JohnB

Money may be a factor. Only a relatively rich nation can afford to spend money on long rehabilitation programs rather than feeding its population, and bullets are cheap.

Hmmm, 2000 BC, about the beginning of the 12th Dynasty. Nothing comes to mind from anything I've read. I would have thought that any bang big enough to leave ejecta all over the globe would be mentioned by the Egyptians. However there is some confusion as to actual dating of the Kings and this might very well help solve the problem. If the impact can be accurately dated, then so could any relevent records as they are found. While it may not be connected, around the 16th C BC (give or take a century or two) the Hyksos came out of Asia somewhere with their new fangled "chariot" thingies and conquered Egypt. Given the "confusion" it might be that they were forced to move from their homelands by the abrupt change? Like I said, I'm not aware of anything, but a full blown expert on the Middle Kingdom might.

So does that mean I shouldn't use my darkroom any more? You do understand that movies were being made in 1919? Strictly speaking a movie is a series of still photos taken (at the time) at a rate of between 18 and 22 per second. I chose 1/20th of a second because that is half way. What you are saying is correct but it does require long exposure times, generally in excess of 1 second. Still photography (Portraits, etc) hadn't required that for decades before 1919, even the old glass films were well under a second in the 1880s. Your explanation requires the photographer to be using a most unusual and rather incredible technique to take a simple photo. Simple questions. 1. How long is your "long" exposure time? 2. Can the movements you describe be made in that time? 3. Why would the photographer use a totally unneccessary long exposure time for a simple group photo? What is the reason? What I do find amusing in this exchange is that you obviously have no idea at all about HMS Daedelus in 1919. It was a training facility for reconnaissance aircrews for the Royal Navy. Presumably, then as now, military reconnaissance outfits had no knowledge of photography and access to only the poorest equipment, with neither the abilites or equipment of the lowliest Fleet Street newspaper photographer. Taking a group photo in 1919 did not require a long exposure time. http://www.fleetairarmarchive.net/daedalus/History_WW1.html As to the rest. You say I'm wrong but cannot say how or why. You accuse me of strawmanning yet can't say how or why. I'm quite well aquainted with logic, but I suggest most strongly that you investigate much further the version known as "circular". If you're going to keep using it, you should at least know what it is. Unlike you however, I feel it encumbent upon me to help you as much as I can in your further education. You might try this link or just try the Wiki one. (The words are shorter). The thing is Max, you don't actually want a discussion, you want to pontificate and expect others to bow down before your impressive intellect. Sorry, but I'm not impressed. This is so very clearly demonstrated when you admonish from on high that "instructing" others is not worth your time. The simple fact here is that to actually demonstrate and explain your theory, instruction is exactly what you have to do. Anything else is to expect others to agree with the idea as some sort of "revealed truth", which simply "ain't gonna happen". There, I've tried. I doubt you will listen and I'm sure that when you pass on to whatever forum you decide to inhabit next I will be simply be one more indulging in "a multitude of intellectually dishonest personal attacks". One last point, you might want to read this thread. Just the first post will do.

Ooh, that's good. May I use it?

Um, no. The WV radiates the heat as it cools and the radiation leaves the system. Radiation upward = Out of the atmosphere. That's one of the reasons why it's a cooling effect.

Greg, it's possible. I think it unlikely though simply on the grounds of age. 75,000 years is a long time to carry those myths. I've wondered about the origins of the myths myself and tend to lean towards a more recent genesis. The Holocene Impact Working Group suggest the Burkle Crater in the Indian Ocean as a source. A cometary impact somewhere between 2,800 and 3,000 BC, it ties in well with legends from the time and after as a probable cause for many creation and flood myths. An interesting extra is that the comet that made the Burkle Crater is hypothesised to have missed us the first time and struck on the way out of the Solar System. Since a comets tail always points away from the Sun this means that as it came closer the tail would have been seen as a large, bright snake of light in the sky, getting brighter and larger every night until the impact. I do wonder if this is the genesis for both Dragons and the universal view that comets are bad omens since both these ideas seem to date from prehistory. I think it would be very interesting to see a Planetarium reconstruction of what such an event would have looked like from the ground. I sometimes look up at the night sky and try to visualise it, the sky being split by a bright ribbon of light constantly growing brighter. Just imagining it is scary, it would have paniced early humans to actually see it. (It would panic me if I saw it! )

How long do you think an exposure was for a photo in 1919? Are you seriously suggesting the person put his hat on and resumed his place in under 1/20th of a second? You might be able to argue a double exposure, but if the effect was from movement during a long exposure then the person would be a complete blur and not two distinct images. The sharper the clarity the shorter the exposure, this is a basic fact of photography. The clarity of the faces of all participants points to a short exposure time and your explanation requires a long exposure time. It doesn't match the physical evidence. The explanation is physically untenable, if not outright impossible. As to the second pic, I didn't think it was all that great myself. It was included because it was taken by a professional, something you said never happens. Which is the circular reasoning I was speaking of. You aren't explaining a phenomenon. You have decided on the answer and examine evidence based on that answer. Specifically, "All contrary evidence must be false" is inbuilt into the hypothesis. It's "Alice in Wonderland" stuff, "Verdict first, evidence later". This is the same form of reasoning that people use to prove the existence of God. The hypothesis is "God exists and all evidence to the contrary is falsely planted by Satan". Being circular it cannot be challenged until the person realises that they are involved in circular reasoning and reject it as illogical. Another example is the "Repressed Memory Syndrome" that was fshionable for a while. The hypothesis went "Person A suffers from RMS, any testimony provided that the events didn't happen are the result of the witnesses suffering from "Denial"." One of the basic tenets of science is that a theory or hypothesis must be falsifiable. Yours doesn't fit because incorporated into the hypothesis is that all falsifying evidence is wrong. It's neither your idea or conclusions I'm objecting to, but the method that you used to get there. The method (and that part of the hypothesis) is invalid. The correct process is to re-examine your answer in the light of evidence, not to examine evidence in the light of the answer. Consider these two different approaches to investigating the problem; 1. What is the cause of the "ghost" phenomenon? 2. Since ghosts cannot exist, what makes people think they've seen one? Which is the honest and open approach? And which one do you fall into? I watched the vid and was unimpressed. I've also seen the photos and didn't think much of them either. They show little and prove less. I do know some professional photogs that go ghost hunting, sometimes they come back with a reasonable pic, but most times empty handed. (And I'm almost ready to strangle with their own camera strap the next person to show me "Orbs" as evidence.)

Ah, gotcha. We were talking about two slightly different things. You were specifically talking about water vapour, I wasn't. Yes, the ability of the atmosphere to support a given quantity of water vapour is dependent on temperature, as you say. I was taking the next step as well. (and this seems to be the logic used in the models) Since the ability of the atmosphere to form clouds is dependent on the amount of WV present, the consensus view is that clouds are also dependent on temperature. It's that step I and others have problems with, not the first one. So we aren't actually in disagreement. Questionposer, the atmosphere is dynamic rather than static, it's not a great idea to attempt to consider one part in isolation. A higher surface temp means that the air can carry more water. Water blocks the IR and increases warming in a seeming neverending cycle. However hot warm air rises and cools to form clouds. Rain is the result of transport of heat to the upper atmosphere, so increased rain is actually proof of an increasing cooling effect. Similarly increased rain means increased clouds. Clouds will act a blocker for outgoing IR from the surface (a warming effect) and at the same time act as a blocker for incoming IR from the Sun (cooling effect), and block visible light that would be converted to IR on the surface (cooling effect). And that's just the very basics. The magnitude of the effects will vary with the density of the cloud as well as the height and also the speed of the Hadley Cells. While each part of the system can be looked at in detail the overall response of the entire system has to be examined for any conclusions to be made. Consequently "all I can do is just infer that because there is heating, more water evaporates into the atmosphere to trap more heat" is only the beginning of the story.

Swansont, it doesn't require any new thermodynamics. For water (clouds) to only be a feedback for temperature requires that water (clouds) only change in response to a change in temperature. This is generally viewed as being atmospheric temperature, BTW. If water (clouds) change in response to any factor other than temperature, they can then become a temperature forcing and not a feedback. This is a major part of the Dessler/Spencer argument. The consensus view is that clouds are only a feedback to temps, Spencer argues, and shows rather well, that they can be both a forcing and a feedback.

(Emphasis mine) This is factually incorrect. To give two examples. http://paranormal.about.com/od/ghostphotos/ig/Best-Ghost-Photos/Freddy-Jackson.htm While we don't have details of the photographer, one can reasonably assume that an official group photograph for the Royal Navy would indeed be done by a professional. http://paranormal.about.com/od/ghostphotos/ig/Best-Ghost-Photos/Ghost-in-the-Choir-Loft.htm The description says it all; "In 1982, photographer Chris Brackley took a photograph of the interior of London's St. Botolph's Church, but never expected what would appear on the film." I doubt that it would be hard to find more. This means however that they do indeed appear on professional equipment operated by professional people. You will have to rethink your point 1. I'll admit that your 3 groupings are much as I expected. The problem with a very mundane (although very innovative) theory such as yours is that it requires such things as photographic evidence to be the result of incompetence, self delusion or outright intentional forgery. Thus we have circular reasoning. The theory says that all contradicting evidence is the result of incompetence, delusion or fraud. Therefore all contradictive evidence can be ignored as false in some way. Therefore the theory is sound due to the lack of contravening evidence. The process by which you are arriving at the conclusion is flawed.

What? Haven't you seen "Terminator"? You come back nekkid.

Max, how does your theory deal with the photographs of ghosts? How do you photograph a smell?

Pharonic Egypt was founded around 5,000 YBP and had the earlier works of the Sumerians and Babylonians to build on. Early tombs were mud brick Mastabas of a single level. These evolved into multi-level Mastabas during the Second and Third Dynasties. By the time of the Fourth Dynasty, when the Greater Pyramids were built (circa 4400 YBP) the Egyptians had had some 600 years worth of experience. They went from Mastabas to Multi-level Mastabas to Multi-level Masabas with a stone shell to the now classic fully stone pyramid. This process was not without some problems and evidence points to the mistakes. By 2600 BC the founder of the Fourth Dynasty, Snofru, was able to build three pyramida during his reign. They were the Meidum pyramid, the "Red" pyramid and the far more interesting "Bent" pyramid. The Bent pyramid demonstrates the development of building techniques as it has a lower slope of 55 degrees and an upper of 43 degrees. This change occurred for the simple reason that the stone blocks used in building the lower levels began to crack and break. By changing the angle to the lower 43 degrees, there would be less stone on top and the pyramid would be less likely to collapse. The fractures in the stones are plainly visible to anybody who enters this pyramid. Notable, the "Red" pyramid, which was built immediately after the bent one has a constant angle of 43 degrees. The bottom line here is that development to the stage of the Great Pyramid age took 4 Dynasties and at least 600 years of constant work, hardly "just a few years". And, if you look at the actual timeline you can quite clearly see the progression from basic to more complex building techniques used in monument building. One must also be very careful not to confuse lack of theory with a lack of knowledge. While the Egyptians didn't have the advanced mathematical engineering theories and formula that we have today they did have a lot of practical experience in what did or didn't work. IOW, they might not have been able to say exactly why a certain structure built in a certain way would fall down, they just knew from practical experience that it would. Our ancestors were no dummies so please stop treating them as such. I.A., I have to take exception to two of your points; 1. Log rollers were not used, or they were very rare. The Nile valley was always very short of good timber and none could be wasted on rollers, even timber for boat building was normally imported from the Lebanon region and it was extremely valuable. Larger items were moved on sleds with oil or water poured in front to aid in the sliding. In this relief from the tomb of Djehutihotep in the 12th Dynasty, the oil/water pourer can be clearly seen on the front of the sledge. 2. When building a large structure like a pyramid, simply piling up the blocks (block A goes next to block B and block C goes on top. rinse and repeat.) is a recipe for disaster, the Bent pyramid demonstrates this very well. While they lacked advanced theories and would not be able to prove in the modern fashion why an approach would or wouldn't work, they had very advanced practical experience in both maths and engineering. For example a modern engineer could use theory to understand exactly why an obelisk would break if the supporting ropes were more than 1 metre apart and place ropes accordingly, the Egyptians simply knew from experience that if the supporting ropes were more than 3 cubits apart the obelisk would break but couldn't say why.

Great pdfs Essay. Jeskill, I would also suggest Kevin Trenberths paper on the Earths Energy Budget as a good read as to the current state of thinking. He puts numbers to what is going where which can help in the visualisation. http://content.imamu.edu.sa/Scholars/it/net/trenbert.pdf

Caesius, the poll would be better if the option for "both" was there, as that is pretty much the default position. I suspect that others like me will use the "other" to cover this.

Water is a feedback term in the models, because all climate models are inbuilt with the false assumption that only temperature can change water vapour. (Fixed it for you. )

questionposter, the best records we have of the changes over the longer timescales is from the ice cores. Do a google scholar search for "Ice Cores" or "Vostok" or "Greenland cores" or similar and that will put you on the right track. A very good person is Dr. Richard B. Alley who does a lot of work in this field and who archives his raw data very well. Raw data for the long term records is also available from NOAA at their website.

Sorry swansont, I wasn't clear. I didn't mean to imply that all of the change in ratios since 1880 was due to vulcanism. I was pointing out that due to the similarities it is impossible to work what percentage of the change was due to vulcanism. (Within limits) Personally I would put the figure at only a few percentage points. If vulcanism outgassing of CO2 is roughly equal to man made emmissions, then a 2% change in vulcanism would result in a 1% change in ratios. The effect would not be significant (I don't think so anyway) but it must be there. Bringing up the 1880-1910 period was to illustrate that vulcanism waxes and wanes and so its contribution would wobble around a baseline period over shorter time scales.

Max, I'm not out to be mean, but you haven't given us much. I had to reread your original post to find the mention of the website. We do allow linking here and you can put it straight into the post like this; That Which Remains Why not start a new thread outlining your idea and take it from there so it can be discussed without necroing a very dead thread? As I said, the idea is worth investigating however more work needs to be done. Your website gives your idea but is frankly as boring as hell to read. Similarly although you have titles for pages explaining why everybody else is wrong, these are all "coming soon". I'm also having trouble reconciling your comments with the available facts. You say the synopsis has been available for "months", yet the website was registered with godaddy on 15-Sept-2011. There are zero references to "Primal Olfactory Response" in the literature according to google scholar and the only mentions of it that come up on a normal search are yours (or your coworkers) so it would appear that nobody is actually discussing it at all, let alone "attempting to incorporate the information into their mythology". HADD was put forward in 2000 by Barrett and there appears to be some discussion in the literature as to whether it exists or not. (What were you saying about a hypothesis based on a hypothesis?) While it is all well and good to attempt a logical and factual assessment, the bottom line here is that you are hypothesising a previously unknown psychological response to olfactory stimulation. Your theory rests on the combination of a factor that may or may not exist with one that is not known to exist. Considering the extremely shaky hypothetical grounds that you are standing on, it is unwise to call other people names. Put your idea forward. You claim it is testable, so describe the tests and what would be expected as results. Explain why the competing theories don't answer the various questions as fully as your theory does. And leave out the persecution complex.

Not quite. The change in the ratios is what you get when you add a lot of very old CO2 to the atmosphere. I'm not out to be pedantic, simply as exact as possible. The change in ratios allows us to separate the sources of the CO2 into biological and geological categories and no more. After that we have to consider the sources of old CO2, which are of course the burning of fossil fuels and volcanoes (or other geological sources). The isotopic makeup of both of these is virtually identical due to age and as such are indistinguishable. Hence a change in vulcanism will result in a change in the ratios of C isotopes, just as burning fossil fuels does. From there we need to go to actual attribution which is based on the known amount of fossil fuels burnt and the estimate of volcanic gas output per year. The difficulty with this is that we have little more than guesses as to what the volcanics are. Most papers put the volcanic CO2 output at less than 500 million tonnes per year worldwide, however this seems unreasonably low when looking at the estimates for oceanic volcanoes. A rather good and fully referenced article on this can be found here. The bottom line is that to attribute the change in ratios wholly to anthropogenic causes requires you to assume that there is no change in geological processes during the time period in question. This position is logically untenable since the usual explanation for the cooling from 1880-1910 is attributed to an increase in vulcanism which must have led to an increase in naturally C14 deficient CO2. You simply cannot assume constancy on the one hand and variation on the other depending on what you want to argue. I notice that water vapour came up before. The simple fact is that this is perhaps the biggest unknown in climate modelling and estimation. There is a great argument going on ATM in the literature and on blogs between Dr. Andrew Dessler and Dr Roy Spencer on this very topic. The general GW theory is that clouds are a positive feedback and this is in all the models. Put simply, the more clouds there are, the less radiation escapes Earth and the atmosphere heats up, the clouds act as a blanket, so to speak. (This is Dr Desslers position) Dr Spencer takes the opposite view and thinks that the more clouds there are the cooler things will be due to the increased reflection from the tops of the clouds. (I'm keeping things very basic in this.) That clouds can both warm and cool is easily demonstrated by anyone. Cloudy nights are warmer than cloudless ones due to the clouds stopping the radiation from leaving the lower atmosphere, however, cloudy days are cooler than cloudless ones due to the clouds blocking the incoming radiation. this is most obvious when a cloud passes in front of the Sun on a hot day, the temp drop is immediate and large. So the question becomes, "When averaged over the entire surface for 24 hours is the nett effect warming or cooling?". The models generate a prediction as to what will be the change in outgoing radiation due to the change in cloudiness WRT temperature changes and this can be tested against actual satellite measurements. Here's a preliminary figure from the upcoming paper comparing 14 climate models to observations; Some will of course argue that since a few of the models are somewhere within a bulls roar of the obs that then "proves" that the models are "consistent with" the obs. BS. Most of them aren't in the ballpark. I'll be very interested to see both the completed paper and Dr Desslers response as this is a major question. If the clouds are in fact a negative feedback then all the climate models have it wrong and are overestimating the warming. As to the OP and is global warming a "Crisis"? I would think that the onus of proof is on those who say it is. We've had lots of horror stories about what will happen in a warmer world but let's look at the historical facts. The world has warmed by nearly a degree in the last 150 years, even more than that according to the prelimnary BEST papers. So we should have seen some adverse effects already, shouldn't we? What are they? Winters and nights are warmer, growing seasons are longer, farm production is way up, non farm plant growth is up, there has been no discernable increase in "severe weather events" (in the Australian region cyclones are way down), rainfall is up in many places and down in others (which can be good or bad). So how about dropping the hand waving about unprovable futures and saying in what concrete, measurable fashion the climate is worse for a degree of warming.

Do we have a zombie one from back then?

I have to ask the obvious questions. If the "Years of Hell" are caused by some bunch of morons taking things into their own hands in 2093, why not stop them? Exactly what is the point of coming to 2011? Also, since you are from a time some 70 years after the subjugation of humanity and "temporal mechanics is as common as teleportation systems, simple basic physics" then presumably Earth is no longer occupied. (Why would the RuMaur allow you play with this if Earth is still occupied?) The purpose of your mission makes no sense. You are trying to change something that is over and done with. You may as well go back and kill Hitler in 1922.

That wouldn't be because you are the founding member of said "Think Tank", would it? From Yahoo answers, "Max's Activity"; To pretend to be unbiased while pushing your own idea and agenda is dishonest at best. Your olfactory theory is interesting and worth exploration so why not just suggest it rather than go through the rigmarole of pretending to have looked at differeing theories and impartially deciding the olfactory one is the best? BTW, saying that it is "testable" without describing the tests and how they would work is pointless and doesn't add authority to your argument. From my own POV, ghosts etc are quite real and have a perfectly natural explanation. I think that while some of the effects might manifest in the EM spectrum, the cause is not to be found there. Given the current thoughts concerning "dark" energy I find it quite reasonable to assume that this may be in some way responsible. Since by definition "dark" energy cannot be detected by EM equipment, then there is no surprise that EM equipment won't detect it. It's like trying to detect microwaves with a microphone, "simply ain't gonna happen". As to how to detect the particular form of dark energy involved I have no idea. That is way above my paygrade and I'll leave it to the physicists like Mooey to work out. Until then it seems like a reasonable working hypothesis. I am quite confident that in the future the definition of "Supernatural" will become; "A phenomenon for which we have yet to understand the underlying physical laws and theories". Just as a microwave oven is ordinary today but would have been considered "Supernatural" in the 16th century, so too will the things we now call "Supernatural" eventually fall into their correct places in the natural world.

Beware the half truth. Limestone for the pyramids was probably cut with a piece of string on equipment similar to a bow. However it wasn't the string that cut the limestone, but the sand used in the cut. Sand, with a hardness of 7 is quite suitable for cutting Limestone which is a 3. It's the same principle as is used on modern "Rodsaws" except that we glue the grit to the rod and they simply poured sand into the cut. No, he's not. Any argument that uses half truths and outright lies is deception.

How about something simple and immediate? The winning Lotto numbers for next thursday will do.