Comments on: About the Skeptics Handbook

By: Leinwand

Leinwand — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 18:20:22 +0000

Excelent blog and design. I wish good luck from Leinwand.

By: Militant Libertarian » GLOBAL WARMING is a HOAX

Militant Libertarian » GLOBAL WARMING is a HOAX — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 04:47:14 +0000

[...] warming) something to fawn over with their AGW propaganda attempts. I challenge them to actually read this book (it’s free, easily downloaded, and not very long) and then debate the points within the [...]

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By: Paul Kenyon

Paul Kenyon — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 15:50:17 +0000

Hi Jo,
Thanks for addressing my question. I also wonder about what a view of the Earth in the IR from a satellite would show.
Re: energy absorption and the spectroscope, some energy always gets through. But whatever the details of the molecular vibrational and spin modes and inter-molecular processes from I-in to I-out, I’m told the Lambert-Beer law models what the spectroscopic experiements’ results show for air. Working through the law looking for an “absorbed to extinction” distance at a particular concentration shows 99.99% of the 15 +/- 0.5 micron band is absorbed in 3 km of that mixture at 390 ppm CO2. This does not account for pressure change with altitude…but, surely, within 5 km, say, that band is “extinct.” No? One would think there’d be a(n almost) black line in the spectrum there seen from space…a tiny bit reflected or reemitted from what the sun provides…and I did check the sun’s spectrum at Earth…very little IR compared to shorter wavelengths.
A note: a look at, say, the HITRAN spectrum for CO2 shows that it absorbs IR all across the IR spectrum, no gaps, but at different extents at different wavelength regions. Strong absorption regions appear as “spikes” on the graph. CO2 absorbs “strongly” at our current concentrations at just a few, very narrow, wavelength regions, principally at 15 +/- 0.5 microns. (To say, “the energy at 15 microns” is meaningless because there’s no energy at a single wavelength of no width.) At some concentration (pretty high) CO2 begins to absorb significant energy again in other wavelength regions. What are those concentrations?
An argument is made that Venus’s high sfc temp is due to CO2. I’ve heard a physicist claim that this proves AGW is primarily CO2 driven. But (Per Tom Nelson, “Cold Facts on Global Warming”) the concentrations are 300,000 X what we have here on Earth so the physics doesn’t correspond well. And, as it is, CO2 might not be the primary cause of Venus’s high sfc temp for other reasons such as the presence of other GHG’s on Venus.

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By: Joanne Nova

Joanne Nova — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 14:01:42 +0000

Jo,
I have a wee quibble…It’s the words “saturated” and “saturation” on pages 8 and 13. I am reading a new copy downloaded today so this comment should be current. The issue is not that the CO2 is “saturated”. We are adding more CO2 all the time. The sponge is getting bigger. The issue is that there isn’t any more light for any amount of CO2 to absorb. It’s (all but) gone…in the ~ 1 micron wavelength width at 15 microns. …And surely at the other 4 wavelength’s CO2 likes.
Question: I understand that CO2 has a constant distrubution throughout the atmosphere where as water vapor concentrates at lower altitudes. (That’s a pretty broad statement and I know pressure drops off with altitude so…maybe not true, maybe it’s more complex but there’s some truth to it?) Related: The CO2 high up, I’m told, absorbs incoming IR from the Sun. But I’d thought there is no IR…or very little…emitted by the sun, that what we get is all higher frequency…visible through UV. And I was told that this higher CO2 might even shade Earth because of this absorption. What’s your take on this? I will try to find a solar spectrum taken from space. If you have one handy….

A spectroscopist I have spoken too, tells me the Sun’s IR is minimal and CO2 absorption of incoming IR irrelevant. Look at a blackbody curve for the sun.

BTW: If CO2 has absorbed (almost) all the 15 micron radiation from Earth, is the Earth seen in the IR from space dark at 15 microns? If so, wouldn’t this support the argument that CO2 has absorbed all it could at this wavelength?

The Harries et al paper I have written about (but not yet published tries to measure that.) They found some evidence that GHG’s have increased, but the paper is not without it’s serious criticisms, and only valid for a clear sky. (The clouds blitz the nice physics sums).

The big problem is whatever wavelength CO2 absorbs at, it also emits at. So half of what get’s absorbed by CO2 is merely slowed for a second before it’s reemitted up towards space. BUT, the other half (roughly) goes downwards, and may hit… the ground or the ocean and warm them up for longer before they release the IR.

Emergetic CO2 molecules holding that “photon” might also kinetically bang into another molecule of a different gas. Then effectively the CO2 has transferred that energy out of the IR spectrum through kinetic energy to another molecule that can’t emit IR (like oxygen).

This kinetic collision is BTW the mechanism that CO2 (and all GHG’s) COOL the stratosphere. Say, an energetic O2 bangs a CO2, and the CO2 emits an IR beam which leaps off the planet. Hence energy is sucked out of the surrounding gas, via CO2 and IR. The stratosphere cools.

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By: Paul Kenyon

Paul Kenyon — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:52:15 +0000

Al,
I question the AGW camp’s PV claim. I live off-grid with a small PV array and wind turbine and I’ve done the electricity production numbers on the 10 year old PV’s. If we were to provide all the energy needed by the predicted future stable population of 9 billion (projected to happen by 2050…which, really, is right around the corner) each to have an American standard of living (12 kW continuous; USADOE/EIA, year 2000 data) as we are told repeatedly they will demand (Michael Klare: his various lectures and writings) with PV’s that perform as mine do here in Vermont, adjusting for the realities of array performance degradation over time, the many efficiency losses including, transmission, DC to AC conversion and storage (not invented yet,) the need to clean the array elements periodically, etc. we’d have to cover an area the size of South America…or Australia. This, I think everyone will agree, would be considered an unacceptable “environmental impact.” Since the array will inhibit the evaporation of moisture and CO2 uptake from the covered ground and plants and that it gets hot radiating that heat into the atmosphere, warming it, I suspect that array would actually become the climate warming agent that CO2 is accused of being now. Perhaps we could name that outcome “eco-irony.” Frankly, that isn’t going to work.
And, remember, all the sunlight that is coming to Earth is all being used (100%) to run the planet as we know it. If we take from it, we deprive current users of that resource. The wind isn’t free, neither is the sun. There’s a lot of work to be done.

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By: Al Tekhasski

Al Tekhasski — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 07:26:06 +0000

Paul,
Your question about necessary ground for solar panels has an answer from AGW proponents. They say that the entire need for world energy production can be provided by surface area that is negligibly small on the global scale, and deserts are the best places for solar. My concern however would be about how do they plan to clean up all that panel’s surface, and keep all electrical connectors from deterioration.

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By: Paul Kenyon

Paul Kenyon — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:39:18 +0000

Al,
You offer us a peek into the complex world of clouds. In what seems another life, I was charged with desiging an anemometer that would resist atmospheric icing (rime and glaze). I sometimes worked at the observatory on Mt. Washington in NH with meteorologists and we discussed cloud formation and supercooled droplets (which cause rime phenomena.) All bemoaned the fact that the relative humidity required to form clouds had been falling. Ideally, it’s 100% when clouds form but had dropped to as low as 70% more and more often in modernity. I have wondered if this could be a significant warming/cooling driver (don’t know which…even that’s hard to tell. A cloud is a blanket but it also is a reflector. Now and again we see studies in which scientists admit somewhere in their discussion that “we” don’t know enough about clouds [to be blaming all the warming on CO2.]
I wonder, though, what other drivers are out there (man made ones) and how important they are. The next sentences in that post (#180) offer a few suggestions. In that regard, photovoltaics might be providing us a lot of electricity–or at least will be covering a lot of surface area promising to provide a lot of electricity that is actually useful to us–but they get hotter than the ground under them…as well as inhibiting the plant growth beneath them and evaporation from that covered area. I wonder if they could radiate significantly and become climate drivers. Anyone? How much of the ground can we cover with these things before they become atmospheric heaters?

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By: Al Tekhasski

Al Tekhasski — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 07:53:39 +0000

Paul Kenyon (in post #180) asked a question: “If CO2 is only a minor player, and we’re measuring other drivers, what have we missed? What is that single overwhelming climate driver? How have we missed it? Doesn’t it kinda make you wonder?”

I think the major driver is well known, except that mainstream climatology cannot deal with it because of its complexity, and assumes (for simplicity) it as a given fixed factor. It is Earth albedo, where the major reflection of soar energy is provided by clouds.

Cloud formation is a tricky thing, it requires a presence of microscopical particles/aerosols/ions to trigger nucleation of water droplets after the uprising air parcels become supersaturated with water vapor, and clean air may stay supersaturated without forming clouds for a while. It is complicated, poorly controlled, and hard to measure.

The overall effect of clouds on radiative imbalance can be seen even in basic full-spectrum radiative models, such as presented by a group of notable AGW promoters and founders of RealClimate website, David Archer and Ray Pierrehumbert, see here
http://forecast.uchicago.edu/Projects/full_spectrum.html

Try the following:
(A) Run their model with defaults. The model will calculate the equilibrium surface temperature of 289.1K
(B) Double CO2 from 375 to 750 ppm. The model temperature gets to 291.7K, 2.6K higher.
(C) Add 1.4% of low clouds. The model temperature goes back to 289.1K

Conclusion: A change of mere 1.4% of clouds negate the entire effect of hypothetical CO2 warming. The cloud reflection has a direct effect on Earth energy balance, in contrast with hypothetical and controversial “radiative forcing” from GH gases.

It is easy to to understand the power of cloud “shutter” in your own backyard in partially-cloudy weather – the variation in amount of falling irradiation can easily change 10-fold in no time.

There was a research on Earth albedo change (“Earthshine Project”).
They found that Earth global cloud cover had varied from 70% in 1986 to 65% in 2000. One can imagine how big was the change in solar energy that was passing to ground in 1996-2000 and heated it up. Yet the basic climatology asserts that Earth albedo is constant and “very well known”. However, the reason for change in global cloud cover is uncertain; there is a hypothesis about Cosmic Ray that might cause these changes, but people still debate this. In any case, an absence of explanation of a fact does not mean that the fact has to be ignored, and I am certain that some explanation will eventually be found.

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By: Paul Kenyon

Paul Kenyon — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:15:07 +0000

Jo, a before the holidays I’d asked about the question of “saturation” and “saturate” as applied to IR absorption of Earth’s IR emissions by CO2 in The Skeptics Handbook (post 175). Would you tell me if my observation is correct or not and why? Tom has not contacted me about this perhaps expecting you to.
Thanks

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By: Paul Kenyon

Paul Kenyon — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:07:38 +0000

Mike,
The conflation of CO2 and “traditional” (don’tchajustloveit?) pollutants is natural. Forever, it seems we’ve all known about smog and mercury and the harm they do…and, mostly (and conveniently) power plants, aircraft and cars emit water vapor and CO2. Somewhere, quietly and slyly, those who would have us accept AGW, tapped into the existing concern about the truly harmful emissions. It was a coup of sorts and gained the AGW take-over, green world government crowd a ready audience. Folks have rightly wanted to clean up harmful emissions and been repeatedly frustrated in the attempt. Big industry and big energy have been the culprits, successfully protecting and boosting their profit margins. …All that to say I agree the separation of these is important.

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