Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Things like your daughter's experience are a wonderful example of DIY
science that Scientific American was famous for. It was a shame what they
did to you there.
  

    
When I first got the invitation for a review copy, I mis-assumed it
was a biography and not an auto-biography.

I was thus surprised that there was no mention of Michael Farady, a
prime example of an outsider (either no education or a different
area of expertise) making significant contributions to a field.

I guess modesty inhibited you from spelling that out!

And for Scientific American, I always turned to Martin Gardner
first!  (And Daedalus in New Scientist). In college the lab staff
always shuddered when I came in to do an experiment: I'd screw up
something!  

ps: I still haven't managed to get the book to show legibly on my
android (pdf)  or kindle (epub), which are my main
horizontal-reading devices.
  

    
Heya Alan - I’m sorry you’re having trouble with the digital books.
I’ll follow up with you in email. 

Both the pdf and ePub look fine for me on the iPad, using the
Goodreader and Kindle apps respectively.
  

    
Alan, I have written about Michael Faraday and other well-known
amateur scientists in my newspaper columns. 
  

    

  I believe Emily is right -- the models don't depend on a rise in water
vapor to produce warming. Scientists are still working through the
complexities of water vapor's various feedback cycles, but the correlation
between the models and observed warming has been extremely strong, as Zeke
Hausfather has noted:

<https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2019GL085378>

  And from what I understand, urban and rural areas' warming trends line up
very well. It's a common trope for climate denialists, but it doesn't hold
up.

<https://skepticalscience.com/urban-heat-island-effect.htm>

  I don't expect Forest Mims to agree with me about this, but I wanted the
other readers of this topic to understand that none of this is new to
climate scientists, and some of it induces eye rolling.
  

    
jswatz: The modelers consistently claim that water vapor will
increase with warming. That has yet to be documented in my 34 years
of measurements or NASA's global NVAP study. I am among those who
actually measure climate using instruments. Modelers and commenters
do not. 
  
  

    

  It's true that water vapor is not increasing as expected in some areas:

<https://news.ucar.edu/132936/climate-change-isnt-producing-expected-
increase-atmospheric-moisture-over-dry-regions>

  It's also true that CO2 is still the driving force of planetary warming:

<https://science.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/steamy-relationships-how-
atmospheric-water-vapor-amplifies-earths-greenhouse-effect/>

  And it's also true that climate models have, despite the need to still
work out some of the intricacies of the effects of water vapor, been
remarkably accurate, if not somewhat conservative.

"“The real message is that the warming we have experienced is pretty much
exactly what climate models predicted it would be as much as 30 years
ago,” he said. “This really gives us more confidence that today’s
models are getting things largely right as well.”

  That quote is from Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist who was part of a
Berkeley Earth team that tried to debunk climate science and models and
ended up saying they were on the mark. He's quoted here:

<https://climate.mit.edu/posts/ucberkeley-mit-nasa-study-reports-accuracy-
climate-models>

  He's speaking about a study I've already mentioned, which appeared in
Geophysical Research Letters.

<https://eps.harvard.edu/files/eps/files/hausfather_2020_evaluating_historical_
gmst_projections.pdf>

    I'm glad you're doing independent research, but there's no reason to
claim you're proving more than you are actually proving.
  

    
WHen I was in high school (1960 - 1964) - well ahead of your
time at SciAm - I was one of a small group that faithfully 
read - and often tried out - the Amateur Scientist projects.

It was all great fun and quite often something a 13- to 15-
year old could finance on his own and build in the garage.

Kids are still doing amateur science I guess but it seems 
less spontaneous.  More organized.  More competitive.  
Robotics clubs, for example, with sponsors building fairly 
expensive high tech stuff to enter into contests.  Hoping 
for a win they can put on their college application.

We were just kids having a good time and learning science.
Perhaps I'm just a cranky old guy, complaining about how
it was all better when I was young but I do wonder if 
something has been lost.

Do homemade nickel-and-dime science projects done strictly
for the fun of it still have a place?   Has what we were
doing on our own in high school become elementary school
curriculum?   Is it still quietly happening in garages
everywhere, not drawing any more attention that it did
sixty years ago?  
  

    

Those are great questions, Hal. 

The kids in those robotics and science project competitions have to
have started somewhere, right?
  

    

Oh, also: Hal, which of those Amateur Scientist projects that you
did stand out when you look back? What did they involve?
  

    
Wow ... it's been more than 60 years!

One I remember - I think it was Amateur Scientist - was a 
water powered flip-flop.  A flip-flop is a basic computer
logic circuit.  It has two stable states so it can store
1 bit of data.   There must be 12 gazillion flip-flops in
a modern PC.

The thing was built using rubber tubing and the glass
part of eyedroppers to direct streams of water to interfere
with one another to make the thing change state.  It was
finicky as all getout but we got it to work more or less.

In theory we could have strung a few of them together
to build a one or two bit adder but getting the one 
going was sufficient.  We used that understanding to
"build" a four bit adder on paper.

Another was a Foucault pendulum which used a metal
weight as a bob with some simple circuitry make an
electromagnet keep it in motion.  We measured the 
precession  of the bob's plane and worked out our
latitude.  AIR we came within a degree or so of the
real thing.
  

    
That reminds me of the "half adder" I learned about in the early 60s
when digital was very new. I learned everything I could about
electronics by self teaching, too early to be helped by Forrest's
books, those came out after I had become a non-degreed Senior
Electronic Engineer.

But I read every book about electronics that I could find. My
favorite was "The Radiotron Designer's Handbook" with 1500 pages and
everything you needed to know, except transistors and digital logic.
I started reading that at age 9, carried it through most of my
school years. I bought a new copy in the 80's when it was
re-released.

Finding good sources of electronic knowledge was not easy back then.
I exhausted school libraries, then public libraries and then
university libraries. And then bought expensive narrow technical
books with state of the art information about things like digital
signal processing. 

All pre-Internet of course. I'm not sure how I would have fared in
today's world where any electronic question can be answered with a
quick search. Self teaching works - If you can focus and find the
discipline to study hard. I had to find quiet parks to sit and
contemplate the early microprocessor publications before they
started to make sense. Distractions are the enemy of learning.
  

    

holy guacamole, did Neal Stephenson write up that water-powered flip-flop in
Cryptonomicon?
  

    
Regarding the comments about science fairs and kids doing science, I
both participated in science fairs during my teens and judged
science fairs (including the International Science and Engineering
Fair) as an adult. This experience provided persuasive evidence that
science fair projects have become much less challenging than in the
past. Physics and chemistry projects have become rare. Environmetal
projects have taken over. Some are excellent, but many are not. I
still recall the middle school project that claimed ozone is
produced by gasoline-powered cars as proved by the black stain on
cotton balls placed in exhaust pipes. At the opposite end of the
spectrum are projects by students whose parent(s) work in
professional or university labs. Those projects should be placed in
a different category than standard science fair projects like those
my three children did so well.
   
  

    
jswatz: Regarding your comments about water vapor, most climate
models assume that water vapor, the leading greenhouse gas, will
increase as the climate warms. That simply has not yet occurred at
my site, the AERONET site cited in my 30-year paper (1990-2020) in
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, the Smithsonian APO
study (1926-1957), and many other studies. When I was an expert
reviewer for IPCC Assessment Reports 5 and 6, they declined to
include any papers claiming water vapor does not increase with
temperature. There are various other popular claims about warming
that are simply wrong. For example, there has been no significant
change in the annual rise of sea level since at least 1880. As for
temperature, consider that the temperatures measured by Thomas
Jefferson at Monticello, James Madison at his nearby plantation, the
Lewis and Clark expedition, and the US Exploring Expedition are
remarkably similar to today's temperatures. 




      
  

    
I hope you <fmims> stay on for more general discussion .. (and
<inkwell.> topics have no termination dates.)

I'd prefer it if we stuck to the book.

I particularly noticed the University of Kona <https://uofnkona.edu>
and Mauna Loa chapter.  I wonder if you ran into Richard Crowe, of
Hilo (who died in a jeep roll-over in Arizona).
  

    
University of Nations AT Kona. 
  

    
NCAR has a report (from last January) on the water vapor question,
documented in the article linked below. It acknowledges that climate
change is definitely happening, and that the lack of an increase in
water vapor is a mystery:

"[NCAR scientist Isla] Simpson and her co-authors say follow-up
research is needed to determine why water vapor is not increasing.
The reasons could have to do with moisture not moving from Earth's
surface into the atmosphere as projected or circulating around the
atmosphere in unanticipated ways. It's also possible that an
entirely different mechanism could be responsible.

"Adding to the mystery, the new study showed that while water vapor
is increasing over humid regions of the world, it is not rising as
much as expected during the most arid months of the year."

<https://news.ucar.edu/132936/climate-change-isnt-producing-expected-increase-a
tmospheric-moisture-over-dry-regions>

Later in the article: "As for the question of why the water vapor in
the atmosphere is not increasing over dry regions as expected, the
authors broadly suggest two possibilities: the amount of moisture
that is being moved from the land surface to the air may be lower
than in models, or the way that the atmosphere is transporting
moisture into dry regions may differ from the models."
  

    
Alan, the University of the Nations (UofN) was founded in Kona,
Hawaii. It's a non-denominational Christian international school
with a unique format. Unlike traditional colleges with rigid
schedules of courses, UofN students take one course per semester. I
taught in the science and humanities school for some 17 years at the
Kona campus and for 4-5 years at the Lausanne campus. The classes
during my 1-week sessions typically had 10-15 students, some with
prior college courses and even degrees. My students came from 16
countries around the world with typical ages of 19 to 25. One of my
students was a 76-year-old woman. James Watt, former Secretary of
the Interior, and his wife were also among my students. All courses
are taught by individuals with significant experience in their
field. My immediate supervisor for those 17 years was Dr. Derek
Chignel, who headed the chemistry department at a major university
before moving to UofN. The provost was Dr. Howard Malmstadt, the
prominent author and chemist from the University of Illinois. Let me
know if you would like information about the content of my course
and how UofN played a prominent role in my work at Hawaii's Mauna
Loa Observatory. 
  

    
Did you know Richard Crowe?
  

    
Alan, sorry, but I have never heard of Richard Crowe.
  

    

Jon, I provided the link to the UCAR research earlier in the thread. It's
good. The lack of a rise in water vapor in some areas doesn't undercut
theories of climate change at all; it's something scientists expect to
happen that hasn't happened consistenly yet. Scientists also expect
hurricanes to become more powerful as the planet warms, but the data on that
is inconclusive so far — partly because the North Atlantic basin doesn't
have so many storms that you can get statistical significance. But Kerry
Emanuel at MIT has published research that strongly suggests it's already
starting to happen.

   The sea-level-isn't-rising argument is a canard favored by soft
denialists like Stephen Koonin. The folks at Skeptical Science have done a
great job of demolishing that argument, and they are not alone. But they are
more accessible than some sources.

<https://skepticalscience.com/sea-level-not-rising.htm>
  

    

 Here's another piece that deals directly with Koonin's arguments, which he
has published in a bad book:

<https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/wall-street-journal-article-repeats-
multiple-incorrect-and-misleading-claims-made-in-steven-koonins-new-book-
unsettled-steven-koonin/>

  I greatly respect Mims' work to help people understand technology and
science and to start exploring. I'm just saying he's wrong about much of
what he says about climate change.
  

    
As a newcomer to this particular point can I ask where exactly the
water vapor data fit into the larger picture? Are they thought to
refute the whole global warming hypothesis or do they simply point
to deficiencies in the existing models? I'm no scientist but I do
know rhetoric and I'm trying to understand why Mr. Mims thinks it's
so important that (if) the water vapor data do not conform to the
models? 
  

    
jswatz and Andrew Trott: jswatz writes: "...he's wrong about much of
what he says about climate change." Please be specific. Was I wrong
to acknowledge warming? My major point is simply that column water
vapor has not increased as predicted by most if not all climate
models. That's simply a fact affirmed by various papers and
measurement series such as mine. 

I did not seriously challenge the models beyond their omission of
important water vapor measurements, so perhaps I should. For
example, none of the 40 climate models used in the IPCC’s Assessment
Report 5 correctly profiled global temperatures. Only one came
close. This was a major embarrassment for the IPCC, and Assessment
Report 6 did better. As for the many unfulfilled predictions about
climate change, what has happened to snowless winters? Why is NOAA's
historic climate network providing much flatter temperature data
than the weather services poorly placed measurement stations, many
of which are placed near heat islands. Who placed a large black
metal plate directly under the fenced and locked temperature station
at the Maryland science museum? (I photographed it.) Why do claims
about sea level rise not include the fact the upward trend in sea
level has not significantly changed since 1880? As for the
Climategate scandal years ago, why did the British police consider
me a Climategate suspect when, as co-founder and editor of Science
Probe! magazine, I simply asked if the purloined emails were
legitimate. (They were.) 

Then there are the many instances where authentic science is
ignored. For example, consider the MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW of
November 1922 [p. 589] and its rather astonishing report entitled
"THE CHANGING ARCTIC" by George Nicolas (IFFT), which begins:

"[Under date of October 10 1922, the American consul at Bergen,
Norway, Submitted the following report to the State Department,
Washington, D. C.]

"The Arctic seems to be warming up. Reports from
fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers who sail the seas
about Spitzbergen and the eastern Arctic, all point to
a radical change in climatic conditions, and hitherto unheard-
of high temperatures in that part of the earth's surface.

"In August, 1922, the Norwegian Department of Commerce
sent an expedition to Spitzbergen and Bear Island
geology at the University of Christiania...."

This rather amazing report describes unprecedented warming in a
region known for its chilly conditions. The report is still online,
but I've not seen it cited in an IPCC report.