All the current physics fields are constructs overlaid on space-time. So there is some pervasive EM field that is magically maintained by localized charges. Gravity according to GR is not a field, it is geometry of space-time. (That is why quantum gravity has not been derived yet.) Using Occam's razor, it is more plausible that space is the field that has EM as a property and the curvature property advocated by GR. (I have already posted on the non-existence of the time dimension but this has no relevance for the current topic). So photons (virtual or real) are quantized waves on the space "medium" or field. The speed of light is a property of space itself and as space evolves (post Big Bang), the speed of light changes. Cosmologies that have variable speed of light remove the BS of "hyper inflation" and other deus ex machina hacks.
The video above is a useful one in that it debunks the myth pimped by the "mainstream" that the Michelson-Morley experiment disproved the ether and "proved" relativity. I think the ether was a naive construct and properties such as ether flow are not plausible. It does not have to have the properties of a fluid, it can have the properties of a solid, or anything outside of our limited experience. What would be the substance of this medium? It was much like the field fetish of the anti-etherists where some medium was imposed on top of space. The phobia of space is long standing and across the spectrum.
Gravity is a field, we just don't have a quantum model of it, only a classical one
But if you take a region of space, then for all co-ordinates within it you can draw an arrow and a value representing the direction and the force with which gravity is going to act on you at that location. So near a planet all the arrows will be pointing towards the planet and the closer to the planet, the larger the value. That's a field.
In exactly the same way as you might sprinkle iron filaments across a sheet of paper and then bring up a magnet beneath and watch all the filaments re-arrange themselves according to the strength and direction of the electromagnetic field at any given point on the sheet of paper.
I forgot to add that fields are circular. What came first, the particle or the field? Field theory really points to particles being part of the field. So "virtual" photons are localized quantum entities of the field. Take away the field and there is no photon.
Modern physics such as the Standard Model is glorified book keeping. But at the same time it has rabid pretensions on fundamental insight.
It really is absurd that Occam's razor was invoked to choose relativity over the much more sane absolute space-time interpretation of Lorenz and Poincare. The fig leaf covering logical contradictions as "paradoxes" is invisible. The moronic ether debate of the late 1800s corrupted science to the present day.
Climate science is afflicted with the out-of-field "expert" problem. Everyone and his dog feels qualified to pontificate on it and "call it out", etc.
1) Statistics in climate science are irrelevant. We are dealing with a deterministic system. There is no such thing as CO2 having a Gaussian distributed radiative transfer effect. It has an absolute effect as an absorber and emitter of IR. Measuring these molecular spectroscopic properties on different days does not give different results. Applying statistics to aggregated deterministic processes is BS as well. The IR spectroscopy of CO2 does not change by throwing in other gases, solar variability and human opinions.
2) The atmosphere is nearly 100% composed of gases that do not absorb IR. This includes N2, O2 and Argon. The temperature of the atmosphere is set by IR absorption and thermalization via trace gases that absorb IR and the main vapour in the atmosphere, H2O. The magic is that H2O is a vapour for temperatures less than 100 C. Unless we enter a lethal regime for life, H2O will always condense out and will not arbitrarily accumulate in the atmosphere (*). In other words, you need CO2, CH4 and other greenhouse gases to maintain temperatures that allow water vapour to persist in the atmosphere. Without them, H2O would freeze out on the surface. Even the sunny side of the planet would see H2O stay in a solid state with some tiny evapouration with temperatures solidly below -18 C. There is no statistics and bad science in any of this. It is all deterministic and verified in the lab. In the video you have examples of theoretical particles which are not measured. This has nothing at all do to with climate science. All of it is lab based and verifiable for as many times as you care to measure it.
3) Complexity and variability of the atmosphere-ocean-land system is not argument against climate science. It is a denier talking point which assumes ignorance of the audience. The audience is unaware of the basic deterministic processes that compose the climate system and get conned into thinking about statistics and variability as if this was the physical basis of the system. So you see all sorts of amateurs and shills go on and on about local trends or measurements and confound them with global metrics. The thermal energy in the atmosphere-ocean-land system does not fluctuate arbitrarily with time. The energy budgets are closed and the source of the energy is known (the Sun). ENSO is an example of this and there is no magic exogenous energy entering from out of nowhere.
4) Climate models are good enough for what they are used for: energy budgets. Adding greenhouse gases to the system traps more thermal energy in the system. There can not be any discussion of this. Attempts to wave the hands as if there is "uncertainty" in the effect is BS. Some have attempted to come up with offsetting processes such as cloud albedo and the so-called IR iris. This was at least a reasonable intellectual effort, but it requires absurd fine tuning and is ultimately contrived. Even if cloud albedo goes up and there is more IR pumping into space thanks to deep convection (from the cloud top as deep convection is a very efficient means of getting air aloft and past a lot of IR trapping by lower air layers), the atmosphere remains primarily grey and will accumulate IR photons thanks to increases in greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases such as CO2, etc., act to increase atmospheric H2O which amplifies the warming.
5) Temperature leading the CO2 signal during the glaciation cycles does not disprove climate science. No shit Sherlock that under natural conditions temperature would lead CO2 for cases where CO2 was not being added to the system by massive volcanic activity (e.g., Siberian and Deccan traps). The only way for CO2 to be modulated would be via temperature. Colder temperatures increase CO2 uptake by the oceans since more of it can dissolve into the water and stay there. The Milankovich cycles are what initiate the process by reducing insolation in the Northern Hemisphere due to orbital geometry effects. This happens to help glaciers grow which induces and albedo effect. That pesky water vapour is at fault for sedimenting out in solid form at high latitudes.
6) Global warming is a crisis because the oceans have 50 times more CO2 than the atmosphere. Warming the oceans as we have been doing for 200 years at increasing rates will result in a transition from the oceans being net CO2 sinks to net CO2 sources. This was estimated (using climate models assuming certain emission scenarios) to occur around 2100. It has now fallen to around 2070. Since we are seeing more warming and emissions than anticipated, the transition point will arrive sooner. People simply have no idea what an epic problem this is. We will be riding the GDP growth model until everything starts to fall apart. CO2 emissions scale tightly with GDP growth. This is like a law of nature by this stage. The correlation has not drifted away with the advent of any technology. It looks like an entropy effect. The GDP reflects a type of thermal engine and you cannot grow it without waste "heat" rejection. But here the "heat" is CO2 and other gas emissions as well. Energy is consumed for production, transport, agriculture, etc., and there are waste gas emissions. Ideally one could go all nuclear and everything would be electrified. But even then, you would still have emissions associated with power plant construction and the life cycle of products (including land fills).
(*) An idea as to how hard it is to produce an H2O hot house is how the Earth formed oceans in the first 100 million years after formation. The atmosphere was 95% CO2 and it was the oceans that enabled this CO2 to be sequestered into rock as calcium carbonate. So even a 95% CO2 atmosphere could not prevent condensation of H2O into massive bodies of water. Venus failed to form oceans and sequester its CO2, and its current atmosphere is similar to the one it had 4.5 billion years ago. Why Venus failed to form oceans is not an easy question to answer. It is possible that it had less H2O compared to Earth right from the start. This is not unreasonable since there is a distribution of chemical composition at different radial distances to the Sun. Venus may have had substantial amounts initially but not enough to prevent a bifurcation where it lost more H2O to space than the Earth since it failed to condense out fast enough. Venus also has a f*cked up axis of rotation and barely rotates at all. This suggests a massive impact after it formed.
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