There is no working mathematical model of the world's climate, dammit! (Part 3)


Posted On: Monday - December 19th 2016 8:30AM MST
In Topics:   Global Climate Stupidity

(Continuation of Post 2.)

The best way to explain the complications of a mathematical model is by example, I think. I am going to summarize an engineer friend of mine's research project from the distant past.

Back when a whole lot of manufacturing was still going on in the US, this particular company wanting the analysis done was in the business of making personal computers. Chips were being soldered onto circuit boards (or planned to be) via a "hot-bar" process. A small heated bar (just for the purpose of picturing it, think of a roughly 1/2 in. long and 1/8 x 1/8 in bar) is placed by machinery onto a bunch of leads of a chip on one side to solder them all at the same time.

The engineering problem was to determine the electrical power input to the bar and length of time of contact with the leads that would get the joints soldered without overheating any part of the chip (maybe of the circuit board, also). Too much energy in, or at too high a rate - burned out parts. Too little energy in, or too low a rate - unreliable cold solder joints. Both situations are bad. Simple, right? No, NOT. Granted, unlike the the entire climate of the world, say, data could be obtained experimentally, though probably not easily with the small scale. Though experimental methods are a part of engineering, of course, and might still need to be done as verification with this problem, there is a reason we need to apply theory, heat transfer and thermodynamics, in this case.

The reason we need to apply theory is that we don't want to keep doing experiments every time we change any part of the process (different chips, say, or different dimensions, whatever). We want a mathematical model that works. Notice very carefully the "THAT WORKS", part, which differentiates engineering from science!). If we have a computer model, based, of course on math that describes the physics involved, we can change parameters and still get our numerical answers. In this case, we require temperatures of the chip material and the solder over time, given chip dimensions/material, size and material of the leads and solder, size, material, and power of/to the bar, and even air temperature of the work area.

This problem involves conduction, convection, and radiation heat transfer - all 3 modes. Conduction is very well defined by something called "Fourier's law of conduction". This can be modeled very well in even 3 dimensions and transiently (changes over time vs. steady-state) with "finite-element" and "finite-difference" techniques. These techniques break up some differential equations, which are very hard to solve together, into thousands or even millions of linear equations. The methods of solving linear equations simultaneously are called "matrix methods" and have been know for, say, a century or two. Nowadays, computer power is not even a factor for millions of equations, but even at the time of this example, one just needed more time - yes, you might wait on the computer to run for half an hour. Kids today would probably pull the plug to reboot the machine well before that time ;-}

Now, for the convection, the engineering analysis is much more empirical - meaning math derived not directly from theory but generalized from experiments. It is not something that gives numbers with great accuracy, and that's especially so with "free convection", meaning no forced flow of fluid, just movement of air (in this case) via buoyancy (warm air rises as it is lighter, right?). That's what this analysis involved, and much assuming and "smearing" must be done to match actual complicated geometry with the few generalized geometry set-ups that have known empirical math to describe them.

Radiation heat transfer has a simple equation for the gist of it, but the external geometry (what things the hot parts radiate to.) can make the problem complicated in a hurry.

I will get to comparing this problem to modeling the climate of the world in the next post.


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 NY Slimes links African overpopulation to Global Climate DisruptionTM


Posted On: Saturday - December 17th 2016 9:41AM MST
In Topics:   Immigration Stupidity  Global Climate Stupidity

Steve Sailer here on VDare and here on Ron Unz's website (the latter has/allows comments) eviscerates this ridiculous NY fish-wrapper-of-record story. As written about here just a couple of days ago, Sailer reads this crap to keep up with these Gov-media lackeys, so's we don't have to.

A couple of parts stand out here:

[Sailer quoting NYS]:" Sub-Saharan Africa is in the throes of a population boom, which means that people have to grow more food precisely at a time when climate change is making it all the more difficult. Fertility rates remain higher than in other parts of the world, and Niger has the highest in the entire world: Women bear more than seven children on average.
Once every three years, according to scientists from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, or FEWS Net, Niger faces food insecurity, or a lack of adequate food to eat. Hunger here is among the worst in the world: About 45 percent of Niger’s children under 5 suffer from chronic malnutrition.
Meanwhile, in what is already one of the hottest places on Earth, it has gotten steadily hotter: by 0.7 degrees Celsius since 1975, Fews Net has found. …"


[Sailer]:"Meanwhile, the population of Niger has grown from 5.2 million in 1975 to 19.9 million in 2015. But don’t think about the 14.7 million more people, think about the 0.7 more degrees."

Next:

[Sailer quoting NYS]:"But many of these people fall through the cracks of international law. The United Nations 1951 refugee convention applies only to those fleeing war and persecution, and even that treaty’s obligation to offer protection is increasingly flouted by many countries wary of foreigners. …"

[PeakStupidity]:This takes the cake. This writer says that we need to let our country get invaded and overrun by foreigners because it's "THE! LAW!", not only "THE! LAW!", but "THE! INTERNATIONAL! LAW!". We've been completely FLOUTING this invasion shit for too long now and finding LOOPHOLES in "THE LAW". Firstly, US out of UN and UN out of the US (think how much rent someone could get out of that big-ass building downtown NYC).

Secondly, many of us who live in the United States stay here because we don't have anywhere else in mind in which we want to live. Africa is, in particular, one place almost all of us don't want to live. If we did, we'd pack it up and move there. We don't want the US to become Africa, because, again, we don't want to live there! Is this hard to understand for the writer, Mr. or Mrs. SOMINI SENGUPTA? I really doubt it. Some of these writers aren't actually as dumb as they sound. They just do not like the average American, and they DO! NOT! CARE! WHAT! HAPPENS! TO! YOU!

I have another great part of Steve Sailer's article I would like to point out, but this post is getting too long, and my blood pressure is up a tad.


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 Live Dead - Bertha


Posted On: Thursday - December 15th 2016 7:36PM MST
In Topics:   Music  The Dead

April 1978 at Duke University, Durham, NC

(Gerry's lead is from 2:50 to 4:50.)





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 Kids read the darndest things


Posted On: Thursday - December 15th 2016 12:00PM MST
In Topics:   Humor

Our five-year old guy is a pretty good reader. Also, he likes to really organize everything in his mind. If you tell him "this part is made of wood", he wants to know what all the other parts are made out of. If you tell him "this tree is an evergreen", and why, he has to make sure he knows what a deciduous tree is.

While he was using our restroom facilities he wanted to be clear about the information on this box:




"We've got the yellow ones, Daddy", he says.

"Do we have any of the green ones? It says 'heavy flow pads'. We should get some of those.

"I don't see the purple ones either. We have 'regular', but we need 'heavy flow pads' and 'overnight pads'"

I'm all, "Boy, I don't really keep up with this stuff too much. Ask your mama". (Always passing the buck, I guess ;-}


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 It's all like a big game of Risk to these people


Posted On: Thursday - December 15th 2016 8:38AM MST
In Topics:   Elections '16 - '24  TV, aka Gov't Media

Steve Sailer, a brilliant mind, I would say, writes about the screw-ups in the strategy of the '16 Democratic presidential campaign operatives(?). He picks apart this Politico article like he's a hungry vulture working on a fresh, 3-day old armadillo carcass off the side of Nevada State Hwy 49, 20 miles W. of Winnemucca.

Now, I've not read the whole (politico) article and not too many policial strategy articles at all really, but the following important realization comes across:

Ideology, freedom (or lack thereof) of the American people, the financial state of the country, foreign relations, all that stuff doesn't mean a hill of beans to the "strategists". You've gotta admit that's it's not their job. OK, but upon reading this, you will realize that democratic elections are just games of Risk to these people!

Listen to this (Sailer's quote of the Politico article):

"... Waving off complaints during a visit to Michigan a few weeks out, Marshall explained to the room that Clinton was going to clobber Trump in the final debate and they were talking about moving money into Senate seats."

"... moving money into Senate seats". You, the voters, are just some pieces on the board. They may want you to move to the polls, they may not. Maybe the other side wants you to come out. Maybe not. They think you can be manipulated with some money paid to the TV station that you watch used to watch - before you read these 2 peakstupidiy posts - this and this, right? ;-}

You've got to read Sailer's whole thing to see where I'm coming from on this. This is the writer I mentioned in my review of VDare to the right (blogroll). He reads through the whole damn NY Times, just so the rest of us don't have to.

If you're not familiar with the board game Risk, it's an "epic struggle for world domination", an example of which is in this video of a game between these two guys:





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 Sloop John B - Dwight Yoakam


Posted On: Wednesday - December 14th 2016 8:46PM MST
In Topics:   Music

I put the Beach Boys' version up a few days back. I found this video of Dwight Yoakam singing it. It's not a cover, as Bryan Wilson (Beach Boys songwriter) didn't write this one - they just had the only popular version out there. You can't miss with Dwight Yoakam, and the mandolin player is great too.





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 There is no working mathematical model of the world's climate, dammit! (Part 2)


Posted On: Wednesday - December 14th 2016 2:43PM MST
In Topics:   Global Climate Stupidity

(Continuation of Post 1.)

at the end of this post I wrote "... to be explained today or tomorrow." By "tomorrow", I meant "next week" - sorry for the confusing terms :-}

Anyhow:


Without being a scientist in the field, but just from some reading and a mind geared toward science/engineering, one can name many factors that would have to be part of a mathematical model of the earth's climate. This is purely descriptive, with no claim to which is more important and which ones possibly interrelate enough to not be separate at all. Something major may be completely overlooked, but these:

a) Incoming solar radiation
b) Internal energy of the earth's core
c) Internal energy, kinetic energy (currents), and composition of the oceans
d) Internal energy ("sensible heat" and "latent heat") of the atmosphere
e) Composition of the atmosphere (where the specific "greenhouse effect" fits in) including reflectivity of clouds.
f) Land cover of the earth (solar absorption, radiation emmitance, conduction through the surface material)

are probably just a good start.

OK, now (a) varies predictably over a year but in a not-so-predictable manner over the years. (b) is something one never reads about regarding the earth's energy balance, but it's got to be some factor. It's not directly measureable. (c) varies over the huge 3/4 or whatever of the earth's surface area and long-term with time. (d) varies over time and 3-dimensional space. (e) varies with time and has varied drastically in the past versus today's "normal" values. (f) is known fairly well and also varies over the medium term (in particular the snow cover does).

Just to know the values, in 2 and 3 dimensions over the entire world, at one instance of time, of all these inputs to any mathematical climate model is not a task currently possible. To take current values, and know accurate enough information about the interactions of these quantities with each other (all of the physical processes involved) to make a mathematical model that will truly predict the climate in 10, 25, and 100 years, even with a low, continent-sized resolution is not currently feasible.

There will have to be a Part 3 on this. I will need to explain my ideas of the above paragraph another way.

Mind you, this is not a rant against science or scientists (though I will discuss the political part in a later post). Climate science is as good a field to study, or work on, as many others. It is not a practical field, such as meteorology, the study of weather, but advancement of the state of human knowledge is always a good thing, currently practical or not.


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 Wondering when we'll hear the rest of the story on sick Hillary


Posted On: Wednesday - December 14th 2016 1:49PM MST
In Topics:   Elections '16 - '24  TV, aka Gov't Media  AntiChrist  Hildabeast

Hopefully this will become something that nobody cares about anymore really soon. However, since we're still hearing loud whining from the left-wing about "the Russians!" and states' rights (via voting by states, not population), which is keeping this nutcase in the news, we at Peak Stupidity deserve a follow-up on the H.O.H - Health Of the Hildabeast - to know what the real story is with it her.



Will it be like in Soviet Russia, where she fades from view, and we hear once in a while some rumors about an illness, and then we are told about 5 years later she has been dead for 4 years or so already? Our government-media is very similar to the old Soviet media, except we have bigger TV sets (we call them "screens" now) and higher-resolution TV signals with which to view the lies, and more women with blond hair and big tits to spew them.

I'd just like to know if the Parkinsons story was true. There were a lot of doctors' on-line diagnoses, and one guy in particular (I think Breibart displayed his views) that sounded pretty convincing.


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 King of Fake News


Posted On: Tuesday - December 13th 2016 8:23PM MST
In Topics:   TV, aka Gov't Media




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 REM - Don't Go Back to Rockville


Posted On: Tuesday - December 13th 2016 8:16PM MST
In Topics:   Music

Just ran out of time for posting today. Posting will resume tomorrow until morale improves, ... or something.

Here's an REM song with lyrics you can understand:




-----------------------
Looking at your watch a third time waiting
in the station for the bus.
Going to a place that's far,
so far away and if that's not enough.
Going where nobody says hello,
they don't talk to anybody they don't know.

You'll wind up in some factory that's
full time filth and nowhere left to go.
Walk home to an empty house,
sit around all by yourself.
I know it might sound strange,
but I believe You'll be coming back before too long.

Don't go back to Rockville,
don't go back to Rockville,
don't go back to Rockville,
and waste another year.

At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend
I don't care that you're not here with me.
'Cause it's so much easier to handle
All my problems if I'm too far out to sea.
But something better happen soon
or it's gonna be too late to bring me back.

Don't go back to Rockville,
don't go back to Rockville,
don't go back to Rockville,
and waste another year.

It's not as though I really need you.
If you were here I'd only bleed you.
But everybody else in town only wants to bring me down and
that's not how it ought to be.
Well I know it might sound strange, but I believe
you'll be coming back before too long.

Don't go back to Rockville,
don't go back to Rockville,
don't go back to Rockville,
and waste another year.

Don't go back to Rockville,
don't go back to Rockville,
don't go back to Rockville
and waste another year.


[Lyrics by Mike Mills]


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 REM ... we don't need no steeenking lyrics!


Posted On: Monday - December 12th 2016 7:07PM MST
In Topics:   Music

Apropos of my theory that lyrics are the least important element of a song, I present exhibit A, REM's Radio Free Europe. It is from the appropriately titled album Murmur. That album is full of great songs, but it's the melodies and the sound (all of them: Peter Buck's guitar riffs, Mike Mill's pounding bass, Bill Berry's drums, and Michael Stipe's voice - though it doesn't matter what he's singing about) that make them great.

Even the youtube "owner" only put up two lines of lyrics, ha! I know this rocks and there's something about a train station, but that's about all of it lyric wise. I believe the other bandmembers admitted that they didn't know what Stipe was on about.



PLEASE!DO!NOT!LISTEN!TO!THIS!SONG!WITHOUT!BIG!WOOFERS!

"Calling out, in transit,
calling out, in transit,
Radio Free Europe,
Radio Free Europe"


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 City Of Chicago Working Around Clock To Clear 18 Inches Of Bullet Casings From Streets


Posted On: Monday - December 12th 2016 8:39AM MST
In Topics:   Humor

Zerohedge links to The Onion, here.



I just got done saying that ZH has the best commenters around, but it took some of them 1/4 of the article to figure out it's satire. Hmmm, maybe Chicago is even worse now than I thought.


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 Zerohedge.com - frustrating site


Posted On: Monday - December 12th 2016 8:21AM MST
In Topics:   Websites  Global Financial Stupidity  Curmudgeonry

It's the top link on the Blogroll, but damn these people (whoever administers the site, IT-wise)! As I mentioned in the review, they've got it loaded up with pop-ups, slowed down to a crawl even on a fast computer, and it will crash the browsers after a period of time with out-of-control scripts.

The reason it's frustrating is that it's such a great site otherwise, mostly due to the commenters. I was trying to read a long comment from a guy name "Skateboarder", who's been on a while, about the situation in India, what with their government changing the currency on them (really, they are trying a large-scale experiment with the globalist-loved cashless-economy thing.) Then zerohedge crashed the browser, which is why I decided to blog this morning, after a hiatus on Sunday.

Here is the article. What is great about these guys (the commenters) is many of them have a lot of real-life experiences, business or otherwise, that come through in their comments. This particular guy, "Skateboarder" described life in India right now, as he has been there during this money fiasco. His comment, the length of a full-out article, is somewhat in contradiction with "the Tylers" accounts. I'd believe an experienced commenter over the website authors' exaggerations any time.

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 I gotta get some readers ... I'll just put this up.


Posted On: Saturday - December 10th 2016 6:09PM MST
In Topics:   Music



From 1975, playing in Norway.

Agnetha - the long-legged blond
Benny - long-haired guy
Bjorn - other long-haired guy
Anni-Frid - the long-legged redhead

How 'bout that girl fan with the big old polaroid camera, ha, ha.


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 Weather vs. Climate


Posted On: Saturday - December 10th 2016 2:18PM MST
In Topics:   Global Climate Stupidity

You'll hear the big-money climate guys, some of the scientists, pundits and the rest of that crowd say over and over:

"Climate is not weather!"

OK, fair enough. Their point is that weather forecasting (some of it being modeling) is a short term thing that involves pressure systems, current temperature and humidity levels, upper level winds, etc. to tell us whether it'll be cloudy, windy, raining or hot/cold tomorrow. Climate modeling is energy balances of the earth and the distribution of the energy (internal energy in air, ocean, and land temps., kinetic energy (the wind, ocean currents).

Yes, I can rag on Podesta in this post due to the facts that a) I know he's a moron already, so, you know, and b) we know the weather forecasting even in places with lots of accurate weather stations, stations on land and close enough together, is still only good for 3-4 days with any accuracy. Often the next day's forecast is changed the night before on the TV station websites while people are sleeping (hopefully, they didn't get screenshots, right?). Mind you, I'm not saying there aren't smart people involved (I don't mean the ones on TV) that try their best, but it's just a bunch of processes that are what you call "chaotic". Going out a week or so it is nothing but high-paid, color-coded, glorified rectal-extraction.

What does that have to do with climate, then, you ask? Well, climate models involve different processes to be modeled, but there are still a whole bunch of different processes, many of which, individually, have very rough guesses for models. More on this in Post 2, coming, of, "There is no working model of the world's climate, dammit!".

To sum up, I agree that climate is not weather. However, if not chaotic, it is just as complicated for other reasons - to be explained today or tomorrow.


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 There is no working mathematical model of the world's climate, dammit! (Part 1)


Posted On: Saturday - December 10th 2016 1:31PM MST
In Topics:   Global Climate Stupidity

Let me try to put down a substantial point here to defend my Global Climate DisruptionTM denialism, or "distruptophobia", as some may put it.

A mathematical model, almost always simulated on a computer nowadays, is a set of many equations that represent mathematical processes, sophisticated solving software, and constraints on the input and output values. It is one thing to model one process, say, an RC electrical circuit, flow through a piping network, bending in a beam, or conduction heat transfer through a wall. These, in fact, wouldn't really even be called "models", as they are just normal engineering calculations.

It gets harder when one (engineer or scientist) solves a problem involving values being determined vary over space and time. These types of problems have been solved by hand in the distant past, and by computer programs since, via methods that break out the process involved into a system of linear equations that can be solved together, constrained by other equations that represent some limits.

That is one thing. Now, try putting a few different processes together in these type of models. Firstly, if there are slight uncertainties in the outputs of the math representing each of the processes, then things will get much more uncertain when it is put together. Secondly, even if the individual parts are very solid and confirmed via experimentation, when put together the answers to the big problem can still be garbage due to the fact that there are unknown processes existing, that would have had to have been modeled for the overall thing to be close to working. It's not easy.

I will break this up. The next post will be an aside about the difference between weather and climate. Then I will continue where I left it here.


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 What makes a good song?


Posted On: Saturday - December 10th 2016 10:22AM MST
In Topics:   Music

I've been putting songs that I like up at least each day, and I hope the reader(s) is enjoying them. You can look up and play your own stuff, of course, and music is not the point of this blog. However, we hope these are songs you may have not thought of or heard lately, or ever.

That being said, here is this blog's opinion of what makes a good song (classical music excluded here) just in very general terms.

You've got your tune (melody), your lyrics, and what I call "the sound", the last of which is the instruments being played and how well and the mixing/production of the recording. This is how I see the importance:

1) Tune
2) Sound
3) Lyrics

There is no way to have a good song without a good tune. Rap/hip-hop is a whole category of "music" that illustrates the problem of not having a good tune, or any tune for that matter. To see the converse of this, take a song like "Louis, Louis". The tune is not particularly elaborate but catchy, and, in fact, the sound is not too much of anything either. How 'bout these lyrics:

"Louis, Louis"
"We gotta go"

Then to build on this theme about having to go somewhere, we have this subtle change in the theme:

"Louis, Louis"
"We gotta go now"

There have been articles, master theses, etc. too numerous for the author to list in this simple little blog containing various interpretations to find the true meaning. Nobody got around to asking the songwriter himself, but the best interpretation put forth by a team of PhDs in literature is:

"Hey Louis, we've really gotta get going now, um-kay?"






OK, seriously, so you don't need good lyrics to make a good song. The author listened to an interview with David Byrne of The Talking Heads, Mr. Byrne talked about the song Burning Down the House. The tune is not that great, but what a sound! In this case, the rhythm should probably broken out as a subcategory of (2) sound, as it makes this song. David Byrne says that the lyrics were basically arbitrary words to fit the rhythm, and that originally the chorus had "foam rubber USA!" in place of "burning down the house!" It cracked me up to hear this.
I wish I could tell the reader how to find this interview, but all I know is that is was back in the timeframe in which MTV didn't suck, so that brings us to the late 80's or earlier.




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 Too busy a day to post, but gotta put up some music.


Posted On: Friday - December 9th 2016 8:16PM MST
In Topics:   Music

I really want to put up at least 3 post a day for now and not have days of "dead air", but for today, just this:

As kids in our family we were always about 5 - 10 years behind on the pop and rock music, so my brother and I really got into The Beach Boys about 12 years after their prime. The songs most people have heard are the surfing and car songs, of course, and they are all great sounds.

The creative genius of the band, Brian Wilson (there were the 3 Wilson brothers and Mike Love and Al Jardine) decided to go in a different direction with the band, as a lot of bands are wont to do. A lot of times this doesn't turn out well ([cough] Doobie Brothers getting Michael McDonald, [cough], [cough]. However, when "Pet Sounds" was made in mid-1966, it was compared to the most creative pop albums ever made, for instance, the Beatles' "Sergeant Pepper".

This song is from that album, but, funny thing is, this particular track was NOT written by any of the Beach Boys. It is an old standard.

While traveling for my job some of the time, though I like the work, sometimes I think of this.




Mike Love by himself: "This is the worst trip I've ever been on."


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 Cover of Lyle Lovett's "Family Reserve"


Posted On: Thursday - December 8th 2016 6:05PM MST
In Topics:   Music

I don't usually click on youtube cover versions, but this one is very good - a couple of young ladies harmonize very well on "Family Reserve". It's kind of a song about rednecks, whom I have no problem with - good tune and just moving lyrics, originally by Lyle Lovett and his LARGE BAND.




Chances a reader has heard this are, say, 1:1,000,000, so I hope it stays up for a while.


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 Another fine Ann Coulter article


Posted On: Thursday - December 8th 2016 5:54PM MST
In Topics:   Elections '16 - '24  Immigration Stupidity  Trump  Pundits

This lady may have indirectly had a good bit to do with Donald Trump getting elected president. Word on the street is that he read her book Adios America around just before he announced that he was running for office back in summer of '15. Yes, I was on the street when I heard some word about it. Anyhoo, I didn't used to have respect for Miss Coulter back - say 10 years or so - when she came off as another neocon, "Go GOP!" standard Republican booster. (I haven't listened to Rush Limbaugh that much, I'll admit, but he seemed to me to be the same and has also come around.)

Ann has been dead-on on all her articles about immigration over the last 5 years. Her book read as though it was crib-notes from 10 years of articles and blogposts on VDare.com.

This is her latest column, which is basically advice for Mr. Trump. The advice, in a nutshell, is to stay tough, remember the reason we elected him, don't listen to any spew out of Paul Ryan or Nikki Haley (just common sense there), and don't try to make friends with any of the Gov't (aka Lamestream) media. If they treat you nice, Mr. Trump, it's because you are LETTING US DOWN, so quit that.


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