CO2

Posted on February 19, 2017 by gymnosperm

There is a lot of confusion about emissivity. Emissivity is the tendency to emit; particularly the tendency to emit light after absorbing it. In the infrared part of the spectrum, where the earth emits radiation towards the atmosphere, there is very … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate | 4 Comments

Berkeley Earth, The Arbitrary Use of Parameters to Create a Spurious Correlation

Posted on January 1, 2017 by gymnosperm

The graphic above has been widely used to establish a relationship between human CO2 and temperature. I was unable to replicate it. Stephen Mosher very kindly steered me towards a link on the Berkeley Earth site with an excel sheet. Using … Continue reading →

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Twitter is a Sack

Posted on December 7, 2016 by gymnosperm

If you can’t figure out what kind of sack… The real problem is that it is a confirmation bias, groupthink, censored, scored by perceived approval, no dissent allowed, we’re all grooving’, in crowd, don’t rock the boat, typical human doom … Continue reading →

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MODTRAN Up and Down VII

Posted on November 26, 2016 by gymnosperm

One often hears it said that the “heat absorbing” properties of CO2 in the atmosphere are “well known” or “well understood”. This is definitely not the case. The properties of CO2 in the atmosphere are presupposed  to be simple, and held up … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, MODTRAN | 6 Comments