by Judith Curry
Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases. These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming. In its 2007 report, the I.P.C.C. concluded only that most of the warming of the prior 50 years could be attributed to humans. – Richard Muller, NYT op-ed
Muller bases his ‘conversion’ on the results of their recent paper. So, how convincing is the analysis in Rohde et al.’s new paper A new estimate of the average surface land temperature spanning 1753-2011? Their analysis is based upon curve fits to volcanic forcing and the logarithm of the CO2 forcing (addition of solar forcing did not improve the curve fit.)
I have made public statements that I am unconvinced by their analysis. I do not see any justification in their argument for making a stronger attribution statement than has been made by the IPCC AR4. I have written MANY posts that critique the IPCC’s attribution analysis. Here I try to give a sense of the challenges in attributing climate change to causal factors.
Guidelines from the IPCC attribution workshop
Lets first take a look at how the IPCC approaches the attribution of climate change. A good summary is provided by the 2009 IPCC Expert Meeting on Detection and Attribution Related to Anthropogenic Climate Change:
Attribution “of causes of climate change is the process of establishing the most likely causes for the detected change with some defined level of confidence” . As noted since the SAR, unequivocal attribution would require controlled experimentation with our climate system. Since that is not possible, in practice attribution is understood to mean demonstration that a detected change is “consistent with the estimated responses to the given combination of anthropogenic and natural forcing” and “not consistent with alternative, physically-plausible explanations of recent climate change that exclude important elements of the given combination of forcings” (Mitchell et al., 2001). Information about the expected responses to external forcing, so called ‘fingerprints’, is usually derived from simulations by climate models, although the use of simple or conceptual models is possible as well. The consistency between an observed change and the estimated response to a forcing can be determined by estimating the amplitude of a ‘fingerprint’ from observations and then assessing whether this estimate is statistically consistent with the expected amplitude of the pattern from a model. If the response to a key forcing, such as greenhouse gas increases, is also distinguishable from that to other forcings, this strengthens confidence in the attribution assessment. Often, results are based on multiple regression of observations onto several fingerprints representing climate responses to different forcings, and in many cases, the estimate involves a metric that increases the signal-to-noise ratio by suppressing internal climate variability.
Global scale surface temperature is recorded by an instrumental record of 150 years and reconstructed from palaeo data over several centuries. Both compare well with climate model simulations if driven with estimates of external forcing, even on the scale of large regions. This comparison, attribution studies and physical energy considerations led to the assessment that it ‘is extremely unlikely (<5%) that the global pattern of warming during the past half century can be explained without external forcing’. Results from fingerprint studies show that the response to greenhouse gases can be well separated from that to other forcings, and that the recent warming requires a significantly positive and substantial response to greenhouse gas forcing, irrespective of the model used and robust to a variety of technical choices. The fingerprint does not require significant rescaling to match the observed change. All this led to the assessment that ‘greenhouse gas forcing has very likely caused most of the observed global warming over the recent 50 years’. Results for individual continents for the same timeframe show that ‘it is likely that there has been a substantial anthropogenic contribution to surface temperature increases over every continent except Antarctica’.
The AR4 presented strong evidence that recent multi-decadal trends in global near-surface temperatures were very unlikely to have been caused by natural internal variability or natural external forcings from changes in solar output and explosive volcanic eruptions. Since then, the fact that neither 2007 or 2008 has broken the record for warmest year in the instrumental record has been used by some to claim that global warming has stopped or slowed down.
However papers by Easterling and Wehner (2009) and by Knight et al. (2009), have demonstrated that decade long trends with little warming or cooling are to be expected under a sustained long-term warming trend, as a result of multi-decadal scale internal variability. These results underscore the importance of understanding the effects of variability, in addition to external drivers of climate.
Detection of the anthropogenic and natural fingerprints of near-surface temperature change has enabled robust observationally constrained quantification of the contributions of different forcings to global temperature trends and likely ranges of future warming, assuming particular emissions scenarios (Stott et al, 2006). By including multiple climate models to provide estimates of the uncertainty in response patterns, more comprehensive estimates of attributable changes are obtained (Christidis et al, 2009).
Change in most variables of interest has multiple causes, whether in the climate system itself or downstream in natural or human systems. Therefore, attribution to the external forcing of interest must take into account the other forcings and drivers that affect the variable of interest. The effects of external forcings and drivers may be masked or distorted by the presence of confounding influences or factors. Expert judgement based on as complete an understanding as possible of the data, response processes and potential confounding factors and their possible ef fects should be used to carefully assess the likelihood that the detection and attribution results are substantially affected by confounding factors.
Non-climate drivers can have a significant influence on many natural or human systems. For example, the impact of mass coral bleaching events may be affected by the presence or absence of non-climate related drivers such as fishing pressure and pollution. To the extent that the response to greenhouse gas forcing can be separated from the responses to other external forcings and drivers, the change attributable to greenhouse gas forcing can be assessed and further used to produce probabilistic projections of future change.
Confounding factors may lead to false conclusions within attribution studies if not properly considered or controlled for. Examples of possible confounding factors for attribution studies include pervasive biases and errors in instrumental records; model errors and uncertainties; improper or missing representation of forcings in climate and impact models; structural differences in methodological techniques; uncertain or unaccounted for internal variability; and nonlinear interactions between forcings and responses.
JC’s criticism of the IPCC Ar4 detection and attribution arguments
In my published Uncertainty Monster paper, we argued that that AR4 attribution statement was overconfident for the following reasons:
- uncertainties in the models
- failure to account for uncertainties in external forcing (particularly solar and aerosols) and the use of inverse modeling in determining aerosol forcing
- inadequacy of the climate models in simulating natural internal variability on multidecadal (>30 years) timescales
- bootstrapped plausibility and circular reasoning in the detection and attribution arguments
(see also the response by Hegerl et al. and Curry and Webster’s response.)
Observation – based analyses
For those of you that think climate models aren’t useful for attribution studies and/or prefer observation-based analyses, lets take a look at some of the better analyses.
On the Trends, Changepoints, and Hypotheses thread, I described three hypotheses that explain 20th century climate variability and change, that have provided frameworks for observation based attribution analysis:
I. IPCC AGW hypothesis: 20th century climate variability/change is explained by external forcing, with natural internal variability providing high frequency ‘noise’. Best in class: Lean and Rind. They conclude: Empirical models that combine natural and anthropogenic influences (at appropriate lags) capture 76% of the variance in the CRU monthly global surface temperature record, suggesting that much of the variability arises from processes that can be identified and their impact on the global surface temperature quantified by direct linear association with the observations.
II. Multi-decadal oscillations plus trend hypothesis: 20th century climate variability/change is explained by the large multidecadal oscillations (e.g NAO, PDO, AMO) with a superimposed trend of external forcing (AGW warming). Best in class: Wu et al. They conclude: Depending upon the assumed importance of the contributions of ocean dynamics and the time-varying aerosol emissions to the observed trends in global-mean surface temperature, we estimate that up to one third of the late twentieth century warming could have been a consequence of natural variability.
III: Climate shifts hypothesis: 20th century climate variability/change is explained by synchronized chaos arising from nonlinear oscillations of the coupled ocean/atmosphere system plus external forcing (e.g. Tsonis, Douglass). From Tsonis et al.:
The above observational and modeling results suggest the following intrinsic mechanism of the climate system leading to major climate shifts. First, the major climate modes tend to synchronize at some coupling strength. When this synchronous state is followed by an increase in the coupling strength, the network’s synchro- nous state is destroyed and after that climate emerges in a new state. The whole event marks a significant shift in climate. It is interesting to speculate on the climate shift after the 1970s event. The standard explanation for the post 1970s warming is that the radiative effect of greenhouse gases overcame shortwave reflection effects due to aerosols [Mann and Emanuel, 2006]. However, comparison of the 2035 event in the 21st century simulation and the 1910s event in the observations with this event, suggests an alternative hypothesis, namely that the climate shifted after the 1970s event to a different state of a warmer climate, which may be superimposed on an anthropogenic warming trend.
Specific issues with the Rhode, Muller et al. analysis
Judged by standards set by the IPCC and the best of recent observation-based attribution analyses, in my opinion the Rhode, Muller et al. attribution analysis falls way short. The closest in approach is the Lean and Rind analysis, which considers all of the external forcings (with units, not just curve fits) and discusses their uncertainties. Looking at regional variations provides substantial insights into the attribution.
Both global and regional attribution studies have been done, but what are we to make of the global land attribution study done by Rhode, Muller et al.? Land has warmed substantially more than the oceans; it does not seem that their same model would explain the ocean temperature changes. Also, given the regional variations in attribution, going back to the 18th and 19th centuries tells us what is going on in western europe and eastern north america, which is dominated by ocean circulation patterns in the North Atlantic and high latitude volcanoes. While I like what they have done going back further in time, these regional data are of little use for a global attribution study.
JC summary
Attribution of the recent warming remains a challenging problem. The model-based methods used by the IPCC have numerous problems, but the main advantage is that hypotheses regarding causal mechanisms can be tested (by turning off or enhancing various processes).
Observation based methods are gaining more traction, and increasing recognition is being given to multidecadal natural variability. The challenge here is that there are lags and nonlinear shifts in the system, making the attribution to external forcing agents challenging.
No one that I listen to questions that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will warm the earth’s surface, all other things being equal. The issue is whether anthropogenic activities or natural variability is dominating the climate variability. If the climate shifts hypothesis is correct (this is where I am placing my money), then this is a very difficult thing to untangle, and we will go through periods of rapid warming that are followed by a stagnant or even cooling period, and there are multiple time scales involved for both the external forcing and natural internal variability that conspire to produce unpredictable shifts.
Maybe the climate system is simpler than I think it is, but I suspect not. I do know that it is not as simple as portrayed by the Rhode, Muller et al. analysis.
However, this does not stop the team from cheering Muller’s conclusion, see especially the thinkprogress post and the comments. If the attribution problem was as simple as Muller makes it out to be (curve fitting to CO2 concentration), then why are others wasting all their time with complex modeling studies, data analyses etc as described above? At least William Connolley and Eli Rabett have stated this analysis is oversimplistic. As an example, Ken Caldeira seems to think that getting the ‘right’ answer for whatever reason is ok:
Ken Caldeira: I am glad that Muller et al have taken a look at the data and have come to essentially the same conclusion that nearly everyone else had come to more than a decade ago. The basic scientific results have been established for a long time now, so I do not see the results of Muller et al as being scientifically important. However, their result may be politically important. It shows that even people who suspect climate scientists of being charlatans, when they take a hard look at the data, see that the climate scientists have been right all along.
> No one that I listen to questions that adding CO2 will warm the earth, all other things being equal.
Indeed, let’s hear what the dragonslayers have to say.
Let’s just not listen to their one-hand clapping.
In the climate wars, INTEGRITY(tm) saves lives.
All real science is observation based !
Post-1945 science was seriously compromised by misuse of government funds and anonymous reviews of proposals and manuscripts to promote government-approved models of reality over reality.
See: http://omanuel.wordpress.com/
That cancerous growth on government science flourished out-of-sight for sixty-four years before surfacing as Climategate (2009-1945 = 64 yrs).
I deeply regret that the institution of higher learning where I was a graduate student and NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in 1962-1964 is now trying to salvage discredited government-approved models of reality.
Gentlemen,
Physics does not care about political affiliations. But since you do care about them, here’s what we know. Jim Hansen can be considered as a conservative. Kerry Emanuel is a Republican. Andy Lacis voted mostly for Republicans. And for good measures, Judith Curry voted for Obama.
My alter ego was a conservative. I consider myself an independant, and I am saying this against my belief that self-avowal on these matters are destructive or just plainly stupid.
Here are five simple facts:
Today is Monday.
Billions of people will need more energy to lift themselves out of abject poverty.
Burning coal, oil, and gas produces CO2.
CO2 emits heat.
Heats warms things up.
I hope we agree about these facts and that we don’t need to process these facts through double-blind experiments, engineering tests, or micro-models, shields which we usually don’t need to consider these kinds of facts anyway.
Everybody knows enough about climate. Details are not worth your time. Climate is going to change a lot, and policy will be enacted in response to perceived needs.
We need decent quality of life for billions of people, and energy to provide wealth and well-being. Only mixed economies have been known to mankind to bring this about, and these include marked-based solutions. Since I have a semi-random quote to spare, please consider how economics need to change its framing to deal with the kind of environmental concern we’re trying to address right now:
> Conventional economics supposes that agents value the present vs. the future using an exponential discounting function. In contrast, experiments with animals and humans suggest that agents are better described as hyperbolic discounters, whose discount function decays much more slowly at large times, as a power law. This is generally regarded as being time inconsistent or irrational. We show that when agents cannot be sure of their own future one-period discount rates, then hyperbolic discounting can become rational and exponential discounting irrational. This has important implications for environmental economics, as it implies a much larger weight for the far future.
http://ideas.repec.org/p/cwl/cwldpp/1719.html
We’re not talking about the mid-term elections right now. We’re talking about a problem of a scale never encountered in our history as far as we know it. Will you stand up and offer solutions, or are you willing to be played by gaming theorists?
The world needs you to be engaged. If you want to maintain people in the abject poverty that even Americans are now beginning to have a taste, please continue what you are doing.
Thank you.
w.
If you cannot admit that global warming alarmism has become a Left vs. right issue you simply have no credibility about anything.
I don’t think anyone questions that climate denial is driven by the far right. The capture of the Republican party by a reactionary, racist fringe has unfortunately given this conspiracy theory wide circulation.
Outside that lunatic fringe, scientists from both the left and the right are fairly united in recognizing the seriousness of global warming. In the general public, Democrats and independents overwhelmingly recognize reality, with about 35-50% of Republicans in denial.
Robertm
I believe we can bet that Wagathon ambitions to berkeley the Overton way:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
If you are confused try reading Patrick Moore’s, Confessions of a Greenpeace founder
All of society – Paupers and Kings; Skeptics and Promoters of AGW; Democrats and Republicans; Conservatives and Liberals; Communists and Capitalists – we are all now like rats on a ship, rapidly sinking because:
World leaders and leaders of the scientific community lost contact with the reality that sustains our lives and bathes Earth in an abundant and continuous flow of energy when they joined forces in 1946 to:
a.) Unite nations and reduce nationalism to avoid nuclear annihilation;
b.) Obscure reality revealed by observations and measurements, including the greatest discoveries of the scientific revolution; and to
c.) Promote government-approved, misleading models of reality [1,2] to keep society ignorant of the energy (E) stored as mass (m) in cores of atoms and stars.
As noted in this summary, http://omanuel.wordpress.com/, integrity CANNOT be restored to government science until constitutional limits are restored on governments. Then we can all work together for these common goals:
1. We all want world peace.
2. An end to racism and nationalistic warfare.
3. An end to the threat of mutual nuclear annihilation.
4. Cooperative efforts to protect Earth’s environment and bounty.
5. Governments controlled by the people being governed, including.
6. Transparency and veracity (truth) of information given to the public.
References:
1. Hideki Yukawa, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (1946); Introduction to the Theory of Elementary Particles (1948) http://www.nndb.com/people/759/000099462
2. Fred Hoyle, “The chemical composition of the stars,” Monthly Notices Royal Astronomical Society 106, 255-59 (1946); “The synthesis of the elements from hydrogen,” ibid., 343-83 (1946)
Robert | July 30, 2012 at 6:10 pm |
I don’t think anyone questions that climate denial is driven by the far right.
Deniers are of course hugely outnumbered by skeptics.
More significantly, noone questions that climate alarmism is driven by the far left, whose goals are totalitarian.
In support of Wagathon:
DSA USA. “Toward An Economic Justice Agenda.” Political. Democratic Left, May 2008. http://www.dsausa.org/pdf/eja_may2008.pdf
“Treat The Global Environment as the Ultimate Public Good (Page 11)
California AB 32 requires that greenhouse emission levels in the state be cut to 1990 levels by 2020. The bill is known as the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. Global warming essentially is in the platform of the Democrat party. Since the passage of the bill the unemployment in has risen to over 12% and many California cities have filed for bankruptcy and are on the verge of going broke.
If all that was needed to lift billions of people out of poverty was the energy provided by power plants burning fossil fuels that would have been done by last week at the latest. That is the evilest argument I have heard.
They are getting there, with a new coal fired electrical thingamageneratorbob in China every week. ‘Last week at the latest’ is impatient.
===================================
1.5 billion chinamen beg to differ, bob droege…
this is from Berkeley so you should believe it – it’s your own ilk, would they lie to you?
http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2010/02/01/climate-2/
meanwhile, bob old boy, US energy consumption per capita has declined to 1960’s levels
it must be the ban on incandescent light bulbs and those millions of chevy volts or leafs or whatever the all-electric car from government motors is called…
http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=eg_use_pcap_kg_oe&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=us+energy+consumption+per+capita
US energy consumption per capital peaked in 1978 at 8438kg and today it is at 7224kg
WTF do you want from us? we turned the clock back 40 years…
sacrificing out per capita income won’t help china’s grow faster – it will grow slower because we’re the one’s buying all the crap they export
got it? hard to believe isn’t it?
Hey Dave,
Where would China be without the US marketplace?
And what comes first, the energy use or the prosperity?
Forgive me for questioning your facts, but please explain the following:
CO2 emits heat
That is a new one
thank you randy, i thought i was missing something!
“No one that I listen to questions that adding CO2 will warm the earth”
-Judith A. Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology
Thank you for your question, Randy.
Perhaps David Wojick could answer that one?
PDA, you really shouldn’t cut off a major qualifier in Judith Curry’s statement.
PDA,
Chewbacca’s right: please add ceteris paribus, at least to make sure everyone knows you’re a latin lover.
No. Come on. The proposition was not whether CO2 will warm the Earth, but whether it emits heat. The “all other things being equal” qualifier addresses the first proposition, not the second. Randy is making a skydragon argument, which Dr. Curry has explicitly and specifically distanced herself from, in previous statements as in the one I quoted.
I don’t appreciate the parsomatic games, Brandon. I’ve said this before. If you want to have a substantive argument, have at it. But I’m not doing a thousand back and forths with you about the precise semantics of a particular word.
Illegitimi non carborundum.
It amuses me you say you “don’t appreciate the parsomatic games” when in the past you’ve repeatedly abused semantics to create false arguments, and in the present, you are the only one focusing on semantics.
I didn’t say that qualifier was relevant to the Randy’s comment. I said you shouldn’t cut off a major qualifier. That’s true whenever you quote someone. Anytime you quote a person, your quote should accurately represent their views. It doesn’t matter if the views being distorted are relevant to the discussion at hand. You don’t distort them.
Please try not making things up about me.
PDA’s Dada Acronym,
Please add the ceteris paribus clause.
Nevermind that it does not apply our current proposition.
Nevermind that Chewbacca’s trivializing his claim and begs the question along the way.
Id est, nevermind that it might not be a “major” qualifier.
Please be a gentle latin lover.
Your objection that I did not quote Dr. Curry’s statement until the period is noted.
Your insistence on focusing on the form of my comment rather than its substance, in being argumentative about my use of words – the activity which I refer to by the made-up term “parsomatics” – despite my explicit request that you not do that is also noted.
You are upsetting willard. Please desist.
PDA, you’re being silly. I saw you omitted a significant part of a quote, and I said you shouldn’t do so. That issue has no connection to anything said between you and Randy so I had no reason to comment on anything said between you and Randy. You accused me of parsomatics when in reality I was just pointing out a bad practice. In other words, you misrepresented a perfectly normal comment as a semantic game.
The only person guilty of parsomatics is you. The only person focusing on semantics is you. The only person making things up is you. Oh wait, you didn’t falsely accuse me of the last one. I guess I just have trouble keeping track of what things you make up.
Your continued insistence that your point has any relevance to this discussion is noted.
Your continued disregard of my request that you not engage in this type of lawyerlike argumentation is also noted.
At a given point, this approaches harassing behavior. I’ll ask you again to desist.
Eli is going to enjoy this. CO2 (or any other greenhouse gas) embedded into a bath of molecules at some temperature T will emit radiation. The amount of radiation emitted and the frequencyh distribution (the photon distribution) can be characterized by the same temperature T. The emission is thermal, and in equilibrium with the bath. Ipso facto, the emission is heat
PDA, which discussion is “this discussion”?
I explicitly said the point I raised “has no connection to anything said between you and Randy,” so I hope you aren’t talking about that discussion. The only other discussion is the one between you and I, and the point you’ve made things up in that discussion is certainly relevant to it. I’m not sure just what you’re trying to say here, but it seems unquestionably wrong.
When you quit making things up about me, I’ll quit pointing out you’re making things up about me. That’s how things normally go. Continually leveling false accusations against a person while claiming their decision to defend themselves qualifies as harassment is all sorts of silly. All you have to do to make this exchange stop is to stop saying untrue things about me.
If anything, you’re the one doing the harassment. I made a single remark. Since then, everything I’ve said has been in response to you attacking me.
Seriously man. Stop. I’ve asked three times now.
I’m not sure I see much point in making a comment asking me to stop since I’d stop if you didn’t respond to me at all, but since you didn’t make things up about me this time, I’ll happily stop.
I made a comment asking you to stop because I wanted you to stop. I made that comment two more times because you ignored my request. That’s not OK.
Furthermore, the idea that you seem to think you can continually badger me until I stop commenting is not only as clear a violation of Blog Rules as I can imagine, it’s also personally offensive to me. And I don’t want you to think for a moment that I’ll let you get away with it.
See, this is what doesn’t make sense. I stopped, and your immediate reaction is to restart things. All you had to do was to say, “Okay.” Or to not say anything at all. But instead, you decided to make things up about me yet again. You say:
This is an extremely offensive accusation, and it is completely baseless. I have done nothing to try to make you stop commenting. All I’ve done is try to get you to stop making things up about me. You could do that by being accurate with what you say about me. You could also do that by not saying anything about me. Neither of those require you stop commenting.
You’ve provoked me, time and time again, into commenting then complained that I’ve defended myself against your accusations. Then, when I agreed to end the discussion like you asked, you again chose to provoke me by leveling an extremely offensive accusation against me. Even worse, that accusation is completely without basis.
I won’t make any comments about “let[ting] you get away with it,” but you can’t reasonably expect a person to remain silent as you insult them.
Brandon, in my opinion you have a chip on your shoulder the size of Tulsa. You take offense at the drop of a hat, and it – again in my opinion – makes you virtually impossible to interact with.
I was responding to someone else’s comment and then you dropped by and took a shot. And my response to you was “please do not do that thing that you do so often do whenever we interact.” And you then proceeded to do that thing, all the while professing insult that I would accuse you of doing the thing you were doing. Which I asked you not to do.
I didn’t comment on any discussion you were involved in. I didn’t address you at all. You sought me out and began badgering me, despite repeated requests to stop.
So my choices are to avoid any place online where you might comment, let you badger me whenever you want, or to defend myself. I choose the latter.
PDA,
Perhaps you would like to be reminded of the word pinteresque:
> In a typical Pinter play, we meet people defending themselves against intrusion or their own impulses by entrenching themselves in a reduced and controlled existence.
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/28384708880
And thus we could say that while we’re waiting for Godot, some of us are pinkerly whirling.
Pinterest?
PDA, your position is bogus. First, you say:
What did I take a shot at? Not you, for sure. Not your word choices either. All I “took a shot” at was someone offering a quote that creates a distorted view of the quotee’s views. I’d do that for any comment I saw it happen in, and there’s nothing wrong with it.
See, here’s the thing. I didn’t do what you claim I did. You’ve never demonstrated that I did. In fact, you haven’t offered any reason to believe I’ve ever done it. You just keep repeating the claim, over and over, and I profess my innocence. You then claim by attempting to show my innocence, I’m guilty of your accusation. That’s bull. Just like when you say things like:
I didn’t seek you out. I saw a comment in my RSS reader offering a quote which seemed to distort Judith Curry’s view, and I decided to respond to it. I didn’t even think about who you were or any history we’ve had when I made it.
So again, you’ve made an accusation against me you have no basis for. And you’ve done so while ignoring my comments where I say your previous accusations have been baseless. In other words, you’re repeatedly accusing me of things I’ve never done while ignoring everything I say in my defense then claiming the fact I defend myself means I am “badgering” you.
You can play the victim all you want, but the simple truth is you are harassing me.
Dudes (PDA and Brandon), no more messages like this, or i will delete the entire subthread. This is pointless, and nobody wants to read this.
Sure thing. Sorry about it Curry.
On July 30, 2012 at 6:20 pm:
> No one that I listen to questions that adding CO2 will warm the earth.
Some silence, then:
> [Y]ou really shouldn’t cut off a major qualifier in Judith Curry’s statement.
Some more silent chit chat, then:
> No. Come on. The proposition was not whether CO2 will warm the Earth, but whether it emits heat.
Some more silence, then:
> I didn’t say that qualifier was relevant to the Randy’s comment. I said you shouldn’t cut off a major qualifier.
Then no more silence:
> Please desist.
Then:
> I saw you omitted a significant part of a quote, and I said you shouldn’t do so.
And:
> I explicitly said the point I raised “has no connection to anything said between you and Randy,” so I hope you aren’t talking about that discussion.
And:
> I’m not sure I see much point in making a comment asking me to stop since I’d stop if you didn’t respond to me at all […]
(Note to self, keep this one.)
And then some more:
> I saw a comment in my RSS reader offering a quote which seemed to distort Judith Curry’s view, and I decided to respond to it.
Now, unless we see an argument according to which PDA’s excerpt of Judy’s quote distort it, that distortion remains a seeming. That it might be an innocent seeming can be evidenced by the concession that the suggestion is true whenever you quote someone, and more importantly by the assumption that the qualifier is major, which begs to be justified when we’re enjoying this pinteresque characte because of a ceteris paribus clause.
We might be witnessing an evolution in Chewbacca’s Attack:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/25248731162
The Pinteresque Chewbaccattack.
As a general rule, perpetual motion machines violate basic laws of physics. That being laid out, I think I found a problem in your reasoning. (hint: Everything above absolute zero emits heat in one form or another, therefore your argument is in need of polishing)
Thank you for your comment, Jeremy.
CO2 does not “emit heat”. It does act as a thermal inhibitor, preventing absorbed solar radiation from being reradiated into space as black body radiation in the form of “heat” (infrared spectrum radiation), but it does not “emit heat”.
makeinu,
Thank you for your precision.
Next time I’ll write Denning’s list, I’ll write:
I’m tempted to call the last sentence the Iron Law of the Sun.
I’m also tempted to add
– Blankets warm.
Many thanks!
Its C + O2 = Heat +CO2
Burning of carbon released heat. CO2 does not produce heat!
Thank you for your comment, SamNC.
I’m not sure where I said that CO2 could by itself produce heat.
Burning coal, oil, and gas produces CO2.
CO2 emits heat.
wrong. incredible how ignorant are some people, even after years of discussions…. CO2 is no source of energy, CO2 has the property to transmit heat through radiation in certain bandwidth. It will absorb heat if cooler then the source or emit if warmer. It does not “emit heat” else.
Thank you for your probity, Lars P.
I’m not sure that “CO2 emits heat”, in our context, contradicts “CO2 will absorb heat if cooler then the source or emit if warmer.”
I fail to see how “else” part is entailed by the simple claim, which is to be taken as a simplistic fact like “today is Thursday”.
Do you think that adding a ceteris paribus clause could be a major improvement?
Many thanks!
Prof. Curry,
Perhaps it’s time to begin using Berkeley as a verb or adjective.
Muller went all berkeley on yo’ ass. Anthony Watts was berkeleyed by Muller.
What do you think? Of course the traditional expression where I grew up that covers your unfortunate situation with Muller is “Lay down with dogs get up with fleas”.
@Dave Springer
‘Berkeley’, through its connection with ‘Berkeley Hunt’, is abbreviated into a term of abuse through Cockney rhyming slang. The abbreviation is ‘berk’.
Any comments about Anthony Watts’ study?
Ask him to post his data and code.
Perhaps Steve McIntyre could post them, since he checked the stats.
He doesn’t seem so keen to be listed as a co-author http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/31/surface-stations/
His involvement is documented and well-qualified as to extent.
Read the fine paper: Watts, Anthony, Evan Jones, Stephen McIntyre, and Dr. John R. Christy. “An Area and Distance Weighted Analysis of the Impacts of Station Exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network Temperatures and Temperature Trends” (n.d.). http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/watts-et-al_2012_discussion_paper_webrelease.pdf
Conclusions:
Methods:
Watts, Anthony. “Methodology – Graphs Presentation”. Powerpoint, On-Line, July 29, 2012. wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/methodology-graphs-presentation.ppt
Judith, you must be ignoring many of your “denizens.”
“No one that I listen to questions that adding CO2 will warm the earth, all other things being equal.”
That’s not even wrong in my book. The heat transfer at the surface is multi-modal and you can not solve the overall flux and the influencing factors like that. ‘All other things being equal’ is not possible. It’s physical nonsense.
^^^ That ^^^ Bears Repeating. No one who understands physics can possibly accept the rose-parade-level-handwaving in the statement “all other things being equal”. When you have a system of such google-numbers-of-variables of interdepenence, “all other things being equal” should be laughed out of the room.
I’ve stopped listening to the skydragons
Sure. But you are being simplistic (way? over?) in how you’re treating the beliefs of many “skeptics” w/r/t the contributions of ACO2.
I read many non-skydragons who question whether all things equal, CO2 will warm the earth. First, skydragons are necessarily making a detailed argument about the physics involved in the determination that CO2 is a GHG. There are many “skeptics” who don’t actually even examine the physics, but claim that the proportions of CO2 we are putting in the environment could never produce any measurable degree of warming (as an argument about the relationship of scale between cause and effect). There are many who say that other GHGs are necessarily so much more powerful that the influence of CO2 could never be significant in comparison.
I do notice that now you aren’t talking about who is “in the room,” and you’ve moved on to who you listen to. That is a subtle change in your perspective but it should not go unacknowledged. I really do appreciate that you both give people of all sorts (even of my type) a forum for discussion and also making at least some distinctions about who you find credible. I just wish you’d be a bit more even-handed.
I should also add that I’ve often read arguments that even if ACO2 has potentially significant warming influence, the “homeostatic” properties of the Earth’s climate would mitigate or compensate for that potential.
“There are many “skeptics” who don’t actually even examine the physics, ….”
Here you go:
Arrhenius, Svante. “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air Upon the Temperature of the Ground.” Philosophical Magazine and Journal Of Science Series 5, Vol 41 (April 1896): 237 – 276. http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf
You never properly started listening. I stand by my Venus/Earth temperatures comparison, and I say you and the other “97% of climate scientists” are incompetent.
Huffman’s calculation requires ignoring albedos. It’s a joke.
Venus surface heating is geothermal. That soup-like CO2 atmosphere insulates the rocks and traps geothermal heat from below. I suppose it could still be called a greenhouse effect but the heat source in this case is internal not the sun. There is practically no sunlight reaching the surface of Venus due to both the thickness of the cloud layer and the very high albedo of the clouds.
No it doesn’t.
Plenty of sunlight reaches the surface of Venus. The albedo isn’t very high, although it is about twice what earth’s is at about 0.7. Which means way more heat reached the surface of Venus from the Sun than from geothermal
sources.
bob, the Bond Albedo of Venus is ~0.9 and for Earth ~0.3
dear bob doege
do some due diligence for a change
http://exoplanet.as.arizona.edu/~lclose/teaching/a202/lect16.html
Now you know.
Speaking of Venus,
http://www.nonlin-processes-geophys.net/14/641/2007/npg-14-641-2007.pdf
This paper uses some kinda weird maximum entropy dealy with specific heat capacities and such. Seems better than just picking some layer at the top of the atmosphere and pretending that somehow is related to Earth or pulling some albedo out of yer butt. With that slow rotation and kick butt insulation with lots of thermal mass, seems like Geothermal might just explain that isothermal surface temperature a little better than CO2 strangling photons from 24 days in the past.
Well this was remarkably difficult to find outside a paywall. Venera landing craft on Venus returned visible light photographs and the surface illumination is compared to a gloomy winter day in London or Seattle but that’s not very exact.
Here are the spectral photometer readings from the Venera Venus at various altitudes.
See figure 3 here:
http://what-when-how.com/space-science-and-technology/venus-missions/
Surface illumination is 70W/m2 with a peak at 600 nanometers (orange).
From the text:
“They showed, in particular, that the illumination of the surface (spectrally integrated) is about 3-5% of the solar illumination at the upper boundary of the clouds.”
Top of atmosphere solar constant for Venus is 2600W/m2. 3-5% of that is 78-130W/m2. This is a sanity check to make sure I’m not misinterpreting the table somehow. I’m not.
This is however more light than I thought reached the surface of Venus so I’ll stand corrected. It isn’t enough to warm the surface above freezing but it’s enough to see fairly well. A gloomy winter day in London is a good analogy except on Venus it’s orange instead of gray.
“They showed, in particular, that the illumination of the surface (spectrally integrated) is about 3-5% of the solar illumination at the upper boundary of the clouds. The surface albedo is low (about 0.1), so that the incoming solar flux is absorbed by the surface and warms it. This minor energy flux (together with the high opacity of the atmosphere to infrared thermal radiation) may be enough to support the high temperature of the surface and the lower atmosphere due to the greenhouse effect.”
Some sunlight does reach the Venusian surface, but it’s a very small amount. It’s an important contribution though in its ability to drive convection. The problem with Venus is that radiation from the surface can’t escape to space. It has nothing to do with “geothermal heat.”
I was referring to the planetary albedo being about 0.7, not the Bond albedo which you correctly identify as 0.9.
I see you have found pictures showing that indeed visible light does reach the surface of Venus. Glad to see you are doing your own due diligence.
Crackpots are always full of ideas to explain the current situation on Venus, but none have explained how Venus managed to acquire the really heavy atmosphere or to explain the excess deuterium in the atmosphere.
Skydragons served a purpose. It made me do some critical thinking about the difference an ideal gas confined by a vessel versus one confined by gravity in isothermal condition. Key is that thermal energy is defined as kinetic energy plus gravitational potential energy. A thermometer doesn’t measure the latter. At the bottom of the gravity well this makes no difference as kinetic is 100% and gravitational potential is 0% but with altitude it becomes significant. This gives the false impression of a lapse rate in isothermal planetary atmosphere. I believe this is where Sky Dragons go off the rail. Temperature does not increase at the bottom of the gravitationally confined column above what it would be if it were not in gravitational confinement. The temperature indicated by a thermometer however will decline inversely with the increase in gravitational potential energy in isothermal condition under gravitational confinement.
As an engineer I’d never had to consider the effect of gravity on the temperature of a gas before and as a fan of astronomy and astrophysics it just never came up in detail beyond knowing that gravitational heating occurs during a collapse but stops when the collapse stops which isn’t really any different than raising the pressure in a vessel.
Oh, man. You’re 100% wrong. You’d flunk my sophomore thermal physics class. As it happens, I just answered this same question on a Q&A site for the public:
http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=19799
Temperature [(dU/dS)|V] equalizes in equilibrium regardless of g and of other details precisely because S_tot is maximized. The atmosphere is out of equilibrium.
p.s. Please let me know which bridges you’ve designed so I can plan alternate routes.
Appeals to your own authority notwithstanding you’re wrong.
Perhaps a 500# piano falling on your thick skull from a third story window might convince you that gravitational potential energy is real. It took energy to lift every pound of that piano just as it takes energy to lift every pound of air. If the energy per pound of air is equally distributed (isothermal) then you must count the gravitational potential energy in the air at altitude. A thermometer measures only kinetic energy. QED
This is a good explanation.
http://www.etomica.org/app/modules/sites/Ljmd/Background4.html
Etomica is a National Science Foundation project for web-app molecular modeling. The above is part of the background that I thought was particularly lucid in explaining the concept that needs explaining i.e. potential and kinetic energy in an adiabatic system.
If we take a column of gas in the atmosphere in equilibrium it will have a fixed volume, fixed total energy, and a fixed number of molecules. It is an NVE ensemble. The temperature may fluctuate in an NVE ensemble as kinetic and potential energy varies within the ensemble.
Thanks for playing.
Michael Weissman, the answer only apples to an atmosphere that has a single gas. The Earths atmosphere consists of a mixture of gases which undergo gravitational fractionation, thus, there less dense gases populate the upper atmosphere at a higher fraction than they do at the bottom.
As different gases have different coefficients of expansion, and pressure and temperature are linked, your facile answer is bogus.
We must add that our planet has the wrong name, instead of ‘Earth’, it should be called ‘Saline’.
Huge amounts of gaseous water go into the atmosphere, rising during the day, and then undergo a phase change, mostly at night, into liquid or solid phases.. As different gases have different aqueous suitabilities, different gases are transported to the surface at different rates.
Stick to uni-molecular single-phase box models though and don’t bother thinking about dynamic systems, you will only hurt yourself.
“You’d flunk my sophomore thermal physics class.”
You’d never be paid a seven figure salary as a key R&D engineer either.
Ask around and see which thing people in the technology industry value more, money or grades. You continue to not impress me. I spent a lifetime surrounded by peers who are your betters. If you can’t do, teach. PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT! I fart in your general direction.
Never met a seven-figure any kind of engineer who needed to engage in this kind of adolescent dick-measuring contest online… or who had the time or inclination to argue with strangers on the internet about how engineers are cooler than academics.
Those who know don’t talk. Those who talk don’t know. -Lao Tzu
PDA
There’s a first time for everything. ~Chester Tzu, brudder from anudder mudder of Sun
> If at first you don’t succeed, you’re not me.
[Chuck Norris]
Dude! Of course gravitational potential energy is real, at least in the fixed Earth-frame description we’re using here. It’s temperature which doesn’t mean what you think it means. It’s not “total energy oer particle” or whatever you’re thinking. It’s not even “(2/3) the translational kinetic energy per particle” but that equipartition result is close enough for now. And it’s that T that become equal in equilibrium. That’s also the T that gets measured on a thermometer. Seriously, if you want to learn some very elementary thermal physics, try Fred Reif’s book, unless it’s out-of-bounds due to being in the Berkeley series. Maybe Tom Moore’s “Unit T” would work for a real beginning intro.
See above re NVE ensembles. This may be over your head (pun intended).
It’s been a while since I got into this and I’ve forgotten the names but it’s a very old controversy going back to Loschmidt and Boltzmann-Maxwell. It has not been settled.
Here a book chapter dealing with it:
http://books.google.com/books?id=-nWyk7jH5_EC&pg=PA202&lpg=PA202&dq=Loschmidt+Boltzmann+Maxwell&source=bl&ots=51p9MK1QYL&sig=9BRqBSPTw0nUp7Wssd1i2kNHt0c&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-vYWUOz5HIuu8ASoqIDQAQ&ved=0CE4Q6AEwAQ
Challenges To The Second Law Of Thermodynamics:
Theory And Experiment
Springer (not me :) ) 2005
In previous discussions I’ve likened the hypothetical gravito-thermal effect to gravity playing the part of Maxwell’s Demon sorting molecules by kinetic energy component. However, I can’t devise a mechanism that can extract useful work from a gravito-thermal gradient. Lifting and maintaining the lift on the cold side of my heat engine (or thermo-electric pile) confounds me every time. It appears that even if Loschmidt was right nature stil ends up prohibiting a perpetuum mobile of the second kind.
From the book jacket:
You may be too deeply indoctrinated in the sanctity of the second law to consider the possibility and thus not willing to gain any understanding why it’s still controversial today. Maxwell’s Demon is not prohibited. Gravity does weird sh!t like dilate time and mass. We have no theory of quantum gravity. We don’t have all the answers. It would appear I know the questions better than you though.
Thanks again for playing.
JC comment; Dave, I don’t allow these kinds of posts about people commenting here, although I have allowed them previously about people that are public figures (i.e. those who court publicity, an example being John O’Sullivan).
Dave, a fool and his money are soon parted, but I’ll defend to the death his right to be foolish.
==============
Ok, I looked at that site. Pretty good, although explicitly a bit sloppy in defining T. One problem: it says exactly the opposite of what you think.
They define T via equipartition, purely in terms of the kinetic energy. That’s why this (sloppily defined) T can fluctuate- precisely because it doesn’t include the potential terms that you want to include! And that’s why T is the same at each height, in equilibrium. It’s (N/V), not T, that depends on height.
p.s. If you actually are interested in temperature fluctuations, you might read, e.g.:
http://jap.aip.org/resource/1/japiau/v52/i5/p3095_s1?isAuthorized=no
http://apl.aip.org/resource/1/applab/v32/i3/p193_s1?isAuthorized=no
Definition of terms is critical. In an isothermal atmosphere does a pound of air at 10 kilometers have the same total energy as a pound of air at 1 kilometer? In my working definition they do. I suspect you are defining isothermal by volume instead of by mass.
In any case the matter is nowhere near as settled as you seem to believe it is. This is a matter for experiment to settle. Perhaps you can point me to the experiment which demonstrates that non-convecting column of gas or liquid in thermal equilibrium in a gravitational field is exactly the same temperature at the top and bottom. Good luck. The only experiment I could find was this:
http://www.firstgravitymachine.com/testresults.phtml
It’s hardly definitive and the author appears to be on the crank side of the spectrum but that doesn’t automatically mean he’s done something wrong. I would certainly welcome something more rigorous. Confounding my dilemma in whether to take Graeff seriously is the dude holds a number of patents in the technologies he uses to construct his experimental apparatus so he’s definitely no amateur in that regard. He has the means and knowledge to construct the apparatus and perform the experiment.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4LENN_enUS461US461&q=Roderich+W.+Graeff
I believe the proper response from the traditional science establishment would be replication not a hand waving dismissal. It’s not like he’s claimed to have found cold fusion and Pons-Fleischman was at least accorded the courtesy of replication.
Perhaps you can, as a representative of post-normal science, demonstrate the post-normal response to experiments whose results you wouldn’t have predicted… handwaving and appeals to authority like you’ve done so far is what I have come to expect. Color me unimpressed.
What the flying f*ck does an electrolytic capacitor have in common with a planetary atmosphere? You must be tenured which is basically a license to be absurb and still get paid like you were sane.
Dave Springer | July 30, 2012 at 5:40 pm |
“In an isothermal atmosphere does a pound of air at 10 kilometers have the same total energy as a pound of air at 1 kilometer? In my working definition they do.”
That doesn’t make any sense to me. Isothermal means equal temperature, not equal energy. There is no law that says everything has to have the same energy. Gravitational potential energy is *not* heat energy. If you drop an object, you can convert stored gravitational potential energy to kinetic energy and when it lands on the ground to heat energy.
First- DocMartyn: The post to which I replied was explicitly about simple thermal equilibrium, which it got radically wrong. And I explicitly stated that the real atmosphere is out of equilibrium. Your point is completely irrelevant. To the argument. But as a physicist I can’t help but remind you that, if the atmosphere were in equilibrium, T would still be uniform although the fraction of the different molecules would vary with height.
OK Dave: This is my first time on this site. Now I see who’s here. Genuine raving “I tells ya, thermodynamics is just what they want you to believe” loonies.
Dr. Curry: Does it make you in any way uneasy that you seem to be collecting crackpots?
Michael, I am very pleased to see you participating here. the threads at Climate Etc. are mixed – the main technical threads attract some fairly sophisticated discussion. On ‘newsy’ hot topics threads such as the two current threads, things can get rather crackpotty. At the same time, the hot topics threads such as this one attract new participants.
I made no claim that any actual atmosphere on a real planet would be isothermal. I wouldn’t claim any real gas could be ideal either. Resorting to straw man argument straight out of the gate doesn’t bode well for the quality of argument you offer. But I’m tolerant for a while at least. I figure the several years of study that earned you a doctorate deserves some initial respect. Don’t push what little respect I have for sheepskin surfers beyond it. I’m more inclined to judge the quality of your intellectual output by how much someone is willing to pay your for it. I was paid the equivalent of several Nobel cash awards for mine. You?
More handwaving and name calling. How about some experimental science that demonstrates your claim? After all, how hard can it be to put together a non-convecting column of fluid or gas in a university laboratory a few meters high, take pains to insulate it and let it reach equilibrium, then measure the temperature accurately to a couple thousandths of a degree top and bottom and them to be equal to the resolution of your instruments.
Too difficult, apparently. You bore me. So does Curry at times.
Related discussions have come up several times earlier on this site. One of those was continued in some detail here
http://pirila.fi/energy/random-topics/#comment-52
Pekka – a perpetuum mobile of the second kind is not provably forbidden. Your example of a thermocouple across the cold top and warm bottom of a thermo-gravitic gradient fails. Why bother with an atmosphere. Why don’t we just put the cold side at the bottom of the ocean and the warm side at the top? When you figure out why that won’t work you can apply the same answer to coupling the top and bottom of the atmosphere. Conversely, if you can figure out a way to make it work, you can buy me lunch for suggesting you give it the old college try.
Please let me commend to Climate Etc. readers the fine textbook by Frenkel and Smits titled Understanding Molecular Simulation: from Algorithms to Applications (in particular Chapter 7: Free Energy Calculations).
In particular, Dave Springer, the lengthy chains of physical reasoning that lead some folks to the conclusion that “consensus thermodynamics is wrong” can be usefully validated via the dynamical simulations that Frenkel and Smit will show you how to code.
And yes, these micro-scale validation computations affirm that about a century ago, the physics community got thermodynamics right.
What science would you like to learn next, Dave Springer? :) :) :)
Pekka, you state in your argument that an atmospheric column of pure nitrogen must be the same temperature from top to bottom and that temperature is the surface temperature. You state this is because the nitrogen cannot radiate energy.
Wow. I was under the impression that all matter above a temperature of absolute zero radiates energy.
Incredible. Maybe you’d like to reconsider that statement.
Upon further consideration fang (Sidles) I find I’m in agreement with Weissman. He just doesn’t realize he agreed with me (yet).
He says there is no such thing as an isothermal atmosphere in the real world. I explained why that’s so. There must always be a temperature gradient in the gravity field. Molecules at the top of column must, on average, have the same energy as molecules at the bottom of the column. Given the molecules at the top of the column have more gravitational energy they must have less kinetic energy for the books to balance. It’s really very simple.
Thanks for playing Dr. Weissman. It’s been fun but ultimately you could not win.
The emission from pure nitrogen is really weak, not exactly zero but very close to that due to the symmetry of the molecule. Even the magnetic moment is zero making the emission much weaker than that of oxygen which is also very weak.
Dave Springer, you need to watch Mrs. Karosas’s lecture … then code up some kinetic simulations for yourself! ;) ;) ;)
`Cuz until you acquire some practical experience, your thermodynamical pronouncements will continue to provide Climate Etc,‘s most vivid examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect! :) :) :)
“But as a physicist I can’t help but remind you that, if the atmosphere were in equilibrium, T would still be uniform although the fraction of the different molecules would vary with height”
Indeed?
We take a a very simple gas giant, Fe core and atmosphere made of H2, He & Ne, and give it uniform radiant heat from space, just enough so that there is no liquid Ne at the Fe center.
If the planet is isothermal then it will have a pressure, thus energy gradient. One would tend to suspect that at thermodynamic equilibrium the heat in the system would be uniform with altitude, and not temperature.
DocMartyn, your thermodynamic observations are a very good start.
Two hundred years of experience suggests that a very mental model for thinking about thermodynamic equilibrium (that is, a mental model that the math, the microscopic kinetics, and the experiments all agree with) is to picture not only energy, but all other conserved quantities (like chemical species and charge) as sloshing around from place-to-place, until at equilibrium, everything is as disordered as it can possibly be.
Then it is a nice theorem of thermodynamics, that at equilibrium ALL the thermodynamic potentials (one for each conserved quantity) are uniform throughout the body.
From this point of view, heat energy is just another conserved quantity, and its chemical potential (known as “inverse temperature”) also must be uniform.
@article{Zia:2009lr, Author = {Zia, R. K. P. and Redish, Edward F. and McKay, Susan R.}, Journal = {American Journal of Physics}, Number = {7}, Pages = {614-622}, Title = {Making sense of the Legendre transform}, Volume = {77}, Year = {2009}}Happy studying, DocMartyn! :) :) :)Fan you state;-
“Then it is a nice theorem of thermodynamics, that at equilibrium ALL the thermodynamic potentials (one for each conserved quantity) are uniform throughout the body. ”
Except of course the actual gravity field, which is vectorial and which gives rise to a pressure pressure.
As I state, we get gravitational fractionation of gases, based on density, in our own atmosphere and in those of all the gaseous bodies in the Solar system we have examined.
A box model gives you a thermodynamically ‘flat’ system. However, we actually live is a more rounded universe and gravity exists.
In a box model we have perfectly mixed gases, however planets have gradients, caused by density.
You might google the terms ‘cracking tower’ and ‘cracking trench’; one of these technologies exists and is used to manufacturer/separate hydrocarbons on the basis of density and the other does not.
One of these devices uses a gravity field and ones doesn’t.
DocMartyn, thank you for pointing to fractional distillation columns as a common-place example of extraordinarily interesting thermodynamics.
In these columns there are three (or more) conserved quantifies: (1) the total energy, (2) the total mass of the “light stock” (that flows upward), (3) the total mass of the “heavy stock” (that flows downward). Associated to these conserved quantities are three (or more) thermodynamical potentials: (1) the “inverse temperature” of the energy, (2) the “chemical potential” of the light stock, and (3) the “chemical potential” of the heavy stock.
At equilibrium the column has uniform potentials, top-to-bottom. Now apply a heat source at the bottom, and a heat sink at the top. Magic happens! Not only is a flow of heat induced, but a flow of the other thermodynamic quantities and potentials too. And because these induced flows can act to locally decrease entropy, they have immense economic value in (e.g.) purification of chemicals.
All of this is covered in seminal works by Merrel R. Fenske in the 1930s, who is the eponymous creator of the Fenske equations that are much-used in chemical engineering, and is summarized in J. Calvin Giddings textbook Unified Separation Science (1991).
The relation to atmospheric science is direct: distillation towers are heated at the bottom and cooled at the top; the induced entropy gradient induces complex transport processes of mass and energy. Similarly the earth’s atmosphere is heated at the bottom (by sun-warmed land and water) and cooled at the top (by radiative emission to space); the induced entropy gradient induces complex transport processes of mass and energy (including most spectacularly hurricanes and thunderstorms).
Please let me assure you, that there is nothing particularly mysterious about the role of gravity and/or curved geometry in all this.
Perhaps it is harsh to say, yet it is none-the-less true, that the gross misunderstanding of thermodynamical processes that is often shown by climate-change denialists strikingly illustrates the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Summary Never invest in a chemical plant that was designed by climate-change denialists. :) :) :)
Fan, “Please let me assure you, that there is nothing particularly mysterious about the role of gravity and/or curved geometry in all this.”
That appears to be an incorrect statement, if you look at the inverse or potential temperature profile of the planet. If a temperature of say -20 C is critical to any process, then a significant fraction of the “surface” would not be included. Since a doubling of CO2 is limited to about a 1% change, that “surface” area change does have to be that large to be “significant”. Mysteriously, the models tend to be least accurate where that happens.
“Skydragons served a purpose.”
Indeed. In a serious discussion, a good belly laugh is pleasant and relaxing.
Yes, skydragons served a purpose by raising a discussion and doubts.
I used to think like you, that the temperature ought to be lower at the top of an air column in a gravity field, because I though the average energy (kinetic+potential) should be the same everywhere. I have since changed my mind, partly discussing it with many people including Pekka, but mostly (isn’t it always the case?) by doing some thinking and math myself. It is indeed counter-intuitive at first, but when you define the possible states of your particles in the column taking both position and speed into account, and compute the Maxwell-Boltzman distribution conserving total energy and mass, you get the classic results, i.e. constant temp (defined as average kinetic energy per particle) and variable density. Intuitively, it can help to think about the density together with the speed when considering exchange between repr volume at different heights: indeed the gravity field means that particles are accelerated and they end up to higher kinetic energy when going from top to bottom….but you also have more particles in the bottom that leave this particular kinetic energy state due to higher density. The M-B distribution and density distribution are such that both effects cancels out and M-B distributions corresponding to the same temperature is the only way to keep stable kinetic distributions at all heights. Well, it is not very clear explained like that, but think about it and at one time it just clicks and what was already demonstrated (in a more abstract way) by doing M-B distribution on the whole position+velocity state vector start to “feel” right to your engineer intuition ;-)
Kai, “compute the Maxwell-Boltzman distribution conserving total energy and mass” Funny thing about Earth, the time frame for conserving energy and mass don’t have to be the same. If you consider the lower troposphere a quasi-radiationless non-equilibrium system and the Tropopause and above a near pure radiation only system, matter and energy can be transferred and hang around a while. When the ocean have less energy, that is less likely to happen, when they have as much energy as they can hold, it would happen a lot. Since at the lower energy state, more mass/energy contained the matter would have more degrees of freedom than in a higher energy state when it can be dissipated along with energy out of the system. When some of the mass doesn’t return and the specific heat capacity of the matter drastically decreases, things can shift a touch.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/climate%20stuff/whatsnormal.png
Who knows, maybe the oceans and the stratosphere temperatures would approach an asymptotic limit of some sort?
Joshua
For every ignorant denier, there are probably a million ignorant alarmists.
It shows that even people who suspect climate scientists of being charlatans, when they take a hard look at the data, see that the climate scientists have been right all along.
Is the sort of logic we can expect to be ever be employed by the Left concerning capitalism and Judeo/Christian morals and ethics?
” It shows that even people who suspect climate scientists of being charlatans,”
There are many quotes being posted online showing that Muller was never a skeptic. The fact that he now portrays himself as ‘converted’ does not reflect well on him or the entire BEST project. Looks like a put-up job.
The attempt ex post facto to excommunicate Muller is hilarious. Where were these claims before Muller announced the preliminary results? Absolutely nowhere; the guy was acclaimed as a savior.
The desperate need now to cast him out of the “skeptic” pantheon illustrates the religious, indeed cultish overtones of the supposed “skeptics.”
Robert
Your attempt to paint Muller as a “converted” skeptic is as hilarious as his own claim is dishonest. This desperate need now to place him earlier in skeptic pantheon illustrates the religious, indeed cultish overtones of the supposed alarmist “scientists”.
Muller has always been on the alarmist side. His difference was, he realized the widespread fraud and dishonesty that has characterised alarmist “science” was harming the movement, and sought to bring some openness honesty into the picture. Sadly though he has let his politics dominate, as invariably happens with precomitted alarmists.
Judith –
This is an unfortunately unconstructive statement on your part
First, looking for an antecedent, it isn’t clear what you are saying the quote is an example of.
Secondly, at least you qualified with “seems,” but let’s look at what Caldeira said about what Muller got right:
He is saying that Muller got the right answer for the right reason – as have others who looked at the data.
This a bit ambiguous: what “climate scientists have been right [about] all along” could be either the interpretation of the land data or attribution of change to ACO2.
Either way, this kind of tendency on your part to reflexively impugn the integrity of combatants on one side and sand-head w/r/t the combatants on the other only retards progress. Why do you think it is helpful to imply that Caldiera would be willing to approve of flawed science? Because it always helps to generate debate if you conclude a post with red meat?
If others who support the AGW theory do so for no other reason because both temperature and CO2 are increasing, then they don’t understand the climate system. To me Caldeira seems to be cheering Muller’s belief, rather than his arguments.
I don’t see that, and it seems like a reflexively uncharitable interpretation. Again – depending on whether he was referring to interpretation of the data or attribution, he could be saying that Muller got the right answer for the right reasons.
But even if that isn’t the case, Caldiera could be saying that even if Muller’s science was bad, in a political sense the BEST findings would support addressing a problem Calidera thinks needs to be addressed. Implying that he supports bad science is gratuitous, IMO. It’s that kind of negative attribution of character that happens on both sides. I find it categorically speculative, unscientific, and just as suggestive of motivated reasoning from the people who make those statements as in the intended targets.
Judith,
Caldeira is cheering for Muller because so much of the climate consensus is based on shared belief that is more pseudo religious than scientific agreement.
No wonder the trolls want to keep the argument centered around their misrepresentation of the argument rather than the facts.
Thank you for underscoring my point.
This is exactly the type of response that statements from Judith like the one I noted tends to evoke.
That isn’t necessarily her fault, but it is something maybe should assume some responsibility for if the intent is to create more and better dialog. If she makes these kinds of statements repeatedly and they continually inspire this kind of comment, it seems reasonable to question why it keeps happening.
Now perhaps your conclusion is accurate, lurker – but there is no doubt that it is by definition speculative and unscientific.
Joshua,
Please start in with your mommy fallacy anytime now.
You are a never ending joke. A bobble head troll, as it were.
Caldeira: “The basic scientific results…” and “I do not see the results of Muller et al as being scientifically important.”
These must surely be statements about only the more mundane findings (do the temperatures agree) rather than anything novel (different opinions on attribution) if he doesn’t think they are scientifically important.
Wasn’t the BEST study initially driven by Muller’s distrust following climategate? So it’s maybe a statement of fact that:
However, their result may be politically important. It shows that even people who suspect climate scientists of being charlatans,…see that the climate scientists have been right all along…in assessing temperatures, which was what all the visible fuss was about as far as most people were aware.
Watts is the first one to do a reanalysis using the most recently adopted site classification criteria i.e. Leroy 2010. BEST and predecessors used Leroy 1999 which failed to adequately address anthropogenic heat pollution. Get used to it. The new site selection criteria is what it is and does what it does. You’ll have to dispute Leroy 2010 to dispute Watts unless he made some egregious math error that, given he had a bona fide statistician and also a bona fied atmospheric physicist as co-authors is pretty unlikely.
Your attachment to Watt’s shiny object is already past its sell-by date. Debunkings are already popping up like mushrooms all around the web, despite Watts strangely providing neither data nor code nor the name of the journal he’s submitting to:
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2012/07/venema-review-of-watts-et-al-2012.html
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/07/30/why-wattss-new-paper-is-doomed-to-fail-review/
Watts’ “paper” (unsubmitted, unpublished, and unreviewed) announced in his “PRESS RELEASE” (by himself, raising the question of how it differs from any ordinary blog post) is a McGuffin designed to distract attention from Muller’s announcement and Watt’s own prior commitment to respect Muller’s results:
“I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.”
— Anthony Watts on BEST, March 6th, 2011
The question for Tony is if he stands by that statement know that Muller has announced the result. He doesn’t want to answer that question, hence the shiny object.
Your quote from Watts on BEST is incomplete without this followup from 7/29.
“I fully accept the previous findings of these papers, including that of the Muller et al 2012 paper. These investigators found exactly what would be expected given the siting metadata they had. However, the Leroy 1999 site rating method employed to create the early metadata, and employed in the Fall et al 2011 paper I co-authored was incomplete, and didn’t properly quantify the effects.
The new rating method employed finds that station siting does indeed have a significant effect on temperature trends.”
Stephen Rasey, it’d probably be best if you (and everyone else) just ignored Robert. He’s indistinguishable from a troll, and he tends to contribute nothing useful. For an example, look at the second “debunking” he offered. It explicitly says:
Either he hasn’t read it, he’s intentionally misrepresenting it, or he’s so delusional he think it actually rebuts something. Whatever the reason, it clearly shows he’s not someone you should expect to be able to have a reasonable discussion with.
Right to the point. It is what it is,
Judith, thank you for hosting the fine forum that is Climate Etc. … your efforts are greatly admired and appreciated by everyone!
What confidence level do you assign to the opinions you state? As a concrete and practically important example:
———————————-
The No-CAGW Scenario Supposing that CO2 levels double, none-the-less substantial Greenland/Antarctica ice-mass will *NOT* occur, such that multi-meter sea-level rise will *NOT* be observed within the next five centuries.
(1) We can be 100% confident of the no-CAGW Scenario.
(2) We can be 99% confident of the no-CAGW Scenario.
(3) We can be 90% confident of the no-CAGW Scenario.
(4) We can be 50% confident of the no-CAGW Scenario.
(5) The no-CAGW Scenario is scientifically unlikely.
(6) The no-CAGW Scenario is scientifically impossible.
(*) It is not rational to estimate the probability of the no-CAGW Scenario.
(**) It is rational to estimate the probability of the no-CAGW Scenario, but it is socially and/or politically imprudent to publicly state that estimate.
———————————-
To be even-handed, Judith, please let me state that my own opinion is (4)-trending-toward-(5), and that (for me) the scientific evidence of greatest weight is the treble assurance of radiative transport theory, ARGO, and GRACE … relative to which, the BEST data is simply not that strong, one way or the other.
Judith Curry, how strong is your statistical confidence in the no-CAGW scenario? The world wonders! :) :) :)
By CAGW, do you mean catastrophic? Not going there in these threads. The only thing we are discussing is attribution of warming. So if you take of the ‘C’, this is a good survey
The question I have is whether, if you believe in these natural oscillations, natural cooling could just as easily be blunting AGW as enhancing it.
If you don’t know what is cause the natural oscillation, don’t you have to consider both possibilities, and not just the side of the distribution that implies a lower climate sensitivity?
What consideration have you given to the possibility that the observed warming is a function of (AGW + natural cooling trend)?
curryja | July 30, 2012 at 12:15 pm |
(As an aside in preface, I wish to thank you for taking.. well, maintaining.. the moral high ground of the principles and positions — though I disagree with them in this case — that you uphold. It is always a delight to encounter people of goodwill and good conscience presenting a forum for discussion of deep division and dispute in a way that might advance the topic.)
By CAGW, do you mean catastrophic?
What if by CAGW people mean CRAGW?
Costly.
Risky.
Whatever else can be said of catastrophe, isn’t the point of principled people to consider the assignment of risks and costs, when the causes are attributed to some and the burdens to others?
(Let’s leave accidental benefits aside: they accrue too to some and not to others, leaving us in the same position of attribution to some and burden on others. The whole benefits of AGW argument is thus a canard.)
Some cause AGW disproportionately. AGW has clear Risks that can be established without concern for some types of attribution because the principle in any community is of Deep Pockets — a victim of tortious conduct may elect to seek redress from any particular person who caused the harm based on ease of reaching into their pockets for satisfaction of the liability.
Do we have 17% attribution? 3%? By convention, by precedent, it doesn’t matter. AGW is real. The proofs are substantial. It is true they may be subject to criticism, either model-based or observation-based, theory-based or experiment-based, but the criticisms are far from fatal, and far from capable of supplanting the GHE theory with another hypothesis. The remarkable consiliency of theory and observation and model and experiment across ice cores and thermometers and sea ice volume and sea level rise and habitat change for wildlife and extreme event incidence/variability/exceedence/clustering, and on and on into now over a hundred distinct well-founded arenas of science is overwhelming. It doesn’t mean it can never be proven wrong, but the same could be said of the theory of the atom.
AGW creates risks. The proofs of this, too, are substantial, even patent. The probability that these risks have become reality is extremely high, given late extreme events.
We’re right now at the point it would be plausible for a class to seek action for redress of climate damage from specific actors? That would be a question for courts. We’re right now at the point where no qualified expert could stand up in court and testify, “There is no AGW,” or “There is no Risk of AGW,” without perjury? That’s pretty clear.
While there is a risk of CAGW, there is also a risk of overreacting on the basis of exaggerated claims of it. Class action against such liars should be instituted. And hiding data, redefining peer-review, etc, should attract automatic prison sentences.
BatedBreath | July 31, 2012 at 2:40 am |
Exaggerated claims? What harm is there from exaggeration of a claim? Whose responsibility is the ‘overreacting’? What is the evidence of overreacting? Be specific. Be detailed. Provide links to original source documentation. Count nothing twice. Count nothing not directly attributable from first causes. Use generally accepted accounting principles. In other words, prove this alarmist panick-mongering assertion you have made of overreacting.
“Automatic prison sentences” is a phrase I’ve been told by its lack of due process or recognition of the right to a fair trial of judge and jury indicates tyranny. Are you a tyrant? Despot? Statist? Sounds like. What’s your hidden agenda in this? You don’t explain. You just emote and assert.
But let’s return to the exaggerated claims. The unexaggerated claims and the moderately exaggerated claims have both been produced and compared side by side, and come down to the same net result, it seems. But even if there were a difference between the extremely exaggerated and unexaggerated claims to do with rate or degree of harm, there’s still proof of risk. The liability attaches to the source of the risk, and the degree of the risk is not the issue in matters of liability, but the degree of the harm.
What are the amounts of the harms? Well, of the various floods and droughts that can absolutely be shown to have a contribution to their risk, the heat waves and storms, there have been deaths. Death is a pretty big harm to be liable for.
And the proximity of the cause? Death by wildfire, wildfire by heat and lightning, heat and lightning by AGW, AGW by CO2, CO2 by burning coal.
Let’s compare. Death by cancer. Cancer by prolonged exposure to tarry substances and smoke. Prolonged exposure by addiction to nicotine. Addiction to nicotine by promoting high-nicotine tobacco when you knew your product causes death by cancer and kept fighting the science on it.
AGW caused death; liability one step less remote than tobacco caused death.
Or are you saying the hardship and death caused by the weather caused by the coal companies is exaggerated?
Get a grip Bart. The (blindingly obvious) exaggeration is in the claimed certainty and severity, the crucial ‘C’ in in CAGW, on which those angling for more political interference base their whole case. And which in reality is still little more than primitive curve-fitting.
BatedBreath | August 1, 2012 at 1:04 am |
What is the level of certainty you say is claimed? Point at the claims where the level of certainty is spelled out, and the rationale for that level of certainty is laid out.
And really, if I’m not the one who died in a wildfire or of heat exhaustion in a heatwave or in a traffic accident in a blizzard or caught in a flood, then it’s less severe for me than for the victim, but for the victim, I’m thinking it’s hard to exaggerate the severity.
As we know these things have happened and their probability has been increased by AGW, your claims of exaggeration are callously specious.
Many other techniques than curve-fitting have been called on, and the reasoning behind these scientific proofs is sufficient to meet the standards of evidence; where these proofs do not suffice, then by that same argument all our knowledge of the Moon, planets and stars, atoms and molecules, microbes and prehistoric creatures are in the same or greater doubt as the same techniques and certainty levels or worse are used in gleaning our conclusions about those things.
In other words, you’re makin’ stuff up.
, No Bart, what is ‘made-up’ are the exaggerated levels of un/certainty associated with the ‘C’ in CAGW on the part of the IPCC, which make up the core of the argument that political action needs to be taken. Ditto the claim that there is much telling advance over curve-fitting. It’s really just political action for political action’s sake – music to the ears of extreme politicos like of yourself (even though you publicly pretend otherwise from time to time).
BatedBreath | August 3, 2012 at 2:54 am |
Could you make that up again? Only in English this time?
Judith, it’s my pleasure to amend the question per your request! As a bonus, the amended question is better-humored. :) :) :)
———————————-
The No-Big-Change AGW Scenario Supposing that CO2 levels double, none-the-less substantial Greenland/Antarctica ice-mass will *NOT* occur, such that multi-meter sea-level rise will *NOT* be observed within the next five centuries.
(1) We can be 100% confident of the No-Big-Change AGW Scenario.
(2) We can be 99% confident of the No-Big-Change AGW Scenario.
(3) We can be 90% confident of the No-Big-Change AGW Scenario.
(4) We can be 50% confident of the No-Big-Change AGW Scenario.
(5) The No-Big-Change AGW Scenario is scientifically unlikely.
(6) The No-Big-Change AGW Scenario is scientifically impossible.
(*) It is not rational to estimate the probability of the No-Big-Change AGW Scenario.
(**) It is rational to estimate the probability of the No-Big-Change AGW Scenario, but it is socially and/or politically imprudent to publicly state that estimate.
———————————-
Fan – nice to meet you:
For the sake of argument, are you considering in your thinking the possibility that CO2 will double and the ice mass loss will occur but the reason for the ice loss won’t be the increased CO2? That could be catastrophic, but not CAGW.
Joshua, thank you for your excellent question.
Please notice that in neither version of the question do any variants of the two “C”-words appear: “causal*” or “catastrophe*”. Thus there is no affirmation in the question, explicit or implied, of either causality or catastrophe.
The reason is simple. Supposing that CO2 levels *do* double, and the ice-caps *do* melt, and the ocean *does* rise by multiple meters, then none-the-less there will be folks who affirm that the association of these events is non-causal and/or that ocean rise is non-catastrophic.
Summary The question is posed such that issues of causality and catastrophe are nugatory.
——————
So, what is your personal opinion, Joshua? :) :) :)
Yes. I imagine that is true. I would also imagine that some would argue that some would see causality and/or catastrophe no matter the weight of scientific evidence.
Heh – my personal opinion? Um…. er…..
I don’t have the scientific chops to have much of an opinion. I note that there seems to be a preponderance of opinion among those who do have the chops, so I think it only expedient to do our best in evaluating probabilities and to examine policy. The problem is that it’s hard to find a good discussion amidst the flying jello.
@Joshua
No kidding. It doesn’t take Mr. Spock to quickly figure out there could be catastrophic warming without anthropogenic causation considering the most stable condition in the earth’s long history is no permanent polar ice caps. That means the ocean is 100 meters higher. That’s a catastrophe for humans but actually the most common stable climate condition in the earth’s past.
Dear Bonehead Professor John Sidles of University of Washington Medical a.k.a. “a physicist” a.k.a. “a fan of *more* discourse”,
No CAGW does not rule no catastrophic warming. It rules out only anthropogenic causes. The earth for most of its past had no permanent polar ice caps. That condition wasn’t anthropogenic in cause yet it clearly happened and is clearly the rule rather than the exception.
:roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:
The thread could be interesting and informative … without this sort of nonsense.
This discussion illustrates three common traits of climate-change skeptics:
(1) Most climate-change skeptics are skilled at equivocation.
(2) Some climate-change skeptics prefer abusive discourse.
(3) Few (if any?) climate-change skeptics are able to estimate probabilities.
For example, are there no climate-change skeptics who can estimate the probability of the No-Big-Change AGW Scenario.
If not, then what purpose (if any) is served by a community of climate-change skeptics that is (for policy-making purposes) innumerate? :) :) :)
Some can project a lower-cost scenario, but this is not popular for a couple of reasons:
* Once you estimate a probability, you have to weigh it against the other probabilities, and they don’t want to do that.
* Taking a hard look at a modest-cost scenario cuts against the catastrophic thinking prevalent among climate change deniers and conspiracy theorists in general, i.e. “We might spend money on green energy and end up avoiding modest problems rather than huge ones” is not an impressive threat compared to “World Socialist Muslim Leftists will Destroy the Economy but Warming is Actually Not Happening and Anyway Warmer is Better.”
The drama queens will always prefer the latter formulation to the former.
Something Fan overlooks here about the general nature of the debate:
All climate “scientists” are paid lackies of the state, and are hence prone to conclude CAGW, since this will boost the coffers and power of their paymaster.
Ignoring how scientists get funding, this boggles the mind given that most all republicans now deny AGW and even most democrats are reluctant to action. But seriously, when all you have are conspiracy theories like these it’s a sad day indeed.
Daws
Your strawman of “conspiracy” is laughable – organizations acting in their own interest is common sense. Indeed it would need a conspiracy for this to NOT be the case. The interests of the state (and a more politically controlled society) lie in a “finding” of CAGW. Which is exactly what state-funded scientists are producing. You truly need to be blind to not see the connection.
Indeed it would need a conspiracy for this not to be the case. Forcings and feedbacks are positive.
Indeed – the political forcings and feedbacks fom political funding are strongly positive.
Attribution, she’s a bitch.
Don’t know why, just scratch that itch.
Puff the Magic Carbon
Lived by the C. degree.
Nature turned and bit him, someplace rich.
=============================
That’s not one of your better literary creations and doesn’t bear repeating. IMO. Just sayin’.
Either Dr. Curry isn’t listening, or she’s not listening to enough people.
Aside: Google “I don’t know anyone who voted for Nixon”
(Yes, I know it’s a misquote>)
I can feel them in the blogosphere.
==========
David Appel has an excellent post:
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2012/07/where-best-should-have-stopped.html
“Physicists tend to see the world as made up of simple physical systems (particles and fields), and when the physical systems get too complicated (atoms beyond Helium, molecules, galaxies), they hand them off to the chemists and astronomers for analysis. Heisenberg et al found the laws of quantum mechanics; but then they didn’t get much beyond calculating the spectra of He2+ before saying, yeesh, that’s hard, enough of that! So they turned to the structure of the nucleus and the laws of quantum electrodynamics and partied it up there.
What does x-ray crystallography say about the structure of DNA? Don’t ask a physicist! Pure physicists don’t do that kind of stuff. Sure, they could if they really wanted to. But by and large they really don’t want to, and it’s not what they’re good at.
Attributing climate is more like figuring out the structure of DNA than it is like figuring out the laws of quantum mechanics — simple curve-fitting (“exponentials, polynomials”) doesn’t cut it. In fact, it makes you look kind of foolish. If it were that simple climatologists would have done it in the 19th century (and, of course, they’ve all tried curve-fitting on the second week of their research, then hid those papers in a bottom drawer.) That’s exactly why they scratch around for all the clues they can get, and why they ruin their youth build climate models. (Sure, CO2 is one of the big factors, which is already enough to be worried about our large emissions; but there is usually a lot going on.)
BEST did a great job reconstructing the temperature history of the planet (assuming their work passes peer review, at least). Perhaps they should have stopped there.”
David Appell does not support his claims with any evidence, citation, or reasoning process.
The reason is simple: David Appell’s claims are so wrong historically, as to be wholly nonsensical logically.
See for example, the multiple seminal textbooks listed in Subrahmanyan “Chandra” Chandrasekhar’s bibliography, in which numerous physical principles and mathematical techniques that are fundamental to modern climate change science were first set forth.
Judith, please revise your opinion of David Appell’s deeply ignorant essay! :) :) :)
David Apell got it right for 1% of physicists and wrong for 99%.
What BEST did for CO2 and temperatures was curve-fitting. It isn’t particularly compelling (Curve-fitting rarely is.). Whether this has to do with Muller’s particular limitations as a physicist is questionable, although this stereotype did not originate with Dave (see also http://xkcd.com/793/) and may, like many stereotypes, have some element of truth.
That said — and this is where Muller can be said to have “caught up to 1988” in a useful way — two hundred and fifty years of temperature data with a strong warming trend and no other strong forcings detected really does beg the question, if it’s not mostly CO2, what is it? “Skeptics” need a coherent theory of this, and they don’t seem to have one, and whenever they try and invoke “multidecadal oscillations” or “step changes” they succeed in underscore the lack of any real physical theory of where, apart from AGW, the additional energy is coming from.
So the curve fitting does not prove causation, but it does suggest that as a matter of common sense, the burden of proof lies with those that want to minimize the CO2 contribution.
Five stars. That is exactly the issue.
Here’s the thing. It’s an unfortunate fact that the general public makes the equation of the word ‘physicist’ with the LHC or other research devices that are built to uncover the very fundamental nature of the physical world. As Pekke has pointed out, a very small percentage of research physicists work on such problems. The VAST majority of physicists work on a wide array of research and development ranging from understanding the flow of electrons in nano-structured materials to the quantum mechanical relationship between electronic states in photosynthetic chromophores to understanding the flow of air and transport of water vapor in the atmosphere. This research has led directly to every single technological advancement we enjoy in the modern world.
Now, Mr. Appell’s point may be valid that Muller’s analysis is oversimplified and lacks the necessary nuance to meaningfully inform our understanding of climate. However, it doesn’t help Mr. Appell’s argument that he also makes totally oversimplified and uninformed generalizations about a population of professionals whose role in scientific research is as broad as any others’.
I would also like to point out the serendipity that I would return to reading these threads when Prof. Michael Weissman was making comments. He was my undergraduate academic adviser at UIUC. Very odd indeed.
Judith (or perhaps I should ask David Appell, since it was his remark although you quote it approvingly):
Simple dynamical models of the kind that physicists would naturally try first (these are better than simple curve fits, but give nearly the same result) seem to fit the global temperature data much better than the sets of straight lines that we see in the IPCC reports and elsewhere. They also have direct physical interpretations, although these are necessarily a simplified account of what is happening. So why have they ended up in bottom drawers instead of becoming the normal reference point for discussion?
Judith
If we accept the premise that all (or a majority) of the 1.5C warming over the past 250 years is due to human activity, then we must ask what did humans do to cause the 2+C decline which resulted in the LIA? The obvious and reasonable answer is: human’s had no influence on the LIA.
Scientists cannot argue that the cause of the 2+C degree decline during the LIA was 100% natural and the rebound out of the LIA was 100% human induced. That is implausible to say the least.
Expecially since we see evidence of a 1,000 year cycle:
0 AD – Roman Warm Period (warmer than present)
1,000 AD – Midieval Warm Period (warmer than present)
2,000 AD – Current Warm Period (approaching prior warm periods)
Do humans and CO2 concentration changes have an impact on Earth’s temperatures, locally and gloabally, probably? Is it 100%, extremely unlikely!
We are wasting valuable time and resources solving a non-existent problem (AGW) while allowing real, serious problems (primarily in the undeveloped nations of the world) to fester and kill many more people every year. Human health and life expectancy increase dramatically when energy is prevalent and inexpensive. Building power plants and transmission systems to bring inexpensive electricity to undeveloped areas will produce far greater benefits than the money wasted on CO2 abatement and alternative energy sources whose time has not yet arrived.
Bill
That isn’t logical.
What’s not logical is to agree that the past 1.5 C. of warming has had vast benefits, but to declare that the next 1.5 C. of warming will be devastating.
=======================
Find someone who says that for me so I can tell them they’re being illogical.
You can feel them in the blogosphere.
==============
well I didn’t say that but I said something a bit more open-ended along the same lines…
Actually, I should have responded with: “Mommy, mommy, they were illogical fiiirrrsssttt!”
Yes. Good point.
Kim,
Yes. Good point.
Unfortunately, Other Bill, I agree with Joshua that it’s not logical. OTOH, over at Lucia’s I asked – if getting us out of the LIA was almost all our doing, at what point did AGW stop being a good thing (eg we’d still be in the sucky old LIA)? Heh heh – have fun.
Well, since the industrial revolution and the renaissance occurred during the LIA, I wouldn’t call it at all sucky.
If warm is so good, how come the US has so many air con systems? And what has the heat of Las Vegas added to the sum of all humanity (apart from a few mob movies and Frank Sinatra)?
Climate is unionized ,in Tokyo for example the Summer T always decreases on Sundays and Holidays eg Ohashi 2006
Let us gather and glorify Gaia for evolving a mechanism to produce a fertilized and a warmer, more productive, earth for all its denizens. The fruits are uncountable, as are the mysterious blessings.
==================================
it’s the f*ing earthworms, stupid
Or as Walter Russel Mead said:
Gaia, that treacherous slut, has made so much oil and gas that her faithful acolytes today cannot protect her from the consequences of her own folly.
Well the legumes are the plants that support Rhizobia and allow them to fix nitrogen. Now the enzyme that does the biz is nitrogenase and is very oxygen sensitive. The plants protect the bacterial enzyme from having high levels of oxygen around by making Leg-hemoglobin. This protein is an animal protein that made its way into legumes via horizontal gene transfer,
He have no idea how this happened, or how rare this type of even is. However, the legumes are as old as the mammals and they have doubled the bio-productivity of the land during that time.
If Gaia would send me a email explaining how it got a plant to read an animal gene I would appreciate it. If there was an intermediate vector, what was it ?
“All good Democrats believe in global warming, after all, it is the science of one of their key heroes, former Vice President and Senator Al Gore. And all good environmentalists are aboard the global warming band wagon. And, for all of them, the Agenda is what is important. Their Agenda is to eliminate fossil fuels and the internal combustion engine from our civilization. The carbon dioxide, CO2, thing is simply the means to the end. And if the means is not true; who cares. It is only the Agenda that is important. To all of these people, my effort to debunk the CO2 greenhouse gas science is irrelevant.” ~John Coleman (‘why the global warming science has failed humanity,’ 26-Feb-2011)
I simply don’t understand how supposedly reputable scientists can do such shoddy work. I’m speaking of Muller’s sweeping statement of attribution. Even I can see his logic is simplistic. So if an innumerate, scientifically illiterate boob like me can see it, it’s certain Muller et al can too. So why do they leave themselves open like that?
I’m also noticing a blog post by Willis showing that Muller’s graph illustrating the temporary cooling effects of volcanos is very misleading. Muller’s graph makes it look like the various eruptions took place just before each short period of cooling, but when the eruptions are placed more accurately in time, they often occurred in the middle of the cooling.
Can the desire for self-aggrandizement be so strong and so destructive of good judgment? Yes, of course it can, but I find it startling nonetheless…
Judith,
Are you going to comment on Anthony Watts’ paper? If it holds up, it certainly seems to have major implications.
I’m too swamped at the moment to dig into Watts’ new paper. I’m counting on others to do the audit and assess the broader implications.
Shucks (to use a word you don’t hear much any more). Watts’ paper is way more important than Mullers in its implications I’m sure you’d agree.. But I can understand why, given your association with their work and Muller’s desire to list you as an author, you’d have a special interest in it.
Ross McKitrick was one of the reviewers of at least one of the BEST papers. He recommended that the papers were not ready to be published and recommended major re-writes. He released his review comments with his explanation of how he came to the conclusion that he had to do so in light of Muller’s publicity blitz when he was of the opinion that the research did not support the conclusions that BEST had reached. McKitrick’s comments are available at:
http://www.rossmckitrick.com/
In my arrogant opinion, McKitrick’s thoughts deserve a post of their own. Ross was prevented from showing his objections to the BEST study by an anachronistic twist of peer review. That perversion of process is worth discussing in its own right.
To say nothing of his trenchant statistical critique.
======================
RayG, Ross McKitrick only reviewed one of the four BEST papers.
Ray G
I have to agree with Kim that the two reviews by McKitrick “deserve a post of their own”.
The BEST conclusion, not only that UHI distortion was insignificant, but that it also, in effect, caused a spurious cooling signal [huh?] seems incongruous and McKitrick seems to have found an explanation for this apparent error.
The BEST attribution of post-LIA warming to human GHG emissions appears speculative, especially in view of the fact that the cooling of the LIA was clearly not caused by humans.
BEST should have limited the study to providing a time extension to the record of land surface temperature and improving the quality of this record, rather than getting off into issues it was unable to judge.
Max
by Judith Curry…”No one that I listen to questions that adding CO2 will warm the earth, all other things being equal.”
==============================================
And this is very sad indeed. You do not need to question that either, right, because they do not question that. Accordingly, no single one of them needs to question it, because the others, including you, do not to question that. That is interesting.
I am sure, if you ask them for a real scientific experimental proof, they will not be able to present any! This is my experience anyway. This phenomena is well known by the way: http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheEmperorsNewClothes_e.html .
Greg,
I’m sure Doctor C. did no mean she wasn’t open to evidence that might call that assumption into question. In fact, she’s already changed her opinion about a lot of things, which is prima facie proof of an open mind, something that’s just about wholly absent in most climate scientists we know about.
prima facie evidence.
See my previous thread:
http://judithcurry.com/2010/12/05/confidence-in-radiative-transfer-models/
I don’t see the big deal here anyway. The question isn’t whether, but how much.
.
The question is why can’t we see it against the play of natural forces? Now, I’m aware that Muller can see it, but he’s blind to natural forces, unless it’s misplacing volcanic action.
===============
Kim
Please witness that I have yet again replied to Mosh.(sixth time I think)
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/29/a-new-release-from-berkeley-earth-surface-temperature/#comment-223914
Beats me why its so hard to tell me what stations were used, why, and how the data was amended.
tonyb
Heh, tony, I’m about to try telling moshe and Zeke that they can’t find it. Might work.
===============
Kim
Whilst mislaying data seems to be a basic trait of climate science I am sure that Mosh and Zeke can easily lay their hands on the information requested and I’ve every confidence that Mosh will stop here for a mili second one day and impart that information to us.
Fancy suggesting they have lost it. Shame on you.
tonyb
Well, it works with children. And candy is easy to take from a baby.
=================
Yet another “denizen,” who doubts that ACO2 can warm the Earth’s climate, thrown under the bus.
I know you’re like to think so, Josh, but why did you leave off the second half of my statement?
A sad sort, blatant and unapologetic with his sophistry.
=======
I thought it wasn’t relevant.
Seemed to me that you were dismissing the relevance of a “skeptic” who doubts ACO2 could warm the Earth (i.e., no big deal). You said what “the” question is – as if your question is “the” only question. In fact it isn’t. Others have other questions. I have repeatedly observe some “skeptics” underplay the extent to which there are other “skeptics” who doubt ACO2 could warm the climate, even as I see many “skeptics” speaking about how “skeptical” belief isn’t monolithic.
Stating your opinion doesn’t change someone else’s opinion. If I misunderstood your point, and leaving off the second sentence was misleading, apologies. I had no intent to mischaracterize your view, only to comment on how I thought it exemplifies a pattern (as I described above) in the debate.
Sad also because of what he coulda been without a ‘few university courses in critical thinking’. Think what he coulda been.
Joshua, you coulda been interested in the science. You coulda been a contenduh.
=======================
There is an elephant in the room that nobody seems to want to address and that is “if human CO2 emissions are the cause of significant warming in the 1980’s and 1990’s, why did it stop in the 2000’s?”. We see similar rapid warming from 1910 to 1935 with no significant GHG contribution. Why? And why is the rise from 1975 to 2000 different from 1910 to 1935? Might it just be a continuation of the same warming trend with a hiatus during the 1950’s through the mid 1970’s? China’s CO2 emissions are skyrocketing with per capita emissions there now equal to Europe and total emissions exceeding the US and still climbing yet global atmospheric CO2 still rises with a roughly linear trend.
Everyone seems to bend over backwards and say “some of the warming we have seen is caused by human CO2 emissions” yet nobody really knows if that is true. What caused the rise from 1910 to 1935? There was no significant human CO2 emission at that time. I posit that we don’t know any more about THIS recent temperature rise than we do about the early 20th century rise. It seems like a great exercise in attempting to attribute causation to correlation. Maybe after several centuries of colder temperatures in the LIA, it takes a while for the ocean to fully circulate a few times and warm up. Maybe we have another century or two or three of warming before it fully “recovers” from the LIA and as it does so, dumps more CO2 into the atmosphere than humans could if we tried.
In every case in which I have looked, any warming post 2004 has been the result of mathematical prestidigitation. HADCRUT3 shows cooling since 2004: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2004/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2004/trend while HADCRUT4 shows things rather flat http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2004/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2004/trend
Why does NCDC retroactively re-adjust historic temperatures in their database each month with temperatures older than about 1950 being systematically adjusted cooler and newer data adjusted warmer?
The bottom line is that there is so much noise and so many vested interests that it is impossible to say what is going on.
I am not convinced of *anything* yet but I believe Watts with the ISO classification of station quality is on the right track.
Too bad a little mouse came in and sent that elephant flying.
Any number of knowledgeable people could answer those questions, but the best way is for you to study the available materials and find the answers.
Any number? I have been studying this issue for 10 years and so far I haven’t seen a single explanation that doesn’t rely on smoke and mirrors. I also notice you provide the typical dismissive non-explanation that is typical of that side of the debate. The history is full of rapid, extreme changes in climate that had nothing to do with atmospheric CO2. There is not a single thing presented to date that shows that CO2 *is* any significant cause of the climate change we saw until about 2000. And since 2000 human CO2 emissions have increased at an accelerating rate with NO change in temperatures and NO change in rate of total atmospheric CO2 increase. If human CO2 emissions were significant, we would see the change in atmospheric CO2 track changes in human CO2. When global human CO2 emissions declined in 2009, we should have seen a decline in the rate of atmospheric CO2 increase. We didn’t. When they increased in 2010, we should have seen the rate increase in atmospheric CO2. It didn’t.
But it is becoming obvious on the face of it that the hypothesis is flawed. 15 years of no statistically significant warming in the face of unrelenting linear growth of CO2 in the atmosphere. The only way we can get any warming is by constantly fiddling with the “adjustments” in order to bring it back when it disappears.
It is an absolute mockery of science.
Any number? I have been studying this issue for 10 years and so far I haven’t seen a single explanation that doesn’t rely on smoke and mirrors.
The evidence would suggest you’re not very bright. :)
You could cool your house with all the handwaving.
First off, take the identified trend in temperature over a suitable interval and compare it to the uncertainty in the measurement of that trend. The ratio will tell you how long a period will need to be in order to be statistically significan, and then you woul need to test if the trend is indeed statistically significant.
Next, realize that we are using temperature when what we are really concerned with is heat, so it is more complicated than measuring CO2 levels and comparing them to temperature trends.
And I have not heard of any global temperature trends in the past that are as rapid as what is occurring now, there may have been some locally rapid past changes in temperature, but globally, it is really difficult to support that past changes have been as rapid.
And I had been under the impression that global emissions had at least flattened with the global recession. Looks to me like the averaged slope of the Keeling curve dropped a bit around 2010, but the annual variability is more than the yearly increase, so I wouldn’t expect to be able to see that.
George, I agree. This is to be falsified:
http://c1planetsavecom.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/files/2012/01/GillettteFig1.png
Whole lotta aerosols will be needed in this and the next decade to keep up with the cooling. Nature will take care of the pseudo-science of GHGGW.
In 1968 Roger Revelle devised a gut course of such crushing lucidity that it could perusade even an innumerate student politician who got a D of the importance of radiative forcing.
Now George & Co. insist we forget all Revelle exposited in favor of the gospel according to a Perdue dropout who never made the grade as a certified TV weatherman , because he’s waving a paper that reads like something drafte by a a Perdue dropout who never made the grade as a certified TV weatherman.
Who says the age of miracles is past ?
Russell is the material you referred to by Revelle avaialble online?
I don’t know if his lectures were recorded or course notes published.
You can search under Nat Sci 118 – “Population, Resources and the Environment”. or ask the Harvard Center for Population Studies , which Revelle founded.
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be online
Ya, Russell, such ‘crushing lucidity’ that Schneider played musical chairs with the truth, and Muller is grateful that Gore exaggerates to make his points.
=============
I would be interested in seeing Revelle’s Gut course of crushing lucidity as well. I can’t speak for George, but there are some issues in the debate that don’t require reinventing physics. A Perdue dropout may not make a very good Harvard Professor, but having designed a few instrumentation system, he might have a little experience of value in the data side of the problem. Data has been known to lie on occasion inspiring some marvelous discussions on whether physics has laws or just guidelines.
Since the relationship deltaT = lambda x deltaF has three components, not knowing the deltaT, accurately might have some impact on the final conclusion. Especially in a somewhat complex bi-stable system.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-JetNuc4BIgQ/UBbhjA1G-VI/AAAAAAAACus/-A4K5S4C1lc/s912/strangely%2520attractive.png
Of course, considering the tropics and oceans instead of land may just be one of the failings of misguide University of Florida dropouts, but thermal capacity does have its uses.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2012/07/there-are-no-steps-it-is-constant.html
In 1997, the late Scripps oceanographer, Robert E. Stevenson, well and lucidly addressed the “gospel” built from Revelle’s CO2 conjecture.
http://members.tripod.com/%7eamerican_almanac/globwarm.htm
I doubt even Watts can feel great joy at being seconded by Lyndon LaRouche’s oceanographer.
A rebuttal that relies upon character assassination is hardly what I would have expected from a distinguished Harvard professor. The times, they have certainly and sadly changed.
With the hope that you aren’t equally reliant upon assassinating the character of sixth graders, I’m am going to provide another you another link (to a homemade, youtube video).
The video demonstrates that CAGW/CACC theory has always rested upon a shaky house of cards and that even a sixth grader could examine the data and blow the whole thing down (a bit of hyperbole, granted, but the video makes Watts’ spurious data in, specious theory out point — albeit tangentially and, unlike certain Harvard professors, genially).
Russel Seitz wouldn’t know a chicken from a boilermaker if one blew up in his face and the other laid an egg on it.
=============================
But he’d look a ramblin’ wreck. Thanks Russell for the image of you and of Harvard.
=========
Seitz,
I wish there was someone a bit younger here who was able to defend Stevenson against your scurrilous attack on his reputation, character and memory. I am an old man now. Joining the right words with the right thoughts is not so easy a task any longer. I shall do the best that I can.
Stevenson was a dedicated marine scientist and brilliant man. He trained NASA astronauts in oceanography and marine meteorology for many years. He served as Secretary General of the International Association for the Physical Science of the Oceans for eight years. He was director of the Office of Naval Research at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography for nearly twenty years. He authored the more than 100 articles and several books, and during his life he was honored with many awards, including the Meritorious Civilian Service award from the federal government.
For all those reasons, it would have been more accurate and truthful for you to have described Stevenson as NASA’s oceanographer, IAPSO’s oceanographer, the US Navy’s oceanographer, or SIO’s oceanographer. But truth was not your aim, and you elected to defend your views with slander. Utterly shameful and disgraceful.
Stevenson’s SIO obituary
http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/Releases/?releaseID=131
Doug,
Thank you!!!
Doug, much as one might hope that Stevenson had never volunteered to write for LaRouche, the fact is that after his peer reviewed publications petered out he took up with the publishers of The ‘Greenhouse Effect’ Hoax: A World Federalist Plot, 21st Century Special Report: The Coming Ice Age — Why Global Warming Is A Scientific Fraud. and The Coming Fall of the House of Windsor.
Invoking his distinguished defense career in defense of his post retirement appearance in LaRouche’s bizarre publications is as ad hominem as their content is , ad rem, untenable in the light of current science.
In mitigation it should be remarked that Stevenson retired to Hawaii years before Christy and Spencer retracted their erroneous negative temperature trend.
As to Pete’s remark , just as I cannot fathom why Stevenson elected to write on LaRouche’s behalf, I cannot imagine a circumstance in which I would grant Farrakhan permiission to publish any work of mine–
As the tree falls, so must it lie.
Thank you, Mr. Seitz for such a revealing comment…. reveiling about you. I will remember your name.
A comment that illustrates why so many people posting here prefer to remain anonymous
@Russell Seitz
God help you if Louis Farrakhan ever finds your Bright Water concept appealing and publishes the papers you’ve written on the concept in the NOI’s Final Call. It would then, apparently, be perfectly appropriate to refer to you as Louis Farrakhan’s physicist.
Russell Seitz, is proof that it is not only cream that floats to the top.
@ neverending Count me as a skydragon then – as CO2 does not warm the earth. Increase in CO2 concentration might increase the cooling delay but if the CO2 remains constant equilibrium will be reached. CO2 is “saturated” during the day – causing the expansion of the atmosphere – which will the contract as it cools. It is not a closed system.
Dr. Curry –> Is this
http://berkeleyearth.org/faq/#disagreement
in fact a “joint statement” from Muller and yourself?
“No one that I listen to questions that adding CO2 will warm the earth, all other things being equal.”
Why don’t they question it? Carbon dioxide lags temperature changes hundreds of years, surely they must have heard about that. What is this? Some kind of magic ability of a SuperMolecule to change temperatures hundreds of years before it itself begins rising or falling?
What is this claim that “adding CO2 will warm the Earth” actually based on?
There is no Greenhouse Effect – the claim that “greenhouse gases raise the temperature of the Earth 33°C from -18°C to 15°C”
It’s an illusion created by sleight of hand, by taking out the Water Cycle.
And, using a bottom figure which in the real world is the one used for the Earth without any atmosphere at all, the AGW fisics uses this to pretend the Earth’s temperature with an atmosphere but without greenhouse gases. This is not real world scenario. It is a fictional world.
In the real world with the atmosphere as we have it, mainly nitrogen and oxygen, the Water Cycle cools the Earth 52°C from the 67°C it would be without water, think deserts.
Carbon dioxide is fully part of the Water Cycle – all pure, clean rain is carbonic acid – and the residence time of water in the atmosphere is around 8-10 days.
Those here claiming the Greenhouse Effect exists, please, show and tell.
http://judithcurry.com/2010/12/05/confidence-in-radiative-transfer-models/
I asked for show and tell to the specific point I made, show and tell that the Greenhouse Effect exists. I have explained why it is an illusion.
Giving me a link to 4 long discussions without any direct link to the answer I’m waiting for is, not helpful.
Where’s that bus? Anyone seen the bus?
If you want to disprove the Tyndall gas effect, you’re actually going to need to read and understand those discussions. Not because I say; the physics (or “fisics” if you prefer) of radiative transfer is actually very robust, and are central to not only atmospheric science but optics, astrophysics, and remote sensing as well.
Overturning all that may require a bit more than a medium-short blog comment, one imagines.
See my reply to Edim. I couldn’t find anything in Tyndall which addressed my point, do fetch if you say he has shown this claimed Greenhouse Effect.
I have a lot of respect for Tyndall, an honourable man and a great scientist, and meticulous in describing his experiments, at an exciting time for science – of the first steps to look into the invisible air around us.
John Tyndall observed how gases may absorb and re-radiate IR energy in the form of heat. If you find fault with the physics of radiative transfer, your beef is with Tyndall.
He was indeed an honorable man. Tyndall was quoted as saying that “it is as fatal as it is cowardly to blink facts because they are not to our taste.”
I know of one ghe that does exist:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse
However, this latter process is a minor player compared with the former (convective) process. Thus, the primary heating mechanism of a greenhouse is convection. This can be demonstrated by opening a small window near the roof of a greenhouse: the temperature drops considerably. This principle is the basis of the autovent automatic cooling system. Thus, the glass used for a greenhouse works as a barrier to air flow, and its effect is to trap energy within the greenhouse. The air that is warmed near the ground is prevented from rising indefinitely and flowing away…
The French called their first greenhouses orangeries…
Yes, in the real world the main heat transfer system in the atmosphere is by convection, as a volume of air gets heated it becomes less dense and rises and a colder volume of air being heavier will flow into the space beneath it – wind – and of course in the Water Cycle where water vapour, lighter than air anyway, with its high heat capacity will rise on being heated until it reaches colder conditions and giving up its heat condenses back into liquid water; a greenhouse with all the windows open.
But this all begins with the claim that there is this Greenhouse Effect which is the claim that the Earth would be 33°C colder without greenhouse gases, that the Earth is warmed from -18°C to 15°C by greenhouse gases.
The main greenhouse gas is water and that cools the Earth 52°C to bring it down to 15°C. The Greenhouse Effect is created by excising that completely and then creating a fiction that greenhouse gases raise the Earth’s temperature from -18°C to 15°C, and, that 33°C is the actual real world difference between the Earth with no atmosphere at all and the Earth with the atmosphere as we have it. So, there are two sleights of hand here. It is rationally unavoidable to conclude that the claimed Greenhouse Effect is an illusion.
I’m asking specifically for show and tell for this claim and it is never produced…
The main greenhouse gas is water and that cools the Earth
Are you actually aware of what this thing called a “greenhouse” is? That it’s purpose is not cooling, but warming.
You are absolutely correct that water vapor is a potent and abundant greenhouse gas, but since you don’t “believe” in radiative transfer or the greenhouse effect, I’m really not sure what it means to you when you call something a greenhouse gas.
Again, there is a great deal of information available on the physics of radiative transfer, blackbody radiation and the like. It really won’t do to claim in a few short sentences that it’s all wrong without explaining how it is wrong.
“Yes, in the real world the main heat transfer system in the atmosphere is by convection,”
Not just the main heat transfer system, but the CONTROLLING / REGULATING heat transfer system.
Notice how if the surface of the Earth is hot, the extra heat gets transferred upwards. If cold.. very little upward heat transfer..
The function of the atmosphere is to COOL the surface if it gets overly warm.
H2O aids this significantly because of its high specific heat and latent energies at phase change.
@PDA
At what point is the Earth a “black body” for radiative transfer.?
At what point is the Earth a “black body” for radiative transfer.
Um, when the entire surface is entirely black, I suppose.
I’m not sure that I understand your question. The Earth is not a black body, but treated as a “grey body,” emissivity of about 0.612, for purposes of determining effective temperature.
Wouldn’t a better question be what is a perfect gray body? There is no perfect black body and there would be no perfect gray body, but if you are comparing perfect black body apples, a perfect gray body would make a better comparison than some modeled oranges.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2012/02/more-ideal-gray-body-fiddling.html
I was just playing with that based on 50% entropy and the conduction/latent estimated with the R-value for the imperfection aspect. Kinda interesting to me.
If the surface is always same temperature or 5 C cooler than air above it [if surface is never warmer than air above it] can the atmosphere warm up or will it cool down?
Or is there mechanism that the air of atmosphere can be warmed other than the surface?
Only one I can think of [which could be substantial] is particles in the air [tiny bits of a surface :) ] being made warmer than air it is surrounded by.
Perhaps the clouds of Venus cause Venus to be warmer than it seems it should be.
?
Orangery Effect.
If Muller says 1.5 C warming caused by CO2, isn’t he saying the overall 1.5 C is caused by CO2 forcing. That CO2 caused an increase in water vapor?
And if you just measuring the US, doesn’t all increase in the irrigation count for increasing water vapor? The pumping ground water suppose affect sea level- that’s mostly for irrigation. If it affect sea level, you could also imagine it affects the atmosphere.
Come on Curry, admit it: you owe your living to the Koch brothers, who are desperate to disprove man’s link to climate change so they can make even more billions. So, you’ll say anything to keep to the party line they insist on. Just another sold-out scientist in hock to big biz.
I know next to nothing about the Koch brothers, but they can’t be too happy with me since I am disagreeing with the study that they funded.
Typical Big Oil chicanery, funding a flop of a study.
====================
Easy peasy question, Judy, perhaps too easy to answer. Do you think Muller or Watts have dealt with UHI better?
====================
Judith, they run Koch Industries (you can Goggle if you desire), are multi-billionaires who sometimes fund conservative causes. Even though they fund about 1/10th of what uber-progressive George Soros does on the left, they symbolize the left’s boogeyman. I doubt they are happy or un-happy with your comments. You say, ” but they can’t be too happy with me since I am disagreeing with the study that they funded.” Is your disagreement pre- or post Watts?
I think the point was the Koch brothers being cc deniers were wanting the study they funded to go the other way, since it didn’t they’d welcome any beratement of it. So by disagreeing with it, that would ultimately serve their purposes.
Heh, this from the guy who thinks that scientists grubbing at the money trough must be conspiratorial. Son, I think there has been a conspiracy to confuse you.
============================
If this analysis is correct there are two very simple ways to test it.
1) Examine the North American tree rings against the BEST regional temperature reconstructions.
2) Examine the North American lake pollen against the BEST regional temperature reconstructions.
If BEST is irreconcilable with 1), then either BEST or 1) or both are wrong.
If BEST is irreconcilable with 2), then BEST is wrong.
The expression “consistent with” should be banished from the scientific discourse as something that is meant to strengthen the validity of a proposition.
It is a very weak logical connection. For any proposition A it is extremely easy to construct a proposition B which is consistent with both A and ~A.
“As noted since the SAR, unequivocal attribution would require controlled experimentation with our climate system. Since that is not possible, in practice attribution is understood to mean demonstration that a detected change is “consistent with the estimated responses to the given combination of anthropogenic and natural forcing” and “not consistent with alternative, physically-plausible explanations of recent climate change that exclude important elements of the given combination of forcings” (Mitchell et al., 2001). ”
It never ceases to amaze me that with the above statement so obviously true, scientists have not long ago realized that it will never be possible, by using the methodology of classical physics, to ever establish what happens when we add CO2 to the atmosphere. In the end, since we are almost certainly going to go on adding CO2 to the atmosphere at a faster and faster rate, we will find out what happens when CO2 levels get higher and higher. In the meanwhile, let us just relax, and make the maximum use of all types of fuel to increase our standard of living, and make the maximum use of the elevated levels of CO2 to increase food production.
Jim Cripwell, you are absolutely right. And that’s the logical reason why some women deny pregnancy until it’s time to push.
Oh wait. That’s not logical at all. Heck, it’s a much-studied cognitive syndrome called “denial.” Doh!
Never mind, Jim Cripwell! :) :) :)
curryja | July 30, 2012 at 2:42 pm:
“See my previous thread:
http://judithcurry.com/2010/12/05/confidence-in-radiative-transfer-models/”
================================================
Thanks for the link, but I am not sure what you mean by that. I searched the thread and 3 articles you linked there for the key word “experiment” and found no link to any experiment directly proving CO2 warming. This rather confirms my point.
There is apparently another effect though, that pure CO2 warms slightly more than the air, but other gases have this ability too without being able to “trap radiation”, and the effect is negligible, like ~1/1000 – 1/10000 K by the present concentrations and temperatures. But you did not mean that, did you?
The greenhouse effect is illustrated by the ability of radiative transfer models to simulate the observed spectra (at both the surface and top of atmosphere) including the the CO2, water vapor emission bands.
What is the connection between these spectra and atmospheric heat content? CO2 and H2O are not the atmosphere, far from it. Are their spectra proxies of some sort?
we are talking about greenhouse effect, which is demonstrated by the spectra in clear skies (no clouds, minimal aerosol). You can then calculate heating rates in the atmosphere using radiative transfer models that demonstrate that they get the measured spectra correct at both the top of the atmosphere (satellite or very high flying aircraft) and the surface (abundantly measured by the ARM program, as described in that original post). The fact that the TOA and surface spectra are different, and consistent with our understanding of the spectroscopy of the gases from laboratory experiments, is the basic experimental information. The more detailed physical interpretation requires application of the line-by-line radiative transfer model applied to a known atmospheric column profile of temperature and gas concentrations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot5n9m4whaw
Of course – once the gas warms sufficiently emissions increase again although this time in all directions. The scattering of photons enables the characteristic absorption spectra to be seen in satellite spectral analysis.
‘The instrument views Earth through a telescope mounted in the side of the spacecraft. Reflected sunlight is first focused at a field stop (a rectangular aperture at the focus of the telescope that limits the field of view) and then realigned before entering a transfer optics assembly that ensures all three spectrometer channels view the same scene. A beam splitter selects specific ranges of colors of light to be analyzed by each spectrometer, which is then refocused on a narrow slit that forms the entrance to each spectrometer.’ http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/oco/spacecraft/index_prt.htm
The key is the rectangular aperture.
But the nitrogen and oxygen that actually make up the atmosphere are not heated radiatively, right? Hence my puzlement about radiative transfer and these spectra being the whole story.
The minute a GHG molecule absorbs a photon, it immediately starts crashing into N2 and O2 molecules, transferring the energy to them. The fact that they don’t absorb is moot. They get heated almost immediately.
I should have said millisecond. It’s about that fast.
Yes – the gases are in local thermodynaic equilibrium as a result of collisions.
“The minute a GHG molecule absorbs a photon, it immediately starts crashing into N2 and O2 molecules, transferring the energy to them. The fact that they don’t absorb is moot. They get heated almost immediately.”
So you have say 1000 kg of air [around 10 meter cube of air, 1000 cubic meters with about 1 kg mass]. Say, couple km up. So of 1000 kg, there is 780 kg of N2, 209 kg of O2, 93 kg of argon, and 4 kg of CO2. Plus say 100 to 200 kg of water. Very roughly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Composition
And these gases crashing into one another with vapor water being not ideal in terms of gas [it’s sticky]. Anyhow every nanosecond they hitting each other at average velocity of 500 m/s.
Kinetic energy is 1/2 mass time velocity squared, so the tonne of air has about 125 million joules of energy. Plus water vapor which has mass of 100 kg has 2,270 kJ/kg of latent heat so 100 kg is 227,000 kJ or 227 million joules of energy. The 227 million joules is potential energy whereas dry air has 125 million joules of kinetic energy.
What kind of energy is being added by the 4 kg of CO2. Is added to the velocity of the gas. Is vaporizing water droplets into vapor. Or what? And how joules per second is involved?
Yet you still missed the mark in predicting how much the earth would warm. IPCC AR1 estimate with no CO2 emission reduction 0.3C/decade. Actual warming 0.15C/decade and falling.
At some point one might consider admitting to a mistake. You’re tenured fercrisakes. It’s not like you’re going to have to take some kind of personal responsibility for being wrong. It’s not like you live in the real world among people who suffer for their mistakes. None of you overpaid underperforming climate boffins have any personal accountability.
P.E. | July 30, 2012 at 9:32 pm |
The minute a GHG molecule absorbs a photon, it immediately starts crashing into N2 and O2 molecules, transferring the energy to them. The fact that they don’t absorb is moot. They get heated almost immediately.
P.E. | July 30, 2012 at 9:33 pm | ]
I should have said millisecond. It’s about that fast.
——————————————————————-
You were right the first time.
For future reference nitrogen @ stp 7.7*10^9 collisions per second.
Damn near 10 collisions per nanosecond.
http://faculty.washington.edu/callis/Chem142/Au-02/lectures/C142_Lec15_Temp_Au-02.ppt#413,31,Diffusion
Relaxation time is orders of magnitude slower at around 10 microseconds. This is why the emission altitude is thousands of meters above the surface. That’s the point were the distance between molecules allows makes collision rate slower than relaxation rate.
Chemists need to know this stuff pretty accurately to predict reaction reaction rates because the reactant molecules need to collide. Confounding this is they sometimes need to collide with enough energy to break an existing bond to free up the constituents to form some new molecule. With a Boltsmann distribution of kinetic energies sooner or later even the strongest bonds get broken but it may be quite a bit later making for glacially slow reactions. Watching paint dry comes to mind but even that’s speedy compared to some really slow reactions. On the other hand some are wicked fast like nitroglycerin exploding.
But I digress. You were right. Below emission altitude collisions dominate the action by several orders of magnitude over relaxations.
Dave,
The latest IPCC projections of temperature increase range down to about 0.1 C per decade, in AR4.
So at least the boffins are boffinating their boffinography.
Can`t we all agree with the imminent Norwegion scientist Ivar Giaever that there is no accurate way to measure the earths temperature since it has remained stable over the past 150 years?
The main point is that until thesomeone goes out and looks at the HISTORIC CHANGES, not only at EACH AND EVERY site, but also in the LOCAL NEIGHBOURHOOD of each site, then they CANNOT POSSIBLY make proper allowances for local factors on the temperature trends.
If you don’t account for these local trends first, the major cause probably being the large jump in urbanisation in the 1970-2000 period, then the whole calculation of so-called “global” land temperatures is just a crock of s*** !
Roy’s PDAT and this paper by Watts et al. go some small way to addressing this issue.
Is it far enough.. almost certainly not.
Excuse me if I’m stating the obvious but if CO2 levels rose and fell in (logarithmic) proportion to temperature in the pre-industrial era, and also changed in identical proportion to the recent larger temperature rise, does that not show that humans have had NO influence at all on the process?
The corollary is that year-2000 CO2 levels would have been what they were simply due to temperature change, even if we had burned no fossil fuels. Thus, human activities haven’t even increased the CO2 concentration beyond that which the warming would have given us anyway.
We are then only left with the need to explain the temperature rise, which could be due to a number of unrelated causes, and we have the whole picture.
Seems to me that far from vindicating cAGW, this is a point-pistol-at-foot exercise for climate change proponents. If it’s correct, of course.
At the peak of the Eemian, 120 odd thousand years ago, temperatures were warmer than now (sea level 6 metres higher than now) but CO2 was less than 300ppm (around recent preindustrial levels). It is now approaching 400ppm – higher than it has been since millions of years before the current ice age.
“At the peak of the Eemian, 120 odd thousand years ago, temperatures were warmer than now (sea level 6 metres higher than now) but CO2 was less than 300ppm (around recent preindustrial levels). It is now approaching 400ppm – higher than it has been since millions of years before the current ice age.”
So why our current sea levels so low and we are so cold?
If CO2 control average global temperature and we had over 60 years of CO2 levels apparently higher than ever occurred during Eemian, why are so much cooler.
If we were living during the Eemian would we be saying the greenhouse house adds 34-35 C ?
So why our current sea levels so low and we are so cold?
If CO2 control average global temperature and we had over 60 years of CO2 levels apparently higher than ever occurred during Eemian, why are so much cooler.
That’s obvious isn’t it? Preindustrial CO2 was lower than Eemian CO2 and it was a bit colder. By adding 125ppm of CO2 – most of it in less than 100 years – it is as though we have turned on the heating. The temperature does not go up as soon as you turn on the heating. The bricks and concrete in a house slow the heating of a house, the ocean slows the heating of the earth.
We have to wait a while for the heat to melt chunks of the Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheets. This will also result in us feeling the full effect of the Control Knob. The ice sheet reflects away some of the sunshine, so its melting will result in more warming.
Remember when we talk about the “Eemian” we are condensing thousands of years (and likely slower changes in forcings) into one word.
-So why our current sea levels so low and we are so cold?
-If CO2 control average global temperature and we had over 60 years of CO2 levels apparently higher than ever occurred during Eemian, why are so much cooler.
“That’s obvious isn’t it? Preindustrial CO2 was lower than Eemian CO2 and it was a bit colder. By adding 125ppm of CO2 – most of it in less than 100 years – it is as though we have turned on the heating. The temperature does not go up as soon as you turn on the heating. The bricks and concrete in a house slow the heating of a house, the ocean slows the heating of the earth.”
No, actually it is not obvious. And Eemian CO2 was about the same as Preindustrial levels. And yeah, Preindustrial was even colder [about 1 to 2 C colder then current]. So if Eemian had LIA, it would apparently leap back up after this cooler period.
Ok can see why ocean take awhile to warm, but then again LIA was less than 500 years and it not The Ice Age as far being cold, but just 1 to 2 C cooler. So LIA should take awhile to cool down and would not cool down a huge amount. Or mostly what would time to cool during LIA would be near surface, mostly- and not a lot.
“We have to wait a while for the heat to melt chunks of the Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheets. This will also result in us feeling the full effect of the Control Knob. The ice sheet reflects away some of the sunshine, so its melting will result in more warming.”
This seems backwards. It seems we would warm in other areas first and than eventually get around to Greenland and lastly Antarctic. Both Greenland and Antarctic are relatively small areas, if they painted pitch black, they do little to warm anywhere else. So your warming should start in significant amount in the temperate zones which get far more solar energy.
But yeah it takes centuries of warming to have much affect upon Greenland.
gbaikie
This seems backwards. It seems we would warm in other areas first and than eventually get around to Greenland and lastly Antarctic. Both Greenland and Antarctic are relatively small areas, if they painted pitch black, they do little to warm anywhere else. So your warming should start in significant amount in the temperate zones which get far more solar energy.
Why would it only “eventually” get to Greenland. Winds and ocean currents do a good job of distributing heat around.
Quick calculation suggests painting Greenland black adds roughly half a watt averaged over the earth (assuming Greenland receives around 100W/m^2 on average). Not sure about the tropical/subtropical glaciers though.
“Why would it only “eventually” get to Greenland. Winds and ocean currents do a good job of distributing heat around. ”
Land is a bad investment of heat.
The reason we cooler is the oceans haven’t warmed enough.
But that is the question why, in your time, haven’t we had the oceans warmed more?
We been in interglacial period about 10,000 years and Eemian was 10 to 11 thousand years.
Anyhow it seems if temperate and tropical were well mixed and polar region not well mixed, we get more global warming, once temperate zone warm, and most glaciers are mostly melted, then the polar regions will also warm. Whereas well mixing of polar region with Temperate zone and more static relations with Tropics would seem to cool the planet.
Josh wrote with his usual disingenuousness: ” I thought it wasn’t relevant.”
My wife and I got a big laugh out of this. Thanks Josh. What are you, eleven? In your own way, you have the all the typical warmist nastiness. I honestly find it strange, how that seems to be some sort of behavioral marker for true believer-hood.
I’ve never disputed Co2 will warm the atmosphere. My dispute along with most skeptics I know, concerns extent, and significance. If you really don’t know this, you haven’t been paying attention. And if you do know it, and I suspect that you do, your gloating is really quite retarded.
curryja | July 30, 2012 at 6:09 pm:
“The greenhouse effect is illustrated by the ability of radiative transfer models to simulate the observed spectra (at both the surface and top of atmosphere) including the the CO2, water vapor emission bands.”
======================================
Well, if a model is able to simulate something observed then… it proves what?
It would be nice if it were exactly the other way round: if what a model says about CO2 warming effect could be proven correct by a real direct experiment. Is there anything like that? I mean, if there is nothing, and from my experience with this issue there is nothing, would it not be appropriate to look more closely at the emperor’s clothes?
Complex natural systems are not amenable to simple laboratory experiments. You have to conduct a series of process experiments, and link them together in a causal chain. If you can simulate the processes using a model that has predictive skill, then the understanding and physics that goes into the model becomes an important part of the theory. Then you continue to challenge the theory and its components with observations. If the models have predictive value and are useful, well then they are used for practical applications. And confidence in the theory is built with successful applications of the theory. So don’t be surprised if you can’t find a simple laboratory experiment that demonstrates or refutes the atmospheric greenhouse effect.
‘a model that has predictive skill’. Call the cattle home, Judy, across the sands of Dee.
=========
Judith, first of all, just in case, let us keep in mind that this is not about you or me as persons, it is only about the emperor’s clothes.
Someone who states the CO2 warming effect is real but impossible to demonstrate in a falsifiable scientific lab experiment needs actually to prove that. A general reference to “complex natural systems are not amenable to simple laboratory experiments” is not a proof that that thing about CO2 is one of the kind that can not be proven in a lab. Sounds a little bit complicated, I know. To say ” we have no experimental proof” is one thing, but “an experimental proof is impossible” requires a proof itself.
Second, if all what you have is “a model that has predictive skill”, then you need to prove first that this model is able to predict not just something else, but exactly the thing in question, namely CO2 warming. Your model “predicts” what we already know from observation, nice, but this is not a real prediction. And even if a model can predict something it does not mean again it can predict something else. To put it in a simple way, the model predictions of CO2 warming effect has never been experimentally proven correct, apparently. And this leads to conclusion, that the core statement about CO2 warming effect has no basis in science, it is not a scientifically proven fact. This alone does not mean yet, however, that this statement is wrong, but it is unproven, so simple is that.
Coming back to the emperor’s clothes, we have a situation, where it is just unproven that the emperor has any clothes.
The radiative transfer models’ clothes are pretty solid. The clothes for global climate models are much skimpier
Very nicely put :)
The clothes for climate sensitivity are non-existent.
Solid? Well, this does not require any proof at all. They are solid, because they are correct, right. Why they are correct? This is easy: because they are solid!
Sorry, but the circular reasoning seems to be obvious to me.
Say, 90% or more of the atmosphere is warmed how?
The question is not the reality of the radiative cloth. The question is the conclusions the cliamte consensus / climate hype industry weaves from that cloth. The consensus / hype industry is claiming there is a climate crisis woven from that cloth. Skeptics come to different conclusions.
Well, the problem with many so called “skeptics” is that they accept the clothes the emperor does not really have, and so they proceed discussing the clothes like “there is only half the warming”, “the anthropogenic warming is there but it is not so dangerous” or even “it would be cheaper just to adjust” and so on. First, this helps the naked emperor and second, why bother chasing various secondary flaws of the AGW concept, if this concept can not survive the basic check?
Greg,
If there is no crisis, no one would give a fig or billions of $ to the climate cause cause.
The climate crisis is the only question of interest.
I find it interesting that so many who believe so fervently in the climate consensus that there is a dangerous change underway that only managing CO2 can mitigate are so unwilling to discuss the crisis their beliefs require.
” curryja
Complex natural systems are not amenable to simple laboratory experiments.”
With the greatest of respect, absolute twaddle. Just because climate scientist do not have a tradition of experimental design does not mean that expirements are either difficult or on such a leage scale as to be uneconomical. The regular eclipses allow one to measure effluxes through out the diurnal cycle. One can measure the effects of water on Tmax/Tmin measurements. One could measure isotope ratios in tree ring chronologies and independently estimate temperature. One could examine the transatlantic slaveship records to estimate the trade winds and compare it with model reconstructions. One could check the SST estimates from the ULTRA decodes of German weather ships and U-Boats.
One could actually measure influxes, temperature and the farming cycle and see if changes in agricultural practices cause effects on temperatures.
You could check out Antony’s postulate and build very good, good, quite good and crap weather stations and see what it does to temperature data.
Just because they do not do experiments, does not mean that experiments cannot be done.
I don’t think this is what he meant by experiments.
Right, I am only interested in core issues, the physical experimental proof of alleged CO2 warming effect in the first place. And this only because of the emperor, nothing else.
Judith- Is it always like this? Or are there times with real discussion of actual science, data handling, Bayesian priors, etc.? If this is typical, how can you stand it?
for the most recent technical thread, see
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/20/sensitivity-of-the-nocturnal-boundary-layer-to-added-longwave-radiative-forcing/
there are tradeoffs to high traffic hot topic situations (which we are currently in): on the pro side, I attract new readers and participants (hopefully a few interesting ones). On the con side, emotions are running high and some crackpots show up. In the net, people who spend time here reading or commenting learn alot, get in some entertaining conversations, and we all broaden our horizons in terms of new topics and multiple perspectives and sharpen our rhetorical skills. You do have do some filtering tho, its an acquired blogospheric skill :)
Dr Weismann:
Is it always like this?: Pretty much, yes.
Data handling? You mean “fudging the numbers”, right?
Bayesian priors? If you really want to go there…
Best not to mention quantum theory, though – This is a family forum.
Personally, I come here for the comedy gold.
I strongly recommend doing up a large bowl of popcorn before you begin your readings.
Or a double of scotch, if that’s your poison.
Keen graduates of the University of Google and Dunning-Kruger College come here from all over the interwebs, with their broad horizons and multiple perpectives on science, to prove their mettle and compare their… research programmes. In the process, people learn “alot” about such hot issues as: “climate-gate”, “fake-gate”, the emporer’s new clothing, hockey schticks, climate modelling SNAFUs, the Al Gore – Rajendra Pachauri nefariousness, and Anthony Watts’ brilliant scientific career.
Stick around, Michael – These threads could use a few more arrogant, rent-seeking, consensus hoaxers. But, please, try to stay relevant – – Stick to proper blog-science, OK?
Did anyone bother reading this?
http://books.google.com/books?id=-nWyk7jH5_EC&pg=PA202&lpg=PA202&dq=Loschmidt+Boltzmann+Maxwell&source=bl&ots=51p9MK1QYL&sig=9BRqBSPTw0nUp7Wssd1i2kNHt0c&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-vYWUOz5HIuu8ASoqIDQAQ&ved=0CE4Q6AEwAQ
I hadn’t read it before. I knew the gist of it. It’s pretty good if you enjoy reading about classical unresolved problems in physics. This one isn’t difficult to understand but you can’t resolve it by hand waving in a blog comment. So far it hasn’t been resolved in an honest to God experiment either but the experimental evidence, what little there is, so far supports it.
The subchapter chapter concludes by recommending that Graeff’s experimental results deserve serious attempt to replicate:
Michael Weissman evidently believes he’s tested this in his head, published the results in a blog comment, and that’s good enough. He should have been a climate scientist with that attitude is all I can say.
Show me the experimental science, Weissman. Academic blowhards on blogs are a dime a dozen.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/the-loschmidt-gravito-thermal-effect-old-controversy-new-relevance/
Tallbloke and the cyclomanics chat about it and the Universal Climate Theorem, Gravity does have some interesting impacts, like effecting nearly every thermal property of every element, but I haven’t pondered perpetual motion since the 80s.
I shouldn’t really continue this, but noticed this compelling argument from Dave:
” Molecules at the top of column must, on average, have the same energy as molecules at the bottom of the column. Given the molecules at the top of the column have more gravitational energy they must have less kinetic energy for the books to balance. It’s really very simple.”
Does it bother any of you who find this appealing that he’s just “proved” that at heights of greater than ~20 km the net kinetic energy of O2 in equilibrium would be negative?
Does this blog have some private room where the rational people step aside for real discussions?
Whoops, sorry Judith, posted before I read your last note.
Try reading the chapter in the book I linked. I’ve described the Loschmidt effect to you. I can’t help it if that wasn’t covered in your physics coursework from the early 1970’s which was probably the last time anyone asked you to lower yourself to read anything from the great minds of the golden age of physics. I’m quite pleased to have independently arrived at the same position as Johan Loschmidt in the gravito-thermal effect. No one has proven it wrong by experiment and if you’d pull your head out of your ass long enough to read the book chapter I referenced you’ll find that some of your peers feel it deserves serious attention and Graeff’s experiments in particular to be replicated at independent laboratories.
Too much bother for you, Professor Know-It-All? Scared? Afraid you’ll get spanked by a high tech engineer in public? I’m afraid the latter already happened, bucko. The only thing you can do now is man-up and read the literature on what you thought you knew or run away like a little coward and ask mama Curry if she has some private skirts to hide behind. You wussy.
Dave,
That chapter tells only that scientists continue to question even those aspects of scientific knowledge that most consider virtually certain. That’s important for science in spite of the fact that the outcome is almost always nil, i.e. the generally accepted views remain solid and the contests fail finally to find errors. Those few exceptions where the contest is successful are great moments for science.
That chapter does not claim that good evidence had been found against standard textbook thermodynamics, there are some weak inconclusive indications of a deviation, nothing more. Even if the results would get substantiated the effect is very weak, nothing even remotely significant to support your theories.
I gave the link to a discussion that continued on my own site. That discussion is also evidence on the difficulty of understanding thermodynamics. Some more detailed arguments are in a separate pdf-file to make presenting formulas easier. My comment was inspired by the paper of Berberan-Santos, Bodunov, and Pogliani: On the barometric formula and in particular by its appendices.
Referring also to some comments of DocMartyn it’s interesting to note that without molecular collisions in the atmosphere and radiative effects the atmosphere would be isothermal in a very peculiar way. The starting point is an assumption that the surface has some constant temperature and that gas molecules leave the surface with a Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution that corresponds to this temperature. That means that lighter molecules would on average have a higher velocity than heavier ones. Each molecule would go as far up in the gravitational field as it’s original vertical speed allows, those staring with higher speed would go higher than slower ones.
Under these assumptions the velocity distribution would be identical at all altitudes in spite of the fact that every molecule slows down when going up and speeds up again while falling. That’s possible because only the molecules with high original vertical speed reach ever the high altitudes. The selection of initially faster molecules cancels precisely the slowing down with altitude.
The density of each type of gas decreases in this case exponentially with altitude, but the exponent depends on the molecular weight. Thus the high atmosphere would have a much larger share of light molecules. Even then the kinetic energy distribution is the same for all gases and for all altitudes.
The real atmosphere is very different as the collisions are frequent and as convection is essential. Convection mixes the atmosphere so effectively throughout the troposphere that the molecular ratios are almost identical at all tropospheric altitudes (except for water affected strongly by condensation). The temperature profile of the troposphere is controlled by convection. Radiation is also essential as emission from the upper troposphere is needed to maintain the temperature gradient that’s needed to get convection going.
Pekka, the ‘apparent’ breakage of the Second Law, as a result of a uni-direction field, is not of purely academic interest.
Biochemists routinely separate macromolecules by density centrifugation; whereby we apply a unidirectional centrifugal force on a disordered system of mixed macromolecules and get separation of different components, as described by the Svedberg/Einstein equation.
On a more mundane level, fraction of various metal baring ores using shaking to separate rock and metal either on shaking tables or in pans, is a well described technique. Again an imposed field, gravity or centrifugal, provides a means of separation.
I am glad that you recognize that my thought experimental equilibrium planet would have a chemically striated atmosphere; based on gravitational sorting by density.
I am not a distinguished physicist, and I am generally unable, a prior, to make the call whether the presence of a particular gradient means one can describe as system as being at dis-equilibrium or at equilibrium. I always have the nagging doubt that a unidirectional field may be affecting the system.
My rule of thumb is to ask, can I get work out of the system?
With regards to Earths atmosphere, the answer is obvious yes, I just build an hydroelectric dam and use the energy from falling water.
The oceans also give me a yes. I can use the temperature differential from the surface and the depths to run a gas/liquid engine. Ocean thermal energy conversion is a mature technology that allows the oceans to perform work.
I like work, on the human level because it enriches my environment and on the intellectual level because it gives me valuable information about a system.
I know, because of work, that the oceans are in thermal disequilibrium. Knowing this, I also know that any analysis which treats the oceans as an equilibrium system is false. I know also, that attempts to measure changes in the heat in the system, based on measuring temperature, are invalid.
Moreover, I know that during daylight the surface waters of the seas and oceans become dense saline and during the night these cool and fall. Seasonally, the dense, cool, concentrated surface brine’s generated during the summer months plunge to the depths; taking dissolved oxygen and organic, biotic, material with them. I know I am dealing with a highly complex system that is both dynamic, cyclical and multidimensional.
Thus, I know that attempts to quantify ‘missing heat’ in the worlds oceans are at best, both futile and intellectually dishonest, and at worst, fraudulent.
Then again, I am no distinguished physicist, who knows, maybe distinguished physicists have a proven track record for coming up with accurate descriptions of steady state, non-equilibrium, multidimensional dynamic processes by using the equilibrium approximation.
We know that density differences matter, because that’s how UF6 centrifuges work. The second law isn’t broken; the density gradient becomes one more term in the equilibrium equation. Thermo works fine when you include everything.
Centrifuges are certainly well known in many fields of science and engineering and there’s nothing in them that I would call even “apparent breakage of second law”. Molecular ratios vary a little also in the troposphere but very little because the convective mixing process is much stronger than the diffusive process that would lead to the same differences as those I presented for non-interactive molecules. If we would have an isothermal atmosphere we would also have those significant differences in molecular ratios.
In a centrifuge the diffusive separation is enhanced so much that a significant enrichment of heavier molecules near the outer surface results. Repeating the enrichment very many times in very high speed centrifuges allows for separation of uranium isotopes 235 and 238 as well.
As you say the Earth system is not an equilibrium system. It’s rather an approximately stationary non-equilibrium system driven by solar radiation. Daily and seasonal variability presents deviations from the stationarity as does the longer term variability. The state of the oceans settles very slowly and may still be significantly influenced by history as far back as the last ice age. The observation that OTEC power plants are possible does not tell much about that because the required temperature differences are maintained by the quasi-stationary processes.
The understanding of the oceans is obviously incomplete but as with other parts of the Earth system many things are fairly well known while some others are not understood as well at all. Making statements on any particular issue without thorough knowledge of the present state of science is just empty speculation. Personally I trust that my knowledge of physics can tell a few things but is totally insufficient for judging the level of knowledge on most of oceanic phenomena.
Doc,
The striations definitely are not properly considered because each changes the thermal properties, but the 2 law violation would lead me to believe something is poorly considered not that there is a violation.
http://www.nonlin-processes-geophys.net/14/641/2007/npg-14-641-2007.pdf
I have not found any review of that paper, but their approach is similar to my way of thinking. I think that would be a more interesting discussion than some of the ones that have developed.
Well, the pro-AGW climate scientists think they are rational and the anti-AGW skeptics think they are rational. Climate scientists claim experiments can’t be done on the atmosphere of 1, so models are good enough for experiments. The physicists who think they are rational can argue with other physicists who think they are rational. And nobody could be bothered to formulate and experimentally verify some real physics as it might apply to atmosphere. Granted that there is no consistent formulation of the physical mechanism behind the “greenhouse effect”.
On the question posed in the title of this page “observation based atribution”, clearly, it fails the correlation vs causation question until there is a proper causal hypothesis and experimental verification.
Gerlich and Tscheuscher think the greenhouse doesn’t exist in theory. Climate scientists disagree with them and won’t propose a testable mechanism and nobody on either side seems interested in the physics lab. Climate scientists stand behind mountains of radiative transfer data collected in IR-reflective measurement chambers, and tyndall’s experiments which demonstrate IR absorption without bothering on emission/scattering or thermalisation.
So, Dr Weissman, do you have any experiments with which to enlighten us?
Would you proffer an opinion on my questions:
1. If IR absorbing/emitting gases can thermalise IR radiation outside of an IR reflecting measurement chamber.
2. If *any* known physical property of any material can be used to change mean temperature of any body when subject to fixed alternate repetitive heating and cooling effects over day-length cycles.
3. If presence of IR absorbing/emitting gases accelerate or retard thermal mixing of gas mixtures of different temperatures.
3 is the only one consistent with the physical system as we know it. Given that, it is plausible that the addition of GHG will cause no detectable change in temperature. It is also plausible that the addition of GHG will result in a regime shift with serious consequences. I wish we would focus more research on this area.
In relevant timeframes, gawd does not allow regime shifts with serious consequences. Otherwise, we would be frozen toast.
The oceans provide pretty nifty buffering to reduce the probability of frozen toast. Then if you focus on the changes in half of 30% of the system, you might miss that. It is the Strange Attractor stuff the chaos guys talk about..
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2012/07/strangely-attractive.html
If you ignore the range of “normal” that the strange attractors allow, you might think something is linear when it is not.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2012/07/there-are-no-steps-it-is-constant.html
I do believe that a regime shift to a much warmer or colder climate is unlikely, although it can’t be proven. My personal opinion is that we will remain trapped in the attractor that constrains all interglacials. GHG or no GHG.
Doug,
That looks likely, trapped in a more stable climate. To drift towards the lower attractor looks like it would take more land area in the high northern latitudes to be allowed to accumulate snow. That is bad for business though in some areas of the world. It does look like the tropical glaciers can make a little come back, but since avalanches are bad for business and good for skiing, I doubt they can be unmolested for long. Kinda looks like Gates may have his Anthropocene after all.
btw Doug, I think you found the most important paragraph in the article, and it has gone barely noticed.
There is a glaring paradox in climate science that no one has bothered to explain: How come that a rare gas like carbon dioxide (less than 1% of atmosphere) can have such a profound effect on climate when nitrogen (70%), oxygen (20%) and water vapour have no effect? What is the difference between carbon dioxide and say, nitrogen that explains this paradox? There are other questions: why does the UN’s IPCC support 20 (different?) models when all they need is one good one? Surely it is better when tackling an intractable problem to concentrate your resources. Surely some one can decide whether the NASA model or the one from Oxford/Hadley is better than the one from Nigeria? Why did the IPCC ignore the the 0.5C temperature rise before 1940 and the subsequent reversal after 1940? Does the IPCC really believe that weight of numbers is better than good science?
Climate prediction by modelling and simulation seems to be the best way of tackling this intractable problem. It is essential to first get the structure pf the model right. The period between 1905 and, say, 1950 contains important lessons for climate modellers, because the dramatic rate of change of temperature in 1940 can only be explained by narrow band saturation by earth’s IR radiation of the CO2 molecule. All resonant systems have limits on the amount of energy they can absorb.
The other important lesson for modellers is the transport delay of decades in heat convecting through the oceans and back into the atmosphere from 1970 on. While atmospheric heat can move into the surface of the oceans in months, it takes decades for that heat to flow out in the opposite direction. So most of the temperature build up between 1970 and 2000 was old pre-1940, now permanent, recirculated back. Unless these two lessons are learnt by the modellers they can spend years fiddling with parameters to try to get agreement with real-life data.See my web site.
Who says water vapor has no effect?
As to your comment regarding CO2, it’s no paradox. Google is your friend, here, I’m not going to do your homework for you.
The “it’s a trace gas” portion of your “paradox” is a red herring, Trace gases can kill you, for instance:
“Crystalline botulinum toxin in the amount of a single gram — a mere ONE-FIFTH of one teaspoon — evenly dispersed and inhaled, would kill more than a million people.”
And 100 micrograms of LSD will have a profound effect on your perception of the world for several hours.
If CO2’s a trace gas and trace gasses can’t have profound effects, well, how can plant life on this planet possibly be absolutely dependent on it’s being in the atmosphere?
Several micrograms of LSD has a profound effect for several hours? It must not be the same stuff as back in the 1970’s then. A few micrograms profoundly effected my perception for 12-18 hours in about a dozen or so, ahem, experiments I conducted.
I prefer to use pigment in auto paint as an example. A few grams of black pigment added to a kilogram of white paint coating an auto body of several hundred kilograms has a dramatic effect on the temperature of hundreds of kilograms of metal on a sunny day. Unfortunately it doesn’t translate to CO2 in the atmosphere because cars don’t have surfaces that evaporate but it’s a good story nonetheless.
I’ll bet you didn’t have access to a scale capable of measuring in the 10 microgram range nor the ability to separate the active chemical from the blotter or whatever the carrier was.
But never the less, in my opinion, the effect is profound and in some ways permanent, like losing your virginity.
It is not a paradox to people like you and I if we have degrees in physics. But to ordinary folk it is a paradox and might increase scepticism.
But it is a matter of considerable importance to understand the difference between carbon dioxide and nitrogen molecules. The reason why CO2 is different is because it has resonances in the band of infra-red frequencies emitted by the earth, which nitrogen does not have, although both are otherwise heated by earth’s radiation. The resonance in CO2 is narrow band, like most resonances and has the important property that it only absorbs large amounts of radiation at the resonant frequency. The earth radiates like a black body over a band of frequencies, so most of the radiation escapes harmlessly into space, So you see it is important to understand the differences of the two gases and explain the paradox.
It is the clue to understanding what happened in 1940′
“If CO2′s a trace gas and trace gasses can’t have profound effects, well, how can plant life on this planet possibly be absolutely dependent on it’s being in the atmosphere?”
Indeed. And there would be no oxygen either. It annoys me when people label CO2 as a pollutant as there would be no life on earth without it.
“The earth radiates like a black body over a band of frequencies”
Does it? I have seen pictures of the Earth taken from space, like this one
http://global.fncstatic.com/static/managed/img/Scitech/Earth%20from%20Russian%20satellite.jpg
now I don’t know about you, but I can make out differences in the color of the Earths surface. You know, the water appears blue to me and the land a mixture of brown and green.
The surface of the planet isn’t a black body, in the visual range.
So you must be talking about the near-IR right?
http://0.tqn.com/d/space/1/7/T/e/pia00226.jpg
So, just like all climate science, words that have actual meanings in mainstream, orthodox, science mean something quite different. So we all know what a ‘black body’ spectrum is, except when applied in climatic studies.
When you say;
“The earth radiates like a black body over a band of frequencies”
you mean
“The earths surface radiates quite unlike a black body over a band of frequencies due to heterogeneity of is surface and the presence of life”
Which definition of the word “like” do you, like, have a problem with?
The earth doesn’t radiate much in the visible range, most of what you are seeing is reflected light.
Like you didn’t know that.
I assume that people who comment on this site do not want to waste their time with nit picking. I mean what I said about the earth’s radiation. Few climate scientists would disagree that the infra-red portion is most important to climate. The picture you linked to your comment was taken from the side facing the sun, hence the bright and beautiful colours which are reflection, not radiation. Had you tried to photograph the other side it would have been rather black unless you used an infra-red camera.
I just have to say the word “paradox” is being butchered here, a paradox is when the truth of a thing leads to it being false and the falsity of a thing leads to it being true. Different chemicals having different properties is hardly a paradox.
Pollutant reminds me of the word toxicity, most everything has a certain LD50 – the amount at which exposure to a thing will kill 50% of the population- even water. Though life can’t exist without it there is a certain point when it can kill you. Same goes for CO2 in the atmosphere for the planet. Yes it may be semantics but that doesn’t change the point at which levels become harmful.
There’s also no hard and fast definition for “species” in biology, but quibbling over the definition of that also doesn’t change the genetic make up of two organisms, or any other of their properties.
Alexander Biggs
There are other questions: why does the UN’s IPCC support 20 (different?) models when all they need is one good one? Surely it is better when tackling an intractable problem to concentrate your resources. Surely some one can decide whether the NASA model or the one from Oxford/Hadley is better than the one from Nigeria?
Well, the IPCC does not support any models – the models are funded by national government funding (usually). Other than that it’s a good question.
The scientific view is that 20 models is probably too many, but one is too few.
Different models mean different groups of people looking at the problem in different ways. There are many aspects of climate modelling that remain uncertain.
It is difficult to get rid of models and combine resources into fewer models because there is a lot invested in each model. For example, most of the 6 European models are also used by the national met services for doing weather forecasting.
Steve,
I have understood that you have spent considerable effort in looking at the software aspects of climate models. Based on your experience, can you comment on the following:
You write:
In a way that’s fine and should convince us that the models can do certain things reasonably well, but that’s also a problem. The use of the models in weather forecasting means that their capability of solving the short term initial value problem has been tested and found to have some reasonably well known accuracy over various time spans. That implies certainly that they are fairly successful also in some other tests related to geographic representation and lack of a tendency to produce significant spurious trends over a few months or perhaps also over a few years. Their use in weather forecasting would, however, allow for the possibility that these properties have been forced upon them by tuning.
To continue from the above a good weather forecasting model is built in a way that does not guarantee that it has the required level of temporal stability for correct reasons or that it would have any value in studying how changes in long term forcing changes will affect climate. Furthermore the tests that it has been subjected to during the development process may make it very difficult to use the successes in additional tests that can be performed as evidence on the value of the model in climate projections.
I’m sure all competent climate modelers understand the worries that I present in the above paragraph, but what’s your impression on their capability in resolving the issues and in building evidence on the value of the weather forecasting type of models in producing climate projections.
Bus #17 – spot 4A.
You’re in luck, because they are serving refreshments under bus #17.
Please be sure to arrive early to facilitate logistics. We’re running low on space and will need to give away your spot if for some reason you can’t make it.
PDA (short for PDA’s Dada Acronym) | July 30, 2012 at 6:06 pm |
“John Tyndall observed how gases may absorb and re-radiate IR energy in the form of heat. If you find fault with the physics of radiative transfer, your beef is with Tyndall.”
No, my beef isn’t with Tyndall – he didn’t have anything to say about the The Greenhouse Effect as per your, generic, claim. If you can find him giving experiments showing in all the parts that “greenhouse gases warm the Earth 33°C from the -18°C it would be without them to 15°C”, then, please, fetch this.
As I have explained, the main greenhouse gas is water and carbon dioxide is fully part of the Water Cycle, without water the temperature would be 67°C, think deserts. Therefore, the claim is obviously wrong. It would be hotter without greenhouse gases, 52°C hotter.
Where is the proof that the temperature would be 33°C colder without greenhouse gases?
Where is there even a reasonable explanation of the process?
I’ve given a reasonable explanation of the Water Cycle.
I appreciate you engaging here, but I’m only requesting information on that specific base claim, on which the rest of the AGW fisics is built.
Claiming that adding carbon dioxide will further heat the Earth is not a reasonable concept in traditional physics which includes the Water Cycle to which CO2 is fully joined as all rain is carbonic acid. How can adding CO2 which is fully part of the Water Cycle possibly add heat to the Earth when the Water Cycle cools the Earth 52°C?
“He was indeed an honorable man. Tyndall was quoted as saying that “it is as fatal as it is cowardly to blink facts because they are not to our taste.””
Well, with this I have to agree. The fact is that I can find no Greenhouse Effect as claimed, all I find is a fiction that it exists.
No, my beef isn’t with Tyndall – he didn’t have anything to say about the The Greenhouse Effect as per your, generic, claim.
I’m sorry, but that’s not true.
Tyndall’s apparatus wasn’t sensitive enough to test CO2 but it was more than adequate to characterize many other better absorbers of “calorific rays” to use the 1850 vernacular for longwave infrared. Tyndall believed water vapor was the main greenhouse gas. He was sort of right. Liquid water is big kahuna when it comes to warming the planet and water vapor neutralizes itself by adiabatic cooling into a cloud which blocks shortwave in a negative feedback like that which makes an op-amp stable. It’s my position that liquid water and water vapor are both fluids and we should properly look at greenhouse fluids not just the fluids that are gases. Liquid water is like a greenhouse gas on steroids. It is completely transparent to shortwave radiation from the sun. It’s the impurities in the ocean which thermalize the shortwave energy not the water molecules. It is so opaque to longwave radiation that DWLIR is completely absorbed in the first few MICROmeters of ocean surface. The atmosphere can’t pull that trick off in KILOmeters of depth and has some gaping holes where no far infrared at all is absorbed. Liquid water is the ultimate greenhouse fluid. This is in fact what is responsible for the planet having a life-friendly surface temperature range not the puny atmosphere. The tail doesn’t wag the dog. The primary effect of the atmosphere in the climate is providing enough surface pressure so water has a 100C temperature range where it can remain a liquid.
Tyndall did (one can read his treatises to check what he did – i did) test CO2 in much larger concentrations than atmospheric IIRC from 10-100% CO2. Tyndalls calibration of his galvanometer do not permit easy inference of what magnitude of heat/temperature difference he measured.
As I said, he says nothing about the specific point I’m making, that the Greenhouse Effect as AGW fisics has it exists, he ends:
“…However this may be, the facts above cited remain; they constitute true causes, the extent alone of the operation remaining doubtful.”
The Greenhouse Effect claim is that without greenhouse gases, excluding nitrogen and oxygen, the Earth would be 33°C cooler, that greenhouse gases raise the temperature of the Earth from minus 18°C to plus 15°C. Tyndall has nothing to say about this.
However, we do now have a far, far greater understanding of the extent. We know that taking out the Water Cycle, the main greenhouse gas, the higher temperatures that prevail on the mountain top would prevail as they do in the deserts, the Earth’s temperature would be 67°C.
Maybe he’d never been in a desert..
He says nothing about your claim, but does agree with what I’m saying.
However, you misunderstand him in this further. Firstly he is talking about the direct heat from the Sun, the coherent direct beam thermal infrared which he calls the “obscure rays”, it’s this he’s saying which is playing the large part in the weather systems as water vapour absorbs it on the way down together with the thermal infrared upwelling from the heated Earth.
“But this aqueous vapour, which exercises such a destructive action on the obscure rays, is comparatively transparent to the rays of light. Hence the differential action, as regards the heat coming from the sun to the earth and that radiated from the earth into space, is vastly augmented by the aqueous vapour of the atmosphere.”
Secondly, he is talking about radiant heat, thermal infrared, being captured by water vapour – and please do note this well – to which the light from the Sun is relatively transparent.
Traditional physics understands this, and the how of it, which is why it says categorically that water is transparent to visible light. This means that water does not absorb visible light but transmits it through. It has no physical capability of heating the oceans, for example, as claimed by AGW fisics.
(And now is being furiously backpedalled by a few who’ve understood this argument…, :) Though now they have to explain how visible light heats the particles in the ocean to raise the temperature of water to extent it is raised, and bearing in mind the very great heat capacity of the ocean which absorbs vast amounts of heat before showing any temperature change.., and, explain exactly how visible light which works on the electron transition level on meeting matter can possibly heat these – “It’s the impurities in the ocean which thermalize the shortwave energy not the water molecules.” – since it takes the great direct energy of heat, thermal infrared, to move the molecules of these “impurities” into vibration which is what heats up volumes matter. So, how hot do these impurities have to get to heat the waters of the ocean?)
Of course, we could just stick with traditional physics which understands that it’s the direct beam heat from the Sun which is the invisible thermal infrared, the coherently radiated heat from the Sun and not the dissipated non-coherent thermal infrared from the atmosphere, which directly heats the water of the oceans – then we wouldn’t have to tie ourselves up in knots …
But here, let Tyndall explain:
” At present a small but brilliant spectrum falls upon the plate, A B, but the slit is quite out of the spectrum. I turn the handle, and the slit gradually approaches the violet end of the spectrum; the violet light now falls upon the slit, but the needle does not move sensibly. I pass on to the indigo, the needle is still quiescent; the blue also shows no action. I pass on to the green, the needle barely stirs: now the yellow falls upon the slit; the motion of the needle is now perhaps for the first time visible to you; but the deflection is small, though I now expose the pile to the most luminous part of the spectrum.* I will now pass on to the orange, which is less luminous than the yellow, but you observe, though the light diminishes the heat increases; the needle moves still farther. I pass on to the red, which is still less luminous than the orange, and you see that I here obtain the greatest thermal power exhibited by any of the visible portions of the spectrum.
The appearance, however, of this burning red might lead you to suppose it natural for such a colour to be hotter than any of the others. But now pay attention. I will cause my slit to pass entirely out of the spectrum, quite beyond the extreme red. Look to the galvanometer! The needle goes promptly up to the stops. So that we have here a heat-spectrum which we cannot see, and whose thermal power is far greater than that of any visible part of the spectrum. In fact, the electric light with which we deal, emits an infinity of rays which are converged by our lens, refracted by our prism, which form the prolongation of our spectrum, but which are utterly incompetent to excite the optic nerve to vision. It is the same with the sun. Our orb is rich in these obscure rays; and though they are for the most part cut off by our atmosphere, multitudes of them still reach us. To the great William Herschel we are indebted for the discovery of them.”
My italics. AGW fisics has dismissed these altogether.., it says that the direct thermal infrared from the Sun plays no part in heating land and oceans. And then it has given the properties of thermal infrared to visible light, the “shortwave in longwave out” meme, regardless Tyndall shows visible is utterly insignificant as a thermal energy.
Visible light has no capacity to thermalize anything?
I’ll give you a thousand dollars a second if you let me paint your back with a visible light laser. But I get the first 60 seconds free of charge. If you’re still conscious and in the same room you can start earning at that point.
Deal?
1 watt 800nm (green) handheld laser setting a toothpick on fire
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKlzraZQKWs
1 watt handheld blue laser setting stuff on fire
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=WNLP1PHJXu8&feature=endscreen
350mW green laser lighting a cigarette (don’t try this at home, cigarettes raise the risk of cancer in people in different time zones and dimensions and stuff – that second hand smoke is super wicked messy dangerous)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=MEdQCueZWwg&NR=1
125 mW green laser lighting the fuse on fireworks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=F9JBW0WfhyA
200mW red laser burning an assortment of items.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6oG2vW-blM
Red, Green, and Blue lasers burning stuff. That about covers the visible spectrum. Any remaining doubts about visible light not being able to thermalize anything?
Thanks for playing, Myrh! You’re more fun to play with than Weissman. He ran away begging for a private place to chat with Curry in the first half hour. Record time. I bet he hasn’t scored in years. I wish him luck. Getting all backed up eventually results in a problem. A super wicked mess kind of problem if you get my drift. The kind of complex problems that simple mental masturbation experiments with toy computer models just won’t solve.
Dave,
Thanks for the great Youtubes on lasers.But is comparing coherent light with sunlight really useful?
(Beyond some cool videos).
This idiotic response is so boringly predictable, someone always comes in with it – THE SUN IS NOT A LASER.
If you can’t tell the difference between direct beam light from the Sun and a laser then you, should explore further.
So, Myrrh, would you be so kind as to describe the ‘calorific rays’ from a laser?
And a p.s. – try warming yourself up on your tv’s remote control. Or thousands of them…
We cannot feel shortwave Light. We cannot feel it because it is not hot. If it was heating us up we could feel it as hot.
Shortwave direct from the Sun including uv and near infrared are not hot, they are not thermal energies, they cannot heat us up. They work on a different scale (electronic transition, of the electrons) compared with heat energy, thermal infrared (atomic/molecular vibrational).
Try working out the difference between a near infrared camera which works on the same principle as a visible light camera, reflective, and a thermal infrared camera. Near infrared is a light not a heat energy, it is reflective as is visible light, the camera captures the near infrared reflected back from the object – near infrared is light not heat. A thermal imaging camera captures the amount of heat radiating from an object.
An incandescent lightbulb radiates 95% of its energy as heat, the invisible thermal infrared is heat, and 5% visible light.
Thermal means of heat, that’s why thermal infrared is called thermal. Photo is the Greek for light that is what photovoltaic cells capture to turn into electicity – these are not absorbing the Sun’s heat, but light.
This is what is so annoying about the mindlessly regurgitated AGW memes, the general handwaving in the direction of great scientists like Tyndall when Tyndall would be appalled that you can’t tell the difference between heat and light. Please, read the extract I posted where he shows the difference between heat and light. Light is not a thermal energy.
NASA used to teach the difference:
NASA: “Far infrared waves are thermal. In other words, we experience this type of infrared radiation every day in the form of heat! The heat that we feel from sunlight, a fire, a radiator or a warm sidewalk is infrared.
Shorter, near infrared waves are not hot at all – in fact you cannot even feel them. These shorter wavelengths are the ones used by your TV’s remote control.”
You cannot feel near infrared because it is not heat.
The AGW memes have been deliberately created to confuse the basic science – a deliberate dumbing down of the general population through the education system. Support that or work out the real basics for yourselves, up to you.
Mur,
Humorous charade you are pulling off. You fit right in with Springer and the captains.
Where is there even a reasonable explanation of the process?
Dr. Curry provided numerous links to sites explaining the physics (you’ll forgive me if I persist in spelling the word per its dictionary entry) of radiative transfer. Have you reviewed any of that information. If so, can you explain to me how it is in error?
I’ve given a reasonable explanation of the Water Cycle.
You’ve asserted some things as fact without any source. Can you share any scientific research that supports your assertion?
Claiming that adding carbon dioxide will further heat the Earth is not a reasonable concept in traditional physics which includes the Water Cycle to which CO2 is fully joined as all rain is carbonic acid.
Can you explain what “traditional” physics is, and how it differs from the conventional one: where greenhouses keep crops warm rather than cooling them, where the Earth’s effective temperature is 255°K rather than 325°K?
The next physics explanation I want to see is the one that explains two decades of 0.21C/decade warming followed by one decade of 0.0C/decade warming all while anthropogenic CO2 emission accelerates non-stop.
That’s the explanation I’ll spend some time with. I’ve already offered it. Distilled into a political soundbite size that normals seem to prefer to receive their important information in I’m naming it:
It’s the water, stupid.
Dr. Curry provided numerous links to sites explaining the physics (you’ll forgive me if I persist in spelling the word per its dictionary entry) of radiative transfer. Have you reviewed any of that information. If so, can you explain to me how it is in error?
I’m not new to reading these explanations… As before, I am looking for a specific explanation of a specific claim, The Greenhouse Effect, which I have shown is an illusion, therefore I call it AGW fisics not to confuse it with real world physics which has convection, which, as I’ve already pointed out it the main method of heat transfer in a fluid medium which is the atmosphere around us.
Therefore Dr Curry’s: “We should note that the transformation of the LW flux that is emitted upward by the ground, to the LW flux that eventually leaves the top of the atmosphere, is entirely by radiative transfer means.”, is clearly not of this world.
“Armed with a capable radiative transfer model, it is then straightforward to take apart and reconstruct the entire atmospheric structure, constituent by constituent, or in any particular grouping, to attribute what fraction of the total terrestrial greenhouse effect each atmospheric constituent is responsible for.”
Sure you can, in the imaginary world where there is no huge heavy volume of fluid around us and so where there is no convection.
How is it that you have no convection?
How can you ignore convection in the great amount of fluid gas in the heavy volume we have of it as an ocean around the Earth?
How can you understand how our weather works?
What I get from these radiation only explanations is a complete lack of understanding of our atmosphere, how otherwise could convection be excised from the scenario?
http://geography.about.com/od/climate/a/windpressure.htm
http://www.scienceclarified.com/everyday/Real-Life-Chemistry-Vol-7/Convection.html
Re: I’ve given a reasonable explanation of the Water Cycle.
You’ve asserted some things as fact without any source. Can you share any scientific research that supports your assertion?
You really don’t realise you are in different world… The weather system is very well understood in the real world around you, please read those two links bearing in mind that what is being described is an ocean of fluid gas around the Earth, a very heavy volume of fluid gas weighing down on us 14lbs/sq inch, a ton weight on your shoulders, which from differential heating expands and contracts discrete volumes setting up convection currents; we call these winds in the atmosphere and currents in the ocean.
This is the primary method of heat transfer through fluid mediums, liquids and gas are fluid mediums – the gas ocean of atmosphere above us is as the liquid water ocean at the earth’s surface, heat is primarily transferred by convection currents as heated and cooled gases rise and sink.
“Heat moves in fluids through several processes, including convection. Convection is the transfer of heat by the actual movement of the heated material.” http://www.ucar.edu/learn/1_1_2_7t.htm
Please do read the last one, you can test for yourself that gases are fluids and that heavier than air gases will flow downwards, sink.
The Water Cycle is standard real world physics part and parcel of standard fluid dynamics and its ways are well understood from evaporation to condensation in ocean and atmosphere. We understand how weather works.
Because we understand how gas heated become lighter and less dense and when cooled become heavier and more dense, so lighter gases are bouyant in air, heavier gases sink in air.
The Water Cycle is standard knowledge in traditional physics, as water gets heated it evaporates more and rises faster and with its great heat capacity, energy storage, it takes with it heat from the surface and releases this in the colder heights as it condenses out back into liquid water, or ice, its heat flowing to the colder atmosphere and away.. Gases have weight, so clouds float on air because moist air is less dense, lighter than dry air. And so on.
This is only new to those who don’t have the Water Cycle or convection in their energy budgets, and, claim further that the direct heat from the Sun, thermal infrared, doesn’t get through the atmosphere to heat the surface of the Earth postulating a non-existant barrier calling it the ‘greenhouse glass’. The atmosphere is not permanent cloud cover.., the “obscure rays” as Tyndall calls them, the direct thermal energy from the Sun, the invisible thermal infrared, are still abundant on Earth. This is what heats us up as it penetrates our bodies and heats up the water in us.
But somehow it can’t penetrate the skin on the ocean according to AGW fisics..
To be fair to you, this strange otherworld fisics was introduced into the education system some decades ago, so we now have a whole generation with corrupt basics knowledge of gases and our atmosphere and so especially the main method of heat transfer here, convection.
I only discovered quite recently that NASA promotes the AGW fisics and no longer actively teaches the traditional physics basics as it used to; it used to teach that the invisible heat we feel from the Sun is thermal infrared, now it promotes that heat from the Sun doesn’t reach the earth’s surface, and so plays no part in heating land and oceans which is the AGW fisics meme. The disjunct here is that it has exchanged real physics for the imaginary fisics created to support AGW for the majority population who have no applied need to know how the real world works. Visible light from the Sun is not a thermal energy, see Tyndall quote I gave above, it is not capable of being the main ‘heat’ energy for heating land and oceans.
So of course great confusion is bound to be the norm here, the fisics created to support AGW was designed to create confusion.
Re: Claiming that adding carbon dioxide will further heat the Earth is not a reasonable concept in traditional physics which includes the Water Cycle to which CO2 is fully joined as all rain is carbonic acid.
Can you explain what “traditional” physics is, and how it differs from the conventional one: where greenhouses keep crops warm rather than cooling them, where the Earth’s effective temperature is 255°K rather than 325°K?
I’ve already explained how a real greenhouse works, to control the temperature which entails both heating and cooling mechanisms – traditional physics is how things actually work.
Your question therefore does not make sense. Which is my point in this exchange…, your, generic AGW fisics, idea of “greenhouse gases warming the earth from -18°C to 15°C is not found because your idea of greenhouse is not found. Your idea of greenhouse doesn’t exist. I’m still waiting for you to produce the mechanics of this claim, which I hope that in actually physically looking for it you too will come to see that it doesn’t exist..
And if you’re going to use Kelvin then the degree symbol is redundant. I don’t use it because it doesn’t relate easily to the world around us which science investigates, for the same reason degrees Fahrenheit not useful in picturing differences. Degrees Celcius much easier to use as a rule (ruler) against which to measure these differences; the freezing and boiling point of water in Celcius sets the scene as it were and comparisons are easier to grasp.
I believe without water to moderate the difference in temperature between summer and winter and transport summer heat in the tropics to higher latitudes in the winter that snow cover would gain the upper hand and creep towards lower latitudes year by year holding its ground by raising albedo to something near 0.9. The ocean on the other hand has an albedo near 0.1. That’s a monumental difference. Basically the tropical ocean absorbs heat like a mofo with such a low albedo and if it weren’t for producing clouds, which are a negative feedback, the earth would be quite a bit hotter. The first and largest factors to understand in the earth’s surface energy budget are latent flux and surface albedo. The ocean is double edged sword with a very low albedo but it produces clouds with a very high albedo so it self regulates at about 70% cloud cover with an average albedo of around 0.35 and a remarkably small hysteresis.
K Trenberth can find part of his missing heat here. The other part is stored as chemical energy in living things.
Let’s play the name game. I’m game.
Daniel Sheehan, Professor of Physics, USD
http://www.sandiego.edu/cas/hallmarks/sustainability/biography.php?ID=485
is the co-author of this book:
Challenges To The Second Law Of Thermodynamics: Theory And Experiment ~Springer-Verlag 2005
and in chapter/section 6.3 which you can read most of here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=-nWyk7jH5_EC&pg=PA202&lpg=PA202&dq=Loschmidt+Boltzmann+Maxwell&source=bl&ots=51p9MK1QYL&sig=9BRqBSPTw0nUp7Wssd1i2kNHt0c&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-vYWUOz5HIuu8ASoqIDQAQ&ved=0CE4Q6AEwAQ
concludes that the Loschmidt Effect, which I described to Weissman and he dismissed out of hand as very wrong, has not been disproven and recent experimental results appear to support it and deserve serious attention:
Weissman, on the other hand, offers me two of his papers dealing with physical esoterica in electrolytic capacitors like that’s supposed to end the discussion. I’ve seen plenty of literature bluffing but little quite so bad as that lame attempt. Inf*ckingcredible.
David, Actually, the F’ing capacitor thing is kinda interesting. There is no free transfer of energy and changing the rate of energy flow will change the entropy of the system. Two of my pet peaves are not considering entropy and thermal inertia.
That one link you have with the K/N=d/kT appears to be derived from Boltzmann’s work. The d though would be total degrees of freedom not just three dimensions. Once you consider those other degrees of freedom, rotational, vibrational, then there is some interesting stuff.
For example, on Venus, the radiant energy TOA is limited by CO2 almost exclusively and is about 65Wm-2. Earth with slightly higher gravity, appears to have a CO2 minimum radiant energy of about 67Wm-2. That may be a “gravitational” limit related to the minimum temperature and pressure in the atmosphere where CO2 can emit spontaneously. That is likely because at that temperature and pressure a CO2 molecule would tend to behave as a solid not a gas. Then fun stuff can happen.
“Challenges To The Second Law Of Thermodynamics” … oh my.
Well, if the second law of thermodynamics doesn’t hold, why, then evolution is possible after all, isn’t it, DaveScot?
(Dave’s also a creationist.)
I’m a creationist in the sense that the universe is a closed system 14 billion years old and the order in the universe today cannot be greater than the order in it 14 billion years ago. According to the standard model the universe should be an homogenous soup and we shouldn’t be here to talk about it. You’ll forgive me for questioning the atheist’s bedtime story that it’s all just a freak accident. Something went poof and 14 billion years later the library of congress appears. I ain’t buying into the freak accident theory like there’s no other rational explanation. I can give you links to some of the greatest living theoretical physicist today like Leonard Susskind lamenting that there are no satisfying explanations for the order in the universe but that probably wouldn’t make any difference because you already know better than Susskind, huh? It must be nice to have all the answers to all the questions that the greatest minds humanity has produced have been unable to agree upon. Nice in the way of a lunatic happily counting his fingers in a padded room 24/7. I suppose the most charitable thing for me to do with you is not try to disturb your contented existence.
> You’ll forgive me for questioning the atheist’s bedtime story that it’s all just a freak accident.
Depends which appeal it is: incredulity or ignorance?
This is one of the rare cases where I don’t have enough data to decide. I’m an agnostic and take up Pascal’s Wager because the risk:reward ratio warrants it so long as you choose an easy religion to follow. You can’t get much easier than being a Protestant. Just ask to be forgiven and it happens. You’re set for life and you can move along to other things like the proverbial Protestant work ethic where you work hard and reinvest the fruits of your labor. Protestants didn’t capitalism but were the first to turn into a religious imperative! Now religions like Catholicism and Islam that requires a lot of effort, kissing of rings, and supporting a slothful clergy class. Screw that. The risk:reward ratio is substantially diminished by that noise.
should read protestants didn’t invent capitalism but were the first to make it into a religious imperative
Dave,
I like your idea of capitalism as a religious imperative.
Speaking of which, taking Pascal’s wager means that you choose to believe, which means that you can’t really say:
> I’m an agnostic and take up Pascal’s Wager.
This would be worse than to say that CO2 emits heat, for it would mean you don’t know that being agnostic is to suspend belief.
Speaking of which:
http://chucknorrisisgod.com/
Pascal’s wager…that’s a great example of why scientists aren’t always good philosophers. As used here, vs pascals more ironic usage, this amounts to following the most scary religion because it’s the most scary. Are you then sure you have the most scary version of hell of all the religions in mind? Perhaps defying Thor would be more painful?
Arguing from consequences is a fallacy. Something is not true just because it feels good. And evoking god of the gaps theories for the existence of the universe…makes me wonder how one can function at all as a legitimate scientist. Why bother at all with investigating anything you don’t know the explanation for, just say god did it. Hey… there’s a spin on climate change you can do :)
Wow. I knew dhogaza was low, but I didn’t expect him to go this low. He just insulted basically every religious person in the world.
Wow.
I knew Chewbacca was just hairy, but I did not expect such a bald statement.
He just implied that every religious person in the world are creationnists.
Wow.
:)
Chewbacca? Please explain.
Joshua,
See a bit below.
Damn threads.
OK, AFK for a few weeks.
Bye.
It’s not 100%, but yeah, almost all religious people are creationists. Can anyone think of any notable counterexamples?
You gotta little universe here, you know, God didn’t build that by himself.
===================
Do you really questions whether there are millions of religious Jews, Christians, Protestants, etc., who believe in evolution (and not even intelligent design), and who consider the Bible’s creation story as allegory, or perhaps not even that?
To clarify my remarks, creationists shouldn’t be confused with right-wing fundamentalists who have attempted to co-opt the term and are commonly called Creationists. The term creationism covers a broad spectrum of beliefs, many of which are completely compatible with all known science.
In fact, it even covers some non-religious beliefs. For example, there are people who believe aliens played a role in the creation/development of life on Earth. That belief is a form of creationism.
To put it simply, the fact a group of fundamentalists have tried to co-opt a term does not change the fact the term has a long and rich history in theology. If one must refer to such fundamentalists by the term, one should try to use a capitalized form (Creationists) to distinguish them from the actual word. Or, at least be willing to accept it when people point out or take issue with the conflation.
So to clarify further, Brandon, you’re saying that almost all religious people, and even some non-religious people, have some of a wide variety of various and unspecified beliefs.
Given that clarification, I’d have to say that you’re correct.
Is Chewbacca Jewish? [1]
Are buddhists creationists?
Are believers in the Big Bang theory creationists?
Are believers in Big Band theory Benny Goodman fans?
So many questions, so little vacation time.
[1] http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Chewbacca
Pastafarians are creationists.
Joshua,
Here you go:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/25248731162
With an hat tip to WebHubTelescope.
Thanks, Willard. I’ve tried talking to Brandon about his oft’ repeated “that makes no sense” (and many variants that he peppers comments with).
Unfortunately, his responses on that subject never made any sense.
Joshua,
See also **Strictly Speaking**:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/24188591829
See also **Contemporary Sophistry**:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/24401285273
and all the links from these comments.
That kid in the video,(30/07 5.27pm) is no slouch. Looks at the US temperature sitation data, rate of warming changes over a century at paired sites in 100 km vicinity, urban and rural. Urban rate keeps goin’ up, rural doesn’t change. Even a kid can see it. Now what’s that tellin’ us?
Backs up Anthony’s research, or maybe it preceded it? )
Its telling us that the rural site needs adjusting upward to make it’s trend steeper than the urban site… of course !!! ;-)
‘It has been shown by numerous studies (Norris and Leovy 1994; Wyant et al. 1997; Clement et al. 2009) that marine stratiform cloud cover should and does correlate negatively with SST. The hypothesized mechanism for this relationship is a destabilization of the lower troposphere by the warming SST, reducing static stability and entraining more dry air into the cloud layer.’
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~rmeast/Eastman_et_al_2011.pdf
These appear in CERES as both changes in LW and SW flux. In this Loeb (2011) graph the clearest correlation is with the Multivariate ENSO index (MEI) and LW flux in the tropics and subtropics especially. LW up increases with El Niño and decreases with La Niña. I think it may be a result of both STT and changing cloud.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=Loeb2011-LWCERES.png
Of course if we remember that El Niño warm the planet (both oceans and atmosphere) and La Niña cool – the LW variability must be offset by SW forcing. The very simple secret is in convective ocean/atmosphere coupling that change cloud radiative forcing.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=CERES_MODIS-1.gif
This means for the past that there was a period between prior to 1976 when La Niña dominated, a period from 1977 to 1998 where El Niño dominated and a period since when La Niña is dominant. Seen quite clearly in Claus Wolter’s MEI
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/
I would expect that to show up in the satellite data pre-2000 if it was at all accurate.
‘In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.
In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.’ IPCC s3.4.4.1 – http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-4-4-1.html
It appears that the data is consistent with the theory. What this means for the future is that some 10 to 30 years of intense and frequent La Niña in the offing will tend to cool the planet. Longer term ENSO is much more variable.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=ENSO11000.gif
Drought and flooding the likes of which are not remotely seen in the instrumental record.
Although it is convenient to discuss ENSO as a distinct system – in reality it is a mode of spatial and temporal variability in a complex and dynamic system that spans the globe and beyond.
“Of course if we remember that El Niño warm the planet (both oceans and atmosphere) and La Niña cool ”
El nino / La nina represent a switch in ocean currents. Can you explain where this supposed warming and cooling comes from ?
Chief is wrong about this. El Ninos do not warm the ocean, but are a period of greater heat flux from ocean to atmopshere and this is reflected in higher SSTs.
;-)
Just in case you miss it in all the damn noise.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/wwv/
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/wwv/gif/wwv_nino.gif
Ceres can’t measure radiative flux at TOA accurate to 0.5-1.5W/m2 over the entire surface of the earth year to year. That number is calculated from ARGO data which ostensibly tells us how many extra joules land in the ocean from one year to the next. Given that ARGO buoys only dive to half the average depth of the global ocean and tend to get corraled into high concentrations by ocean gyres I’m a bit skeptical on whether they’re accurate enough to allow TOA imbalance to be modeled. One thing is for sure, ARGO hasn’t been around for climatologically significant length of time. So far they’re just measuring global weather. I prefer the 33 year history of satellite borne microwave sounding units for my temperature data which is now nearly twice the accepted climatology minimum of 17 years, only misses a bit of coverage at the poles, and actually has the sensitivity to resolve decadal trends in the hundredths of a degree. The record so far is 0.21C/decade for two decades and zilich for the third decade. IPCC AR1 prediction was 0.30C/decade every decade. Oops. Missed the mark they did. Back to the drawing board…
“ARGO hasn’t been around for climatologically significant length of time”
neither have thermometers ;-)
David,
Although it is true that absolute values of radiant flux are very uncertain – I have seen estimates in the range of -2.1 W/m^2 to 6.7 W/m^2 – radiative anomalies are a very different thing. ERBS radiative flux anomalies were accurate to better than 0.5 W/m^2 (Wong et al 2006). CERES is several times better.
I assure you that the data was not ARGO based but actually came from instruments in orbit – unless NASA has pulled off another moon landing scam. :cool:
ARGO is excellent data. Most heat concentrates to the surface by convection. So 2000m seems resonable to integrate heat changes and shows heat accumulating in the climate system in the last decade.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=vonSchuckmann-OHC.gif
To look at why – we need to balance the energy budget.
dS/dt = Energy in – Energy out
dS/dt is the change in energy storage which was positive in the ARGO period to 2008. So energy in was greater than energy out.
Here’s a CERES graph with trends from Kevin Trenberth.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=CERES-BAMS-2008-with-trend-lines1.gif
Energy in decreased a little in the Schwabe cycle in the period considered by von Schuckmann et al. The change in energy out was entirely in reflected SW.
The 1st order differential energy equation completely defines global energy dynamics and is usable over short periods if we have sufficiently accurate data. It is not a matter of discerning trend against noise.
Much as I think that the UAH and RSS are the most useful datasets – tropospheric temperature is the least interesting part of the puzzle.
Someone is selling you a bill of goods, my marsupial friend. Ceres margin of error in shortwave is 3%. That’s why no one knows quite what the earth’s average albedo is from year to year closer than +- a few percent. The several attempts to measure it are not in satisfactory agreement. In these kind of situations we need multiple disparate measurement techniques to be in agreement. Satellite MSUs for example are sanity checked against balloon soundings. What’s the sanity check for CERES? Point of fact there is none that agrees with it closer than a couple percent so that’s as good as you can say it is. Reflected shortwave is about 400W/m2 so +- 2% is +-8Watts. From that ou can say there’s an imbalance with an accuracy of a few tenths of Watts? Seriously? With a straight face?
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2011JCLI3946.1?journalCode=clim
I shouldn’t say there’s no sanity check for CERES. There’s no direct measurement of TOA energy balance that can serve that purpose. The sanity check in use is ARGO which is an indirect measure of TOA energy balance. CERES is as accurate as ARGO in other words and I already said ARGO’s history is short, it misses any water covered by ice, it misses the lower half of the ocean, and it misses much of the open ocean because ocean gyres tend to corral the buoys into tight clusters.
Dave,
You are very stubborn and tend to folloe your own train of thought rather than actually engaging in a dialogue. The error in the absolute flux I said was -2.1W/m^2 to 6 .7 W/m^2 . That’s a little more than the 8 W you mentioned. The anomaly error I referenced in Wong et al 2006 – Reexamination of the Observed Decadal Variability of the Earth Radiation Budget. The CERES increase in accuracy comes straight from the CERES design objectives – which it has fulfilled. Please observe the difference between absolute values and anomalies.
In general this site would benefit from far more considered study of the literature and far less arm waving.
No paywall:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~aaron/files/Download/Donohoe_Battisti_Albedo.pdf
I’m pretty awesome, huh? :-)
You got the facts Chief. I can always back up what I say. Read it and weep.
Anomalies don’t apply in this case chief. The absolute margin of error in CERES is above and below 0. You can’t reliably what the sign of the imbalance is. There might be 1.5W/m2 more energy leaving TOA than entering it. All you say from an anamoly is there’s some amount more or less difference this year than last year. So you can say (maybe) that the imbalance has increased or decreased by some tenths of watts year to year but the absolute margin of error is so large you can’t tell me whether the imbalance is positive or negative.
Plus the study I cited is 2010 and yours is 2006. Presumably we’ve refined our knowledge of how well Ceres is performing in those 4 years. So neener neener neener you big jelly beaner.
And WTF is up with the different names you’re using? You have multiple personality disorder or something? How many different names are you using here, Sybil?
Way ahead of you dumbo – I am out of here entirely.
P.S. Sibyl
That website “The People’s Cube” looks like John Nash’s office at Princeton did right before the guys from the mental hospital hauled him off in a straight jacket for a few months of biweekly insulin shock therapy to reduce the number of voices in his head. You should go in voluntarily. Schizophrenia is treatable nowadays by gentler means than it was 60 years ago. Nash went on to win a Nobel prize. His wife left him though. Can’t win ’em all.
No honest man here merely bombasic tomfoolery and a propensity for pulling it out of your arse. No ability to cope with satire either – if you can’t cope with the people’s cube. Did you at least look at the Duke ENSO animation because – like much else you are so woefully mistaken in your characterisation of ENSO dynamics is laeugable.
As for changes in radiative flux. ‘
‘Trenberth and Fasullo correctly point out that the absolute accuracy of these radiation budget instruments is not good enough to measure very small radiation imbalances…just the CHANGE in that imbalance over time. Well then maybe it was the period BEFORE 2000 where there was an imbalance, with extra energy being lost by the Earth, but no cooling, and NOW the solar and infrared flows are once again in balance. Just a thought.’
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/04/
The CERES accuracy is said to be 1 W/m^2 in both SW and LW (1% in SW and 0.4% in LW from memory – sounds about right) with a 0.2 W/m^2/decade drift. The latter is more relevant to anomalies.
You strike me more as an ignorant, pompous @rsehole with little propensity for civilised discourse. A detriment to the esalon. A blight on the blosphere. A sociopath with little grace and no wit. You are an emample to avoid.
Yet another name, Sybil?
The people’s cube is so cluttered and clashing no normal person would try to sift through it to see if there’s a pony anywhere in that huge pile of manure.
Just avoid responding to me and if I can figure out all the names you’re using I’ll do the same for you. My pleasure. You’re immune to facts and that just frustrates me after a certain point.
Chief Hydrologist said:
“Of course if we remember that El Niño warm the planet (both oceans and atmosphere) and La Niña cool…”
—-
Again with this false statement Chief? Why do you persist in this? El Niño is a period in which more net energy is leaving the ocean than during ENSO neutral or La Nina periods. Elevated SSTs are the direct display of this energy leaving the ocean, and then of course this energy enters the troposphere and is recorded in higher tropospheric tempertures. El Ninos do not warm the ocean Chief. Higher SSTs during El Ninos are a record of net energy LEAVING the ocean. Hence, following a strong El Nino we usually see total ocean heat content flatten or even decline slightly.
No Gates. El Ninos are caused by slowing of trade winds which slows evaporation which allows the ocean to retain more solar energy than it would otherwise. This is indeed a warming of the planet just like the first poster said to you. La Ninas are caused by faster than normal trade winds which raise the evaporation rate and hence pump energy out of the ocean and off towards Alpha Centauri at a faster rate. This indeed cooling the planet just like the first poster said to you.
Let me know which part of that you don’t understand. Live the government, I’m here to help.
David, your explanation is nonsense. The higher SSTs on average over a greater area during an El niño is a direct measurement of energy leaving the oceans. This energy is then measured by rising tropospheric temperatures.
El Ninos release more net heat to the troposphere and hence tropospheric tempertures spike during El Ninos. The La Nina’s do not “pump” more neat heat out of the ocean, and this can been seen in the fact that tropospheric temperatures usually fall during La Nina’s.
If you are here to help, you can begin by getting the actual physics correct.
“The Skeptical Warmist
The higher SSTs on average over a greater area during an El niño is a direct measurement of energy leaving the oceans”
The influx of solar energy on the surface can be transformed into major products; sensible heat (which you measure as temperature) or latent heat (which you can measure as increased water vapor flux and increased salinity).
At low wind speeds a packet solar energy influx gives a greater ratio of sensible/latent than occurs with high wind speeds.
The relationship between heat influx and sea surface temperature is not direct, nor independent of the movement of the atmosphere.
Temperature is not heat., you cannot state that a rise or fall in surface temperature due to a change in radiative energy flux.
Here is a terrific ENSO animation.
http://www.youtube.com/user/taichiatduke
You can get more here – http://www.duke.edu/~ts24/ENSO/
‘El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the most important coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon to cause global climate variability on interannual time scales. Here we attempt to monitor ENSO by basing the Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) on the six main observed variables over the tropical Pacific. These six variables are: sea-level pressure (P), zonal (U) and meridional (V) components of the surface wind, sea surface temperature (S), surface air temperature (A), and total cloudiness fraction of the sky (C).’ http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/
The cloud variability – negatively correlated to SST – is the critical one for cloud radiatve forcing. Simply asserting that I am wrong Gatesy withut any justification but merely arm waving is absurd.
Is it any wonder that it is impossible to get past the basics because there is always someone who refuses to do any research and simply pulls it out of their arse.
Captain,
Nice of you to come to the Chief’s defense, but your statement did not address the inaccurate position he posited that El Ninos “warm the ocean”. This is the subject of the discussion.
JCH, Linear estimates in a non linear system have limited utility. Finding change points is where the money is. One of the neat things about non-linear systems is that variance decreases at odd times.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2012/07/there-are-no-steps-it-is-constant.html
Please – there are ENSO resurces all over the web. It is the biggest source of both climatic and hyrological variability on the planet. If you look at the Duke animations – not hard – you begin to understand some of the complexities of ENSO. There are people like Dave who never will understand – he has a closed mind and an inability to enter into an honest discourse. But these things are very simple – and might simply be found by any honest student of natural philosophy. If we then start to seek the reasons for it – it is found in cloud radiative forcing.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/wwv/
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/wwv/gif/wwv_nino.gif
If you are not an honest student you will simply reject it on the basis of any old rationalisation and I will have wasted my time again. That’s life in the climate wars. I studied these things for decades just for the love of it – and only spoke up (for what it’s worth) when the serious errors became evident and how ill that portended for environmental sustainability.
Diogenes,
The essential point of discussion here is the net global flow of energy from ocean to atmosphere during an El Niño year. Related to this of course is the issue of whether or not an El Niño represents a net warming of the ocean (i.e. an increase in ocean heat content, which is NOT the same as simple increase in SST). There is much confusion by some about this. If you would like to add you perspective to the conversation you are welcome to it.
A few points that need to be explained:
1. Why global tropospheric temperatures increase during an El Niño year and where that energy comes from.
2. The difference between a redistribution of energy in the ocean and the net addition or subtraction of energy. Hurricanes for example both redistribute energy in the ocean and subtract energy and put it into the atmosphere. Looking at El Niño from a net energy flow perspective can be quite informative.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/climate%20stuff/WabbitsFolly.png
That is the upper 300 meters in the ENSO region. Whether an El Nino warms the oceans or not depends on the ocean and the timing. In the first part of the plot, whether it was an El Nino or la nina, the general result is different than in the last part of the plot. Like it or not, cyclic behavior and thermal capacity impacts the results.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-JetNuc4BIgQ/UBbhjA1G-VI/AAAAAAAACus/-A4K5S4C1lc/s912/strangely%2520attractive.png
It has been that way for a while and likely will continue. That Tierney reconstruction is low frequency, but there is still clear differences in the high normal and low normal responses.
Captdallas,
It would seem apparent from your first graph what direction the energy flow is during an El Niño. The flow of energy out of the ocean during the 1997-98 El niño is quite dramatic. And of course, the that energy went into the troposphere disrupting weather around the planet.
This is a graph supplied to Roger Pielke Sr. by Josh Willis:
OHC, upper ~700 meters
compare with:
ENSO
Dr. Gates, for a short time period, picking out sublet changes is not a simple matter. If you look at the first half of the ENSO region you can see the rough response curve similar to these.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2012/07/there-are-no-steps-it-is-constant.html
The shape of those curves should be related to the heat capacity or thermal inertia of the “thermal layers” being impacted. The ENSO region is not an isolated system, Energy will be transferred up/ down and horizontally. So I have been playing with comparing the energy transfer response time to the northern and southern extents of the oceans.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2012/07/thermal-inertia.html
That linear estimation method is kind of cheesy, but it appears to be good enough for exploring possibilities. Based on that crude analysis, the heat capacity and rate of energy flow from the ENSO region sets up oscillations that vary with the heat capacity of the adjacent regions. Like waves in a pond, you get different amplitudes and patterns.
When you have the stratosphere following the same approach curve as the SST, there is a little better confidence that there has been a regime change, that dragon king.
All circumstantial currently, but more and more things are falling into place.
Here is figure 1 from Dessler 2010. The ENSO cloud feedback is central to cloud radiative effects.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=Dessler2010Figure1.png
Here is Wong et al 2006 on the correspondence of ERBS to ocean heat content by Willis.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=Wong2006figure7.gif
Compare the 1998 El Nino and the following La Nina.
Here’s one just for the hell of it.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=ENSODSR.gif
The net heat flows are a factor of many things – you have to think about in terms of the changes in net radiant flux anomalies at TOA. Ya got to have both a theory and data guys.
Anyway – it’s been great – and I mean that sincerely. I am really a bit tired the constant arm waving repetitive nonsense, the dearth of any sanity and civility, the absence of any depth of rational technical discussion, etc etc.
Actually – just one further thing. The 1st order differential global energy equation is by the 1st law of thermodynamics:
dS/dt = Energy in – Energy out
You could add some minor terms for combustion, the heat of radiative decay diffusing to the surface of the planet and enthalpy. dS/dt is the change in heat content in the oceans and atmosphere in a period – i.e. warming or cooling. All three terms are measured with unprecedented accuracy by ARGO, CERES and SORCE.
A positive dS/dt as determined by ARGO and atmospheric measurements – perhaps the latter in the troposphere ideally – means that energy in less energy out is positive and vice versa. Energy in changes little in the Schwabe cycle. Energy out changes relatively more in the SW and LW. Something that really should be at the core of attribution.
Regardless of the mechanism warming or cooling of the planet is determined solely by the radiant flux balance. Redistribution of energy between the oceans and atmosphere is hugely irrelevant to warming or cooling. The mechanism seems in large part to be due to ENSO related cloud feedbacks – and that has implications for the near future evolution of climate.
As it is – you leave the field open for poorly informed and very unlikeable types like Dave Springer to spout triumphalist nonsense like some loony tunes caricature of a libertarian – all because you refuse to look the past and the future squarely in the eye. So be it – I am up to my eyebrows with delusional AGW groupthink space cadets.
I am a bit annoyed at Judith as well for inconsistently running a zoo.
Two points:
The warming or cooling of the planet does depend on heat in minus heat out. However it is the distribution of this heat in the atmosphere and ocean that is of interest, and most people are interested in that fragile interface we call the surface.
Second point: the climate debate is a zoo, no getting around it, and the animals that show up here self select. I only moderate if people get overly insulting or repetitive.
Two points Judith – El Nino warm the surface and La Nina cool – the interesting point is how that happens and we can only see the how at TOA with the whole system and its interesting ocean/atmosphere couplings.
And thanks – I think I will be mosying along now.
You guys/gals are fiddling while Rome burns — while people, mainly the poor in developing countries — are suffering so that you could use up fossil fuels for your mental masturbation. I am a firm believer in science, but it is time to stop the bickering. Wally Broecker warned of global warming in the 1970’s and what much has been done to deal with it since then?
Rome isn’t burning,.
And the poor countries are suffering because they are being deprived of cheap plentiful energy that could be had if the so-called developed countries would let them (if only they got off the AGW band-wagon).
I’m very careful to avoid taking energy away from poor foreigners who don’t get enough to eat. In fact, since I’m among the 49% of US workers who actually pays a net positive amount of federal taxes and the United States government provides more foreign aid to those poor energy deprived folks than any other country that actually makes me a guy that’s making a better world for them. Without the energy that allows me to be a net producer of goods and services I would be one of the 51% of good-for-nothings in the US who produce less than they consume and hence do not contribute one thin dime to foreign aid.
Now you know.
+1 from another of the 49%
Ligija,
You claim Rome is burning.
Where is the smoke? The fire? It is all in your confabulation.
It is the consensus extremists like yourself indulging in mental masturbation.
Open a nature magazine, you’ll find plenty of examples of negative effects from this warming.
PDA (short for PDA’s Dada Acronym) | July 30, 2012 at 5:59 pm |
re: The main greenhouse gas is water and that cools the Earth
Are you actually aware of what this thing called a “greenhouse” is? That it’s purpose is not cooling, but warming.
Yes, I know very well what a greenhouse is, as all who garden do.. The purpose of a greenhouse is to aid in providing the optimum temperature for a variety of plants in a controlled environment, it includes warming and cooling. Plants in the wild exist where they have conditions for growth particular to their requirements, a greenhouse can produce those conditions for plants which otherwise would not be able to survive in a particular area.
You are absolutely correct that water vapor is a potent and abundant greenhouse gas, but since you don’t “believe” in radiative transfer or the greenhouse effect, I’m really not sure what it means to you when you call something a greenhouse gas.
I’m using “greenhouse gas” with an important caveat which I detail below; the gases water vapour, carbon dioxide, etc. You have erroneously assumed that a greenhouse only warms, but greenhouses also cool. That’s why they have windows to open and release any build up of hot air not conducive to the needs of the plants within, convection moves the heat out as heat always flows from hotter to colder. The glass of the greenhouse is also sometimes painted white to help keep the greenhouse cooler if need be.
Using greenhouse gases in the traditional physics way I include nitrogen and oxygen, because, it is the whole gaseous atmosphere around the Earth which is thought of as the Greenhouse. A real greenhouse as I’ve described above, in which the natural processes heat and cool the Earth.
Without the traditional greenhouse, which is the whole voluminous fluid gas ocean around the Earth including nitrogen and oxygen, the temperature of the Earth would be -18°C.
With the basic volume of nitrogen and oxygen which makes up some 98% of the atmosphere, but without the greenhouse gas water, the temperature would be 67%deg;C.
The greenhouse gas water vapour cools the Earth.
Again, there is a great deal of information available on the physics of radiative transfer, blackbody radiation and the like. It really won’t do to claim in a few short sentences that it’s all wrong without explaining how it is wrong.
I have been explaining how it is wrong. The real world has a real greenhouse surrounding it, one that heats and cools, and is made up of all the gases, therefore they are all greenhouse gases. That AGW fisics has taken the term and associated it only with some of the greenhouse gases and has excised cooling from the greenhouse process and so changed the concept of greenhouse, is another sleight of hand..
There is a great deal of information available on convection. It is the main way heat is transferred in a fluid medium, the heavy voluminous ocean of gas around us is a fluid, (gases and liquids are fluids).
It is the movement of this fluid, our atmosphere, as disparate volumes of it heat and cool which gives us our basic weather system, (together with the Earth’s rotational effects). These convective processes transfer huge amounts of heat and cold around the Earth.
Look up descriptions of inshore/offshore winds to get a feel for the basic process of wind, which is volumes of our gas atmosphere on the move.
Land heats up quicker than the water in the ocean next to it due to their different heat capacities. During the day when the air above the land gets hotter it rises becoming less dense and so the relatively colder air above the ocean which is heavier will flow down beneath it, the cool ocean breeze.
Land cools down as quickly as it warms up, so when it is no longer being heated by the sun it is not heating the air above it and this cools down becoming heavier, sinking earthward. Meanwhile, the ocean with its higher heat capacity takes longer to heat up than land and by the end of the day will be warming the air above it which will be hotter than the air above the adjacent land. As this hotter air above the ocean rises the colder denser air from above the land will flow beneath it, out to sea.
This is convection. The huge hot thunderous weather systems of summers and the cold snow blizzards of winters are from massive temperature differences of volumes of the the fluid greenhouse gas atmosphere convecting around the Earth; in the differences of pressures between volumes of low pressure lighter hotter air and high pressure heavier colder air, as subject to gravity.
AGW fisics misses rather a lot out.
The whole atmosphere is driven by pressure differences, movement of air from higher pressure to lower pressure.
Higher pressure allows higher heat holding.. Basic Kinetic theory !!!
Hence the lapse rate, hence convection, hence the wind
The 3 basic methods of heat transfer are are to do with “differences”.
Differences in pressure, heat content, concentrations etc etc etc
Physics and nature (physics is just our current mathematical interpretation of nature) wants to equalise all these differences.
“Without the traditional greenhouse, which is the whole voluminous fluid gas ocean around the Earth including nitrogen and oxygen, the temperature of the Earth would be -18°C. ”
Wiki: “If an ideal thermally conductive blackbody was the same distance from the Sun as the Earth is, it would have a temperature of about 5.3 °C. However, since the Earth reflects about 30% of the incoming sunlight, the planet’s effective temperature (the temperature of a blackbody that would emit the same amount of radiation) is about −18 °C”
So if earth was a blackbody it’s temperature would 5.3 C. If it was blackbody which had stuff like our clouds which reflected about 30% of sunlight it would be -18 C. Or the entire planet’s temperature would be a uniform temperature of -18 C.
Earth isn’t nor is there anything which is blackbody. Or no spherical body has the blackbody characteristic of an uniform temperature. Or blackbody doesn’t need it’s temperature averaged as it has same uniform temperature.
Obviously non blackbody has higher temperatures. Some areas can much hotter than other areas. Something like earth is it had a black surface, or somewhat black like asphalt, without an atmosphere, would have some of it’s surface at some of the time, very hot, say 120 C.
Such an airless black surface earth-like world could have a very high average temperature- if had material able to absorb heat [had high heat capacity]
If you add an earth atmosphere to to such a high capacity and black surfaced world, and the atmosphere had no greenhouse gases [so O2 and/or N2] then the hotness surfaces will be less hot, and coldest surfaces will be less cold- it will have some greenhouse Effect.
If instead one had blackbody and added this atmosphere, you would not change it’s uniform temperature, but you would lower it’s temperature.
Instead of asphalt covered world, you have an earth-like planet with the N2 and O2 atmosphere and cover the entire surface with water so at least a mile deep [no land]. Then highest the surface of the water will get is about 30 C. And ocean temperature near tropics should be around 25 to 30 C. There would not be polar ice caps, one might get seasonal polar sea ice. And average temperature should similar to Earth’s average temperature. Adding CO2 to such a world should not make much difference to it’s temperatures.
Since there is no land there would be far less dust, than Earth. Having little dust may inhibit cloud formation, and with less clouds, one could see significantly higher average temperature [say around 2-4 C]
Actually gbaikie, I would venture to guess that the temperature of your aquatic planet would be dependent on the salinity of the oceans. The greater the salinity, the higher the Tmax.
With an elliptical orbit the seasonal differences would be greater, with increasing salt. You will have a Mediterranean/Red Sea situation on a global basis whereby the summer sun increases the surface salinity, which cools in the winter and sinks.
“Actually gbaikie, I would venture to guess that the temperature of your aquatic planet would be dependent on the salinity of the oceans. The greater the salinity, the higher the Tmax.”
Without any land on the aquatic planet, it seems the general assumption would be having a ocean of less salinity. And easy to see a fairly sterile environment- no salt, no nutrients, and very pure water. And life would confined areas of under water volcanic activity. And under water volcanic activity is unlikely to bring nutrients to the ocean surface. Or I am not aware that Mid-Atlantic Ridge adds any significant amount nutrients to the open oceans of the Atlantic as compared open ocean of the Pacific.
Though I suppose if Earth had less life, and was somewhat sterile, in situation something like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge may seem to have greater effect upon Ocean’s surface conditions. Plus if planet had similar volcanic activity as earth, one could expect an occasion massive volcanic eruption to transport large amount of nutrients to the surface. Though if world was as volcanically active as Earth, it would seem one would get land areas.
So generally with ocean covered world, less salinity and pure fresh water.
And you saying salinity would large effect. I would agree that higher salinity should cause oceans be able to retain more heat. But our current ocean don’t seem to doing any better in this regard, than if were fresh water. If had shallow oceans of saltwater where sunlight reached the bottom and warmed it, it seems one could have very warm ocean.
But miles deep, don’t know how effect it would have.
That is word salad, useless drivel by Mer.
“The greenhouse gas water vapour cools the Earth.”
That must be why when I go into suanas adding more steam makes me colder…
http://www.gd-wholesale.com/userimg/33/1760i1/spray-water-cooling-fan-934.jpg
:) And what is happening to the heater?
Water is a great absorber of heat, when you pour water onto the hot stones the water heats up and evaporates raising the humidity of the sauna, the stones cool down. The water takes away the heat from the stones and brings it you making you hotter, to sweat more.
Heat always flows from hotter to colder.
This is what happens in our weather system as water takes the heat away from the surface in evaporation and lighter than air rises into the colder heights where the water vapour will again condense back into liquid water, or ice, forming clouds and falling back to earth as rain and snow is the Water Cycle.
So it cools the earth by taking away heat of the surface which it releases in the colder higher atmosphere as it condenses out and it also cools by bringing in colder therefore denser heavier air beneath it as it rises. Hot air rises, cold air sinks.
It’s a dynamic system. It can’t really be appreciated by those who only think in terms of radiation, because it’s all to do with the movement of volumes of air and this transfers heat and cold around the earth in our weather systems. It’s volumes of hot air rising and volumes of cold air sinking, this is convection, this is how now hotter humid air in the sauna reaches you, a volume of hot wet air travelling. It applies to all the troposphere which is where weather happens.
They miss this out deliberately – because putting it back in shows there is no Greenhouse Effect because the water cycle cools the earth, think deserts, the earth would be 67°C without the dynamic of the water cycle.
And carbon dioxide is fully part of that – all rain is carbonic acid. Rain takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and back to earth, where the plants are waiting for it.., and it is thus in the same 8-10 day residence time in the atmosphere as is water.
Carbon dioxide can’t accumulate in the atmosphere because of this – and because it is anyway heavier than air, it will always sink in air, it does not readily rise in air – so carbon dioxide is fully part of the cooling of the earth through the water cycle.
Myrrh says
“Heat always flows from hotter to colder.”
I say “Heat always flows from colder to hotter.”
I think we need someone who really understands tht second law of thermodynamics to tell us who is right.
Maybe a physical chemist is around who can settle this.
The 2nd Law comes from real observation and a comprehensive understanding of the process. If you think this is wrong and you are right, then by all means, show it.
It is not an insignificant thing to overturn a Law in physics…
I was once given a description of your, difficult to know what to call it, idea. I was told that an eskimo could leave a piece of raw meat in his igloo and go off hunting for a few hours and on his return he would find the meat cooked and ready for his dinner.
What would you call that?
It is similar to something I heard
“If all the matter in the universe was composed of pots of water and stoves heating the pots of water, sometime between a google and a googleplex years, one of those pots would freeze.”
So the eskimo returnign to his igloo to find his seal steak fully cooked is not impossible.
Ponder this scenario then,
Observe a tank of gas, lets use Helium to eliminate a few assumptions.
Observations show that the velocity of the individual molecules are distributed in accordance with the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution.
I you examine a collision between two atoms in this tank, you have four
possibilities,
1. The faster atom transfers some energy to the slower atom and slows while the slower atom speeds up.
2. The faster atom rebounds from the slower atom at the same speed and no energy is exchanged.
3. The faster atom gives most of its energy to the slower atom such that the slower atom is moving faster after the collison than the faster atom was before the collision.
4. The collision results in the faster atom going faster and the slower atom going slower.
Which of these are allowed?
1 and 2 are allowed because we observe heat transfer by convection and conduction.
If 3 and 4 are not allowed then we would observe that in the tank, the atoms do not eventually move all at the same speed, the result of repeated collisions of the first type.
Therefore, by proof of counter example, collisions of type 3 and 4 can occur and therefore heat can transfer from a cold object to a hotter object.
Which is why the heat transfer always goes in both directions.
I am not trying to overturn the second law of thermodynamics, just trying to help people to grasp the concepts.
And Carbonic Acid, really, do you call it that we you have a coke?
typo,
should read “the atoms do eventually move at the same speed”
is similar to something I heard
“If all the matter in the universe was composed of pots of water and stoves heating the pots of water, sometime between a google and a googleplex years, one of those pots would freeze.”
Back to the example I gave… This is the logical outcome of the claim that “backradiation from a colder to a hotter can heat the hotter” which is the original claim of AGW fisics, as for example, Spencer still argues in Yes Virginia. (See Pierre Latour’s No Virgina.) This isn’t about some imagined possibility – God’s already grabbed that one… see N.T. This is the claim that this is what actually happens in the AGW Greenhouse, the igloo cooking dinner.
So the eskimo returnign to his igloo to find his seal steak fully cooked is not impossible.
And this is the problem, those supporting AGW fisics have an elementary logic fail. You have no mechanism to stop that happening because you claim the impossible is happening all the time, is the norm.
Ponder this scenario then,
Observe a tank of gas, lets use Helium to eliminate a few assumptions.
Observations show that the velocity of the individual molecules are distributed in accordance with the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution.
I you examine a collision between two atoms in this tank, you have four
possibilities,
1. The faster atom transfers some energy to the slower atom and slows while the slower atom speeds up.
2. The faster atom rebounds from the slower atom at the same speed and no energy is exchanged.
3. The faster atom gives most of its energy to the slower atom such that the slower atom is moving faster after the collison than the faster atom was before the collision.
4. The collision results in the faster atom going faster and the slower atom going slower.
Which of these are allowed?
1 and 2 are allowed because we observe heat transfer by convection and conduction.
If 3 and 4 are not allowed then we would observe that in the tank, the atoms do not eventually move all at the same speed, the result of repeated collisions of the first type. [should read “the atoms do eventually move at the same speed”]
Therefore, by proof of counter example, collisions of type 3 and 4 can occur and therefore heat can transfer from a cold object to a hotter object.
Which is why the heat transfer always goes in both directions.
I am not trying to overturn the second law of thermodynamics, just trying to help people to grasp the concepts.
? Well, that’s the first time I’ve heard that explanation, so now you’re imagining ideal gas snooker where anything might happen? You’re still in the AGW impossible happens all the time?
Come back with actual physical examples of all four please.
And Carbonic Acid, really, do you call it that we you have a coke?
Cleans up dirty pennies if you want to try it out.
But, irrelevant to my point. My point being that all rain is carbonic acid.
Which means, that carbon dioxide is fully part of the Water Cycle and so has the residence time of water in the atmosphere which is 8-10 days.
(And where it isn’t ‘wet’, then carbon dioxide being one and a half times heavier than air will anyway displace air and sink to the ground, unless work is done to change that.) (And where the Water Cycle cools the earth 52°C so there is no Greenhouse Effect warming of 33°C.)
Carbon Dioxide is a real gas, it is not an ideal gas without properties. It has real weight, real volume, real attraction. It is not an imaginary ideal gas in a container bouncing off other imaginary gases. It can’t defy gravity. It can’t defy its nature. It can’t accumulate in the atmosphere. It
doesn’t wear its knickers on the outside of its pants.
AGW fisics has an imaginary atmosphere of imaginary gases. Not one of its claims stands up to scrutiny here. You can make up all kinds of imaginary scenarios to explain your imaginary world – but they all fail the test of reality.
All I’m doing here is explaining how the basic claims were created. Of what I’ve found. You can continue coming up with garbled explanations based on imagined electromagnetic energy and imagined molecules and pretend you’re describing real process because you use words used in real physics, but it’s a world of fiction, science fiction. It’s actually not good enough to be present day standard science fiction, it’s a fantasy world created through the looking glass with Alice – thinking impossible things even before breakfast. Why not step back through the mirror? You could begin with this to ground you:
“Energy from colder cannot heat hotter further because the second law of thermodynamics says so, because nature says so; always and everywhere.” Latour
Read that again.
Real science is examining the real world around us.
JC said:
” Land has warmed substantially more than the oceans; it does not seem that their same model would explain the ocean temperature changes.”
—–
This notion that land has warmed more than the oceans is an interesting one to state so matter-of-factly, and while I think I might know what you are trying to say, I think some exactness would make your statement something that can actually be discussed. To begin with, an exact definition of what we are measuring and how we are measuring it seems essential. There is a huge difference of course between tropospheric temperature over the ocean, and ocean surface temperatures at the skin layer and then ocean heat content at various levels.
Land versus water temp.
The how is microwave sounding units on satellites.’
The how much is 0.22C/decade land-only:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss-land/every/mean:12/plot/rss-land/every/trend
and land + ocean is 0.14C/decade
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/every/mean:12/plot/rss/every/trend
Since this source doesn’t have data broken out by the same sensors for ocean only I’m going to go out on a limb and presume you can intuit from the numbers above that for the ocean + land to be substantially lower than land-only the ocean must be warming much less than the land and somewhat less than the land + ocean.
Let me know what if any part of that you don’t understand. I’m here to help.
I’ve written a number of previous posts on this topic. A quick illustration of the issue:
http://airhead.cnt.org/images/sea_land_ocean_temps.gif
350×298 pixels in four full colors?
Surely you could have chosen a smaller image. I had wait microseconds for that to download!
In every discussion of evolution and creationism – there is room for both science and spirituality.
‘Since there exist in this four dimensional structure [space-time] no longer any sections which represent “now” objectively, the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated. It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence.’ Albert Einstein
Aussies as a race are pretty laid back most of the time. As a nation we are totally pissed right now. Far from the top 5 in the Olympic medal count we have dropped out of the top 10. We will suck it up, regroup and try even harder.
About 65,000 Australians self identified as Jedi at the last census – not quite the fastest growing religion which was Hinduism. I self identify as a 4 dimensional Jedi cowboy. Lonesome is just part of the iconic nature of being a cowboy – especially in four dimensions.
In a very real and relativistic sense every contest eternally plays out in 4 dimensions. There is a start, a middle and a finish. All of one piece. Time is an illusion – although a convincing one according to Albert. What this means for both evolution and entropy I hesitate to think. I can’t get past the horror. Every crime, every torture, every murder fixed in eternity like an insect in amber and perpetually happening. A scream fixed in time and space.
Thus I conceived of the perfectibility of the universe – a play of light and dark across all time and space mediated through Jedi consciousness. ‘Within a man of light there is light and he lights the whole world. When he does not shine, there is darkness.’ In my universe I can see and feel eternity and infinity. How can God not exist in my universe?
I would like to think that there is a perfected universe in which we win all the medals – but there are probably more important things to worry about. At any rate – we are quite good at recognising the human perfection of the moment regardless of nationality.
Best regards
Captain Kangaroo
“What this means for both evolution and entropy I hesitate to think. I can’t get past the horror. Every crime, every torture, every murder fixed in eternity like an insect in amber and perpetually happening. A scream fixed in time and space.”
Yes but so is every bloom of the rose, act of kindness, and joyful moment also perpetually happening. Without contrast how would we know the difference between the good, the bad, and the ugly? My suggestion is try to bring more joy than sorrow into the world and if you succeed then no one, not God or your peers, should have any complaint. I don’t stand willing to say I have the answers like some preacher in a pulpit. The problem of evil is, how would our hostess put it… oh yes, a wicked mess of a problem. She gets paid a cool quarter million a year according to public records in Georgia which discloses the salaries of all state employees to tell us about super wicked problems that can’t be solved so it would behoove us to listen up when there’s no incremental cost involved.
On the effect of aerosols on Climate Sensitivity
The uncertain strength (and even sign) of aerosol forcing allows the climate modelers to use aerosols as a tuning knob (aka fudge factor) in making their models produce warming more-or-less consistent with past observations. Using an assumed large aerosol cooling to cancel out the GHG warming allows the modelers to retain high climate sensitivity, and thus the fear of strong future warming if those aerosols ever dissipate.
http://bit.ly/xFCmnL
Unless the effect of aerosols is removed from climate models, the effect of CO2 on the climate will remain exaggerated.
Great, so volcanoes don’t work, and all of these engineers who have been running around saying they can cool the earth by filling the sky with tailpipe crap are engineer morons.
The timing is not right for the volcanoes to have caused the coolings. Check it out. The volcanoes are epicycles and very bad ones, compared to the original orbital epicycles. It’s really laughable, that warmists believe that.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/best-temperature-and-largest-volcanoes.jpg
By ignoring reality, the global warming alarmists feel free to ignore history: “over the past 12,000 years, there were many icy intervals like the Little Ice Age [that] alternated with warm phases, of which the most recent were the Medieval Warm Period (roughly AD 900-1300) and the Modern Warm Period (since 1900).
“Over the last 12,000 years virtually every centennial time-scale increase in drift ice documented in our North Atlantic records was tied to a solar minimum. ~Henrik Svensmark
PDA (short for PDA’s Dada Acronym) | July 30, 2012 at 6:20 pm |
“No one that I listen to questions that adding CO2 will warm the earth”
-Judith A. Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology
Set your coffee down before opening this link
http://tinyurl.com/c8fsddo
curryja | July 30, 2012 at 6:57 pm | Reply
“Complex natural systems are not amenable to simple laboratory
experiments.”
Sweeping generalities are usually wrong. Living things are the most complex systems found in nature yet Gregor Mendel with simple laboratory experiments deciphered the particulate nature of inheritance by crossing bean plants and observing the ratios of inherited traits in subsequent generations. It was so simple his monumental breakthrough in genetics was ignored for the next 30 years. Someone eventually noticed it and it was combined with Darwin’s theory of natural selection to become what’s called the modern synthesis.
Just because you can’t figure something out Curry doesn’t make it super wicked mess or whatever the f*ck names you want to make up to represent the class of problems that elude you. Sometimes the answer is sitting right in front of you and it takes you decades to notice because it just seems too simple to be right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel
You need to broaden your knowledge base. Big time.
Look up complex systems on the wikipedia. Mendel was able to conduct controlled experiments. We are not able to conduct controlled experiments on the climate systems.
curryja | July 31, 2012 at 10:19 am |
Dr. Curry, this is a simplification of the case of difficulties with complex systems that vaults over broad categories and settles only on a single set of cases.
Some complex systems are not subject to some experiment on some scales.
Where the scale is appropriate to the measure, that is where there is convergence of central tendency, then even the most complex system is entirely subject to experiment.
Mendel conducted controlled experiments on some of the most complex systems imaginable by restricting himself to experiments on scales that would show convergence of central tendency to the mean in the scope of his researches.
Observations showed this convergence because the same mean outcomes were repeatable in trial after trial.
This same repeatability is present in many aspects of climate on many scales, over and over again. In particular, one can take CO2 level in the atmosphere (modified by aerosol level) and correlate with temperature if the time span is decadal-to-multidecadal and the size of the region is large enough. This repeatability fails in only a small minority of cases on such scales, matching well our confidence levels.
This is not because the climate system is simple. This is because the tool of the scientific method to simplify is elegant and robust.
Bart,
If that would be so simple we would know rather precisely the climate sensitivity. That scientists accept that this value is as highly uncertain as IPCC tells is a proof that the correlations that you describe don’t resolve the issue. This is the general judgment of mainstream climate science. Claiming otherwise is against “scientific consensus”.
My preferred approach is different. As the attribution of the observed warming cannot be done reliably enough I would put the whole step aside. What’s significant for projections of the future is not the percentage of the human and natural influences in what has happened in the past but the strength of the human influence separately. Therefore the analysis should be directed to the determination of the climate sensitivity or perhaps of the transient climate response. Studying all climate processes, both natural and anthropogenic, may be essential in that quest but there are still significant differences in the logic of analysis depending on the approach.
Pekka Pirilä | July 31, 2012 at 11:09 am |
Our approaches are not so very different.
Attribution of the observed warming, however reliably it has been done (which by any objective standard is very reliably), it’s really unimportant to much that will happen going forward. Not unimportant to everything, but unimportant, for example, to those feeling a sense of oppression and unfairness against the tyrannical actions of a few free riders gaining excess benefits on the suffering of the many, with neither compensation nor consultation, and often with outright deception.
What’s significant in some parts of the future is neither the ratio of human:natural influences, nor the strength of human influence, but merely the fact of human influence at a higher level than could be efficiently and economically obtained. There is a frequently asserted claim that cutting back on CO2E emission would be costly to the economy somehow. This is an absurdity: increased efficiency, maximized return to energy used, is inevitably lower emitting and inevitably economically preferrable.
And this climate sensitivity claim you make, I’m afraid I do not fully understand.
Suppose we had a wager. For every instance of a span of time of 17 years up to 100 years on any reliable record of CO2 concentration and temperature over a region at least the size of, for example, Denmark, if you identify one such span and place where the climate sensitivity is outside of the range of 3.1 +/- 0.3, I will name nineteen comparable spans on some comparable region that the climate sensitivity is within the range. In the hypothetical wager, for every instance short of 19 I am in my final tally, I will owe you one Euro. For every instance in excess of 19 I can come up with, you will owe me one Euro. We will repeat this exercise until one of us has amassed 40 more Euros than we had at the start of the game. Which of us would win? Do you have any doubt if we continued the game infinitely that there would be a clear winner, and who it would be, based on the current state of our knowledge?
It certainly costs money on the front end to forgo the densely packed energy of fossil fuels.
But there are many caveats to that, including not only the huge costs of AGW and ocean acidification, but also the high costs of asthma, bronchitis, COPD and lung cancer caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
As you point out, there are a lot of economic reforms that would both make money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. My current favorite example is ending local utility monopolies and creating a national or even international free market for electricity.
Higher mileage standards save money and reduce emissions. Better infrastructure for commercial rail in the US, preferable electrified, could cut shipping costs and dramatically cut transport related emissions.
The politics of cutting emissions is hard. The science and the economics, for the most part, are really really easy.
“curryja
Look up complex systems on the wikipedia. Mendel was able to conduct controlled experiments. We are not able to conduct controlled experiments on the climate systems”
Again, I suspect that hanging out with the wrong crowd has clouded your thinking.
When Einstein introduced the general theory of relativity in 1915 it did not have a an empirical foundation. The physicists were not able to move huge gravity wells around and test the fundamentals of his various postulates. Arthur Eddington and collaborators did however TEST the hypothesis in 1919, via a series of observations during a total solar eclipse, made simultaneously in the cities of Sobral, Ceará, Brazil and in São Tomé and Príncipe on the west coast of Africa.
The key here Judy is a testable hypothesis. Philosophically, if you TEST a model against observation, find the model unable to match reality and then discard the model you are doing science. If you TEST a model against observation, find the model unable to match reality and then alter reality you are doing climate science.
Models are mathematical experiments aimed at providing a description of phenomena observed in reality. A failure of the model, at any level, should be a criteria for falsification. If a chemist models a process as being first order with respect to a reagent, and finds that kinetic analysis indicates a different order, the chemist does not dismiss reality in favor of mathematical purity.
Drug designers do not dismiss the the deaths of their mouse models as ‘aberrant’ with hand-waving and mutterings about species differences in favor of their ‘in silico’ design prowess.
The inability to design controlled experiments is a matter of imagination, not a problem of the system one wishes to interrogate. I can experimentally determine the size and distance of the moon from the Earth using a map, ruler and a couple of pieces of card.
I agree that we want testable hypotheses. The person that I originally responded to wanted a simple laboratory experiment to ‘prove’ the atmospheric greenhouse effect.
I think that every scientist wants tests that can tell about the validity of theories and models. I don’t think climate science differs in that from any other science.
We know, however, that “no model is right but some are useful”. Therefore the tests cannot tell whether a model is right (it is not) but they should tell whether some particular model is useful – and being useful is not an absolute property but should be understood “useful for a stated purpose”.
Some atmospheric models are known to be useful for weather forecasting. The question here is:
– How useful best and most applicable of them are for making projections about future climate based on some assumptions about external forcings and CO2 emissions in particular?
This question is related to the question:
– How much can all the empirical comparisons that have been possible tell about applicability to this purpose?
The key issue with the weather models for climate applications is that water vapor is not of primary importance for say 10 day weather forecasts, where as water vapor is the name of the game for climate applications. I suspect that the approximations made for water wapor in weather models are causing a hyperactive water vapor feedback in extended climate simulations. Because we don’t have good historical water vapor observations, this is difficult to test, although there was a very recent paper (von der haar was a coauthor) that showed global satellite water vapor paths (no trend was found).
Dr. Curry, You write “I agree that we want testable hypotheses.”
One of the things that has happened over the years, is that proponents of CAGW have made predictions as to what is going to happen in the future is CAGW is correct. To some extent, these are testable hypotheses. Yet no-one seems to want to collect all these predictions in one place, as assess whether they were correct or not. Which is what true scientists would do. Instead, the proponents of CAGW cherry-pick those predictions which were not completely worng, and claim that these selected predictions prove that CAGW is correct.
I keep coming back to Smith et al Science August 2007. This is one very well written prediction, which we will soon be able to actually test.
The success of the theory of AGW in successfully understanding and predicting the climate is such that deniers have been forced to give up the argument and invent a fake theory they call “CAGW,” a straw man they need to give them something they can pretend to make a case against.
Every time a denier say “CAGW” the subtext is “We were wrong about plain-old AGW — it’s confirmed. So let’s talk about something else.”
Actually there could be a good and acceptable way to test this, at least for the planet, and that is for us to stop our CO2 emissions and wait some decades to see if things cool back normal. Granted this may take some generations given how long the current CO2 takes to cycle out. But really isn’t this experiment just all that proponents of AGW are advocating we do?
Not possible and no need. It will ‘cool back normal’ anyway.
“Actually there could be a good and acceptable way to test this, at least for the planet, and that is for us to stop our CO2 emissions and wait some decades to see if things cool back normal. Granted this may take some generations given how long the current CO2 takes to cycle out. But really isn’t this experiment just all that proponents of AGW are advocating we do?”
It would be far cheaper the terraform Venus.
Or deliver numerous test planets from outer solar system into inner solar system.
‘For every ignorant denier, there are probably a million ignorant alarmists.’ (31/07 2.15 am.) Say, BB, why such a conservative estimate? )
Beth Cooper | July 31, 2012 at 3:24 am |
He forgot to double-count? Though it appears he may have counted alarmist deniers, which could cause him to loop.
I’d rather be ignorant and right than knowledgeable and wrong.
Better yet to be neither.
The climate research industry in the US is ripe for farming out to China. When I was at Dell Computer in the mid-1990’s doing motherboard design for laptops me and my cohorts were raking in 6 and 7 seven figures in salary and incentives annually. It was ridiculous. I got an opportunity to work with the biggest laptop producer in Taiwan to produce a design to our specification. The engineers over there were doing great work at a fraction of the price as it was costing to do it in the states. I worked out the bugs in the language barriers, figured out what they did well and where they needed guidance, and in a couple of years outsourced about half engineering department of two multi-billion dollar business lines – consumer desktops and consumer laptops. I made my own job so easy I replaced myself with a young new hire from IBM making half as much and retired with enough green that I’d never have to work for anyone else a single day for the rest of my life. That was over twelve years ago.
I looked up what the state of Georgia is paying our hostess here. A quarter million a year. What are the taxpayers of Georgia getting in return? A blog? Declarations of super wicked messes that are intractible?
Is this typical of the university system? If I was running that show I’d clean house and farm whatever it is they out to India at a fraction of the cost. That’s if there’s anything identifiable they actually do. Far as I can tell unpaid volunteers like Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre are more productive.
The super wicked mess is an academic quagmire of overpaid underperforming unaccountable tenured buffoons getting nothing done except raising the price of sheepskin higher than the median price of new homes making that flimsy education into the most expensive thing most of those kids will ever buy. The real shame is they could take self-paced courses online and get a better education at a fraction of the cost. This has become a racket possibly only exceeded in scope by the military industrial complex and pharmaceutical companies. Unfortunately we can’t farm out weapons systems R&D to China but we can sure as hell farm out the climate R&D racket as there’s no national security considerations. And that’s if there’s anything identifiable worth continuing overseas. At this point it doesn’t look like there is. Maybe someone can put a bug in Mitt Romney’s ear. He knows about trimming the fat and outsourcing as well as anyone. Instead of government motors how about we have government online 4 -year degrees and make them free for anyone who wants to sign up so our kids don’t begin their working careers with so much debt they’re never able to get out from under it.
Dave Springer
Please don’t attack people. Please return to man made global warming “science”.
Don’t worry about it. No one keeps track of this silly crap. It’s a blog not congressional testimony fercrisakes. Mother nature is doing the heavy lifting by refusing to conform to the predictions of the cargo cult climate narrators. I counted on her and she didn’t let me down. All we needed to do was to delay any difficult to reverse carbon sin taxes long enough for the decline to become undeniable by quick glance at the satellite telemetry. That’s done. Stick a fork in CAGW. It’s done too.
Please don’t. You are more powerful when you stick to the “science” of man made global warming.
Please do.
Sometimes people need to be attacked. This is great opportunity to reform the higher education system in the US. Brick and mortar classrooms are quaint in the internet era. It’s a racket that’s putting a huge financial burden on our youth. I want to see it go the way of the dodo. Newspapers and magazines are folding like paper dolls. Universities are next in line. This should be good news for the green crusaders. Think how many unspeakable acts of carbon sin will go away when all those faculty and student bodies no longer have to drive to school and back every day. Happy happy joy joy.
If you check you will find that the online climate related college courses mostly all teach CAGW. Same for K-12. Putting green propaganda online makes it harder to question than when it is in the classroom, where student skepticism can be seen by others. Be careful what you wish for.
Anthropogenic Global Warming = hokey schtick science = MANNIAN SCIENCE.
A group called Gedankenexperiment Free Youth (GFY) has asked me to suggest a simple experiment for some climate boffin to undertake.
I’ve zeroed in on a demonstration of the ability of far infrared light to slow down the cooling of water in an open container free to evaporate in response.
Recently these wonderful little devices called Quantum Cascade Lasers with tunable output frequencies in the 3-15 micrometer range and continuous wave operation up to 200mW have become widely available for a number of remote sensing applications.
They may be purchased here:
http://www.daylightsolutions.com/technology/qcl_technology.htm
What I’d like to see is one of these puppies focused onto the surface of a vial of water free to evaporate in response and then the power amped up a bit to simulate the increase of atmospheric CO2 over the course of the industrial revolution. The water should start out at some normal ocean temperature that’s above ambient temperature in the lab and timed to see how long each takes to cool by some fixed increment.
Presumably the vial with the higher power LWIR laser focused on the surface will take longer.
Who wants to snag a grad student and get this underway to please GFY?
Anyone? Anyone? Curry? Anyone?
Many thanks in advance from GFY!
I’m with Girma here. The open society is EVERYTHING. Thank you, again, Judith Curry for allowing it to take place on yr site.. We are getting , ahem, robust debate here, ANYTHING open to examination, alpha male protagonistss thrashing it out here ) do so because you don’t put constraints on arguing the science. …Jest sayin’ … what do I know.
It’s interesting. I have yet to discover the edge of the envelope here yet. No hurry. Its the Fahrvergnügen that counts. The political movement that’s CAGW is dead in the water. The academic side is dead too. It’s running on reflex now like a chicken with it’s head cut off. Might take a couple more years to bleed out all the way.
Early entrants like Hansen, Lacis, and Curry are just going to laugh all the way to the bank. That’s okay. All’s fair in love and sales of snake oil. Caveat emptor. Chris Colose I feel sorry for. He’s going to be flipping burgers after the collapse. No tenure, no bankroll, no nothing but a history of being a useful idiot to a con artists. I find no humor at all in that.
I might agree with you if and when Congress slashes the $2 billion/year USGCRP budget. No sign of that at this point. So far the only evidence of CAGW collapse is blogospheric skepticism, including yours. But the pro-CAGW blogosphere is sitting there too. So at this point I am just as skeptical of your predictions as I am of theirs.
I know they say a billion here and a billion there adds up to real money before too long but in the era of trillion dollar budgets $2 billion just seems chump change anymore. Who’d even notice?
Here’s a real eye opener.
http://mat.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/
Education spending in the US is $809B/year and growing. That’s far more per student than any other country. Then look at the result. We’re sucking hind tit. Property taxes are the single biggest expense I have. Over half of the total goes to local primary and community college districts which are so awful I home schooled my own children and got them through exactly the same textbooks used in all the other schools in Texas. One daughter finished high school a year early and entered college a year early. It worked so well well with her I pulled the next one out of public school in the ninth grade and she finished three years of high school, online, same books, in one year. In the two years freed up she became the youngest certified professional dog trainer in the United States which she absolutely loves to do. I was literally extorted out of a couple hundred thousand dollars in tax money into the local school district and got bupkis out of except such a monumental disaster I was afraid to leave my children in it for the full stretch.
And you wonder why I might be a bit over angry at the education fiasco in the US which is far from constrained to K-12.
K-12, I sent my kids to the Dallas Independent School District and the Houston Independent School Districts. Both districts have horrible reputations. My son just scored in the upper two percent of all 2nd-year medical students in the United States. That means he beat most of the kids at the top-10 medical schools, as well as all the rest. Texas schools have one major problem: Texas school boards.
It may not be a real good time to start a medical career. Older doctors are going to be dropping out of the business like flies (my better half has managed a surgical practice most of her adult life) and those that stay are going to be underpaid and overworked as soon as Obamacare gets rolling. I would seriously suggest your boy, and he sounds perfectly situated for it, groom himself for genetic engineering research at JCVI. It’s a lot cleaner profession too. If he’s bent on becoming an MD go for eye surgery – least blood and foul body parts to deal with in the eye. He’s the perfect age to become a prime mover and shaker in the next big technology revolution though so I’d steer clear of M.D. This one’s going to be much bigger than semiconductors. Much much bigger. Still in biology but less of a human body repairman and more of an inventor of cool new things.
JCH
Congratulations to your son. Mine just got a starred first from Cambridge in Physics.
Going into medicine is a very noble thing. My daughter is a midwife. Here in Britain we’ve had the NHS for years and there are plenty of well paid people within it especially at the top of the tree, not so good at the lower ends of the spectrum.On the whole its a good thing
I hope Obamacare avoids the worst vagaries of the NHS which is that all sorts of non critical needs are paid for which results in extra pressure on (say) essential operations together with lots of bureacracy..
tonyb
Our schools, where less than 20% of the students are living in poverty, do fairly well. There is a reason why, if you cross the city line from Philadelphia into Lower Merion, parents are willing to pay enough in taxes to have twice as much spent per student on education.
There are certainly aspects of our educational system that would benefit from change, but reducing the problems to a politically expedient and facile blaming of schools will not result in any improvement.
Good thing that non-critical expenses and lots of bureaucracy doesn’t happen here. Of course, all of that will change with the healthcare act being passed – especially when you consider that Medicare has lower overhead costs than privately insured medical insurance.
In the post normal world, screwing things up massively requires a lot of money.
Public education, climate science, economics, government budgets, all come to mind.
Think of the US university system in which institutions across the land sit on their fiefdoms. With their own endowments in the billions, A preferred access to the public teat, On top of that, no taxes. And they still get to charge tens of thousands per year. They get their own police, exemptions or blind eye to things that get people outside of the schools in deep trouble.
It is an interesting conundrum.
When you are stuck in a binary mentality, you think that since our schools do less well than you’d like in the face of overwhelming and intractable obstacles, the solution is to dismantle public education by starving it of funds.
I mean just consider all those tax-free Shanrgi-Las, where children of all economic levels are well-educated without publicly-funded schools. What more proof should you need?
DS – I mostly ignore you. I pay a small amount of attention only because my father was a line corpsman with a USMC infantry company on Iwo Jima.
It’s always a great time to go into medicine. In 1988 a young Dr. ran down a hallway, his white coat billowing out behind him; like in the movies. He ran right past a Mommy and Daddy and bashed open the swinging doors of an ER room and found an infant who had stopped breathing. He successfully intubated him, but not until a time known to be more than 4 minutes had passed. Then they told his parents their son would likely die. Days later they said he would live, but he probably had brain damage. Then he scored in the top 2% of all medical students in America.
Because there is always a need, there is never a bad time to become a doctor.
(the doctor who saved my son is now a colleague of one of the Docs who posts here.)
$2 billion may be small compared to the system educating 70 million students, but it is the CAGW budget. You claimed Chris would be out of a job. Your diatribe is not relevant to my point. My impression is that you do not understand the status of CAGW as a political and scientific movement.
Outstanding post, JCH. :grin: :grin: :grin:
JCH A+
How long have you had a dog in this hunt, David? I go back about 6 years with a public history beginning with writing articles for Uncommon Descent. I haven’t made single bad call yet that I’m aware of. From the first glance through the satellite data, month by month painted on a map of the globe, it was painfully obvious by the distribution of the warming what was happening currently and the 60-year AMO almost jumped off the page at me out of the longer instrument record. Maybe I’m wrong but there has been no indication of that yet or has there anything in further obsessive study of everything I can access on the internet in all the free time I have since retiring in 2000 that’s led me to question my initial evaluation. I’m not the one running round clutching at aerosol straws and looking for missing joules in the oceanic abyss to explain the satellite record. I called it perfectly and I expect to continue calling it perfectly right down to the final minute of play. It’s never been more than a game to me. My real complaint is with the education system. There’s a hundred times more public money going into that. This CAGW episode will weaken public trust in it and for that it’s worth the cost. The bottom is going drop out of the cost of energy inside 20 years anyway when synthetic biology leaves the incubator. I called the high technology roadmap perfectly too and got into microcomputer design at the tender age of 17 in 1974. If there’s one thing I might possibly regret it was not taking seriously the business plan I did for an entrepremeur class at Pepperdine Business School about a year before I got out of the Marine Corps. I was 20 years old then. I did a business plan for a personal computer franchise chain before the first one existed. I might have had more fun being a founder of something like CompUSA or Circuit City than I did as an R&D engineer. But I really don’t care for running businesses and I’m really not very good at it so it probably turned out for the best this way.
I have been an active skeptic since 1992 Dave. For many years it was my living. The prediction of yours that I am referring to is not about climate, it is that the CAGW movement will collapse in a couple of years. I see no evidence of that. I see it becoming a perpetual liberal cause, about which little is done, but which never goes away, like gun control. A lot of people believe in CAGW. Movements that big do not just suddenly disappear.
This is not the place to debate US education, which I think is quite good.
I have been an active skeptic since 1992 Dave. For many years it was my living. The prediction of yours that I question is not about climate, but that the CAGW movement will collapse in a couple of years. I see no evidence of that. Too many people believe in it. At best I see it becoming a perpetual liberal cause, like gun control, about which little is done but which never goes away. But even that is a long way off. Big policy fights lie ahead.
Dave Springer:
” I haven’t made single bad call yet that I’m aware of.”
LOL. You pompous ass. As “DaveScot” you were a punching bag on evolution discussion sites, as the merest Google search will show. No doubt you’ll distinguish yourself similarly as a climate ‘skeptic’ too. (And don’t look now…when JC refers to the necessary evil of crackpots on open blogs, I kinda think she has you in mind.)
Seriously. Put down your coffee before opening this link.
Those whacky kids at Minnesotan’s For Global Warming have outdone themselves. Again. Brand new starring Watts & Muller.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/WYup_vNcoEs?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
The video is priceless.
Judith said “No one that I listen to questions that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will warm the earth’s surface, all other things being equal.”
I rather believe that Judith should be listening to others who have clearly shown that CO2 changes follow changes in the earth’s surface temperature. Its all there in the ice core studies.
So, if adding CO2 to the total CO2 pool implies that global temperatures will rise in response then Judith and the people that she listens to need to think again.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/46238911/Warming-Power-of-CO2-and-H2O-Correlations-with-Temperature-Changes
It’s a meme produced to support AGW constantly repeated and for the most part going completely unchecked by those repeating it.
As Dr Tim Ball notes here: http://drtimball.com/2011/ipcc-climate-claims-falsified-by-2010-record-high-co2-levels/
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assumes an increase in CO2 causes an increase in temperature. It has never happened, but they continue to perpetuate the belief. It’s built into their computer models, which is a major reason why their predictions/scenarios are consistently wrong. Figure 1 shows the IPCC range of scenarios for temperature and CO2. Actual increases for both variables are below the lowest scenario. When you are this wrong in such a short period something is seriously wrong with your model and assumptions.”
When the consensus of scientists contributing to its 1995 report said there was no such thing, the IPCC changed the report by excising these conclusions and claiming there was, by bringing in Santer.
I pulled together some history of this for a post to Dr Paul Bain on:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/07/dr-paul-bain-replies-about-the-use-of-the-term-denier-in-a-scientific-paper/#comment-1081545
However, I’m more interested in how this has changed physics basics in education. Until we get more high profile scientists willing to look at the disjuncts I can’t see how this will change, the memes of AGW fisics are ubiquitous now.
Has anyone seen the bus? Where’s that bus?
In fact, I think that maybe we’re going to need a couple of buses. Ain’t enough room under just one bus.
Some short buses?
Dave Springer
Please avoid personal attacks. Your power is the power of logic.
Let us expose the unfounded effect of aerosols on the climate that exaggerate the effect of CO2.
PS –
PDA re my last post to you: http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/30/observation-based-attribution/#comment-224259
“And if you’re going to use Kelvin then the degree symbol is redundant. I don’t use it because it doesn’t relate easily to the world around us which science investigates, for the same reason degrees Fahrenheit not useful in picturing differences. Degrees Celcius much easier to use as a rule (ruler) against which to measure these differences; the freezing and boiling point of water in Celcius sets the scene as it were and comparisons are easier to grasp.
I usually manage to spell celsius correctly..
Dave Springer
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/30/observation-based-attribution/#comment-224194
Just for your information, you might have missed my reference in this post to something you said, ““It’s the impurities in the ocean which thermalize the shortwave energy not the water molecules.”
How?
Myrrh, it is true that trebly-distilled H20 is appreciably more transparent than sea-water; however absorption of visible light does occur at all wavelengths even in the purest water. Japan’s neutrino experiment Super-Kamiokande holds the world’s largest volume (50,000 tons) of ultra-pure ultra-clear water, and ranks among of the foremost technical wonders of the modern era of science.
Comedic tautology! ;) :grin: :lol:
Thank you Dave Springer, for summarizing so concisely the cognitive origins of the Dunning-Kruger effect in climate change denialism. ;) :grin: :lol:
Myrrh, it is true that trebly-distilled H20 is appreciably more transparent than sea-water; however absorption of visible light does occur at all wavelengths even in the purest water.
There has been a lot of confusion created from the AGW fisics meme “shortwave in longwave out” which erroneously gives thermal properties of heat from the Sun to light from the Sun while claiming that direct heat from the Sun doesn’t reach the Earth’s surface and so plays no part in heating land and oceans. The direct, beam, heat from the Sun which is the invisible thermal infrared we actually feel as heat which is the Sun’s thermal energy on the move transmitted by radiation does actually have the power to heat water, water is a strong absorber of this energy. This is the energy which penetrates our bodies and heats the water in us, which is physically capable of heating us up. This is the energy which makes us sweat.. This is the energy that is capable of heating matter because it can move atoms and molecules into vibrational states which is kinetic energy which is the heat of movement – rub your hands together, that is mechanical energy causing the molecules of your skin to vibrate which is heat. Visible light can’t do this, for all practical purposes visible light is not a thermal energy – see the Tyndall extract I posted above – it is absolutely ludicrous to claim that visible light, and the shortwaves either side, are the primary energies direct from the Sun heating land and oceans. Ludicrous is being polite. The cartoon energy budget of KT97 and kin is a bad joke. The sooner real scientists without knowledge of this field get to grips with this the better for all of us. Heat and Light are different energies, they have distinct properties and processes. A gamma ray is not the same as a radio wave, a radio wave can travel through walls, visible light can’t, etc.
As I have described above re the Greenhouse Effect, the fisics created to support AGW employs sleights of hand to give the illusion that it describes something real world, here, it uses the play on the word “absorbed”. It deliberately and erroneously associates this word with the meme “all electromagnetic energy is the same and when energy is absorbed it creates heat”.
Light is slowed down when passing through different mediums, slowed down some in the atmosphere and some 14 more when travelling through water, the different frequencies not equally which is how we get to see visible white light split out into its colours as through drops of water in rainbows. Water is a transparent medium for visible light, this means that water does not absorb visible light but transmits it through.
Absorbed here has a specific defined meaning in the science of Optics. As does transparent, which means that the light energy cannot be absorbed by the water molecules but passes through. It doesn’t make any difference how murky the water to this process, the water molecules do not absorb the energy because water is transparent to visible light however many particles of matter suspended in it. If water was not transparent to visible light, not transmitted through unchanged, there would be no life in the oceans..
This technical meaning of absorbed is confused with the absorbed used in descriptions of light of different wavelengths travelling to varying depths in the ocean. This is simple attentuation, a loss of intensity, the further it travels the correspondingly greater the loss of intensity.
This varies with wavelength, the shorter the wavelength the lower the loss of intensity. The shorter wavelengths from 300 to 500 nm are reduced in intensity by less than 5% per metre of water depth, the longer wavelengths can be reduced up to 40% per metre – which is why blue and violet light travels further and red light is ‘absorbed’ earlier.
The sleight of hand play on the word “absorbed” doesn’t end there.
AGW fisics claims that the atmosphere is transparent to visible light, but it isn’t. When we look at the sky during the day we are seeing light, we are not seeing through the atmosphere to the stars beyond as we can see through it at night and through water the objects beyond it. The atmosphere scatters light by first absorbing it.
The reason we see light and have our blue sky is because the electrons of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen actually do absorb the energy of visible light and send it back out again, this is called reflection/scattering and blue light is scattered more than the longer wavelengths. This clogs up our otherwise transparent atmosphere because our atmosphere is not transparent to visible light.
As the electrons of the molecules absorb the energy of light their energy state is raised, as they come back to their ground state they emit the same photon of light as they absorbed, the same energy wavelength, and so light is reflected and scattered around the sky.
AGW admits to light being scattered in the atmosphere, but doesn’t mention that this is because the electrons of nitrogen and oxygen absorb the energy, so doesn’t give an account of how much visible light is heating the atmosphere..
Back to real world. Not all absorption of energy creates heat (and the sleights of hand on the word heat are legion), the scattering of light in the atmosphere is sending back out the same non-thermal light energy that went in, and, visible light is not moving the atoms/molecules of nitrogen and oxygen into vibrational states which is what it takes to heat matter, kinetic, the heat of motion.
Also, the great role of light, besides making the world visible for us, is its absorption by pigments in photosynthesis – this again does not convert to heat, but into chemical energy, into sugars to fuel growth.
Visible light and the shortwaves either side which AGW fisics claims heat land and oceans, doesn’t do this because it can’t. AGW fisics has taken out of the energy budget the real wavelength direct from the Sun which actually does heat land and oceans, the direct heat from the Sun, the invisible thermal infrared.
“it is absolutely ludicrous to claim that visible light, and the shortwaves either side, are the primary energies direct from the Sun heating land and oceans. Ludicrous is being polite. The cartoon energy budget of KT97 and kin is a bad joke. The sooner real scientists without knowledge of this field get to grips with this the better for all of us. Heat and Light are different energies, they have distinct properties and processes. ”
“Sunlight at zenith provides an irradiance of just over 1 kilowatt per square meter at sea level. Of this energy, 527 watts is infrared radiation, 445 watts is visible light, and 32 watts is ultraviolet radiation”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared
If a material could only absorb this 527 watts of infrared radiation then object could only reach a certain temperature.
Let’s see, 40 C is 313 K requires 544 Watt per square meter. So if objects can only be heated by 527 watts per square meter they could not reach 40 C [or 104 F], but the earth surface [say sand] can be heated much higher than 40 C- typically can reach higher than 60 C.
And 60 C [333 K] requires at least 697 watts per square meter. Or object in vacuum with 700 watts square meter of sunlight could reach 60 C.
Visible light contains no heat energy but infared light does.
Energy is energy and E=hv
Visible light has more heat energy than infared.
The sun provides more heat energy in the visible range than the infared.
Just to be clear, one of the 4 statements above is false.
“Visible light contains no heat energy but infared light does.
Energy is energy and E=hv
Visible light has more heat energy than infared.
The sun provides more heat energy in the visible range than the infared.
bob droege | July 31, 2012 at 11:13 pm |
Just to be clear, one of the 4 statements above is false.”
Visible light and infrared light are electromagnetic energy- radiation.
Just as microwave or X-rays are. Neither are heat energy, per this definition of heat energy:
“Definition: Heat energy (or just heat) is a form of energy which transfers among particles in a substance (or system) by means of kinetic energy of those particle. In other words, under kinetic theory, the heat is transfered by particles bouncing into each other. ”
http://physics.about.com/od/glossary/g/heat.htm
Heat energy per above would velocity of gas molecules or the vibration of molecules in matrix [whether in solid or liquid state of matter].
So, heat energy refers motion of some matter, and velocity of this matter is below the speed of light. Whereas visible or infrared light is wave/particle or photon which travels at the speed of light.
So, “”Visible light contains no heat energy but infared light does.” is false.
“Energy is energy and E=hv. ”
Energy is energy but E in E=hv, refers to energy of photon.
“Visible light has more heat energy than infared.”
A photon of visible light has more energy than a photon of infrared light. But neither has heat energy per definition above.
“The sun provides more heat energy in the visible range than the infared.” According wiki: “527 watts is infrared radiation, 445 watts is visible light” and watts is measurement of energy and this energy can be converted into heat energy. So 445 [visible] is less than 527 [infared].
Gbaike,
Sorry you had to waste so much time to show that I was wrong.
You are right and two or three of my statements were wrong.
What I meant was that visible light has more energy that can be converted to heat than infared.
Allow me to be more precise,
“Visible light has no energy that can be converted to heat but infared does.”
This is the gist of what Myrrh was saying and I think is wrong.
Energy can be converted between forms and E=hv
Visible light has more energy that can be converted to heat than infared.
And the sun provides more heat in the infared because that is a much wider band than the visible range.
And I think your definition of heat is a little narrow, as I would argue that heat can be transferred by conduction and convection as you state, but also by radiation. And wiki would support that.
And I have seen heat defined as internal plus kinetic, meaning that atoms or molecules electron and nuclear energy levels contribute to the heat of an object as well as the motion.
“Allow me to be more precise,
“Visible light has no energy that can be converted to heat but infared does.”
This is the gist of what Myrrh was saying and I think is wrong.”
Yes I agree. Myrrh saying something which wrong- but I would say general point is correct. Which I grant is very confusing.
Basically if I sun bath, the sun will warm my back. What is warming my back is sunlight, and sunlight is mostly shortwave radiation [visible or infrared] and it’s mostly this visible or infrared shortwave radiation which doing the warming. Though if the air temperature was below freezing, I would be freezing my butt off.
I could feel warmth from sun, on top snow-if I am on something insulated, and there isn’t any wind. And any part not in sunlight is wrapped in something like parka jacket- not that I have tried it.
I as kid, many times during a summer, I would get out of my grandfather’s swimming pool dripping wet and would lie down on warm/hot concrete and be warmed by concrete and sun in the sky. The concrete was the really warm thing [if instead I used lawn chair/couch, it takes longer to warm up]. When lying on concrete the sunlight also felt warm-if it went behind a cloud one could feel significant difference. Because you dripping wet, concrete wasn’t too hot, sort of like jumping into a sauna or hot tub.
Anyway the sunlight certainly is warm, as people who sunbath can attest.
And it’s shortwaves of sunlight that warms people and of course the sand, concrete or the inside of a parked car with windows rolled up.
“Energy can be converted between forms and E=hv
Visible light has more energy that can be converted to heat than infrared.”
Yes the energy from photons can be converted- but mostly on earth they aren’t.
Which is the general point that Myrrh is talking about which is correct.
If want heat energy, you can’t even design something that captures much more than the majority of the energy from the photons. And Nature generally does do a well as best human designs, in terms of capturing this the energy of the photons.
And as wiki says there more energy in the infrared wavelength of sun at sea level at noon on a sunny day: “527 watts is infrared radiation, 445 watts is visible light, and 32 watts is ultraviolet radiation”.
Now can get into the idea that not all watts of energy produce “same” heating. But generally white and black has more to do with visible light- they are colors [loosely speaking]. [Loosely color are what we see [visible light]. Ultraviolet might hurt your eyes and infrared may warm the eyeball, but these aren’t “seeing”. Black is not seeing and light is seeing all :) Or just bright. ].
So a question I could have is how much heating of say sand is done by infrared part of sunlight and how much is heated by the visible part of sunlight. So if you had 1000 watts per square meter of infrared radiation, you get x amount of heating. Then you have 1000 watts per square meter of visible light, you get x amount of heating.
And then finally you 1/2 and 1/2 equaling 1000 watts per square meter. Is 1/2 and 1/2 less heating or more heating? I believe this what you mean by “Visible light has more energy that can be converted to heat than infrared.”.
As said the visible light protons has [without doubt] more energy then infrared photon.
Or said differently 500 watts of infrared energy has more photons than 500 watts of visible light. And someone with math skill can give the precise numbers involved.
…And Nature generally does do a well…
I meant….And Nature generally doesn’t do as well….
Jeez Gbaikie,
Infared is considered longwave.
And you say Myyrh is wrong but generally correct? Which is it?
And you say light energy is not converted to heat generally on earth, but that contradicts your nice story about swimming in your youth.
This site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget
Shows that 70% of the light is absorbed and turned into heat.
Bob,
It has always been a circus to watch which of these clowns can most creatively screw up the physics The challenging part is to figure out which ones are here to entertain and which are serious in their ineptitude. Curry has it easy in the college classes she teaches — she only has to give a failing grade to the whole lot of them . Yet contrary to what Springer says, she earns her salary. It’s worth every penny to keep these people from continuing a career in science and technology.
Web,
I don’t want to discourage any one from a career in science.
In fact, if anyone here can tell me why the cosmic rays affect climate hypothesis is wrong using the terms class 100, cloud level radiation levels in mrem/hour and documented cosmic ray levels and has a chemistry degree and HPLC experience, then I could at least get them a job interview.
We need smart people, but that’s not why I post here.