"You are really not having a good day."

Facts are hard for most people. It is so much easier to have strongly held opinions.

@BOG: You have a way of making up facts, to be fair. It's a common thing that most people do, but pretending you're better than that is silly when anyone can read closely and see that you are inconsistent in some areas.

Not interested in debating that with you, just take some time to realize that it's clearly not that easy and you should perhaps put more effort into it and stop insulting people over it.

Oct what are you talking about?

Mean surface temperature of the moon is 220 K at the equator, colder than the South Pole. And at other points of the Moon it's even colder.

@ TrPrado

I try. I am, for my sins, a scientist by training. And a modeller, as it happens. Although the models I've built have been ISIS-TUFLOW (HEC-RAS when I'm slumming it) and focused on local flood risk rather than long term climate forecasting, the principles behind it are very much the same.

All models are wrong. You need to calibrate and validate the hell out of them before you can trust them, and when your model is the planet that's damned tricky. When you can't even take reliable measurements of the present day situation it is bloody impossible, which is why I am finding this Antarctic thing so concerning. A really important part of the system has possibly been doing the opposite thing to what we thought it was.

All models are wrong, but our model is apparently quite a bit wronger than we thought it was. I am amazed that so few of you are finding this concerning.

Sorry, boylee, I assumed that when you were talking about the Moon's reflection you were talking about the bit you can see that is doing the reflecting, as opposed to the dark bit that ain't. Daytime on the equator that can hit near 400K, which is a tad unpleasant. In the dark it gets considerably cooler. The mean value is pretty meaningless.

But the Moon, just like every planet in the solar system, is in thermal equilibrium. Energy in equals energy out. Whether it has an atmosphere or not doesn't change that. Atmosphere essentially just allows some of the planet's energy to be stored in a different place and be moved around a bit more.

Octavious - This needs to be said again -
"Again, I stress that this is the present day scenario. If we can't get what is happening under our noses right, how they hell can we hope to predict the future with any degree of accuracy?"

All climate change predictions are based on models, 100 years out. We can't model the weather with any accuracy 100 days out.

So what's your point here? That the thickness of atmosphere has no effect?

@ boylee

The point is that every time I've seen you make a scientific point on this thread it's been wrong :p.

@ Baldilocks

Now that's not entirely true either. At it's most basic level everyone can predict weather and climate.

I can give you a good idea what the whether will be in a few hours time based on my observations about what's happening over my head, what I can see on the horizon, and which way the wind is blowing.

I can't tell you what the whether will be like on the 18 of July, 2025, in Devon, but based on a lifetime's experience of living in it I can give you a rough idea of what range of conditions you may face. If you happen to be visiting then, I advise you pack an umbrella.

I can also tell you that the flood risk from tidal events will be far far lower than what you get today, based entirely on observations of the solar system. It's amazing what can be predicted. But the further out you go, the harder it gets, and that range of possibilities gets ever wider.

Bald Old Guy, thats like making the argument that we shouldn't trust physicist calculations on how to get to the moon, because we can't map out the exact calculations of every cubic foot of space that must be passed on the way there. Small portions of matter, and likewise the small weather occurences, are largely unpredictable but largescale patterns are observed through aggregation.

With that mentality, we would've never made it to the moon. Or are you the kind that believes that the government faked the moon landing.

?*

I was wrong about the rate of climate change, I admit. But I don't think I was wrong about the coldness of the Moon. First you said it's warm up there, then you said it *can* get warm, but looking at the mean temperature is pointless, we should look at variation (I guess?), even though whether an object is generally hot or cold I think is given by the mean, and not the variation.

Since you're the closest we have to an expert (although I happen to be a scientist myself, though on a completely unrelated field) I would expect you to give a more consistent oversight on what you think is happening.

Instead you seem to want to join the name-calling which is really pointless and doesn't really help to prove your point. So I ask you again to please share your thoughts on it if you want, because I'm genuinely curious. Even if I was wrong before, repeating it over and over doesn't make you right, nor will it ever increase your penile length I'm afraid (assuming you're a guy of course).

Speaking of climate change, the northern lights, which only exist below the Arctic Circle due to manmade carbon emissions, will be visible into the central plains of the United States tonight. Go check it out if you can. It won't be much unless you are up north but I would venture to say a lot of you have never seen it before in all likelihood, and seeing it when it really, really shines colorfully is genuinely one of the most amazing and memorable natural experiences you can ever have.

@ boylee

Ok then, think of it like this. There is a girl who is incredibly quick witted and funny when she's up and about. She spends half the day like this, and the other half asleep. You take an average of the two states of being, and describe her overall condition as drowsy.

The moon is the same. It spends a week or two in darkness when the surface temperature is extremely cold, and a week or two in sunlight when the surface temperature is extremely hot. In between it briefly passes through the mean temperature, but quoting that mean is a poor description of what the moon is actually like.

Now you were specifically talking about the moon reflecting light. This implies a daytime moon, as that's when there is light to reflect. I specifically referred to that particular state of moon in my answer, the moon you can see being the moon in daylight. In this state the moon, with very limited atmosphere, is very hot. Totally unlike how you described it.

Oct - "At it's most basic level everyone can predict weather and climate. " yes. Cold in winter, warm in winter. But the pretenders of the climate change religion claim they can tell exactly what the temperature will be on November 24 in Dublin in the year 2054.

But they cannot tell us what the temperature will be in Dublin on November 24 in 2015.

bo " the northern lights, which only exist below the Arctic Circle due to manmade carbon emissions," So you are suggesting the Northern Lights did not exist before man? That Man created the Northern Lights?

Amazing ignorance you possess.

Oh dear. BOG has to be pretty much intentionally misreading everything y'all say. I mean, seriously. Either that or the dude can't read English.

You're arguing with a total denier, people. Logic and actual facts aren't going to convince someone like that. Seriously. It's like trying to argue with a French player who asserts that Army Paris moving to Munich in 1901 is good for Germany.

Just throw some ridicule/shade and move on.

thor "You're arguing with a total denier, people." You are so wrong. From my first post, I said climate changes. It is up to you religious zealots to show how man causes climate change. To repeat - There was an Ice Age. The Ice Age went away. How did man cause this climate change?

Dude. Multiple people have posted details of exactly how. You've just chosen to ignore everything they've posted.

@ BOG: "The Ice Age went away."

Are you suggesting that the ice age was a myth and never happened?

Or rather, multiple people have posted details of exactly what *is* going on with human caused climate change, and nobody at all is claiming that human causes are the only causes.

thor -"Dude. Multiple people have posted details of exactly how. You've just chosen to ignore everything they've posted."

k. humor this old guy. Show how man caused the last ice age. Show how man caused the ice age to go away. I must have missed that post.

@ BOG: You were probably alive during the last ice age - can't you tell us at first hand what happened?

Jamie - "Are you suggesting that the ice age was a myth and never happened?" the myth is that man can change the climate. How did man cause the last ice age? How did man cause it to go away?

I think you missed the part where no one is claiming that man caused the last ice age to arrive or depart. You are conflating arguments so hard here.
It's like saying that last time the power went out because an idiot went and cut the power line, so this time the power goes out, it has to be that same idiot, even though he's in jail.

Heh. Looks like I got trolled into responding. Sheesh. Maybe I should just start arguing that Army Paris should be in Munich for Germany's benefit by 1901. Seems legit.

BOG's logic:

Earth warmed up (before) + Wasn't us = earth warmed up (now) + Cause

Cause = Wasn't us + Earth warmed up (now) - Earth warmed up (before) = Wasn't us

Even though he argued before that correlation isn't causation, that's exactly what he's hiding behind. If anyone is still up for arguing against him, you need to convince him that he made a mistake when oversimplifying the issue. He can't simply assume that because man didn't warm up earth before (let's call that a negative correlation?), man is not warming up earth now.

Step - You are an ignorant fool.

"He can't simply assume that because man didn't warm up earth before (let's call that a negative correlation?), man is not warming up earth now."

look at what you are suggesting. Climate changed without man in the past. But somehow, because of man, climate is changing because of man. "Jane, you ignorant slut"

Show how man is causing climate change. A natural process that has been going on for centuries

I'm willing to place bets that BOG is not in fact a bald old guy.