A new brief summary of the reasoning and evidence behind the skeptics case. –Jo
———————————————
The Skeptic’s Case
Who Are You Going To Believe – The Government Climate Scientists Or The Data?
Guest Post Dr David M.W. Evans
We check the main predictions of the climate models against the best and latest data. Fortunately the climate models got all their major predictions wrong. Why? Every serious skeptical scientist has been consistently saying essentially the same thing for over 20 years, yet most people have never heard the message — here it is, put simply enough for any lay reader willing to pay attention.
What the Government Climate Scientists Say
The direct effect of CO2 is well-established physics, based on laboratory results, and known for over a century.[2]
Feedbacks are due to the ways the Earth reacts to the direct warming effect of the CO2. The threefold amplification by feedbacks is based on the assumption, or guess, made around 1980, that more warming due to CO2 will cause more evaporation from the oceans and that this extra water vapor will in turn lead to even more heat trapping because water vapor is the main greenhouse gas. And extra heat will cause even more evaporation, and so on. This amplification is built into all the climate models.[3] The amount of amplification is estimated by assuming that nearly all the industrial-age warming is due to our CO2.
The government climate scientists and the media often tell us about the direct effect of the CO2, but rarely admit that two thirds of their projected temperature increases are due to amplification by feedbacks. They admit there are discrepancies, and go to great lengths to resolve them (see for example, Thorne, Dessler, Sherwood).
What the Skeptics Say
The serious skeptical scientists have always agreed with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2. The argument is entirely about the feedbacks.
The feedbacks dampen or reduce the direct effect of the extra CO2, cutting it roughly in half.[5] The main feedbacks involve evaporation, water vapor, and clouds. In particular, water vapor condenses into clouds, so extra water vapor due to the direct warming effect of extra CO2 will cause extra clouds, which reflect sunlight back out to space and cool the earth, thereby reducing the overall warming.
There are literally thousands of feedbacks, each of which either reinforces or opposes the direct warming effect of the extra CO2. Almost every long-lived system is governed by net feedback that dampens its response to a perturbation. If a system instead reacts to a perturbation by amplifying it, the system is likely to reach a tipping point and become unstable (like the electronic squeal that erupts when a microphone gets too close to its speakers). The earth’s climate is long-lived and stable— it has never gone into runaway greenhouse, unlike Venus — which strongly suggests that the feedbacks dampen temperature perturbations such as that from extra CO2.
What the Data Says
The climate models have been essentially the same for 30 years now, maintaining roughly the same sensitivity to extra CO2 even while they got more detailed with more computer power.
- How well have the climate models predicted the temperature?
- Does the data better support the climate models or the skeptic’s view?
Air Temperatures
One of the earliest and most important predictions was presented to the US Congress in 1988 by Dr James Hansen, the “father of global warming”:
Hansen’s climate model clearly exaggerated future temperature rises.
In particular, his climate model predicted that if human CO2 emissions were cut back drastically starting in 1988, such that by year 2000 the CO2 level was not rising at all, we would get his scenario C. But in reality the temperature did not even rise this much, even though our CO2 emissions strongly increased – which suggests that the climate models greatly overestimate the effect of CO2 emissions.
A more considered prediction by the climate models was made in 1990 in the IPCC’s First Assessment Report:[8]
It’s 20 years now, and the average rate of increase in reality is below the lowest trend in the range predicted by the IPCC.
Ocean Temperatures
The oceans hold the vast bulk of the heat in the climate system. We’ve only been measuring ocean temperature properly since mid-2003, when the Argo system became operational.[9] [10] In Argo, a buoy duck dives down to a depth of 2,000 meters, measures temperatures as it very slowly ascends, then radios the results back to headquarters via satellite. Over three thousand Argo buoys constantly patrol all the oceans of the world.
The ocean temperature has been basically flat since we started measuring it properly, and not warming as quickly as the climate models predict.
Atmospheric Hotspot
The climate models predict a particular pattern of atmospheric warming during periods of global warming; the most prominent change they predict is a warming in the tropics about 10 km up, the “hotspot”.
The hotspot is the sign of the amplification in their theory (see Figure 1). The theory says the hotspot is caused by extra evaporation, and by extra water vapor pushing the warmer wetter lower troposphere up into volume previously occupied by cool dry air. The presence of a hotspot would indicate amplification is occurring, and vice versa.
We have been measuring atmospheric temperatures with weather balloons since the 1960s. Millions of weather balloons have built up a good picture of atmospheric temperatures over the last few decades, including the warming period from the late 70’s to the late 90s. This important and pivotal data was not released publicly by the climate establishment until 2006, and then in an obscure place.[13] Here it is:
In reality there was no hotspot, not even a small one. So in reality there is no amplification – the amplification shown in Figure 1 does not exist.[16] Even
Outgoing Radiation
The climate models predict that when the surface of the earth warms, less heat is radiated from the earth into space (on a weekly or monthly time scale). This is because, according to the theory, the warmer surface causes more evaporation and thus there is more heat-trapping water vapor. This is the heat-trapping mechanism that is responsible for the assumed amplification in Figure 1.
Satellites have been measuring the radiation emitted from the earth for the last two decades. A major study has linked the changes in temperature on the earth’s surface with the changes in the outgoing radiation. Here are the results:
This shows that in reality the earth gives off more heat when its surface is warmer. This is the opposite of what the climate models predict. This shows that the climate models trap heat too aggressively, and that their assumed amplification shown in Figure 1 does not exist.
Conclusions
All the data here is impeccably sourced — from satellites, the Argo buoys, and weather balloons.[18]
The air and ocean temperature data shows that the climate models overestimate temperature rises. The climate establishment suggest that cooling due to undetected aerosols might be responsible for the failure of the models to date, but this excuse is wearing thin—it continues not to warm as much as they said it would, or in the way they said it would. On the other hand, the rise in air temperature has been greater than the skeptics say could be due to CO2. The skeptic’s excuse is that the rise is mainly due to other forces – and they point out that the world has been in a fairly steady warming trend of 0.5°C per century since 1680 (with alternating ~30 year periods of warming and mild cooling) where as the vast bulk of all human CO2 emissions have been after 1945.
We’ve checked all the main predictions of the climate models against the best data:
| Test | Climate Models |
| Air temperatures from 1988 | Over-estimated rise, even if CO2 is drastically cut |
| Air temperatures from 1990 | Over-estimated trend rise |
| Ocean temperatures from 2003 | Over-estimated trend rise greatly |
| Atmospheric hotspot | Completely missing — no amplification |
| Outgoing radiation | Opposite to reality — no amplification |
The climate models get them all wrong. The missing hotspot and outgoing radiation data both, independently, prove that the amplification in the climate models is not present. Without the amplification, the climate model temperature predictions would be cut by at least two thirds, which would explain why they overestimated the recent air and ocean temperature increases. Therefore:
- The climate models are fundamentally flawed. Their assumed threefold amplification by feedbacks does not in fact exist.
- The climate models overestimate temperature rises due to CO2 by at least a factor of three.
The skeptical view is compatible with the data.
Some Political Points
The data presented here is impeccably sourced, very relevant, publically available, and from our best instruments. Yet it never appears in the mainstream media – have you ever seen anything like any of the figures here in the mainstream media? That alone tells you that the “debate” is about politics and power, and not about science or truth.
This is an unusual political issue, because there is a right and a wrong answer and everyone will know what it is eventually. People are going ahead and emitting CO2 anyway, so we are doing the experiment: either the world heats up by several degrees by 2050 or so, or it doesn’t.
Notice that the skeptics agree with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2; they just disagree just about the feedbacks. The climate debate is all about the feedbacks; everything else is merely a sideshow. Yet hardly anyone knows that. The government climate scientists and the mainstream media have framed the debate in terms of the direct effect of CO2 and sideshows such as arctic ice, bad weather, and psychology. They almost never mention the feedbacks. Why is that? Who has the power to make that happen?
About the Author
Dr David M.W. Evans consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part-time 2008 to 2010, modeling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. Evans is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees including a PhD from Stanford University in electrical engineering. The area of human endeavor with the most experience and sophistication in dealing with feedbacks and analyzing complex systems is electrical engineering, and the most crucial and disputed aspects of understanding the climate system are the feedbacks. The evidence supporting the idea that CO2 emissions were the main cause of global warming reversed itself from 1998 to 2006, causing Evans to move from being a warmist to a skeptic.
More information:
The ten-second guide to the world of skeptics
The models are wrong (but only by 400%)
The missing hot spot (Plus all posts tagged “missing hot spot“)
David Evans: Four fatal pieces of evidence
David Evans, Carbon Accounting Modeler, Says It’s a Scam
Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Part I
All posts by Dr David Evans.
UPDATE: There is a PDF version of this post.
REFERENCES
[1] More generally, if the CO2 level is x (in parts per million) then the climate models estimate the temperature increase due to the extra CO2 over the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm as 4.33 ln(x / 280). For example, this model attributes a temperature rise of 4.33 ln(392/280) = 1.46°C to the increase from pre-industrial to the current CO2 level of 392 ppm.
[2] The direct effect of CO2 is the same for each doubling of the CO2 level (that is, logarithmic). Calculations of the increased surface temperature due to of a doubling of the CO2 level vary from 1.0°C to 1.2°C. In this document we use the midpoint value 1.1°C; which value you use does not affect the arguments made here.
[3] The IPCC, in their last Assessment Report in 2007, project a temperature increase for a doubling of CO2 (called the climate sensitivity) in the range 2.0°C to 4.5°C. The central point of their model estimates is 3.3°C, which is 3.0 times the direct CO2 effect of 1.1°C, so we simply say their amplification is threefold. To be more precise, each climate model has a slightly different effective amplification, but they are generally around 3.0.
[4] More generally, if the CO2 level is x (in parts per million) then skeptics estimate the temperature increase due to the extra CO2 over the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm as 0.72 ln(x / 280). For example, skeptics attribute a temperature rise of 0.72 ln(392/280) = 0.24°C to the increase from pre-industrial to the current CO2 level of 392 ppm.
[5] The effect of feedbacks is hard to pin down with empirical evidence because there are more forces affecting the temperature than just changes in CO2 level, but seems to be multiplication by something between 0.25 and 0.9. We have used 0.5 here for simplicity.
[6] Hansen’s predictions were made in Hansen et al, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 93 No D8 (20 Aug 1988) Fig 3a Page 9347: pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_etal.pdf. In the graph here, Hansen’s three scenarios are graphed to start from the same point in mid-1987.
[7] The earth’s temperature shown here is as measured by the NASA satellites that have been measuring the earth’s temperature since 1979, managed at the University of Alabama Hunstville (UAH). Satellites measure the temperature 24/7 over broad swathes of land and ocean, across the whole world except the poles. While satellites had some initial calibration problems, those have long since been fully fixed to everyone’s satisfaction. Satellites are mankind’s most reliable, extensive, and unbiased method for measuring the earth’s air temperature temperatures since 1979. This is an impeccable source of data, and you can download the data yourself from vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt (save it as .txt file then open it in Microsoft Excel; the numbers in the “Globe” column are the changes in MSU Global Monthly Mean Lower Troposphere Temperatures in °C).
[8] IPCC First Assessment Report, 1990, page xxii (www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf) in the Policymakers Summary, Figure 8 and surrounding text, for the business-as-usual scenario (which is what in fact occurred, there being no significant controls or decrease in the rate of increase of emissions to date). “Under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A) emissions of greenhouse gases, the average rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century is estimated to be about 0.3°C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2°C to 0.5°C).”
[10] Ocean temperature measurements before Argo are nearly worthless. Before Argo, ocean temperature was measured with buckets or with bathythermographs (XBTs) — which are expendable probes lowered into the water, transmitting temperature and pressure data back along a pair of thin wires. Nearly all measurements were from ships along the main commercial shipping lanes, so geographical coverage of the world’s oceans was poor—for example the huge southern oceans were not monitored. XBTs do not go as deep as Argo floats, and their data is much less precise and much less accurate (for one thing, they move too quickly through the water to come to thermal equilibrium with the water they are trying to measure).
[11] The climate models project ocean heat content increasing at about 0.7 × 10^22 Joules per year. See Hansen et al, 2005: Earth’s energy imbalance: Confirmation and implications. Science, 308, 1431-1435, page 1432 (pubs.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi?id=ha00110y), where the increase in ocean heat content per square meter of surface, in the upper 750m, according to typical models, is 6.0 Watt·year/m2 per year, which converts to 0.7 × 10^22 Joules per year for the entire ocean as explained at bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/giss-ohc-model-trends-one-question-answered-another-uncovered/.
[12]The ocean heat content down to 700m as measured by Argo is now available; you can download it from ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/3month/ohc_levitus_climdash_seasonal.csv. The numbers are the changes in average heat for the three months specified, in units of 10^22 Joules, seasonally adjusted. The Argo system became operational in mid-2003, so we started the data at 2003-6.
[13]The weather balloon data showing the atmospheric warming pattern was finally released in 2006, in the US Climate Change Science Program, 2006, part E of Figure 5.7, on page 116 (www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/sap1-1-final-chap5.pdf).
There is no other data for this period, and we cannot collect more data on atmospheric warming during global warming until global warming resumes. This is the only data there is. Btw, isn’t this an obscure place to release such important and pivotal data – you don’t suppose they are trying to hide something, do you?
[15] Any climate model, for example, IPCC Assessment Report 4, 2007, Chapter 9, page 675, which is also on the web at http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-2-2.html (Figure 9.1 parts c and f).
[17] Lindzen and Choi 2009, Geophysical Research Letters Vol. 36: http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf. The paper was corrected after some criticism, coming to essentially the same result again in 2011: www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf.
[18] In particular, we have not quoted results from land thermometers, or from sparse sampling by buckets and XBT’s at sea. Land thermometers are notoriously susceptible to localized effects – see Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? by the same author: jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/corruption/climate-corruption.pdf.
Very interesting. I’m confused by figure 7. It shows that satellite measurements of outgoing radiation from earth show an increase as the sea surface temperature increases. But it then shows all the models predicting otherwise.
Since a warmer object emits greater radiation, why do the models predict otherwise?
32
JB
Did you miss the third point below Figure 7?
81
http://i56.tinypic.com/acdczn.jpg
30
That is funny! 🙂
40
jonnyboy, ya gotta get yaself, out of this pet rock mentality.
30
John, The whole premise of Catastrophic Man made global Warming is based on the so called “greenhouse effect” trapping more heat down here on earth. If the incomming solar radiation is constant, as also assumed in the models, then according to thermodynamic theory, if more is heat retained on earth, as indicated by the rising temperatures, then less energy must be exiting the top of the atmosphere (TOA). The fact that, more heat exits the TOA as the earths temperature goes up shows that the basic assumptions of the models with respect to the “Energy Balance” of the earth’s atmoshere and to the way the “greenhouse effect” is supposed to work is wrong. In any other field of scientific study, such a glaring divergence between hypothesis and actual real world evidence would mean it would be discarded. The fact that it continues on as if nothing has happened shows that it is now more akin to religious dogma than scientific theory.
110
Confused John?
Yes you sure are – you cannot distinguish physical reality from virtual reality that the models represent. You place primacy on the models and that is the problem, the whole problem and all of the problem.
In your reaction we have the problem identified in a manner never before – you are at a loss when confronted with physical reality contradicting your belief (here the climate models).
It means you have no understanding, and by implication none of your fellow AGW supporters, of the scientific method.
When the models say “A” but physical reality results in “B”, then the models are in error and need changing.
It means that the assumptions that the models are based on, are wrong.
But the religious mind rejects this because Faith is stronger than reality.
61
Confused Skeptic ?
What becomes even more disturbing is when you finally realize that this is a THREE SIDED ‘DEBATE’ and that two sides are wrong. The footnote [2] mentions direct effect of CO2 being known for a century. In fact, what has been known since Dr Robert Woods experiment of 1909 is that even GREENHOUSES DO NOT BEHAVE LIKE ‘GREENHOUSE GASES’. A free moving, three atom, naturally occuring and mandatory for life gas molecule has NO ABAILITY to capture (for more than a few milliseconds), to reflect, or to redirect outgoing photons moving at the speed of light. Carbon Dioxide molecules merely vibrate as this outgoing energy passes. The Warmists wrongly claim that CO2 is the primary climate driver. The Luke Warmists claim that CO2 is only a partial driver. Traditional Physics and Realists prove that there is NO potential for any level of CO2 to effect the planets temperature. The sole purpose of this Faux Science of AGW has been to force an unneeded and false Carbon Commodity Market on a guilable and grossly miseducated public. It is a patently false construct to insist that this ‘debate’ must assume any level of CO2 warming.
20
Because CO2 molecules scatter IR they increase the impedance to IR transmission to space. Also the probability of the IR being absorbed at second phases is increased, so there will be some warming.
As the CO2 IR bands are saturated near the Earth’s surface, the phenomenon of self-absorption may reduce emissivity and absorptivity of the atmosphere facing the surface thus reducing IR impedance. Hence net CO2 climate sensitivity may now be slightly negative.
12
Geez Louis don’t hit him with such a big stick.
John – when I realised that AGW was a crock of … it was gut wrenching, literally wanted to throw up.
The problem you have is in your epistemology – how do you determine what you know. The normal scientific process is to discard refuted theories. With all the political and financial capital invested into AGW – it will not die so easily. But at this point you have a real choice, to clean up your mind and start living in a reference frame where measured physical reality trumps theory – or continue as you are.
The red pill or the blue pill Neo.
21
OK, I’m less confused now. For starters, I didn’t realise how the graphs in figure 7 had been generated. They are from Lindzen & Choi, each dot represents a particular time interval, for example 1989 – 1990. These time intervals appear to have been chosen because sea surface temperature rose from (roughly) a local minimum to a local maximum during each interval.
The trouble is that Lindzen & Choi’s analysis is very sensitive to the start and end points of each interval. Shift them by a month or so, and everything changes.
Anyway, those good people at Real Climate provide a thorough explanation of why Messrs L & C are wrong.
23
Just thought I would point out that that link you just posted is from 8 January 2010 and is a response to Lindzen & Choi (2009). I note that you chose very carefully to ignore the fact that there was a revised paper published Lindzen & Choi 2011 which was published in response to the criticms against it making the reference….out of date at the very least.
61
What do you think warmists like Trenberth would say? Oh thank you Lindzen and Choi for correcting our understanding of the nature of feedbacks. We will now resign from our cushy jobs. Of course not. That is their understanding of how things work.
Lindzen and Choi accepted the criticism of restricted data (tropics) and included more general data in 2011 with no change in their conclusion about climate sensitivity. The other major criticisms are only valid if you accept the IPCC understanding of the science.
Thus the trolls in response are in effect saying nothing more than this is what my champion believes. We know all about these data manipulators and we, along with more credible scientists, who keep their scientific integrity, are not at all impressed, unlike you trolls.
We could flip a coin on who is right and who is wrong on this issue if we found the points of difference in the “theory” beyond our grasp.
A more useful approach, for the advancement of climate science, is to ask if either the alarmist scientists, who postulate a certain range of potentially dangerous climate sensitivities, or L & C, Spencer, Christy et al, whose understanding of feedback mechanisms is fundamentally different, have completely nailed it and have all the answers yet?
That said there seems little doubt that the weight of the present observable evidence favours a much lower climate sensitivity than the IPCC paradigm gives.
Incidentally Reference 17 of Dr. Evan’s article indicates the trolls don’t read the “notes”:
[17] Lindzen and Choi 2009, Geophysical Research Letters Vol. 36: http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf. The paper was corrected after some criticism, coming to essentially the same result again in 2011: www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf.
20
Perhaps young John not being a properly acclimatised Aussie, your brain is responding to warm 40C temperatures in an un-Australian way. Whatever the cause of your flip flopping what you obviously need now is a bona fide authority figure.
We skeptics, unlike alarmist camp followers aka trolls by skeptics when they seek out our intellectually stimulating company, are not so much into authority figures.
The problem we skeptics have with the sort of alarmist climate scientists trotted out and quoted as argument settlers is that in most cases they are no smarter than the trolls who more often than not quote them irrelevantly or out of context but it would hardly matter even if the context was right. The reality is they seem to be a pretty dumb lot (did you see the youtube encounter featuring the brain – power – outmatched Dessler toyed with by Lindzen?) and don’t cut it with skeptics.
Skeptics would probably accept I. Newton as the bees knees as lots of his stuff has gone from HYPOTHESIS to THEORY and is now enshrined in LAW.
Perhaps there will never be another Newton but here’s about the 21C next best thing. So without further ado let me present:
Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus of the School of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study; Fellow of the Royal Society said in a 2011 email exchange with a journalist:
“First, the computer models are very good at solving the equations of fluid dynamics but very bad at describing the real world. The real world is full of things like clouds and vegetation and soil and dust which the models describe very poorly.
Second, we do not know whether the recent changes in climate are on balance doing more harm than good. The strongest warming is in cold places like Greenland. More people die from cold in winter than die from heat in summer.
Third, there are many other causes of climate change besides human activities, as we know from studying the past.
Fourth, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is strongly coupled with other carbon reservoirs in the biosphere, vegetation and top-soil, which are as large or larger. It is misleading to consider only the atmosphere and ocean, as the climate models do, and ignore the other reservoirs.
Fifth, the biological effects of CO2 in the atmosphere are beneficial, both to food crops and to natural vegetation. The biological effects are better known and probably more important than the climatic effects. Sixth, summing up the other five reasons, the climate of the earth is an immensely complicated system and nobody is close to understanding it.”[7] wiki
40
Real Climate are a joke– and so are you if you believe them or the IPCC are trustworthy!
40
John,
you are meant to be confused. Dr Evans has chosen to start his first graph in the middle of an El Nino (hot) and ended it in a La Nina (cold)causing a distortion in the rate of increase.
Further, the actual trend data for all major temperature put the reality measure at 0.35-0.5 not 0 as indicated on the graph.
Like most of [snip] science it’s junk.
[Don’t be a smart alec David. Treating your hosts as fools is ungracious. Mod oggi]
42
He chose 1988 because that’s when Hansen made the prediction. His point is absolutely valid.
51
His point is invalid because, he didn’t start the graph on the trend line, but on an extreme positive point on the graph. He didn’t provide trend lines which would have invalidated his point. The Nile data miners can always find some data that purportedly suits their argument but the truth is it doesn’t stand up to simple scrutiny. Dr Evans has enough qualifications to know evidence from cherry picking. This is cherry picking.
Look David, using The Nile as a corruption of Denier is treating us as fools. Start treating others with some respect. You got it? Mod oggi
REPLY: DavidR – it’s impossible to know which graph you refer too. What “extreme point”? If you throw serious allegations, do them carefully and with specific detail, no more vague “evidence”. David E started all of his graphs at the point the prediction was made, or at the earliest possible data point available. If you have calculations of trend lines that show Hansen, IPCC, or ARGO fit with the predictions, then detail them. The alarm-team made predictions knowing it was an El nino year, presumably they were smart enough to adjust their forecasts to compensate, right? A fail is a fail. — Jo
32
Jo:
As stated above I am referring to the first graph. 1988 was the hottest year on record up to that point being about 0.2 above the trend line on all the major data sets particularly UAH.. If Dr Evans provided a trend line for the UAH data it would show ~ 0.4 degrees of warming over the period not the fairly flat trend he is implying.
[snip comment about mod.]
REPLY: UAH Data? Why not. This earlier graph below with UAH Data makes it easier to see David’s point. Hansen has the data to 1988, he knew exactly where it was on the normal spread. He made the prediction knowing the two decades leading up to it. Hansen thought 1988 was a “middle of the range year” compared to what was to come. It wasn’t: — Jo
12
Claiming that Hansen’s emissions scenario A is what actually occurred is a blatant misrepresentation of the facts.
Using UAH data when Hansens’s predictions were for surface temperature is another blatant misrepresentation.
Yes, these are serious allegations. Serious and demonstrable.
The GHG forcings due to emissions (which is what the scenarios are modelling) that actually occurred were lower than the scenario B projection.
UAH does not measure surface temperature, it measures the lower troposphere, which is usually slightly cooler than the surface.
You know both these things Jo. This sort of distortion would not fly in science or law.
12
Calm down Tristan,
“UAH does not measure surface temperature, it measures the lower troposphere, which is usually slightly cooler than the surface.”
We’re measuring trends from a zero point anomaly, not absolutes. It’s not about which one was colder to start with, it’s about the trend. In any case, UAH is a better dataset. If the UAH trend is lower than than the surface data that could be because the surface data is so horribly corrupted(UHI, micrositing, lost data, station changes, airports, concrete blah blah blah).
Methinks you doth protest too much. Surface data doesn’t help Hansen enough in any case.
Whichever why you look at it, Hansen told Congress in 1988 that the world would be 0.8C higher in 2010 if CO2 emissions kept increasing. He was wrong.
PS: Did you get my email about gold in Escrow?
30
I’m talking about the graph in your response to DavidR.
Plotting UAH data on a graph that measures surface temperature is misleading.
Claiming that Scenario A is what occurred is misleading.
Claiming that the surface data is horribly corrupted is misleading. If you recall the history of the UAH, you’ll note the numerous egregious errors committed by Spencer and pals, and with every error caught, the UAH trend moved closer to that evidenced by the surface measurements. The surface temperature records have been exhaustively audited by many groups and individuals. No one has found any of the corruptions you describe and the team sent to find evidence of UHI gave us a paper demonstrating no such issue.
He did not.
I did not get an email from you. As I said in my reply to your comment in another thread, I like my money where it is.
22
Tristan
February 3, 2012 at 1:13 am
Hansens scenario A is BUSINESS AS USUAL, which is exactly what has happened in the real world, business as usual. In fact, all the Mauna Loa CO2 charts show steady relentless increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
Unless you can show us data that’s different, your claim is false, a BLATANT MISREPRESENTATION IN FACT.
Alternatively, you may wish to show us data that indicates less than expected HUMAN EMISSIONS. But then you’d have to explain the Mauna Loa data with natural emissions won’t you.
See that? Relentless increase in CO2 content.
What should have been used, Hansens data from GISS? You expect us to verify a blokes predictions with that very same blokes data? You may be a sucker fool Tristan, we’re not.
Oh really? Do you mean to say Hansen got the GHG forcings all wrong? That means he got the temperature predictions wrong as can be seen from the graph in the post, he got the emissions scenarios wrong as can be seen from the Mauna Loa data, and now you reckon he got the forcings wrong. A trifecta. What exactly did Hansen get right Tristan?
But of course you are wrong. Here is what Hansen says about scenario B in section 4.1 of his paper (pp9343)
Well, as I’ve shown with the Mauna Lua chart, we haven’t had a “decreasing” growth rate in trace gas, we had a steady growth rate. If Hansen had of graphed temperatures from a steady growth rate, the line would have fallen between scenarios A and B wouldn’t it?
But you’re talking about the “forcing” from the trace gas. In which case, Hansen had his forcings all wrong, meaning his testimony to congress in 1988 was bunkum. So Tristan agrees that Hansens prediction to congress in 1988 was wrong.
Oh really? All this time we’ve been told that warming from GHGs will be HIGHER in the troposphere than at the surface.
Figure 1: Atmospheric temperature change from 1890 to 1990 from (a) solar forcing, (b) volcanoes, (c) greenhouse gases, (d) ozone, (e) sulfate aerosols and (f) sum of all forcing (IPCC AR4).
The above from Skeptical Science (lol) have a look at charts C and F Tristan. That’s what’s supposed to happen from GHG warming. The troposphere warmer than the surface, yet in your enthusiasm to protect a charlatan named Hansen, you’re now telling us that that’s all assbackwards, that “the lower troposphere, which is usually slightly cooler than the surface.” Have you told the denizens of IPCC that they’ve got their science assbackwards Tristan?
But you know all these things Tristan. What I don’t get is why you’re misleading people in order to protect the failed predictions of an activist who ceased to be a scientist long ago. Surely there are many other climate subjects you can use up your reserves of distortions and lies on.
Regards
31
Hansen’s scenarios each represent a certain rate of Carbon emissions. Whether you like it or not, the Carbon emissions that occurred fall between the B and C scenarios, despite the lack of ‘action’ taken.
That would be a sensible choice.
His understanding of forcing:temperature/time was groundbreaking and quite accurate.
Actually it’s supposed to happen due to any warming, it’s not actually related to AGW specifically. Currently the long-term hotspot appears difficult to unravel from all the noise but I figure it’ll be revealed in the coming decade.
12
Tristan do you actually read what’s been posted, pause a short while and digest it?
For you to make the above statement, you’d have to be an automaton that just repeats claims without any thoought going into it.
Look, let me make it very clear and unequivocal for you.
THE GRAPH IS FROM THE IPCC AR4. IT WAS TAKEN FROM THE SkS SITE.
THE F’ING CAPTION FOR CHART C SAYS…
DO YOU COMPREHEND THAT TRISTAN? IT DOESN’T SAY ANY WARMING, IT SAYS GHGs.
Yet here you are claiming it’s from any warming. Either you are a total moron, or you are purposfully lying to cover your sorry ass that I paddled.
It’s easy to understand how a scam such as AGW perpetuates. [snip inflammatory]
If your whole purpose on these blogs is to waste peoples time and cause distruption with your inane comments and outright bold faced lies, all I can tell you is to take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror and reflect a little on your existence in life when you go to bed tonight.
Oh, and try to lie straight in bed. It’ll be difficult at first, but practice practice practice.
I’m done with you, now run along, you’re dissmissed.
30
More accurately, that is what was predicted to occur given the level of forcing from GHGs alone. We’d expect an identical signal from forcing due to solar activity, were solar activity equally strong. As far as the trop is concerned, warming is warming. The stratosphere differentiates.
21
Tristan: Repeat after me, yes, all causes of warming would lead to a hot spot. It didn’t happen. 28 million radiosondes tell you so. Either that means a/ their amplification assumptions are wrong, or b/ the world hasn’t warmed as much as the surface stations show. Would you like to be caned with a or caned with b?
Both scenarios are a failure for Team-catastrophe. You can’t win either way.
Now ask yourself why your team didn’t explicitly tell you (in their 2006 or 2007 reports that their supposed “fingerprint” or “signature” (their term) was not unique – at the time, they said “greenhouse gases”? Leading you up the path…
Their climate models predicted we would get a hot spot. Their models are wrong. Only the weather-balloon-deniers still pretend that millions of repeated calibrated measurements were wrong and that the mystery (non-unique) hot spot is hidden up there.
And regarding the bet, if you’re not willing to buy the gold now there’s no point hammering out the details.
30
More accurately, it has not been directly observed. One response to this, from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (including one John Christy) is:
Almost all model simulations show more warming in the troposphere than at the surface. This difference between models and observations may arise from errors that are common to all models, from errors in the observational data sets, or from a combination of these factors. The second explanation is favored, but the issue is still open.
Indirect observations of wind and precipitation support the existence of a warm troposphere at the tropics.
A) The idea of a warmer troposphere at the tropics is simply a result of the MALR.
B) There isn’t a whole lot of discrepancy between the trends fromUAH and GISS so I’m not sure why you harp on so much about the surface data.
Caning averted I think.
No. The MALR predicts that. The climate models reproduce the MALR.
There’s no reason why a legal document shouldn’t suffice. Unless you’re really going to claim that you’re worried ~50k would bankrupt me. That would require some truly remarkably bad fortune 🙂
12
Jo,
Still you don’t put the trend line in, just an extension of the graph which does show 1988 as the hottest year up until that date, and therefore well off the trend line.
12
Checking on Hansens’ paper we find that the projections were made based on the data up until 1984 so Hansen would have had no idea what the data would have been like in 1988. Once again the trend line not the hottest year on record should have been the starting point of Dr Evans analysis.
—-
REPLY: Excuses Excuses. Hansens graph plots data after 1984. If he was too lazy to run his models with newer data that just shows how careless he was. David wasn’t starting the graph from 1988 in any case. He writes in his notes: “In the graph here, Hansen’s three scenarios are graphed to start from the same point in mid-1987”. Jo
12
John, the alarmists are probably surmising that a warmer ocean has more evaporation and, hence, greater feedback from the water vapour, preventing the escape of outgoing radiation.
Nice one Jo, a swift kick right in the AGW family jewels.
20
You are once again employing the trick of base-lining data at a single point, rather than to a significant period of time, and hence giving a false impression of divergence. A view of ocean heat content, with more context, for example, completely contradicts your claims.
The same is true of your climate model claims, accompanied by a few other single-point baseline graphs – a real comparison of model predictions demonstrates that they match observations surprisingly well. Your attack on Hansen is discussing emissions scenarios that did not occur; a strawman argument.
Finally, in regards to climate sensitivity, the lead of your article, it’s well worth looking at Knutti and Hegerl (2008), a review of many works in the field, agreeing on a most likely climate sensitivity in the range of 2-4.5°C. Your claimed 0.5°C sensitivity is inconsistent with all of the data. If the climate responded with that sensitivity, we would never have had ice age swings – the changes in insolation are only sufficient to cause ice ages and interglacials with about a 3°C sensitivity.
Unless you are claiming that the ice ages never happened…
—
Overall, your article is (in my opinion) a heavily distorted political puff piece, a near copy of your earlier post, which had similar issues. Very sad.
11
Your faith in the IPCC case is touching, but it is based on four major scientific mistakes.
The assumption of 100% direct thermalisation [there is no mechanism for energy transfer to non-GHGs]; ‘back radiation’ is really Prevost Exchange Energy, a measure of temperature and emissivity; 33 K present GHG warming is really ~9 K; net AIE is slightly positive.
Also, the amplification of tsi increase at the end of ice ages has nothing to do with CO2 because it starts 2 ky earlier than any major change of CO2. The same mechanism accounts for much present Arctic melting, now reversing in its 50-70 year cycle. You prove it by this: http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/figure-101.png
The cooling of the N. Atlantic is because the cloud albedo decrease over the Arctic region [caused by phytoplankton blooms] is reversing and the sinking of warmed ice melt water [density inversion] which has warmed the N. Atlantic is slowing. The Russians think that by 2020 the Arctic will be back at year 1900 temperatures. You can’t get N. Atlantic cooling by CO2-AGW and this warming accounts for most post 1990 OHC change.
As for the true GHG-GW, correct the CO2 IR physics by putting in self absorption at IR band saturation near the Earth’s surface and CO2-GW is probably slightly negative at present, but it could have been higher in the past.
20
Time for a CO2 molecule to relax orbitals and emit IR is ~10^-6 seconds. At sea level pressure that CO2 molecule will undergo ~10^9 collisions.
That means that an energized CO2 (or H20, or CH4) molecule has on the order of 1000 collisions before it can emit excess energy. That’s the direct mechanism – molecular collisions exchanging vibrational and translational energy. Greenhouse gases are at the same temperature as the gases they are mixed with, with energy exchange via collisions occurring much more frequently than radiative transfers.
11
That is an assumption.
It’s highly likely that the IR energy can’t be transferred collision by collision because it’s quantised – only transferable to another asymmetrical molecule, not N2 or O2. This is standard physics in advanced textbooks. I suggest you get acquainted with the statistical thermodynamics including the Law of Equipartition of Energy and the concept of Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium.
In 1993, Will Happer, an IR specialist, resigned as Director of Research of the US DoE because he refused to lie about this physics. His comment was ‘I don’t need the money’. As with Lindzen in 1988 when he warned that the modellers had got it wrong about high feedback, Happer was ignored.
Climate science has clearly adopted an attitude that once an idea has been accepted by peer review, it cannot be overturned. Thus Tyndall’s mistake was not to understand that CO2 has high CTE in the range 250 – 350 K because that’s the temperature range where the long wavelength IR absorption develops in association with a 13.1% increase in Cp.
Thus the ‘PET bottle experiment’ probably shows the effect of pressurisation and warming of the container walls by scattered IR, not direct thermalisation. The real physics is buried in partial molar Cp data and van der Waal’s coefficients. Nasif Nahle is studying this.
There could be some direct thermalisation but my view is that it is likely to be mostly indirect at aerosol second phases, cloud droplets that have gettered local CO2 and bare aerosols.
I could be wrong but I’m quite pleased at predicting why the North Atlantic is cooling; that disproves the IPCC case better than any other experimental measurement. South Atlantic OHC for the reversed latitude is static indicating it’s an Arctic-only effect.
20
Jo/Mods,
this comment by KR really deserves to be elevated to its own thread and given a good Australian lampooning. Tag it under the “so silly it’s not even wrong” file. The only thing missing is a link to Gomer Pyle et al 1963.
10
KR you seem to have completely ignored the fact shown in this article that all satellite measurements of outgoing radiation showed it to increase and not decrease.
see Lindzen and Choi 2011
That is complete nonsense. In all of the interglacials the co2 increase was an effect of the temperature rise. The sensitivity of the climate to natural forcings says absolutely nothing about the sensitivity to Co2. I suggest that that you read the following papers, which show how co2 did not play a major role in glacial, interglcial changes.
‘In defense of Milankovick’ by Gerard Roe
‘Implications of the Secondary Role of Carbon Dioxide and Methane Forcing in Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future’ by Willie Soon
I also suggest you read this article here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/30/co2-temperatures-and-ice-ages/
And watch this video here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z685n4RMx6Y
All of them completely refute the claims made that Co2 played any major role in the interglacials.
20
The amplification of tsi increase at the end of the last ice age was almost certainly from reduction of cloud albedo starting 2 ky before any significant CO2 rise. It manifested itself as warming of the deep Southern Ocean, restarting the deep currents.
3.5% fall in albedo = 2.88 W/m^2 quoted by AR4 as the total GHG warming from the LGM to the pre-industrial age. No CO2 is needed, it’s a lagging indicator and it could presently be slightly net negative. Most recent warming has probably been natural, and it’s reversing.
There is absolutely no unambiguous experimental proof of any CO2-GW, but there could have been some, a maximum of 15% of the IPCC’s central claim. You get that by setting ‘cloud albedo effect’ cooling to zero [it could be slightly positive] and reduce present GHG warming offset by cloud cooling to 9 K.
The warmists hate it when I write this because they know I’m winding them up outrageously but they also know from the liberties they have taken with the truth that I could well be right!
10
Lindzen and Choi 2011 is indeed an interesting article – it’s a virtual copy of the two (three?) previous versions of his work, all of which have received a very poor reception. There are multiple papers offering refutations, and I found the GRL reviewers comments (on the last rejection, shortly before L&C submitted it to an off-topic journal) both enlightening and in the main along the lines of my own impressions (prior to reading the reviewers comments).
L&C (whatever version) use arbitrarily chosen time periods (periods different by merely days give completely different results), continue to approximate the extratropic regions with a scaling factor of x2 (heat transport in/out of the tropics is an order of magnitude greater than the imbalance they discuss, and polar regions won’t necessarily react as tropics do), and failed to answer any of the major questions posed in the various refutations.
To be blunt – that paper is horrible.
11
I completely agree. CO2 acted as a medium term (~500-800 years) feedback to the insolation changes of the ice age swings.
Currently, however, the forcing change (energy imbalance of the climate) is due to our CO2 rise, from which we should expect all the other feedbacks (melting ice caps, glaciers, vegetation changes, whatever happens with clouds) to occur. And in fact the high levels of CO2 we’ve put into the oceans may indeed amplify the CO2 feedback from solubility changes as the temperatures rise.
The insolation changes over the ice ages were on the order of 6-9 W/m^2, resulting in a temperature change of 5-6C. A doubling of CO2 would result in a forcing change of ~3.7 W/m^2.
Just because there are forest fires started by lightning (natural causes) does not exclude the possibility of arson.
11
In fact, the pattern and circumstances of the large number of fires in Texas last summer was very suggestive of arson. Possibly some warmist who got tired of waiting for the climate apocalypse and decided to help it along.
We had a similar set of fires (not as many, though) in Colorado two years ago. Privately, fire officials were virtually certain it was arson, but nobody was ever caught.
Lightning fires tend to start when there’s lightning. The wind starts fires when it blows down power lines. When fires start out in the middle of nowhere (but near a road) during a drought and wind storm, but with no lightning or downed lines, one becomes suspicious — particularly when a large number of them start in a short time.
20
Since when, did base-lining a time series against a single common point become “a trick”.
The graphs demonstrate the divergence of reality, from the range of predictions, relative to the point where the predictions were made.
From what I can see from the figures, the predictions were consistently overly pessimistic, indicating a flaw in the modelling technique(s) being used. That is useful information, is it not?
20
The green line on figure 4 looks to be labled wrong.
—
Well spotted. Will fix! Ta. Jo
10
KR, your ocean heat graphs ignore the last 6 years of inconvenient data. Is that the best you can do? David’s ARGO graph is more accurate, more recent, and golly – where did all that extra energy go? Quadrillions of joules…
And yes, let’s talk about a “significant” period of time — the warming started 300 years ago, and the decadal rate was the same in 1870 as it was in 1990 — how does that fit with your theory?
11
It’s well known (or should be) that we don’t expect the climate to react in a monotonic fashion. Surface water temperatures in particular are going to show some variability, and even flat or steeper periods of a decades length (Meehl et al, 2011), due in large part to circulation changes (overturning, upwelling and downwelling) between surface and deep sea waters.
Palmer et al 2011 discuss this in some length – total ocean heat content as currently measured tracks the top of atmosphere (TOA) imbalance very closely, and in fact can be used as a constraint to evaluate TOA imbalances. So the answer to the “where is it” question is apparently “deep oceans”. I will note that there is a great deal of uncertainty in these measurements, as we are currently only sparsely sampling the deep oceans, but every check done so far has supported increasing OHC in the depths. I look forward to additional and more accurate data in the future.
The climate responds to all the forcings – CO2 is certainly not the only factor. Looking at the temperature data the last 40-50 years of rising temperatures do not match natural forcings, but rather a combination of declining natural forcings (which should lead to cooling) plus anthropogenic GHG’s, black soot, and (somewhat balancing that) aerosol effects.
I would also point to Lean and Rind 2008 and other attribution studies – there’s a survey of half a dozen using different methods here. Results? ~100% of recent warming is human caused.
—
Side note: Dr. Evans stated:
All of those articles (and embedded links) refer to the “tropospheric hot spot”, which is a fingerprint of moist adiabatic lapse rate effects of warming from any cause, and which have nothing whatsoever to do with climate sensitivity estimates – an Argument from Irrelevance fallacy.
11
If you look at the equation of state for water [UNESCO publishes an on-line calculator] pressurised sea water has maximum density at ~2K. Therefore, the heat in the oceans is set by the 2°C thermocline.
The recent Arctic melting caused warmer water from melting ice to settle above that thermocline, hence the rise in N. Atlantic OHC. Less melt water, now the Arctic is freezing, is reducing OHC. The effect of GHGs has been wildly overestimated because of a combination of elementary and subtle mistakes from which the IPCC cannot retreat.
Thus IPCC ‘science’ is alchemy: repeating the modelling in the vain hope that eventually it’ll turn out right. In 2007, Kiehl published this: GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 34, L22710, doi:10.1029/2007GL031383, 2007
In it he admits there is no evidence for CO2-AGW above ‘aerosol noise’. the problem is the aerosol optical physics is very wrong. At the same time as I worked this out, so did the US’ top cloud physicist [G L Stephens] but he apparently can’t get it published. I wonder why? Is is because he points out that the climate models use a cloud optical depth that is twice reality to hide the imaginary part of the warming?
20
You completely ignore the thermohaline circulation? Upwelling and downwelling such as the ENSO due in large part to the winds?
This and your previous post are chock full of errors as basic as your direct thermalization claim. Accordingly, I’m not going to bother to comment further on them.
11
I’m not a climate scientist so I do make errors and am pleased if they are pointed out. However, as I’m highly experienced in other areas, it was easy to see the big mistakes in climate science.
Every process engineer who leans that ‘climate science’ points radiometers upwards to measure what they think is an energy source says the same thing ‘How could they be so dumb!’.
Getting shirty with me won’t stop these elementary errors [the other one is the 33 k claim] from being revealed. I warned politicians a year ago of what was to come as external scientists set about checking the IPCC claims.
10
Show me where there is unambiguous experimental proof of direct thermalisation, defined as the transfer of vibrational energy from an excited asymmetrical molecule to increased kinetic energy of the symmetrical molecules.
Remember, the container cannot absorb IR photons and the measurements must be done at constant pressure. I don’t think there’s any, but I could be wrong.
Tyndall’s experiment was in a closed brass tune so doesn’t count yet I don’t think anyone in climate science has ever considered this.
10
Hi Mydogsgotnonose
I’ve read a lot of your posts here and can’t recall disagreeing in basic context with anything you have said.
As a metallurgist with a lot of background in Mass heat and Momentum transfer situations plus modeling (unlike the AGW kind) and thermodynamics I feel a lot more qualified than any two “climate scientists” put together.
🙂
20
I’m a Metallurgical Engineer: ‘climate science’ is process engineering; my PhD was applied physics. The IR work is vacuous, made worse by the ‘back radiation’ mistake.
In 2004, to keep ‘high feedback’ in AR4, NASA swapped fake science for Twomey’s correct physics he warned could not be used for thicker clouds. The models are a confidence trick to hide bad science.
The political end is apparently Marxist World Government using carbon ‘pollution’ as excuse. They think it’s right to invent data [‘post-normal science’].
The scam was thought up at the 1975 ‘Endangered Atmosphere’ conference. The scientists like Schneider who created the scam switched from predicting a new ice age to global warming. It’s funded by GS, Deutsche, hedge funds etc..
Behind it is eugenics. Carbon offsets are neo-colonialism with children being killed as indigenous peoples are displaced. How the likes of Gillard and Cameron can support such politics is beyond my comprehension; it seems they have no soul.
In the UK, an all-party group of MPs has formed to fight the scam. The trigger has been the revelation that with steam standby, windmills cause more CO2 to be produced than without windmills. They did not do the most basic engineering assessment.
20
Hi Mydogsgotnonose
I have in the past attacked the CO2 as potential world danger in two ways.
First and most obvious for anyone with some science is that there IS NO SUCH THING AS BACK RADIATION. Energy follows the temperatutre gradient , in the case of the Earth where I am, Newcastle, ground at 20 deg C and 10 km up at minus 35 deg C.
Once energy leaves Earth it is not going to return and reheat the ground.
Secondly I allowed that if the only heat transfer mechanism was radiation and CO2 was a real player in this there was one problem for warmers: water.
Water totally dominates the theoretical greenhouse effect. In earlier posts I have quantified the theoretical maximum effect of ALL CO2 and then the effect of Human Origin CO2. Both are so small you couldn’t measure them with the most sophisticated gear. Easily demolished the man made CO2 guilt thing with basic analysis.
Now I find after reading papers by Gerlich and T and the Russian Sockhotin? that the only mechanism at work in the lower atmosphere is pressure and gram molecular weight of the local air.
Not only is the CO2 fear mongering quantitatively inaccurate it is also based on incorrect physics that does not apply at normal atmospheric pressures.
Many of the anti warmers in Newcastle, I discovered at Jo’s night with Lord Christopher here were also fellow metallurgists who all were able to smell a rat in the “science” of man made global warming.
🙂
10
Hi KK, I once worked at Newcastle – in 1967 at the S&L plant.
As a one time manager of an open heath plant, I have more practical experience with greenhouse gases than most climate scientists get in a lifetime. I have advised them to read up Hoyt C. Hottell’s work at MIT in the 1950s and 60s. He calculated emissivities and absorptivities for GHG mixtures in air.
Because these people are only partly educated in science, they are easy meat for those at the heart of the scam who made the initial mistakes and are using pal review to prevent contrary papers threatening ‘the project’ and the vast earnings from the global warming industry.
20
Hi Mydogsgotnonose
I started work next door at Rylands (AWI not AGW) in 196%.
No open hearths at S&L?
Small world.
Will check out Hoyt C. Hottell’s work.
When I first heard that CO2 was being called a pollutant and then blamed for potential CAGW I felt sure it was a mistake; that the journalist had misunderstood that the real intention was that CO2 was a proxy for the real pollution from coal combustion.
But no, CO2 is a pollutant.
What really got me going though was the statement by warmers that the Earth was in peaceful oceanic equilibrium and that we CO2 emitters were going to cause the oceans to rise dramatically.
I knew from my geology that locally we had a spike of 4 foot in sea level that lasted a couple of thousand years and dropped about 4 kya to where we are now.
I started work, and to be fair to the average person, there is a lot of convincing sounding bad disinfo out there.
If you do not have an education you are sunk and at the mercy of the AlGorism.
10
The open hearths were at Corby UK. There I helped develop HSLA steels. I also worked with a heat transfer specialist in the aluminium industry who taught me the nitty gritty about heat transfer including many novel temperature measurement techniques.
The climate scientists haven’t a clue because they believe in precedent of incorrect physics from Tyndall and Arrhenius so will move Heaven and Earth to invent fake add-on science so as not to breach the sanctity of the incorrect core physics.
This is why Hansen has just raised aerosol cooling by a third and invoked greater heat transport in the ocean. Another paper explains the ‘missing heat’ by widening previous error bars.
This is desperate, last-ditch defending. What I have done is to show how you can explain all end of ice age warming and much modern warming by a second aerosol optical physics’ mechanism not involving CO2.
Ultimately, the politicians and honest government scientific advisors [there are some still] have held off from classifying the IPCC consensus as a scam because there was no plausible alternative explanation.
There is now, and it will be published despite the corrupt pal review used to block such work.
10
Hi Mydogsgotnonose
Many of my posts have either shown my unwillingness or incapacity to deal with specialised areas of physics relating to CO2 climate change theory.
I notice you don’t suffer there at all and feel envious.
What I have been able to resurrect from the days when I could do a mass, heat, thermodynamic and chemical balance (iron, slag, off gases) on a blast furnace, is the capacity to see complex problems and work through them.
Climate scientists start their “modeling” (which is not engineering modelling) with a big computer when any Metallurgist knows that you start this type of problem with a large sheet of blank paper to sketch out heat sinks and sources, note chemical reactions, establish boundaries where conditions change and so on.
By contrast Climate Modelers do not have an integrated view of climate change.
All we have from the very complex problem of Global Warming is CO2 locked up on its own in a glass case as exhibit 1, the enemy of world climate.
Isolated, guilty and damned, and no I’m not talking about CO2 I’m pointing to the Climate Modelers.
10
“Looking at the temperature data the last 40-50 years of rising temperatures do not match natural forcings,” — which is the argument from ignorance fallacy. Just because we can’t explain what else might have caused the warming, is not much of a reason to presume it’s “CO2”.
As for “Argument from Irrelevance” – not even close. CO2 doesn’t need to be the only cause — it’s the one that the models predicted, ergo the models are wrong. See the graphs. Worse, if some other cause (like, all of them) was supposed to produce a hot spot (yes they would in theory), the news is no better, it’s still not there. The whole theory is busted. Either that amplification isn’t happening, OR it would be, but the world isn’t warming. There is no angle on this that helps your cause.
20
If the tropospheric hot spot (which you have emphasized quite a bit) is not occurring, then there is an issue with our understanding of the moist adiabatic lapse rate – as a tropospheric hot spot is a fingerprint of that due to any warming. I’ll also note that current radiosondes support a warmer upper troposphere, and that all indications point to earlier radiosondes having calibration issues.
That issue doesn’t change the fact that temperatures are rising. Or that the stratosphere is cooling, ice caps melting, glaciers retreating, winters warming faster than summer, growth zones moving towards the poles, nights warming faster than days, or any of the other fingerprints of an increased greenhouse effect as predicted over 100 years ago from basic physics by Arrhenius and others.
The greenhouse effect is derived from basic physics, spectroscopy and conservation of energy. It’s supported by a huge amount of measurements and observations – with it’s predictions confirmed over and over. I wish it were not the case – but unless someone has a better theory, I’m going to go with the one that is supported by and consistent with the evidence.
Really? I don’t see any other appropriate term for making a claim on climate sensitivity, and in support of it listing completely irrelevant papers.
—
Back on topic – Dr. Evans uses distorted graphics (as in my first comment), some cherrypicking, a fair bit of misrepresentation (Hansen Scenario A never happened – Scenario C did), etc.
11
KR – You say the stratosphere is cooling. Do you know how they measure the stratosphere as compared to the troposphere? If they are measured by the same means (eg radiosondes, satellites), why are the stratosphere measurements accepted as gospel but the troposphere ones are treated as suspect? It wouldn’t have anything to do with the unexpected results produced would it? If they are measured by the same means and the warming of the troposphere has been incorrectly measured and it’s result are too cold, does this mean also that the stratosphere has also been measured incorrectly & it’s results are too cold also. Either way, if the troposphere is warming the stratosphere isn’t cooling, or if the stratosphere is cooling the troposphere isn’t warming. Unless the 2 are measured in a different manner that is.
Anyone know if the stratosphere & troposphere are measured the same way?
(The Lower Stratosphere is not cooling.Has not since the early 1990’s) CTS
20
‘the greenhouse effect is derived from basic physics’
No it’s not. The physics has been misinterpreted so the conclusions are wrong.
No climate model can predict climate.
30
KR I recommend you read these links here and here
10
Can you please explain to me what the calibration issues were, was it operator error or was it a problem with the actual claibration?
TIA
20
Crakar24 – There are a number of issues: on warmer days the balloons ascend more rapidly, older thermometers were larger and apparently were therefore warmed more by the sun, etc.
This isn’t my specialty, mind you – I’ll just point you at the sources I know of: Titchner 2009, Haimberger 2008, Sherwood 2008, and also of interest an independent method using wind shear at Allen 2008.
11
KR,
The rate of ascent is proportional to the amount of helium in the balloon, the more helium the faster it ascends, conversely the bursting height (altitude) reached is inversely proportional to the amount of helium used, the more helium used the lower the bursting height.
The sonde can measure PTu – pressure, temp and humidity, all sondes are calibrated in the factory under controlled conditions and from this a calibration al Gore rythm is produced and supplied with the sonde.
Before release the algorythm is applied to the sonde….well actually not to the sonde but to the data that is received from the sonde. The humidity sensor is heated so it does not freeze during flight.
Suffice to say if there are calibration problems then those problems would arise via operator error. However if this is so then i would assume it would relate to a very small percentage as Vaisala (the worlds leading radio sonde manufacturer) provide excellent hands on training. Also remember that a majority of balloon releases are automated so the operator error factor is largely removed.
Here are some selected quotes from your links
I chose this one because it states that it is “very likely” there is a bias so we are trying to remove it.
and
But KR what is the magnitude and strength of the bias and what is it caused by.
Is there a problem with the factory calibration?
Is there a problem with operator error?
A bias if any must come from here so we need to find it a correct for it, we cannot simply assume there is a bias and then guess what it is?
I asked for evidence showing there is a bias……….i expected a document from the manufacturer explaining it and all i got was some dodgy paper written by someone trying to legally adjust another temp record.
Of all the warmbots you are the only one that attempts to create a logical debate dont stop now please.
Please supply evidence that shows a bias in the measurement of temp/pressure/humidity.
20
Crakar24 – As I said, this is not my specialty, and I would prefer not to overstate anyone’s case for/against. I’ve pointed you to the literature – the suspicion of bias came from among other things differences between radiosonde data (spatially/temporally rare samples, high resolution vertically), satellite data over the last 30 years (great time/area coverage, low vertical resolution), and the underlying physics (radiosonde data not matching physics expectations).
I will not unequivocally state that historic radiosonde data shows a tropospheric warm spot – but current radiosondes do, satellites do, and there are reasons to suspect earlier radiosonde data of having severe biases. There’s certainly no strong support for claiming that some degree of upper tropospheric warming hasn’t happened.
11
KR “There’s certainly no strong support for claiming that some degree of upper tropospheric warming hasn’t happened.”
No, there’s no support at all, nothing apart from 28 million radiosondes. But don’t believe your lying eyes. Yellow is really red.
10
JoNova – Reference for the above graphic?
(Read the blog post again.The source for the image is easy to find.You are a lazy reader?) CTS
11
KR,
It does not need to be your speciality you are simply looking at this the wrong way around.
Let us assume for a moment that the sondes have an error (or as climate scientists like to call it a bias).
This error can come from only two places:
1) During the production of the calibration algorythm, or
2) During the application of the calibration algorythm (operator error)
For you (by you i mean the establishment) are going to claim an error they need to show where the error is introduced and what effects it has on the data.
You cannot simply say the sondes are wrong because it defies the models or the sats maybe the sats and the models are wrong.
If it is a factory calibration error then we could work out EXACTLY what eror it is and adjust the data to suit.
So can you show me what this eror is………i am not interested is scientific wishful thinking, i want an engineering solution to this.
20
KR RE: 5.1.2.1.8 –
The graphic is from Figure 6 in the article, and is fully referenced there.
Try learning to read instead of simply trying to appear clever.
It’s not working.
10
memoryvault – Thank you – but that reference is to this article and thread, not to actual data, or any (peer reviewed) published works. Hence it isn’t a reference at all.
(You are embarrassing yourself.There is a LINK to a paper that contains the image.It also tells us what the date source is.It is somewhere in the blog post.I found it in less than 10 seconds) CTS
11
Jo you got it all wrong
Warming maximum in the tropical upper troposphere deduced from thermal winds
Robert J. Allen & Steven C. Sherwood
Abstract
Climate models and theoretical expectations have predicted that the upper troposphere should be warming faster than the surface. Surprisingly, direct temperature observations from radiosonde and satellite data have often not shown this expected trend. However, non-climatic biases have been found in such measurements. Here we apply the thermal-wind equation to wind measurements from radiosonde data, which seem to be more stable than the temperature data. We derive estimates of temperature trends for the upper troposphere to the lower stratosphere since 1970. Over the period of observations, we find a maximum warming trend of 0.65 0.47 K per decade near the 200 hPa pressure level, below the tropical tropopause. Warming patterns are consistent with model predictions except for small discrepancies close to the tropopause. Our findings are inconsistent with the trends derived from radiosonde temperature datasets and from NCEP reanalyses of temperature and wind fields. The agreement with models increases confidence in current model-based predictions of future climate change.
The graph your looking at (lying eyes) is most likely an aberrant bias. Science moves on – but anti-warmists can get hung up on the lack of explanations.
ature Geoscience 1, 399 – 403 (2008)
Published online: 25 May 2008 | doi:10.1038/ngeo208
Our results highlight the possibility of abrupt climate change arising out of nonlinear atmospheric dynamics (e.g. Corti et al. 1999), as opposed to the nonlinear climate physics emphasized by EMICs, and we verify that these results are not an artifact of numerical truncation.
http://cims.nyu.edu/~gerber/pages/documents/wang_gerber_polvani-2011-JC_revised.pdf
And this.
While satellite MSU/AMSU observations generally support GCM results with tropical deep-layer tropospheric warming faster than surface, it is evident that the AR4 GCMs exaggerate the increase in static stability between tropical middle and upper troposphere during the last three decades.
What this paper is about in the IPPC assessment based the modeling on earlier CGMs at that time. What is now discovered in the above paper is the models were exaggerating the static stability of this trend. Therefore basing the collating and collecting of data l;eads to errorous conclusions like those positied in Dr Evans writngs. What he down is a common mistake believe what the models indicate and capture a STATIC increased temperature state when the above finds why!
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 38, L15704, 6 PP., 2011
doi:10.1029/2011GL048101
On the warming in the tropical upper troposphere: Models versus observations
Key Points
• AR4 GCMs exaggerate increase in static stability in tropical upper troposphere
Qiang Fu
Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA
College of Atmospheric Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China
Syukuro Manabe
Atmospheric and Oceanic Program, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
Celeste M. Johanson
Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA
IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) AR4 (Fourth Assessment Report) GCMs (General Circulation Models) predict a tropical tropospheric warming that increases with height, reaches its maximum at ∼200 hPa, and decreases to zero near the tropical tropopause. This study examines the GCM-predicted maximum warming in the tropical upper troposphere using satellite MSU (microwave sounding unit)-derived deep-layer temperatures in the tropical upper- and lower-middle troposphere for 1979–2010. While satellite MSU/AMSU observations generally support GCM results with tropical deep-layer tropospheric warming faster than surface, it is evident that the AR4 GCMs exaggerate the increase in static stability between tropical middle and upper troposphere during the last three decades.
Move on – science is.
——————————
REPLY: So Ross, either 28 million weather balloons don’t agree with your theory (yellow not being red and all), OR the weather balloons are biased and a much better way to measure the temperature of the air 10km above the equator is to look at wind shear, and calculate the temperature from that. O-K. The obvious way to measure the temperature 10km above Bermuda is to use a computer in San Diego to calculate what it is. Right? Thermometer-pffft. If we can’t get simple technology like a weather balloon to work, what are the odds we can produce a model of the planetary atmosphere and the 400 covarying interdependent variables thereof? Not to mention that I heard wind shear to temperature calcs don’t work to well at the equator, shame that’s where the tropical hot spot is supposed to be. Fu et al supports the skeptics. As does McKintyre. “The models are wrong, but only by 400%.”
You have nothing.
“Most likely an aberrant bias” is not the obvious conclusion that 99% of normal scientists would leap to at this point. Best of luck with your pet theory. Jo
11
KR – Cut and pasted directly from the article.
The actual reference at Figure 6 is (14) below:
(Does he know that BEN SANTER is the lead author of the paper.Where the image in question is found in?) CTS
10
I don’t think he particularly cares.
It’s pretty obvious KR, MattB and Gee Aye are on a somewhat coordinated blitzkrieg raid with little other purpose than to disrupt the thread.
10
This is the kind of thing i am talking about KR,
http://www.vaisala.com/Vaisala%20Documents/White%20Papers/WCO-MET-WMO-test-White_Paper-B211129EN.pdf
Read this, they discuss corrections in the RS algorythms i dont see any of this mentioned in your dodgy links.
You understand now?
20
CTS – My apologies, the links in the text did not go directly to references, but rather to the article as a whole. This gave me the impression of a self-referential link. I did find the “References” section based upon your comment.
From that, and the Santer et al link:
As I said earlier – current observations supports a tropospheric warm spot, there are potential issues with past observations (as per the several links I provided – this chapter is from 2006, the articles I noted are 2008 and later), and more data would be worth having. Not a slam dunk conclusion for either the existance or absence of a tropospheric hot spot, as I have noted on this blog in previous threads.
(Both satellite data sets show no long term warming of the lower troposphere.LINK) CTS
11
This is like debating Wes…….but much nicer.
I will step through our problem
1) They acknowledge the models do not match the data
2) They claim the models are correct and the data is wrong
3) They then admit the uncertainties make it difficult to determine if the models have a common fundamental error
Therefore current observations do not support the hot spot.
Secondly, if they make a claim that the data is in eror they need to justify what that error is, they have not done this. There is nothing in any of your links which describes what is causing the error and how much it influences the data.
20
Aah – the “uncertainties”. THAT explains everything – literally.
A recently published, “
palpeer-reviewed” paper is certain that the “Trenberth’s Travesty” missing heat is lurking somewhere in the “uncertainties”.If all that heat can manage to remain undetected in the “uncertainties”, then I see no reason why it shouldn’t also be hiding a Tropospheric Tropical Flop Spot, or two, as well.
I wonder what else we might find hidden in the uncertain uncertainties.
Phil Jones’ raw data perhaps?
An MWP or LIA maybe?
The possibilities are mind-boggling.
20
KR… The temperatures are not rising as you state. In fact they are falling. Your Guru, Phil Jones, admitted in an interview “There has been no global warming since 1995.” Your belief system seems to be based on IPCC temperature readings from 29% of the earths surface… about 30% of which actually showed cooling. Another third of the sites are compromised. Reading your postings, as well as those that refute your entrenched position, show me that you (like all AGW religious zealots) will never admit you could be wrong… even when the preponderance of evidence is against you. I also noticed that skeptics like mydogsgotnose do admit the chance they could be in error. What a telling difference!
10
KR read the following paper
‘Empirical analysis of the solar contribution to global mean air surface temperature change’ by Nicola Scafetta
20
I’ve also read the Scafetta paper. The entire core of that paper depends upon insulting the ACRIM TSI readings, claiming that the solar data over the last 30 years, when we’ve had the best instrumentation (but for some reason not before then), is invalid.
Despite simple indexes of sunspot count being reliable measures of insolation for hundreds of years. Despite the ongoing work at ACRIM in joining together different satellites with different calibrations, different kinds of instruments, over the last 30 years – records that may have differing baselines but completely agree on variations from their baselines.
This is essentially an argument from leprechauns.
11
Don’t knock it KR, argument from leprechauns trumps some of the “skeptics” stuff.
11
I replied inline at 5.1.2.1.13. It’s all getting a bit distant down here. 🙂 Jo
20
The “joys” of nested comments.
10
KR
The problem with the “significant period of time” argument is that the prediction predicts the past very well. No surprise there. The modellers are free to diddle the aerosols etc.
Since the prediction was made in 1988 the results have been miserable. The warming is less than predicted by a draconian CO2 tax.
The ocean heat analysis is also wrong for similar reasons.
The data prior to Argos is almost useless since it is restricted to where shipping went and the shallow nature of the samples.
Since Argos was introduced the ocean warming has been essentially zero.
The emissions scenarios which did occur was about what was predicted for Hansen scenario “A” while the warming was less than scenario “C”.
So calling his realistic scenario “A” a “straw-man argument” reveals poor thinking skills.
20
“Mainstream” models run against actual emissions have in general been quite good, “skeptic” predictions have not (some discussion here).
While earlier XBT and other data is more limited and with more uncertainties than anyone would like, it goes back quite a number of years – the ARGO network is an excellent addition, although even the leads on the ARGO project state that it’s still shaking out, still refining their data and how to interpret it. Not to mention that it only goes to 700 meters – the oceans average 3900 meters deep. Even disregarding the graphic distortions above, looking at just the last 6 years of data is cherrypicking.
Regarding Hansen (still in amazement that skeptics focus on a single 25 year old study, ignoring the current state of the art), it’s noteworthy that CO2 emissions match Scenario C from that paper, with a much lower than expected increase in CH4 and other greenhouse gases – Scenario A simply did not happen. Hansen’s model runs about 25% high given the forcings, which is entirely consistent with the then state of the science 4.2C sensitivity he used, rather than the current estimates of 3-3.5C.
11
And there you have it, KR is admitting for all to see precisely the main flaw in alarmist’s mindset that leads to a “tortured data effect”, thereby leading to suspect, predetermined conclusions. Do you seriously not see what you are saying there? You are admitting, KR, that the data is only appropriate for interpretation after it has been manipulated! Amazing.
10
Winston, remember the early satellite temperatures, and how the “skeptics” loved them because they showed cooling? Remember how after some time there was a realisation that the data hadn’t been properly corrected for orbital variations? After it was, it showed similar warming to all the terrestrial temperature records.
It is not surprising that there may be teething problems with ARGO data. Then again, maybe the oceans are cooling. What would I know.
11
shh John. Let that never be mentioned. UAH always has been and always will be the premier source of temperature data.
11
I can understand you getting all nostalgic, John. I personally don’t recall ever suggesting satellites showed cooling, but I imagine there was a time when such data was fresh and of such a limited time frame that one could gloss over the fact that the global non-polar temperatures fluctuated in sinusoidal fashion about a possible very minor rise in the mean inconsistent with predictions of catastrophic warming whatsoever.
I’m sure you look back on a happier time when scrutiny was limited to a few heretics and the word of alarmists were taken without question. But, your days in the sun are gone. Your CAGW meme is effectively dead and AGW is on life support and fading fast. That can only happen after 30 years of mass indoctrination if the observable facts don’t match the “scenario” predicted for them.
Ironically, I believe the Climate change scam has done more to set back the cause of sensible planetary environmental and political management than any other single factor. So, when you look back in nostalgia over the loss of your cause, don’t forget to cast the blame where it belongs- at the feet of Hansen, Mann, Jones, Wigley, et al. The bond of trust between the scientific community and the general population having been inexorably broken because of exactly this “adjusting data” behind closed doors, avoiding FOI laws and scientific tradition, moral obligation and basic decorum. So, when adjustments are made, they must be fully justified, raw data must be presented unexpurgated alongside, and the whole process open so that appropriate critical evaluation of such adjustments can occur from those not necessarily a part of the “club” or the “team” or whatever other communitarian euphemism you can dream up to describe the clique of group thinkers.
20
KR here’s a link you might want to look at
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/computer_model_temperature_predictions_accurate/
20
I don’t know what models Mr Cook is referring to but my sceptic’s model is working just fine. Snow, snow, snow, it won’t go away you know!
20
Quite so Bruce….the AGW knobheads said we were going to burn up and we would never see snow again.
Skiing in the Cairngorms is now a regular event every winter…
CO2 has been 15 times higher…
They have bombarded the atmosphere with satellite monitoring and weather ballooons…jo Nova reackons as many as 28 million.
Still no warming…and still they argue…
And we are the deniers?
10
David,
Am I simplifying things or is it true to say:
We know the average global temperature (if there is such a thing) in 1980 and again in 2010.
We know the level of CO2 in both 1980 and 2010 and we can calculate what warming the extra CO2 should have caused for the extra 50ppm or so.
Because we know both the temperature difference and the amount of warming CO2 should have added if climate sensitivity was within the range guessed by the IPCC, we can see exactly how accurate the IPCC’s guesses and compare with climate sensitivity based on observation.
My problem is, if I try and do that calc, I end up with a figure that matches closer the IPCC’s version.
What have I missed?
10
What you have missed is that the IPCC uses 1979 as a baseline because that is when ENSO switched from cooling to warming so most recent heating has not involved CO2-AGW. ENSO switched back in 2007, hence we are now cooling. Even the IPCC recognises that the case for high feedback CO2-AGW can’t be made until we have seen the complete ENSO cycle of ~60 years.
My view is that the IPCC science is almost completely wrong because of mistakes by Tyndall, Arrhenius, Sagan, van der Hulst and Hansen. Correct them and you show how ice ages end with no GHG warming, also why the North Atlantic, which provided much if not most post 1990 Global OHC change, is now cooling.
You need a fairly esoteric knowledge of physics to identify two of the mistakes – Tyndall’s and van der Hulst via Sagan. The IPCC’s response seems to have been to issue fake data in a recent paper. This fight will go on for a while because the US State Department is covertly funding half the IPCC’s costs to keep this Mafia carbon scam going.
10
surely the base line doesn’t matter. We should still be able to calculate the expected rise based on the 2 cliamte sensitivities, shouldn’t we?
Niv Shaviv has a good post:
http://www.sciencebits.com/IPCC_nowarming
10
Not if a major part of the warming has come from other factors. The Arctic melting has probably been mainly from a factor other than CO2-AGW, so its effect on OHC has been misinterpreted.
You can’t get the North Atlantic to cool by CO2-AGW.
11
Mydogsgotnonose makes a good point. The Climate wonks read the related literature, so will be very much aware of the research being done on natural climatic cycles, solar cycles, magnetic cycles, etc.
Rather than admit to the difficulty in merging their view of the world with those cycles, they choose to frame the debate around time periods that coincide with what they know is likely to be a warming trend caused by these other cycles.
This is why they hate baselining against a point that is not of their choosing. It is significant that the first objection raised by KR was on this very topic.
21
Rereke – The issue(s) with single-point baseline are:
* No single measurement is without error – overconfidence
* Given variation in the climate, we can expect decade long flat and decade long extremely steep trends – choosing a particular point can be used to deceive, as in trending from 1998 (right after a steep El Nino rise) to the present (around a La Nina).
* Various measurements will have different offsets – changes, trends are indicative of something happening, not apparent offsets. This is an ongoing issue with misrepresentations of measures such as the ACRIM TSI data, as per the Scafetta paper someone else pointed to.
Single point baselines are, IMO and based upon experience, a sign that someone may be lying with the graphics, as seen here, especially Fig. 7.
30
Rereke – Another example of single-point baseline misrepresentation, from a recent WUWT discussion:
Look at the NOAA US data, and compare the (endpoint to endpoint) trends between 1930-1998 and 1934-2008 single year temperatures. One is an extremely steep temperature rise – the other a fairly large decline. Then look at the differences in decadal averages – an incline of 0.1F/decade, somewhere between the cherry-pick extrema.
It’s entirely too easy to present something deceptive with single-point baselines.
10
Again KR, you miss the point of the graphs, which is the variations from Hansens 1988 predictions, and the IPCC 1990 predictions. Nobody is talking about trends. We are talking about verification.
Predictions were made on those dates by people who supposedly are experts in the field, or who have access to experts in the field.
Politicians relied on those predictions. Were they right to do so? The graphs showing the reality of the temperature in the years following indicate not.
I am not cherry-picking the dates. The starting date is inherently part of the prediction.
“It is 1988, and the global temperature is x, and from my research, I predict it will be y twenty five years from now”. Twenty five years on, we find that it was not.
So all that Dr Evans is pointing out is that the evidence demonstrably does not support the hypothesis. Ergo, the hypothesis is wrong, and must be modified to reflect the reality that has been observed.
That is the normal scientific method, is it not?
Of course, this is just the start. When you look at the number of predictions that have been made by various scientists and organisations, there is a lot of verification to be done to see just how accurate the computer models were at the time the prediction was made. I suspect that very few of the predictions will stand up to that sort of audit.
It will be interesting to see what happens when the results are published.
20
Rereke Whakaaro – Regarding single point baselines and ‘predictions’:
There’s a very clear illustration of the perils of single-point baselining shown here, as summarized in this graph of ocean heat content anomaly.
Dr. Evans started his ocean heat content anomaly graph from a single point in 2003 – during a strong La Nina (an extrema), when cooler sea surface temperatures allow greater heat flow into the oceans. He chose a point even more extreme than the example described above! The resulting ‘prediction’ he drew from that extrema point and the actual trend is exceptionally deceptive.
To be blunt, I would in my opinion have to consider that graph of Dr. Evans evidence of either poor statistics or ill intent.
11
Mango
You are simplifying way more than is justified.
There are many other factors other than CO2 which effect temperatures and you have just ignored them. The ocean currents [El Ninos / La Nina ] have been positive from 1978 to 1998 thus causing apparent warming not due to CO2. This must be subtracted.
The amount of water vapor has gone down since 1950 so how is this positive feedback thingy supposed to work ?
http://climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20ESRL%20AtmospericRelativeHumidity%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1948%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
The actual warming rate is about 1/2 ° C per century and does not support the theories of CAGW.
10
Thanks NetDr
Perhaps I have over simplified
I don’t post here often, so just for info, I don’t accept the AGW hypothesis. I’ve read many of David and Jo’s articles, and have sometimes disagreed with things Jo has written (more politics than science), but I’m still sceptical about the whole CO2 is evil meme
10
Just had time for a quick scan of the piece, but it sure looks good and powerful for helping to get past the ‘denier! denier!’ wail (or is it wall?) that can so easily rear up when modest criticism is made of the climate extremists’ point of view. Looking forward to getting back for a slower read of it when I get the chance.
20
KR, simply stated Q=U+W. Can DWIR from CO2 do work? If not how can it cause an increase in Q since a higher energy object does not absorb lower energy radiation. ie. no increase in U.
10
What the climate science propagandists do is first claim ‘back radiation’ exists. then if you persist in using a scientific argument they revert to an increased impedance to IR transmission to space. That is perfectly correct except for the inconvenient truth that if you reformulate the problem in standard physics’ terms, you don’t get the high positive feedback which is the basis of the CAGW scare.
In essence, the function of the models is to blind people with science and it takes a lot of time even for a person like me with very high level physics to catch them fiddling. However, there are 1000s who, very annoyed by the corruption of science shown by Climategate, have spent the time doing the spadework.
My view is that those who set up the science in the first place made mistakes but the fast warming in the early 1990s gave them a false sense of security. In 1997 when CO2 was shown to follow T at the end of ice ages, they had to calibrate CO2 climate sensitivity against modern warming, hence the false hockey-sticks AND they also had to devise another amplification of end of ice age tsi increase.
In 2005 , Hansen claimed the latter is the albedo difference between dry and wet ice. The real answer is something totally different, and it explains recent Arctic melting. The response by the activists to criticism , as shown here, is to throw their toys out of the pram and to threaten to put ‘deniers’ on trial for eco-crime. in Germany, they are almost at critical mass, a new Nazi tyranny. In the UK and Australia, they are trying to identify critics and get them sacked from their jobs. I’m retired!
10
See the Why greenhouse gas warming doesn’t break the second law of thermodynamics discussion here on JoNova.
11
DLR is Prevost Exchange Energy which can do no thermodynamic work. At equilibrium the radiometer shields the exactly equal IR flux from the opposite direction which cancels it out, also the extra energy which causes real heat transfer, hot to cold.
Arrhenius was mistaken in thinking the S-B equation for a single emitter defines net energy emitted. The definitive experiment is a Dutch PhD thesis. The student shinned up an 800 foot high radio mast at night and measured Up-Down IR vs height. It fell exponentially to zero – Beer-Lambert for the absorption of IR emitted from the Earth’s surface
So, DLR is a measure of temperature convolved with emissivity [I once built a pyrometer based on sampling its spectrum at two wavelengths]. What it does is to link at the speed of light the IR density of states of the emitter/absorber pair.
You prove this by a thought experiment. Suddenly reduce air temperature and it emits less total energy. Less of it is absorbed by the Earth’s surface so it has holes in the its IR density of states. These are then filled by energy from molecular motion. That increases the conversion rate of kinetic to IR energy hence more IR is emitted to heat up the air.
So, DLR is a control system signal: it is not converted to heat when absorbed. You show how false is the climate science explanation by a thought experiment. Imagine you’re on a beach, air temperature 25°C, sand temperature 30°C and it’s windy. You put up a wind break and to keep convection plus radiation constant, the sand temperature rises to 45°C.
Do the sums assuming sand emissivity = 0.85 and atmosphere emissivity/absorptivity = 0.2, defined as the fraction of that extra IR radiant energy absorbed. Assuming half that absorbed IR is re-emitted downwards, the DLR increase is 5.4 times AR4’s 1.6 W/m^2 attributed to net median AGW.
What you do by putting up the windbreak is to add a mini UHI and it has a major effect on DLR so why doesn’t climate science claim UHI causes most global warming, which is what should be the case if DLR can do thermodynamic work!
20
Excellent article, Dr. Evans. Please write another exploring the failure of mainstream climate science to aggressively pursue empirical research on the “feedbacks.” It seems that mainstream climate science is not interested in such research. I do not count computer models as empirical research.
30
I have lost the reference to analysis that showed little or or no increase in atmospheric humidity (water content), a modeled requirement for amplification. If so, that discussion would be one more data reference for Dr. Evans.
10
They just don’t get it. Or, as Bono would say, “stuck in a moment we can’t get out off.”
To the tune of whatever ditty you like.
—————————————————————————————–
I’m a little radiation, radiation, radiation, I’m a little radiation, all day long
Down through the mesopause , mesopause , mesopause, down through the , menopause, all day long.
Down through tropopause, tropopause, tropopause, down through,tropopause, all day long.
Now I’m a little kinetic, kinetic, kinetic I’m a little kinetic, all day long
Up through the pressure, pressure, pressure, up through the pressure, all day long.
Back to a little radiation, radiation, radiation, I’m a little radiation, all day long.
—————————————————————————————————————————-
Consider how a refrigerator works – 2 thermostats going down, and a heat pump going up.
What happens to pressured gas through a condenser and then a separation device?
Co2 forcing, what dribble.
10
Thank you, Dr David M.W. Evans, no good a design, with out the nuts and bolts that puts it together.
Of that design, let us speak.
Greenhouse or refrigerator – pick one.
20
And for those religious Co2 nutters.
Your God, would not give you a greenhouse, when you needed a refrigerator.
10
KR:
Dr Evans has presented what is in my opinion a clear and well documented synopsis of the Skeptic position. Please point me to where there is a similar and perhaps equally persuasive presentation of the Warmist position.
I have looked, and I can’t find it.
-tw
10
I would disagree – Dr. Evans has, as I noted above, distorted the graphs, made strawman arguments, and has not presented any support for a low climate sensitivity, which is apparently the purpose of his article.
As to the current theories on global warming, I would recommend first The Discovery of Global Warming, and for a quick overview of the current issue, a short summary.
11
Your statement calls for the “proving” of a negative eg – “Prove to me that you did not do it”.
What is really required is for someone from your side to actually show there is ANY positive “climate sensitivity – that is, a sustainable positive feedback mechanism at work.
To the best of my knowledge, in all of nature there has never been established an example of a sustainable positive feedback mechanism (one that can feed on itself and grow without the addition of an external driver, or energy source). And yet your entire CAGW “theory” depends completely on the existence of just such a mechanism.
The human body is capable of some 8,000 processes, and all of them, except two, are negative feedback loops. The two exceptions are heart attacks and orgasms.
Try sustaining either for any length of time.
10
At my age, I am not sure that they might not be the same thing.
20
I fully concur – and I’ve tried both.
20
KR here are 900 peer reviewed papers for you to look at.
And the following is a rebuttal to SkS’s failed attempt to ‘debunk’ the list.
Google Scholar Illiteracy at Skeptical Science
10
A lay persons question –
If water vapour in the troposphere does not excede more than about 4% in the tropics and the troposphere holds about 97% of atmospheric water vapour and CO2 combines with water vapour to form carbonic acid, then the forcing causing an increase of ‘greenhouse’ gases,CO2 and water vapour can only mean more rain so as to keep the system in equilibrium?
10
Stop it Kevin. No such thing as greenhouse gasses.
Each molecule, when in a kinetic state is like a Sun. Where is that forcing, when they radiate in equal directions.
10
If CO2 gets hot what forces it? Or is each molecule of CO2 a mini Sun?
10
Stop it or you will go blind -crikey,I’m looking but I still can’t see a greenhouse!
10
<blockquoteThe direct effect of CO2 is well-established physics, based on laboratory results, and known for over a century.[2]
Dr Evans cites a reference ‘2 ‘ here that goes nowhere. I’m disappointed not to find reference to any primary source for the greenhouse effect theory that the sentence implies and one might expect the citation to give. Such a statement beggars proper citation.
May I ask what laboratory results are referred to and where can one find the primary source documents.
It seems Svente Arrhenius misapprehended what Fourier, Tyndall and others had written to come up with the greenhouse effect theory.
Tyndall was more interested in water vapour anyway. (See his lecture “On radiation through the Earth’s atmosphere” 23-1-1863). It seems to me that all AGW science and most sceptics (those who believe a greenhouse effect is real but not significant) are simply accepting and plagiarising the muddled view of Arrhenius – blindly regurgitating it, like here, in the opening or closing remarks of their discourses on the topic of AGW. Simple non-mathematical versions of Arrhenius’ ideas can be found in the English translation of his book “Worlds in the Making” 1908.
We might remember that from 1896 to the rise of the alarmist upstarts like Bolin, Jones and the other Villach conspirators in the late 1960’s and 1970’s, Arrhenius’ greenhouse effect theory was dismissed by mainstream science because it was unphysical and defied laws of thermodynamics.
I would be very interested if the ‘Boxer’ (mydogsgotnonose) could clarify and expand on the terms he used in reply above so I can better understand all he/she is saying – it’s most interesting.
For mine the fight involves both science and politics. If one can convince those of the political class that the greenhouse effect theory is bunk then it’s game over for the giant scam. A Royal Commission with the very narrow terms of reference to only investigate the greenhouse effect theory might be a clincher. Efforts for a R-C with wide terms of reference regarding AGW are so far rejected. Imagine all the billions the Labor government of Australia now expends on ‘Climate Change’, and all the billions that the Coalition (Hunt/Turnbull plan) would spend on “Direct Action’ – if a tiny amount of that cost were spent on a Royal Commission to test the veracity of the greenhouse effect theory the utility for Australians and the world might be enormous. Valuable money could then be committed to useful projects like protecting people from dangers associated with drought, storms, floods and bushfires.
As part of an intelligence gathering effort I would very much appreciate communications of primary source historical scientific documents (like that quoted above from Tyndall) . Empirical evidence for the greenhouse effect theory or against it is what is needed. Correspondence can be sent to [email protected]
In despair for empirical evidence about the greenhouse effect theory an experiment was designed in a form reproducible by students at home or in school. It shows CO2 does not increase temperature by back-scattered transfer of infra-red radiation above the temperature from insolation of the sun alone. (It has been posted here under an Unthreaded thread). (The eight leading Australian professors of Climate Change alarmism could not bring themselves to comment / review it – except David Karoly who said there was nothing to surprise him here.)
10
“The direct effect of CO2 is well-established physics, based on laboratory results, and known for over a century.”
I also share some concern about this blanket statement. In the context of the present post Dr. Evans is certainly free to assume the “direct effect of CO2” as a practical matter, because his larger point is that even assuming this direct effect, the feedbacks are where the action is at. This is a reasonable approach to the debate and, indeed, feedbacks are a very appropriate, perhaps even best place, to stake out an argument.
However, some of us still want to know whether this alleged direct effect of CO2 is even as clear cut as it is often argued to be.
Specifically, we know that laboratory experiments do not fully or completely replicate the earth-atmosphere system. Thus, right from the get-go we have to soften the statement to something more along the lines of “All things being equal, a doubling of CO2 will result in x.” Well, what does “all things being equal” mean, and what can it possibly mean in the context of applying a lab experiment to the real world situation?
Did these experiments, the results of which have been known “for over a century,” resemble anything that could be applied to the live atmosphere in a way in which we can even evaluate what things we are retaining as “equal” and what things are different? Are the experiments performed with closed containers or containers open to space? If closed, is there increasing pressure from introduction of CO2? Is the container large enough to permit air flow and circulation and the natural movements and interactions that molecules would experience on a large scale? And on and on. In fact, there are so many differences that we are hard pressed to find a single aspect of a lab experiment that is consonant to the real world. As a result, all we can really say is that: in a particular experiment, we noted result x, which may or may not have any similarity with the real world.
Now, some would argue, as does Dr. Evans, that what matters is feedbacks. We could even acknowledge, as does Dr. Evans, that there are too many feedbacks to take into account “There are literally thousands of feedbacks, each of which either reinforces or opposes the direct warming effect of the extra CO2.”
We can further call these processes direct effects, feedbacks, forcings, or whatever we want to call them. But the fact of the matter is that these are all live parameters — physical realities — that affect the system and any result we get from the system. We could say, for example, that “CO2 causes x, but that x is then moderated by a, b, c . . . z, such that the ultimate outcome is not x.” However, alternatively we would be just as justified in saying that “*in the given atmospheric system that we have* CO2 doesn’t in fact cause x.” In other words, given the system we are working with, the “direct effect” so-labeled, doesn’t attein. It is a question of semantics only.
And thus we come to the crux of the matter. There are no lab experiments that faithfully replicate the system in question. We simply cannot ever say “all things being equal” doubling CO2 will do x, because we *know* that all things are not equal. Whether we call the physical realities “effects” or “feedbacks” or “forcings” or anything else does not change the facts that: (i) we have no theory that adequately explains or predicts what change in temperature will result from a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere, (ii) therefore, we have no idea what change in temperature will actually result in the real world, and (iii) the best we can do is look at observations, which to the limited extent we have them before us, demonstrate that CO2 is either a bit player or irrelevant.
None of this is meant to detract from Dr. Evans’ otherwise very helpful post. I agree with him that there is much merit to keeping our eye on the feedbacks, particularly from a standpoint of countering the alleged positive feedbacks assumed by the IPCC et al. What I do propose is that we ought not assume that any limited experiment with CO2 in the lab provides us any great insight into an alleged “direct effect” of CO2 in the real world.
10
David; Your article explains the issue perfectly. I could not imagine a better or more concise presentation. The feedbacks are indeed the entire crux of the issue and the data all points one way. Any warmist who does not at least very seriously question his position after reading this is driven by beliefs and politics not science and fact. Unfortunately, such people cannot be reached by logical debate.
10
They are no so concerned with their position. It is the longevity of their revenue stream that is of greater concern, I suspect.
Word is on the grapevine that budgets are, “about to be trimmed”, again.
10
Willis Eschenbach AT WUWTsays:
January 24, 2012 at 1:42 pm
When I illustrated my post called “Perpetuum Mobile“, I chose a photo of a Civil War era perpetual motion machine, because that’s what they are in my mind—a relic of a time long ago when people hadn’t grasped that such a machine is an impossibility.
However, I’m starting to see that perpetual motion still maintains its historical death grip on the scientific illiterati. And I can kinda see why, everyone wants something for nothing.
And truly, people, I hate to bust your bubble and maybe I can’t do so in any case, but the heat can’t flow in the silver wire forever. That would be perpetual motion, and the laws of thermodynamics don’t allow that.
Look, I know that we all break various laws all the time, someone once estimated that Americans break one to three laws every day.
But the laws of thermodynamics aren’t like that. They are not just good ideas, or regulations put in place to protect us from each other or from ourselves.
As far as anyone has ever been able to determine (and lots have tried) those laws simply can’t be broken. That’s why they are called the Laws of Thermodynamics, and not the Good Ideas of Thermodynamics. Those laws say we can’t have a perpetual motion machine driven by gravity.
So if you want to continue to believe that heat will flow through the silver wire forever and ever without end, and that the mystery power that will make it do that is gravity, or lapse rates, or unicorns, or density-driven molecular interactions, or “gravito-thermal forces” or anything else, be my guest. As I pointed out with my Civil War machine, that mistake has a long and storied history, you’re not the first to believe in energetic fairies and Maxwell’s demons.
Just don’t expect your belief, that gravity can do continuous unending work forever and ever amen, to be widely shared in the scientific community …
w.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
Willis now knows that a new paradigm has arrived, and for sciences sake, I do hope the new United Theory Of Climate, remains questioned to the ninth degree.
10
I’m getting a little tired of Willis. The atmospheric lapse rate is maintained by convection which is driven by solar energy input and convection only exists because of a gravity field(no convection in the ISS – hence lots of fans to circulate air). That’s the sense in which gravity “causes” warming of the surface.
Frankly I’m seeing lots of stupid articles on WUWT lately and even more stupid comments.
10
Yes WUWT, it has become a dinosaur, the science went out of it a while ago. But, I do admire Willis for his never ending quest for the truth.
Same as Judith Currys blog, there is a concerted effort by American liberals (that’s lefto’s to us) to muddy the science there, as well.
That pommy, Roger Tattersall, has got if all over WUWT at the moment, in science. Actually go there now, Hans Jelbring has just posted, what seems, indisputable facts about his theory.
10
Yeah well Willis got it severely wrong with his conducting/absorbing/emitting shell model and AFAIK never admitted it. He still thinks back radiation does something. Putting a second shell around the first increases the temperature of the original emitter??? We could do this with a real experiment in a well equipped physics lab.
I don’t have any problem with an radiation absorbing gas getting warmer when radiation of the right wavelength passes through it. This will occur in the atmosphere with LW radiation from the ground(also occurs in the stratosphere with solar UV absorption – this is what *causes* the stratosphere). Convection then brings the extra energy to the surface in the LW case and warms it slightly. Back radiation not required.
Which also raises the cooling stratosphere issue. Why this should be a function of CO2 and not solar UV is beyond me. Sol is a variable star in the UV.
As for the Jelbring paper – Jesus wept. I give up. Exactly what those assumptions have to do with a real planetary atmosphere is beyond me. He may be right but is utterly pointless.
A convective overturning atmosphere will tend towards adiabatic. In the real world if there’s no convection, depending where the energy source is and the absorbing properties of the atmosphere the lapse rate can be almost anything other than adiabatic.
10
Heh – here’s the complete, simple explanation why Jelbring is wrong:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/24/refutation-of-stable-thermal-equilibrium-lapse-rates/#more-55356
10
Subsequent to that explanation Robert Brown had this to say.
“Personally, I think the DALR is caused by the greenhouse effect and gravity, working together to maintain the heat differentials that drive the troposphere. Heresy, I’m sure, on this blog, but there it is.
rgb”
Now tell me he isn’t confused.
10
I would say the bulk of the pro AGW people, be they science or political based know they are scamming. Look at their “cure” tax the northern hemisphere to a standstill and and ship the jobs and prosperity to the largely unregulated India and China, just what do they expect to achieve with this except far far worse pollution from their unregulated industry? If they proposed plans that could actually work then maybe they would have a shred of credibility but sadly not a shred!
10
I don’t think they are. They genuinely believe that the existing evidence points to dangerous warming caused by the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and that we are responsible for that increase.
The main reason jobs are being shipped to China and India has nothing to do with AGW or a carbon tax.
Ultimately, until climate related disasters are so obvious that blind freddy can’t ignore them, it will be impossible to get coordinated world wide action.
10
And if the climate related disasters don’t happen – what then?
But I also agree with you – most people who subscribe to AGW do believe it is correct. (decieved – not decievers).
There would be a minority who do not believe who seek to exploit belief in AGW for their own ends.
Pesonally the key mistake AGW believers make is to not question the processes by which the AGW artefacts are made and published. They assume that the processes are both honest and valid – and as it turns out – they are neither.
Would you trust a law court where the accused was not allowed to defend himself? Process violations can be very subtle, and even practitioners in the field can come to believe that their broken processes are still honest and valid.
10
My position is to have my doubts, but act now. If the climate disasters don’t happen, or our understanding improves to the extent that we can see that there is no risk, then we can return to business as usual.
As far as my doubts are concerned, I expect that if this decade warms substantially, then my doubts will be gone. If there is no warming, or cooling, then I will still have doubts.
10
You crack me up John,
you beleive in AGW and if it warms you will still beleive in AGW and if it does not warm you will still beleive in AGW.
Thumbs up for the comedy.
10
JB,
Have we had any climate related disasters that have been attributed to climate change yet ? I just wondered how that could be, after all, we have only seen 0.7c degree warming in 150 years !
10
Truth, follows truth.
Lies, follows lies.
The Earth atmosphere is a blanket, we are on its outside. We are protected from the heat of our Sun which is on the inside our blanket.
Our blanket is woven of opaque & gas by pressure, stretching from the top of our atmosphere to the earths surface.
I am the way, I am the truth, I am the reasoning of a man.
10
Are you saying there is a blanket around the sun? I thought the fantasy always began with us under the blanket?
10
No, he’s saying he’s under the opaque blanket and the atmosphere therein is under gas by pressure.
10
Kevin are you sure?
I take that as saying we are in space looking down on Earth
If the sun is on the inside of the blanket then that infers the blanket is wrapped around the sun. Also if it is “our” blanket this also infers the blanket wraps around the sun and the Earth with standing on the outside looking in.
Now i have a head ache………………
10
No need for a Penadol.
The blanket is wrapped around the earth, the heat is generated by the sun, under the blanket, we are protected on the other side of our atmosphere (blanket) to the sun.
It is so.
10
The reason for the lies: Two words:
PEAK OIL.
10
It has occurred to me that somebody up there knows more than they are letting on and that’s the reason for the AGW story. However then they’d be building nukes as fast as we could and they aren’t. Also if you look at what they do not say(a much more reliable guide to what politicians really believe)you’d realise they don’t believe in AGW. Anyway Peak Oil is BS. You can’t produce more oil than there is demand or the storages all fill up. I’ve read that they are indeed at high levels. Also there seems to be a story each week about the discovery of more hydrocarbon fuels and at current prices coal to oil is a goer. Done on large scale with nuke process heat it would be interesting to see what barrel costs. You get refined product out of F-T process not crude.
10
That’s now, back then well, remember. The fear of Peak Oil correlate to Hansen’s fantasies.
10
Thus far, the science of atmosphere has rested on the paradigm of Greenhouse.
It is a misinterpretation of the observations of the french scientist Baron Fourier by Arrhenius in 1896. It is that misconception, of previous known physical laws , that has polluted our perceptions of the earths atmosphere into the modern ages.
To shift that invalid principal one has to offer a different perception born of observations and proved in the universal application of it in, within a symbolic syntax (maths).
This is the crux of the matter
The current paradigm demands our atmosphere is gas in an enclosed house.
The correct principal is that the enclosure itself is the whole of the atmosphere. Consider the greenhouse roof to start at the earths surface and end at the top of our atmosphere.
The invalid greenhouse principal is false when subjected to the principal of conservation of energy. They cannot explain why it is so except for the introduction of a new invalid principal.
As we have always done, when our knowledge of the universe of physics reaches the end of our ability to predicate, we fear the unknown. We naturally conserve our existence and fear is a mechanism of this conservation.
It must be so, that earth, water, air, are different forms of the manifestation of energy in mass. The perception of a greenhouse allows a supposition that the energy equation of the equilibrium of mass can be different in its different forms of manifestation.
Baron Fourier would be aghast.
10
Markus, Right or wrong, the word you want is “principle” not “principal”
I know I used to be a School “Principal”
10
And whom did you teach to think?
10
From Tallblokes blog 5 days ago.
markus says:
January 22, 2012 at 7:06 am
Arrhenius, a scientists bias. Greenhouse’s were a tools used in cold Europe.
Prevalent at the time of Arrhenius, they were used for the enhancement of the process of biological life. Wrong.
Why wouldn’t a man, think an analogy, could correlate to the creation of life on Earth. As the vessel of life the atmosphere. Wrong.
The certainty of man to err.
Hans Jullrig says:
January 22, 2012 at 8:43 am
markus says:
January 21, 2012 at 11:29 pm
Thank you very much for the interesting perspective you are describing. Here is some additional information.
Svante Ahrrenius got a nobel prize in chemistry, not because of his calculations of a hypothetical unproven greenhouse effect. He was challenged and disproven about this ideas during the first decade after year 1900.
From Wikipedia:Greenhouse effect
“Arrhenius developed a theory to explain the ice ages, and in 1896 he was the first scientist to speculate that changes in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect.[4] He was influenced by the work of others, including Joseph Fourier. Arrhenius used the infrared observations of the moon by Frank Washington Very and Samuel Pierpont Langley at the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh to calculate the absorption of infrared radiation by atmospheric CO2 and water vapour. Using ‘Stefan’s law’ (better known as the Stefan Boltzmann law), he formulated his greenhouse law.
In its original form, Arrhenius’ greenhouse law reads as follows:if the quantity of carbonic acid increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression.
This simplified expression is still used today:
ΔF = α ln(C/C0)
Arrhenius’ high absorption values for CO2, however, met criticism by Knut Ångström in 1900, who published the first modern infrared spectrum of CO2 with two absorption bands. Arrhenius replied strongly in 1901 (Annalen der Physik), dismissing the critique altogether.”
It can be mentioned that Ångström was a famous experimentalist and a part of Stockholm University is named after him as “Ångström Laboratories”
The Swedish professor in meteorology Bert Bolin at Stockholm University picked up Ahrrenius ideas when becoming the first chairman of IPCC and promoted them internationally and nationally. However, Bolin was never any good scientist but a very clever politician and his word about funding all types of climate research in Sweden was in fact decided by him prsonally. He was constantly attending the highest Swedish political forum “The Swedish councel for state affairs” and was considered THE expert regarding science. No politician would question his judgement for 20 years regardless of party belonging.
Politics had beaten common sense and scientific methods in the area of climate science. It should also be mentioned that Stockholm University had (has) very strong ties with University of East Anglia. 5 years ago about 25 foreign researcher were working at Stockholm University with climate change research and most of them originated from UEA.
10
Thanks for your patience, Jo Nova, I know I’m a bit of a delinquent.
Again, thank you for your efforts, during this sorry saga.
Bye.
Markus Fitzhenry.
10
“The ocean temperature has been basically flat since we started measuring it properly, and not warming
as quicklyas the climate models predict.”10
Hi,
Very good summary.
I guess I would have hammered in the nail by pointing out that the aerosol story is thin – because the aerosols are mainly released in the northern hemisphere not the southern yet the northern hemishpere isnt warming faster than the south. I find that part of the story quite convincing.
Cheers
10
the monolithic MSM is too busy giving space to madmen like Morosov who can’t even understand polls that show CAGW scepticism is not a “fringe belief”:
23 Jan: Slate: Evgeny Morosov: Warning: This Site Contains Conspiracy Theories
Does Google have a responsibility to help stop the spread of 9/11 denialism, anti-vaccine activism, and other fringe beliefs?
People who deny global warming, oppose the Darwinian account of evolution, refuse to see the causal link between HIV and AIDS, and think that 9/11 was an inside job have put the Internet to great use. Initially, the Internet helped them find and recruit like-minded individuals and promote events and petitions favorable to their causes. However, as so much of our public life has shifted online, they have branched out into manipulating search engines, editing Wikipedia entries, harassing scientists who oppose whatever pet theory they happen to believe in, and amassing digitized scraps of “evidence” that they proudly present to potential recruits…
What to do then? Well, perhaps, it’s time to accept that many of these communities aren’t going to lose core members regardless of how much science or evidence is poured on them. Instead, resources should go into thwarting their growth by targeting their potential—rather than existent—members.
Today, anyone who searches for “is global warming real” or “risks of vaccination” or “who caused 9/11?” on Google or Bing is just a few clicks away from joining one of such communities. Given that censorship of search engines is not an appealing or even particularly viable option, what can be done to ensure that users are made aware that all the pseudoscientific advice they are likely to encounter may not be backed by science?
The options aren’t many. One is to train our browsers to flag information that may be suspicious or disputed…
The trick here is to come up with a database of disputed claims that itself would correspond to the latest consensus in modern science—a challenging goal that projects like “Dispute Finder” are tackling head on.
The second—and not necessarily mutually exclusive—option is to nudge search engines to take more responsibility for their index and exercise a heavier curatorial control in presenting search results for issues like “global warming” or “vaccination.”…
Thus, whenever users are presented with search results that are likely to send them to sites run by pseudoscientists or conspiracy theorists, Google may simply display a huge red banner asking users to exercise caution and check a previously generated list of authoritative resources before making up their minds.
In more than a dozen countries Google already does something similar for users who are searching for terms like “ways to die” or “suicidal thoughts” by placing a prominent red note urging them to call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. It may seem paternalistic, but this is the kind of nonintrusive paternalism that might be saving lives without interfering with the search results. Of course, such a move might trigger conspiracy theories of its own—e.g. is Google shilling for Big Pharma or for Al Gore?—but this is a risk worth taking as long as it can help thwart the growth of fringe movements…
It’s not unreasonable to think that denialists of global warming or benefits of vaccination are online friends with other denialists. As such, finding information that contradicts one’s views would be even harder. This is one more reason for Google to atone for its sins and ensure that subjects dominated by pseudoscience and conspiracy theories are given a socially responsible curated treatment.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/01/anti_vaccine_activists_9_11_deniers_and_google_s_social_search_.single.html
a spook and a media darling?
George Soros Open Society Fellowship:
Fellow: Evgeny Morozov
2008–2009
Evgeny Morozov is an online media and digital activism expert from Belarus. As an Open Society Fellow, he worked on The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, his critically acclaimed book published in January 2011. In it, Morozov punctures popular myths about the power of the internet to undermine authoritarian regimes.
Currently a visiting scholar at Stanford University, Morozov was formerly a Yahoo! fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University and has served as director of new media at Transitions Online, a Prague-based media-development organization. His writing has appeared in the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Newsweek, the Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, Slate, Le Monde, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Review, Foreign Policy, Project Syndicate, Dissent, and many other publications.
http://www.soros.org/initiatives/fellowship/fellows/morozov_2008
10
I confess to being pretty-much a layman when it comes to “climate science”, but surely the atmosphere, together with the oceans, act as a giant evaporative air conditioner that keeps the planet cool, rather than as a “greenhouse” which keeps it warm?
Consider the following thought experiment:
Imagine the earth as it is now, but with the “atmosphere” removed and replaced with a “something” that had none of the properties of our current atmosphere, except that it maintained the equivalent of atmospheric pressure at sea level and was completely transparent to sunlight.
Surely the oceans, now deprived of the ability to shed heat via the evaporative process, would simply get hotter and hotter until they boiled away at 100 degrees C?
Since it can’t be that simple, what am I missing?
10
Add to your thought experiment the effects of gravity and of the boiled water. The water would not disappear into space but would become part of the atmosphere. At some point there would be a very large amount of water in the atmosphere but still a large amount of water still in the oceans. What happens next?
10
No, there is no “atmosphere” for the water vapour to become part of. – Imagine our “atmosphere” replaced by an encasing glass globe say, 100 metres above sea level, and some kind of pressure-relief mechanism.
Let’s make it even simpler – imagine we could inject an aerosol into the existing atmosphere to prevent entirely the process of evaporation. We now only have convection of air currents and radiative processes for the oceans to “lose” heat to space.
We know from existing measurements that these processes alone are insufficient to keep pace with the rate of accumulation of heat energy from the sun.
So everything heats up.
Ergo, far from “heating” the planet, the atmosphere ultimately acts to cool it.
10
sorry you said it had the same properties of our atmosphere apart from its property of being transparent to all EM
10
No.
I said it had NONE of the properties of our atmosphere EXCEPT for transparency and maintaining pressure (to get around a changing boiling point for water).
But please keep going, for I am genuinely gobsmacked by this.
10
hmmm not sure I understand it anyway… but I’ll write something regardless. You say it is maintaining atmospheric pressure. How would it be doing this?
The boiling oceans will still produce a gas around the planet that will affect further boiling and change the effects of the sun and do some absorbing.
And yes, the atmosphere does act to moderate the extremes that would occur without an atmosphere – how on the side facing the sun and cold on the other side. What is confusing you?
10
Nothing is confusing me Gee Aye – not even your attempts to obfuscate.
If evaporation was not occurring then the oceans would be continually heating up. Since the oceans neither acquire, nor lose heat energy at anything like the same rate as the atmosphere, then the fact the earth is rotating would have little influence on the outcome.
So, the fact remains, evaporation from the oceans to the atmosphere must be dominating influence on our climate, NOT CO2 or anything else.
And since this evaporation process is ultimately a COOLING process, then overall the atmosphere acts to COOL the earth, not HEAT it.
Ergo, the entire “greenhouse theory” is crap, and the state of the global climate is beyond the capacity of Man to influence to any great degree, short of injecting something into the atmosphere which would prevent evaporation.
20
Water is the coolant. Oceans heat in the tropics, cause clouds. Big ones which go to 70,000 feet sometimes. Cloud tops radiate to space quite well as there’s not much atmosphere above them. Colder water returns to Earth as rain.
This goes on ALL the time in the tropics. Thunderstorms aren’t the occasional events that you might think fom sampling one point.
10
“Cloud tops radiate to space quite well as there’s not much atmosphere above them.”
Only about 85klms to the mesospause, not much at all really.
10
I hope you don’t mind if I come in here, not with anything to offer, but just an observation.
I studiously stay out of these conversations because they are usually beyond me, but I always read them very carefully, because what they do achieve is to add to the tiny knowledge base I (think I may) have, and I always learn something.
I have my favourite comic strips from newspapers over the years, mainly The Katzenjammer Kids, Asterix The Gaul, and The Wizard of Id.
I was never really a great fan of Charlie Brown, as it always seemed average, but oddly, one Charlie Brown comic panel stood out over my whole life, and it was published as early as the late 60’s early 70’s and I can use it here as an analogy.
Lucy, Linus, and Charlie are laying on their backs on the top of a hill looking up at the clouds.
I feel a little like Charlie Brown when I see Posts like this. I can see the clouds, and even though they indicate something, I can’t quite see what those others do. I know that those images Linus can see are there and if I work hard I can begin to make them out. What it brings home to me is that I need to look harder, and then I too, will see what those others see.
I know that Charlie Brown philosophy is pretty basic, but what is happening is that the vast general populace is not even looking for what Charlie Brown sees, let alone what Linus sees.
Sorry to reduce this wonderful Post and comments to the comic book level.
Tony.
10
Good story. What I get from that is that Linus was a pratt who liked to bignote himself with pseudo-intellectual waffle. Charlie Brown was spot on.
“What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown?
Charlie Brown: Well, I was going to say I saw a ducky and a horsie, but then I stopped looking at the clouds. Where I’m looking I can see a bullsh*t artist though.”
10
MattB
Hey!
Nice subliminal backhander to all those making studious comments here.
Tony.
10
Tony – you need to get with the internet jingo. You should have said “I see what you did there.”
10
Matt B
How right you are.
I, er, see what you did there.
(Forgot to proof read before hitting Enter)
Tony.
10
I was going with the recent theme of this site of making up words by blending two other words. Jargon and lingo = jingo:)
10
Do you see Tony7 – what Linus claims to see IS NOT THERE! Your Moncktons or whoever talk like Linus to make Charlie feel dumb and just take his word for it.
10
And your crowd doesn’t?
Tony.
10
In fairness Linus’ blanket suggests he’d most likely be a warmist:)
10
Exactly why would a “warmist” need a blanket?
And who says what Linus sees is “not there”?
If memory serves, Linus is the only character in the strip with anything amounting to “knowledge” (he can play the piano).
10
I have a question for you, Dr. Evans, if you don’t mind. You have argued that it is premature to attribute most warming to AGW with high confidence, because of the uncertainty we cannot factor in due to natural variability. In attribution analyses, we need to estimate the sole contribution of AGW to historical warming that is recent.
The central estimate for that contribution is still about 100%?
Proving any greater uncertainty broadens the range of all possible values. However here is clincher: What is good for the goose is also good for the gander? It extrapolates out in both directions. All we have done is shown that Natural forcings could be positive or negative over the recent past. We end up establishing greater uncertainty that does not tell us which direction we may go in.
Try as we all may no scientist ANYWHERE has found the smoking gun that is causing temperature background rises. The alternative candidate for a “natural” warming aside from CO2’s influence cannot be found.
Solar forcing is flat lining, and all volcanic activity flat. Is it not reasonable to proceed to continue to calculate the effects of AGW as similar to all of the recent warming? Given that mildest climate change proponents see more (net negative natural forcing) as well as less (net positive natural forcing) and present their case as solid. What you are proposing is not known certainty. Until we can define accurately the alternatives of a strong natural forcing, we cannot know. This then is not science as no knowable alternative can be found. The most convincing case still remains and is yet to be proven wrong and incorrect by the greater scientific community – the threat of extreme Global Warming potential never left and is still with us.
The resultant evidences of additional budgeted energies manifesting in regional parts of globe such as polar Arctic and the overwhelming evidence of ice fringes of Greenland and Antarctica being eroded by where warmer seas touch those ice packs are signs of extra energy budgets due to melting evidence. We all know about the increasing sea ice for example around Antarctica – we are not talking about the recovery of juvenile thin ice growth due to winter.
We are referring to evidence that ancient ice / historical non-seasonal ice – perhaps 500 to 2000 years old is melting and just beginning. This is where oceanic currents get to this ancient ice. As well the La Nina’s of the last two years have been the warmest minimums since records were made.
And any climate follower would realize – these cycles are simply how climate equalizes occasionally – by wind and oceanic current. It is not what some think – new ice age cometh or that we are let off the hook over global warming to the end of this century and beyond. That is the thing – this warming trend may osculate like a sine wave but the “cine wave doth creep ever upwards”. It may not plateau for at least another 200 hundred years depending on we do.
The way we perceive climate as opposed to present is short term memory. Yearly subtle shifts in regions and in others dramatic and alarming trends would indicate there will come a time where the certainty of the warming influences overtakes subtle incremental. We will then know as will the general public that all bets are off as to where it is headed. The signs are just beginning. It is when those forcings begin to affect the minimum influences of winter and maximum peaks into our summers.
For these facts we would also have to ignore well over various 100 science disciplines and their web sites with data showing, detailing and documenting clearly manifest evidences of an increased warming budget globally. Therefore we can conclude that the uncertainty is mostly in the direction of positive natural forcings.
As to the Hansen Graph. Somewhat misleading graph as it shows un adjusted data since 1988! Move with science and be fair and even handed and so should climate anti-warmists. Do not distort the science or authors please.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/HansenActualPrediction.png
Figure 1: Observed temperature change (GISTEMP, blue) and with solar, volcanic and El Niño Southern Oscillation effects removed by Foster and Rahmstorf (green) vs. Hansen Scenario B trend adjusted downward 16% to reflect the observed changes in radiative forcings since 1988, using a 1986 to 1990 baseline.
10
In 1988, Hanson was predicting what the temperature would be now (2012). It is not a distortion of the science to point out that his prediction was wrong. Or is Saint Hanson off limits?
You seemed to have missed the central point of the post – which is that the argument is about the direction of the Feedbacks, would you like to stay on topic? Do you have anything definitive to say about feedbacks one way or the other?
You know – it’s not a problem to say that you don’t know what is causing the warming – it is a problem for a political movement to establish a path for society when it “doesn’t know” what is causing the warming – yes it cuts both ways.
10
Got a question for you Ross,
If the Earths climate is both (1) a complex dynamic system, and (2) governed by +ve feedback to CO2, then how has it demonstrably remained stable enough to support complex life forms for at least 600 million years, even in the face of massive shocks such as meteor strikes and supervolcanos with CO2 levels in the atmosphere up to 20x higher than today?
10
Exwarmist,
Extinction and evolution my friend. Add “of mankind” as plausible when it comes to meteor strikes.
The famous Hansen attacks on this guy continue.
The A B or C assessment done in 1988 is a prime example. Also a mistake by anti-warmists along with any science that moves on and re-cablirates the science which he has done. Much noise about this on US sites. OFF topic here.
Please: When you quote a scientist or graph for that matter – do not lock your arguments on out of dates, incorrect information – there’s enough of that out there.
And well they try don’t they – to discredit him. That’s why attacks on him are so bitter.
The irony. The names this bloke has been called. And anti-warmists can’t even see the beam in their eyes over it.
10
ADJUSTABLE PREDICTIONS ??????
Actually Ross, there’s another guy out there who regularly makes “predictions” and then “adjusts” them when reality turns out different.
His name is Harold Camping, and he keeps predicting the Rapture, the return of the Messiah, and the End of the World will occur on a certain date.
Then, when it doesn’t happen, he simply “adjusts” his prediction in the light of “observed changes” (IE it didn’t happen), EXACTLY as has been done on your septic science graph in relation to Hansen’s “adjusted predictions”..
Ross, a “prediction” is just that – a forecast of something that is allegedly going to happen. If “predictions” can be constantly “adjusted” in the light of what actually happens (observed changes), then eventually EVERY prediction would exactly match what was actually happening, and be 100% correct, regardless of what the original prediction was.
Example: I confidentally predict in twenty year’s time the earth will be 20 degrees C cooler than it is now. Furthermore, I will happily bet you a million dollars that my prediction turns out correct to a degree or two, PROVIDED I can “adjust” it every six months or so in the light of OBSERVED CHANGES to global temperatures, as time goes by.
What a load of complete, illogical balderdash.
Only a handful of diehard Christian religious fanatics takes Harold Camping’s constantly “readjusted” predictions seriously, and for good reason.
Only a handful of diehard Climastrology religious fanatics take Hansen’s “readjusted” predictions seriously, for the same reason.
10
“And well they try don’t they – to discredit him.”
The man discredits himself by being arrested at stupid warmest rallies.
Ross, give it a go, shake that dissonance.
10
Someone please explain to the true believers the difference between Cherry Picked Data and a Counter example.
Clue: Cherry picked data proves nothing. A single counter example destroys and entire theory.
All that we need to show in this article is that the models being used to make predictions are not up to the job and despite the claim that “they match observations surprisingly well” it is quite clear that they are, in fact, rubbish.
PS: My computer model predicted 16% of the lotto numbers last week. Not bad eh!
10
TonyfromOz:
in keeping with the spirit of your remarks:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.”
(Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6)
Jo and David, WUWT, Big Mac, Bishop Hill etc are vital to our understanding of the CAGW scientific debate, and may they never give up their fight for the integrity of the scientific method. however, before i go back to the tennis and cricket, i will post further about the MASTERS.
10
Oh please.
10
Okay Johnny, you’re excused.
Just remember to put the toilet seat back down when you have finished.
10
Bishop Hill has a thread on a piece by Leo Hickman – and James Ball – in the Guardian re the BIG PLAYERS in the CAGW scam. the problem is the Greens/enviro-MENTALISTS with the help of the MSM keep up a fake narrative that these BIG PLAYERS are the “climate deniers”/”climate change deniers” who are to be ridiculed:
24 Jan: Bishop Hill: Cameron’s climate connections
Leo Hickman has a fascinating report about a series of “networking” meetings at which businesses paid up to £1800 a head for access to ministers, government officials and special advisers…
Among the public sector employees to have attended the networking evenings is Ben Moxham, David Cameron’s special adviser for energy and the environment and a former employee of BP, who was at an event on climate change in November…
Senior executives from companies including BP, Shell, and the Russian oil giant Gazprom have attended the company’s climate change events, while Apple, Google and Citigroup executives were among those at other networking evenings….
Helpfully, the full list of attendees at the meetings has also been published. Familar names are:
Emily Shuckburgh
Brian Hoskins
Chris Anastasi (appears in the Climategate 2 emails a lot)
Ian Andrews (Serious Organised Crime Agency!!!)
Lord Hunt (ex head of Met Office)
Crispin Tickell (deep green)
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/1/24/camerons-climate-connections.html
read in full for all Crispin’s career history, awards, linkages, etc:
Crispin Tickell
Sir Crispin Tickell has long been a pioneer in linking environmental and in particular climate change to the worlds of politics and business. For many years he was an informal adviser on such issues to successive British Prime Ministers. Until recently he was Director of the Policy Foresight Programme at the James Martin 21st Century School at Oxford University. He is associated with several other British universities as well as universities in the United States.
Most of his career was in the Diplomatic Service…
He then became Warden of Green College, Oxford (1990-97), and set up the Green College Centre for Environmental Policy and Understanding, which later became the Policy Foresight Programme at the James Martin School…
Trustee of the Reuters Foundation, now Thomson-Reuters Foundation 2000-
Trustee of TERI Europe 2003 –
http://www.crispintickell.com/page109.html
the rest of the monolithic MSM is just as compromised, but Thomson Reuters is so upfront with their advocacy:
Thomson Reuters Point Carbon – About Us
Thomson Reuters Point Carbon’s in-depth knowledge of power, gas and CO2 emissions market dynamics positions us as the number one supplier of unrivalled market intelligence of these markets. Our staff includes experts in international and regional climate policy, mathematical and economic modeling, forecasting methodologies, risk management and market reporting.
Thomson Reuters Point Carbon now has more than 55,000 clients, including the world’s major energy companies, financial institutions, organisations and governments, in over 150 countries. Reports are translated from English into Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, French and Spanish.
Thomson Reuters Point Carbon has offices in Oslo (Head Office), Washington D.C., London, Tokyo, Beijing, Kiev, Hamburg, Zurich and Malmo.
http://www.pointcarbon.com/aboutus/
10
I’ve been reading this blog since day 1, and not once have I seen Dr Evans referred to as Dr David M. W. Evans. What’s with the new intials? Is it am Americanism to invoke authority? In a year will it be Dr David M. W. Evans III or something?
10
And this has something remotely to do with the actual post?
10
No not really:)
10
Incredibly, those are his initials.
“David” the name, is rather popular, so is Evans. There are real estate agents pharmacies, & businesses run by “David Evans”. Indeed, there is even another “David M W Evans” in Western Australia. (Fortunately, the W stands for a different name.)
10
There is also only one individual publishing with the name Evans DMW in the last 30 year’s of scientific publications but 1012 publications in all sorts of fields with the name Evans D or Evans D*.
10
April 2008: Time Magazine Special: A Green Future: Bryan Walsh: Does Global Warming Compromise National Security?
But the real transformation came not from a Democrat but a Republican — the veteran Virginia Sen. John Warner. Though Warner had voted against similar measures in the past, this time around he not only supported the bill — which calls for cutting greenhouse gas emissions to 2005 levels by 2012, and then 70% below 2005 levels by 2050 — but co-sponsored it with Sen. Joseph Lieberman. “We had a bipartisan breakthrough, thanks to the wonderful John Warner,” says Boxer.
Climate change is usually characterized as an environmental threat, but it wasn’t melting icebergs or endangered polar bears that made Warner change his mind. “I have focused above all on issues of national security,” Warner said after the bill passed committee. “I see the problem of global climate change fitting squarely within that focus.” For Warner, unchecked global warming could create a world that is inherently more dangerous for the U.S. Acting to mitigate climate change was another way of keeping America safe. It’s a message that resonates with Americans who would sooner log a tree than hug it, and raises the possibility that conservatives and liberals might find common ground on climate change. “I find [conservatives] skeptical on this issue,” says James Woolsey, a right-leaning Democrat who was director of the Central Intelligence Agency between 1993 and 1995, under former President Bill Clinton. “But when I mention the connection to security, suddenly things like solar power start looking a lot better.”…
Last year saw a raft of studies tracing the linkage between global warming and global instability, and none was more influential than a report released last April by the CNA Corporation, a Pentagon-funded think tank. A team of 11 high-level retired officers — including Marine General Anthony Zinni, former head of U.S. Central Command, which has responsibility for the Middle East — termed climate change a dangerous “threat multiplier.” If unchecked, the report warned, warming could lead to resource wars, environmental refugees and failed states in already vulnerable regions of Asia, Africa and the Middle East — the very places where you’ll find American troops today.
The retired officers who made up the CNA panel are hardly environmentalists, and many said they came to the report skeptical of climate change. That was then. “It’s now a mainstream security issue, not a fringe movement for tree-huggers and Birkenstock wearers,” says Sherri Goodman, who chaired the CNA report and served as deputy Undersecretary of Defense for environmental security in the Clinton Administration — a position that does not exist today…
In a recent paper, James Woolsey imagined a dialogue between John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, and General George Patton on climate change. In Woolsey’s telling, Muir cares about the environment, and Patton about security, but in subject after subject — alternative energy, increasing efficiency, improving the electrical grid — they come to the same green conclusion, if for different reasons. “It just happens that the two ideas produce the same outcome,” says Woolsey. “There is something there for everybody.” http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1730759_1731383_1731632,00.html
if CAGW were such a “national security threat” as top neocon Woolsey claims, do u think the following EXEMPTION would make sense?
US Military ‘Worst Polluter on Planet’
By Project Censored
In spite of the evidence, the environmental impact of the US military goes largely unaddressed by environmental organizations and was not the focus of any discussions or proposed restrictions at the recent UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen…
The extensive global operations of the US military (wars, interventions, and secret operations on over one thousand bases around the world and six thousand facilities in the United States) are not counted against US greenhouse gas limits…
While official accounts put US military usage at 320,000 barrels of oil a day, that does not include fuel consumed by contractors, in leased or private facilities, or in the production of weapons. The US military is a major contributor of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that most scientists believe is to blame for climate change. Steve Kretzmann, director of Oil Change International, reports, “The Iraq war was responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) from March 2003 through December 2007… . That war emits more than 60 percent that of all countries… . This information is not readily available … because military emissions abroad are exempt from national reporting requirements under US law and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.”…
Environmental journalist Johanna Peace reports that military activities will continue to be exempt, based on an executive order signed by President Barack Obama that calls for other federal agencies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Peace states, “The military accounts for a full 80 percent of the federal government’s energy demand.”
As it stands, the Department of Defense is the largest polluter in the world, producing more hazardous waste than the five largest US chemical companies combined…
Militarizing the Arctic
Meanwhile, as if the US military has not contaminated enough of the world already, a new five-year strategic plan by the US Navy outlines the militarization of the Arctic to defend national security, potential undersea riches, and other maritime interests, anticipating the frozen Arctic Ocean to be open waters by the year 2030. This plan strategizes expanding fleet operations, resource development, research, and tourism, and could possibly reshape global transportation.
While the plan discusses “strong partnerships” with other nations (Canada, Norway, Denmark, and Russia have also made substantial investments in Arctic-capable military armaments), it is quite evident that the US is serious about increasing its military presence and naval combat capabilities. The US, in addition to planned naval rearmament, is stationing thirty-six F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets, which is 20 percent of the F-22 fleet, in Anchorage, Alaska…
Some action items in the US Navy Arctic Roadmap document include:
Assessing current and required capability to execute undersea warfare, expeditionary warfare, strike warfare, strategic sealift, and regional security cooperation.
Assessing current and predicted threats in order to determine the most dangerous and most likely threats in the Arctic region in 2010, 2015, and 2025.
Focusing on threats to US national security, although threats to maritime safety and security may also be considered…
Adapted from an article in Censored 2011 edited by Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips, Seven Stories Press.
http://peacemagazine.org/archive/v27n1p08.htm
10
Back from holidays … and finally got my internets up and working again (don’t get me started on that one)…. so O/T as I usually do 😉 Apologies if this has been covered before:
A colleague forwarded an interesting piece to me about an Australian Government report which appears to have been “disappeared” down the proverbial memory hole. The offending piece has to do with the long-term supply of oil in Australia and the implications for transport. It was prepared by the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics (BITRE) and has the following name:
Report 117: Transport Energy Futures — Long Term Oil Supply Trends and Projections
The story is covered in The Herald:
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/all-evidence-of-this-treachery-went-down-the-memory-hole/story-e6frezz0-1226248729853
The author makes suggestions as to why this report would be so “on the nose” with the Federal pollies and hence lost to the ether. Oddly if you go to the BITRE web site, no such report exists:
http://www.bitre.gov.au/info.aspx?NodeId=58
Actually, Report 117 is something different entirely. Almost as if BITRE refuses to acknowledge the original Report 117 ever happened. Lucky for us the report leaked to the web and can easily be Googled, at the AIE web site for example:
http://aie.org.au/StaticContent%5CImages%5CReport_120106.pdf
I guess some of the recommendations just weren’t well aligned with the Government’s ideological stance on renewable energy and evil carbon (dioxide) emissions. Stuff happens…
10
Just look at the ocean temperatures graph. A graph starting from a random point in 2004 is meaningless. I could have started that graph in 2005 and the red line would be a perfect fit.
The IPCC 1990 comparison graph under “air temperatures”. In 2010 on the graph it is spot on the “medium estimate”, and you think you can mount a case against AGW based on the following year? That year being 2011 which be all accounts was a pretty warm year.
So to me they are two examples of meaningless graphs cobbled together to make a pre-determined point.
10
The point on the ocean argo temp graph is that there is NOTHING in the science that says that the ocean temperatures are expected to follow the red line starting at the temperature that was first measured by the argo system. So drawing that red line from that starting point and claiming “they don’t match” is highly flawed.
10
What’s more you don’t need to be a climate scientist to see this. Just a very basic grasp of maths. All these graphs, as correctly identified by Tony, are Linusesque.
10
Do you see the line “All the data here is impeccably sourced — from satellites, the Argo buoys, and weather balloons” – this is used to suggest that there exists a red line as per the argo temp graph somewhere in the science that says “this is what the argo temps should be if the IPCC’s version of AGW is in any way correct.” Which if course is a crock.
10
And lastly at risk of talking to myself we have the classic:
“All the data here is impeccably sourced — from satellites, the Argo buoys, and weather balloons.[18]”
Where the [18] suggests that there is a credible reference. In fact the reference, for anyone who bothered reading it, is:
” [18] In particular, we have not quoted results from land thermometers, or from sparse sampling by buckets and XBT’s at sea. Land thermometers are notoriously susceptible to localized effects – see Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? by the same author: jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/corruption/climate-corruption.pdf.”
Which of course is a slightly flawed loop reference saying “this is accurate because look I said the same thing in the past.”
10
“Land thermometers are notoriously susceptible to localized effects”
Lol yes indeed lets throw out the entire planetary temperature record! dismissed with a “notorious” as in “everyone knows this is a basic fact.”
Funny stuff.
00
MattB,
Very nice. Say something, and then add a plethora of comments so any reply is far removed from the actual comment itself. Lovely ploy.
You say in Comment 40.1.1 the following:
At no stage, EVER, did I say that or did I intend that inference to be taken. In fact, the opposite was the case, and the intent, as anyone can plainly read there. This is your imagination running away with itself.
I can take what you usually say with a grain of salt, but when you offer a definitive translation of what I said, and then offer that as fact, you are going a
littlelong way beyond the pale.As is always the case with your lot, they rearrange things to suit their own agenda.
You, Matt are a despicable person for saying this.
Tony.
00
I was waiting for you to see what I did there. No offence intended Tony – clearly (to me at least) you do not agree with me, and I wasn’t trying to suggest you were – I was more being a cheeky smartass.
00
makes it a bit hard to put a reply under a specific post… 40.1.1.1.1 says
could you elaborate or specify? Scientists often cite themselves (sometimes too often). It legitimately gets past peer review if the cited paper contains data and analysis that support the statements made in the new paper. They might not say exactly what I quoted from you above but they are often saying, “this conclusion has support because look here is another study I did that finds the same thing”.
00
Yes but in a scientific publication you’d be referencing a piece of peer reviewed science that has gone through the process. Rather than referring to a non-reviewed rant about the conspiracy of temperature station tricks. You can;t substantiate a claim by referring to the previous time you made an unsubstantiated claim. “That bike is mine because I say it is and I also said it yesterday”
00
MattB
Peer reviewed guarantees that any paper will support the peer consensus – papers that contradict the peer consensus don’t get published. Peer review has one function – to identify plagiarism, otherwise its censorship. I’ve been through the peer review process in having a paper published, and it’s all about making sure it fits the accepted paradigm.
That is another problem with mainstream science, apart from an ignorance of the scientific method.
00
err have you ever read peer reviewed papers?
00
He says he’s published them, Gee Aye, so the answer would be “yes”.
00
Well since he published something by making sure it fitted an excepted paradigm, I’m sure it was not very substantial. His description of the process of publication does not fit with my experience, the guidelines of peer reviewing journals, my interactions with journal editors when I am reviewing papers, or when I guide reviewers in my role as a subject editor. Boring papers that question nothing don’t cut it.
00
Yes the scientific publication has been through hoops of different sorts but you don’t have to be peer reviewed to cite yourself. I might, for example have published an article recently stating that India’s efforts against the West Indies were flattering since their bowlers had poor batsmen and their attack was exposed for what it is by the English. I might now be preparing an article stating a similar thing to explain their poor performance in Australia and remind the reader of a similar article I wrote about the England tour.
I think that citing myself is valid in this case and I’d leave it up to the reader to make a judgement as to whether my self citation and my arguement was justified. I’d hope if they disagreed that they would do me the honour of providing a reason for disagreeing and not just wave my argument away by saying that I cited myself without any elaboration. I think your post was pretty poor Matt.
00
Jo and all other posters, this is a rather clear way of exposing CAGW myth. Pressuring local MP’s to take action is a good idea and sending it around to friends who are still believe in the catastrophic predictions (i.e. Tim Flannery).
My knowledge regarding this topic is limited. Many other sceptical scientists (that I have read) suggest that we could be on the way to another ice age in the future or significant cooling. What is David’s opinion on this considering his research suggests a minor but still increasing air temperature level?
00
If CO2 is governed by -ve feedback, as per the sceptic argument, than as a species we will hit the next glacial period within the current ice age with elevated CO2 levels which will assist our survival by fostering the biosphere.
00
I give up………
i tried to find this comment from Ross which i received via email but blowed if i can find it so a cut and paste will have to do (Jo can you expand on the amount of comments in the “recent commets field”)
Note i did not reproduce the comment in its entirety only what is relevant.
Jo – you got it all wrong.
Warming maximum in the tropical upper troposphere deduced from thermal winds Robert J. Allen & Steven C. Sherwood Abstract Climate models and theoretical expectations have predicted that the upper troposphere should be warming faster than the surface. Surprisingly, direct temperature observations from radiosonde and satellite data have often not shown this expected trend. However, non-climatic biases have been found in such measurements. Here we apply the thermal-wind equation to wind measurements from radiosonde data, which seem to be more stable than the temperature data. We derive estimates of temperature trends for the upper troposphere to the lower stratosphere since 1970. Over the period of observations, we find a maximum warming trend of 0.65 0.47 K per decade near the 200 hPa pressure level, below the tropical tropopause. Warming patterns are consistent with model predictions except for small discrepancies close to the tropopause. Our findings are inconsistent with the trends derived from radiosonde temperature datasets and from NCEP reanalyses of temperature and wind fields. The agreement with models increases confidence in current model-based predictions of future climate change.
The graph your looking at (lying eyes) is most likely an aberrant bias. Science moves on – but anti-warmists can get hung up on the lack of explanations.
ature Geoscience 1, 399 – 403 (2008)
Published online: 25 May 2008 | doi:10.1038/ngeo208
In summary the above statement is claiming that the RS data shows no hot spot but this is because the data has a bias and by using the GPS data from the sonde they can calulate the wind shear and from the wind shear they can calculate the temp and this temp data shows a warming of 0.65 per decade.
I have asked KR for evidence of this bias and what affect it has on the data but KR has fallen strangely silent so i will assume there is no evidence of said bias. For Ross’s sake i will assume that there is a bias in the temp data and will merely focus on the GPS data.
First question i would ask Ross is
1) Not all RS come with a GPS, how many RS used since the 1950’s were fitted with a GPS, in other words how big a sample can Allen and co use to do the wind shear calculation.
Here are the specifications of the most advanced RS on the market:
Temp: accuracy 0.15C
GPS: Position uncertainty-Horizontal 10 meters
Vertical 20 meters
Velocity uncertainty 0.15 m/s
Directional uncertainty 2 degrees
Essentially what Allen and co are claiming is that the thermometer has an error of about 0.5C which of course is a rather large error, suprisingly this error has not been picked up at the factory and they have continued to produce poor quality thermometers for decades no.
Even more suprisingly they could produce a GPS that even with such a large resolution (which of course means the reported position can swing wildly around in both vertical and horizontal directions) can actually produce a temp down to two decimal places and bizzarely can be more accurate than the thermonmeter.
If so then i am suprised Vaisala even bother to mount a thermometer on the thing in the first place.
Do *you* Ross actually beleive this is possible?
00
I tried to clarify – third try.
The three papers I posted assert the following:
1. That radiosonde data showed non-climatic bias
2. Agreement was reached using a calibrated formula for wind (testing temperature transiency).
3. Agreement to models was reached.
4. Climate can radically alter in wild swings as it is a chaotic system. I.E. Global Warming could suddenly speed up.
5. It was found in the latest studies that the Hot Spot is a transient phenomena – it is not static – thereby hard to capture as static (over time) temperature.
The three papers are listed in the @ post 13
01
“It was found in the latest studies that the Hot Spot is a transient phenomena – it is not static – thereby hard to capture as static (over time) temperature”.
That statement is illogical.
Can you work out why, James?
No, I didn’t think so, and here you are inferring our reasoning is suspect. Mate, you’re a amateur, go away.
00
Although I only have a degree in Geology, I believe I see your objection(s). However I won’t post the questions I have for ross; I’d prefer to see if he can work out the logic FAIL that he posted.
00
Ohh, Ross James, the logic of it all is so overwhelming for you guys, isn’t it?
The Environmental lapse rate of the static atmosphere with a temp. gradient of 9,8K/km
indifferent Environmental lapse rate) has been rebranded Static Adiabatic Lapse Rate.
No new names yet for an unstable or stable Environmental lapse rate. (drip, drip, drip).
How an atmosphere that receives a lot of energy from the sun and loses about the same amount at the top can have a lapse rate that is called ADIABATIC escapes me at the moment. (drip, drip, drip).
00
Your belief that atmospheric pressure causes warming is well known.
See the Watts Up web site debate when Tallboy was challenged.
Enclaves are a comfort zone for the disaffected.
Many theories but not any coherent agreement.
They do not promote science in a proper manner as they cannot discourse without resorting to character bending assault.
Things like – “we all know it’s a scam” – therefore they (AGW support) know it is scam and are lying.
That’s character assault and Ad Hom. argument.
00
The conget argument is being solidified as we think.
00
Oh Ross,
As to belief, I have none. I only want the knowing.
I have never cried scam, only mistake, I have never bent the character of a man as feeble as me.
I have only attacked invalid reasoning of the nature of the Universe.
00
Like many warmists who visit this site, you throw around the term “Ad Hominem” like it’s confetti at a wedding, yet you also show that you have no idea what an ad hominem is.
Let me give you an example of an ad hominem.
Richard Linzen is 71 years old and he disagrees with Michael Mann.
Michael Mann is only 46 years old.
So what would Michael Mann know about global warming?
Now that’s an ad hominem.
M. Mann’s age is irrelevant to arguments about global warming.
“Michael Mann is a liar”. Is an insult. If it can be shown that he has lied, then it is relevant to whether we should accept his arguments. If there is no evidence that he has lied then the statement remains an insult and is defamatory.
“Michael Mann is too young to know anything about climate change”. Is an ad hominem. M. Mann’s age is not relevant to the argument. Whoever says such a thing is suggesting that you should not believe M. Mann because of some irrelevant fact.
It is reasonable to assume that if a person is running a scam, that they would be lying. If they are not lying, then they are merely ignorant of the facts, or they are deluding themselves and others.
00
I’m surprised at the large uncertainty on the GPS velocities. Even vertical velocity is better than that in my experience (down to a few mm/sec noise). It seems to be little known that GPS velocities AREN’T differentiated positions but are done directly from the doppler shifts.
00
Jo – you got it all wrong?
I am not saying the comment was not there its just that i could not find it, hence my request to expand on the list of recent comments because when you get a heap of comments all at once relatively new comments drop off the list in a very short time so then you have to trawl through the entire thread to find it.
Cheers
00
This is topic of real interest to me. And I was here ~ a couple months ago and found a rich reward in intelligent comments, from a skeptics point of view, to read.
There is now a dilution of the quality of comments caused by all these warmist trolls pushing their disruptive bs. I gave up reading because there was so much warmist trollip. We understand that their are warmists that have other points of view, but we don’t come to a skeptic site to hear that.
Skeptic comments apparently rarely or never get allowed onto the warmist sites. Skeptics and warmists can fight it out at neutral sites. Why compromise our sites for the sake of warmists? Just my opinion.
00
the site would lose a percieved moral high ground. What kind of skeptic would want to censor counter opinion, rather than argue against it?
00
None!
00
Exactly, matt! And we well know that the converse is true: what alarmists would NOT want to censor counter opinion? As demonstrated by smoggy blog, realcrappyclimate, etc?
Nice to be able to agree with you once in a while.
00
Eric S;
The warmista trolls are out in force because Dr. Evans’ arguments are so persuasve. He clearly demonstrates (using uncontroversial, publicly available data) that the scientists who claim to be able to predict the climate can do nothing of the sort.
They have to try to swamp this threat with counter-claims, no matter how irrational, to try to prevent people like you from reading it.
As a general rule, the more hysterical the trolls become, the better the original post. If the trolls bother you, just read the main post — as you have noted, they rarely add anything useful to the discussion.
00
Eric I have voiced the same idea.
they are marked by the lack of science content.
all they do is put space between the ongoing discussion and comments.
00
[…] […]
00
Just noticed an interesting admission by KR (#6.1):
(My emphasis and edit)
Just to refresh everyone’s memory (from Hansen’s Paper) :
1) Scenario ‘A’ assumed that anthropogenic CO2 emissions growth would continue to accelerate — “Business as Usual”.
2) Scenario ‘C’ assumed that there would be a “drastic curtailment” of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, such that the emission growth rate would be zero by 2000.
What really happened? Well, anthropogenic emissions continued to accelerate (“Business as Usual”), but atmospheric CO2 concentration followed Scenario ‘C’ — what Hansen assumed would be the result of a “drastic curtailment” of emissions.
————————————————————
(Well, the results of Scenario ‘C’ have been achieved, if not the antecedents — perhaps they should declare victory and drop the whole scam?)
————————————————————
What this sequence of events does is clearly falsify Hansen’s (and KR’s, and every other warmer’s) assumption that anthropogenic CO2 is the main cause of increasing atmospheric CO2. If this assumption was right, then accelerating anthropogenic CO2 would immediately result in accelerating atmospheric CO2 concentrations, as Hansen clearly assumed.
Instead, as KR notes, the atmospheric CO2 growth rate has shown a complete indifference to acceleration of the anthropogenic emission rate, thus demonstrating that Humans do not cause (and hence can’t control) atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
This removes the ‘A’ from ‘AGW’ — the scam is also a fool’s errand.
10
BobC – The usual argument about Hansen’s model from skeptics is that it was off by a factor of 4 in warming from Scenario A – a projection, not a prediction, of what might happen with a particular emissions pattern.
Given various and sundry events as time went by, including the Montreal Protocol, the folding of the Soviet Union, increased capture of methane at oil wells due to regulations and technology improvements, etc., greenhouse gases did not increase at the Scenario A levels, but closer instead to Scenario B or C, in particular in the non-CO2 greenhouse gases. Hansen’s B/C scenarios (which were quite close up to 2000) and model for those is off by about 25%, not 400%.
But that doesn’t mean greenhouse gases didn’t increase over the last 30 years. And small inaccuracies in a 25 year old prediction, which didn’t fully take into account some forcings (such as black carbon/aerosols), and with a climate sensitivity value rather higher than currently thought to be the case – that certainly doesn’t demonstrate that “that Humans do not cause (and hence can’t control) atmospheric CO2 concentrations”.
—
In fact, since our economic activities directly affected the amount of greenhouse gases, this demonstrates that humans do control atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
01
Scenario A involved a prediction that CO2 atmospheric concentrations would accelerate due to anthropogenic emissions accelerating.
Anthropogenic emissions did accelerate — atmospheric CO2 concentration continued increasing at the same rate it has for the last 55 years: ~0.45%/year.
Therefore, the prediction that atmospheric CO2 concentrations would follow anthropogenic emissions is falsified — atmospheric concentration followed Scenario C, which Hansen predicted would only occur if anthropogenic emissions were capped by 2000.
You must be the only warmist saying this — most of the publicity is claims that emissions are rapidly increasing. Perhaps we can expect the next IPCC report to say that there’s not a problem, as emissions are under control?
Who says they didn’t? They have been increasing at the same rate for 55 years, ever since continuous measurements at Mauna Loa started. If you’re trying for a straw man here, you need to try harder.
It doesn’t demonstrate that we can control atmospheric concentration of CO2, either, or that CO2 has any detectable effect on the climate.
Your basic case is still unproven. It is up to the people who claim that they can predict the climate to prove it.
The fact that actual measurements of climate sensitivity (see also Idso’s “natural experiments”) are much smaller than the sensitivity that Hansen deduces from incomplete Paleodata; and that the actual measured lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere is orders of magnitude shorter than the hundreds of years theoretical predictions that Hansen uses indicates that his
projectionspredictions are junk (if we needed anything other than their lack of predictive skill).Major non-sequitur here, KR. (Perhaps your brain turns to a pumpkin after midnight?) Our economic activities directly affect the amount of CO2 that we emit. This does not prove that we control atmospheric concentration of CO2. Hansen assumed that we could when he constructed his Scenarios, and the data since has shown him to be mistaken.
We can also cause earthquakes as a result of our economic activities — this does not imply we can control naturally occuring earthquakes.
10
BobC
Please consider the difference between a prediction and a projection.
A prediction makes a statement about “what will be”. A projection makes a statement about “what will be if certain things happen“.
You are treating the early Hansen scenarios as predictions, when they are projections. When the early Hansen model is run with actual emissions, it’s within ~25% – not a bad model at all, especially considering it’s 25 years old.
See the radiative forcing changes for the various scenarios and the historic record. Note in particular the considerable differences in non-CO2 gases, such as CFC’s and CH4. Your entire attack is a strawman argument, a distortion of what Hansen projected.
00
The SkS link you provided shows a chart of Radiative Forcing Changes from 1988 to 1998.
The scenarios discussed relate to the quantity of emissions.
Do you have a source that compares the EMISSIONS projections by Hansen to the actual emissions between 1988 and 1998?
Lets compare apples to apples, not apples to oranges ok?
00
Baa Humbug – If you read the link I gave, you will find in it a link to NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI). CO2 has increased as expected – methane and CFC’s did not.
00
OK, so a ‘projection’ is a conditional ‘prediction’. Most predictions depend on something, so this is mostly specious.
I understand your desire to give Hansen a “Mulligan” on this, but failure is still failure, regardless of where in the several (stated and unstated) assumptions that Hansen goes wrong.
1) Hansen ‘projected’ that the world would warm rapidly IF we didn’t “drastically curtail” anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
2) We didn’t “drastically curtail” CO2 emissions — in fact they closely followed the “Business as Usual” growth curve.
3) The world DID NOT warm rapidly.
What about this failure looks like a win to you?
The fact that atmospheric CO2 concentrations did not accelerate in concert with anthropogenic CO2 emissions simply means that Hansen’s assumption that this had to occur was wrong. It is very unlikely that this is the only assumption in Hansen’s models that is wrong.
The only crisis involving CAGW is a predicted crisis (or, if you insist, a crisis predicted IF we don’t drastically curtail CO2 emissions). For this projected/predicted disaster to have any credibility at all, the models have to start demonstrating predictive skill. So far, they have none.
00
[I must apologize, my earlier post said just ‘CO2’ – I meant anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcings, things under our control, not just CO2, and miswrote. That was incorrect.]
BobC – There’s a strong thread I see in many of these discussions, which is to only look at a single factor. Greenhouse gas emissions (anthropogenic) include CO2, methane, CFC’s, ozone, NO2, etc, and all of these have some effect. CO2 is not the only driver of climate. It just happens to be the largest current forcing (changing factor), and it’s one under our control.
Hansen’s early model projections included expected (at the time) increases in all of these factors. As it turned out, methane and CFC emissions dropped considerably, meaning that the total forcing approximated the Scenario B/C levels. Hence comparing those Scenario A to a completely different set of emissions (the real ones) is a strawman argument.
—
The CO2 rise in the atmosphere tracks our emissions, and isotopic analysis demonstrates it’s anthropogenic origin.
00
Not when the model is run with actual emissions, as that would be Scenario ‘A’ (Business as Usual), which is far off. Your statement only makes sense if it says “run with actual atmospheric concentrations“.
You (and Hansen and all the other warmists) are still trying to pretend that anthropogenic emissions and atmospheric concentrations are joined at the hip.
This assumption has been falsified by the facts:
1) Emissions followed Scenario ‘A’ (Business as Usual)
2) Atmospheric concentration followed Scenario ‘C’ (drastic curtailment of emissions)
The problem that you are refusing to see is that the assumption Hansen makes to construct the scenarios (that anthropogenic CO2 is the main driver of increasing atmospheric CO2) has been proven false.
If this false assumption is removed from Hansen’s (or anybody else’s) climate models, then there is no crisis, projected or predicted.
00
KR
I did read the link. Once again, the NOAA index uses a formula which includes quantity and the presumed known radiative forcing of the gas in question. In other words its sensitivity. An index is a representation of observation or measurement.
If the amount of gas in the atmosphere is apples, then the radiative forcing by the gas is oranges.
Considering Hansens projections are a product of gas quantity and sensitivity, it leaves one with two options as to why Hansens scenario charts don’t match measured temperatures, ergo:
A-) Hansen overprojected the number of tons of gas emitted within the time frame 1988-1998
B-) Hansen over estimated sensitivity.
You seem to claim A is the case. You say “CO2 has increased as expected – methane and CFC’s did not.”
In this case, you need to come up with some numbers depicting how much less CH4 (and other trace GHGs)was emitted, what effect this has had on temperatures using Hansens sensitivity figure.
In the Hansen paper you linked, he says in the 100 yr control run (which is based on fixed atmospheric rates at 1958) he uses 1400ppb for CH4 and 292.6ppb for N2O.
Looking at figure 2 of the NOAA link, we see that CH4 has increased in a fairly linear fashion even through the period in question, 1988-98. In 88 it was about 1690ppb and in 98 about 1760ppb. WHAT DID HANSEN THINK CH4 LEVEL WOULD BE?
Likewise, N2O rose from about 306ppb in 88 to 313ppb in 98 in a fairly linear fashion. WHAT DID HANSEN THINK N2O LEVEL WOULD BE?
The divergance between observed and Hansen projected temperatures cannot be explained by the lack of Ch4 or N2O.
00
BobC – I have to conclude that you did not read my previous post.
Anthropogenic emissions, an essential part of the Hansen projections, include CO2, CH4, NO2, CFC’s – the “trace gas emissions” Hansen discussed with Congress. CO2 concentrations continued to increase at close to pre-1988 rates, CH4 and CFC’s (more powerful per molecule, incidentally) did not. Hence the total trace gas concentrations Hansen was modeling increased at roughly Scenario C levels.
Again, you are falling into the error of a single cause.
—
Baa Humbug
No on A, yes on B.
Hansen presented a number of “what-if” scenarios for greenhouse gas increases. Actual increases of total greenhouse gases are closest to his Scenario C, for which his overestimated sensitivity, not fully accounting for aerosol effects or black carbon/soot, etc., lead to about a 25% error.
00
This is what Hansen assumed when he constructed his various scenarios, and the data since then has proven him wrong.
Actually, isotopic analysis is unable to distinguish between CO2 from fossil fuels and volcanos. To attribute a given fraction of the C12-enriched CO2 to fossil fuel burning, one has to estimate the number of volcanos and amounts of CO2 they emit. This is not a known number — since 1991, the estimated number of undersea volcanos has gone from 10,000 to > 3 million. Precision isotopic analysis of anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 fraction is impossible in this environment of uncertainty and rapidly changing estimates.
Given that the isotopic estimates of anthropogenic fraction are in stark opposition to the many empirical studies (as opposed to theoretical models) of the carbon cycle, I would not put very much credence in the isotopic conclusions.
00
BobC – Human CO2 emissions are 130x volcanic emissions. Minor sea-bed vents are not major volcanoes, and certainly not major CO2 sources. Pull the other one – it’s got bells on it.
The reduction in CO2 concentration from an addition to the atmosphere comprises multiple exponential decays including equalization with the ocean, biological sequestration, weathering, etc – it has a half-life of ~35-40 years, with a long tail on the last 20-30% of thousands of years. We discussed this on previous threads here – I’m not going to repeat that conversation.
The rest of your post consists of Appeal to Complexity fallacies, and a repeat of the “single cause” focus on CO2 as opposed to total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
—
My online time will be limited for a while – I will attempt to check back in a few days.
00
@KR
To be able to make that statement you must have access to information that shows scenario C as the closest to current emissions.
Considering Hansen states in his paper that “Scenario C drastically reduces trace gas growth between 1990 and 2000 such that greenhouse climate forcing ceases to increase after 2000. page 9343 of your link.
You also need to read the 2nd paragraph on page 9345 where he clearly stipulates what scenario C is i.e. “the sources just balance the sinks” and backs it up with Fig. 2 which shows a flat DeltaT after the year 2000 for scenario C.
Do you have the numbers to back up your claim that scenario C is closest to actual measurements?
Furthermore, you claim Hansen overestimated sensitivity. Can you produce the sensitivity Hansen used so that we all will know what level of sensitivity is too high in future discussions.
00
Easy to do when posts pass in the (e)mail.
So, you want me to comment on this:
So, I conclude that Hansen’s assumption that the other trace GH gases were correlated with anthropogenic CO2 was false. What about this sounds like success?
I’ve noticed that modelers routinely run their models assuming that CO2 increases at 1%/year (even though it actually has been increasing at ~0.5%/year for the last 55 years) “to account for the increases in other trace GH gases”. If this correlation is false (as you have just admitted), then all of these model runs and the projections they produced are crap.
You are failing to understand that the entire CAGW scare (including the demands for massive changes in the world’s economy) is based on the ability of climate models to predict future climate. This is what must be demonstrated (and has not) — ad hoc excuses for past failures doesn’t hack it.
00
Right… Estimates of number of volcanos have increased 300-fold in the last 20 years. Nice that you think you know the answer, but I don’t think that’s going to convince anyone else.
Sure… If you can’t respond to specific arguments, then just assume an air of superiority and claim that you have already proven your case. For those who may have some doubts about how much self delusion is involved in this implicit claim, the thread KR refers to is here. The main weakness in his arguments on this subject was that there was no data supporting them, and all the available empirical data contradicted them. Other than that, he did a swell job promoting these fantasy theories.
No KR, that’s what you just did. I have consistently maintained that empirical data trumps overly complex and unverified models, while you have consistently taken the position well described by Eddington: “No data should be accepted until it is verified by [AGW] theory.”
00
“Hansen presented a number of “what-if” scenarios for greenhouse gas increases”
What-if, there is no greenhouse, is the mistake Hansen made.
00
The equation of climate is;
T(n+1) = T(n)+λ ∆F(n+1) / τ + ΔT(n) exp( -1 / τ )
OK, now lets render this equation in English. It looks complex, but it’s not.
T(n) is pronounced “T sub n”. It is the temperature “T” at time “n”. So T sub n plus one, written as T(n+1), is the temperature during the following time period. In this case we’re using years, so it would be the next year’s temperature.
F is the forcing, in watts per square metre. This is the total of all of the forcings under consideration. The same time convention is followed, so F(n) means the forcing “F” in time period “n”.
Delta, or “∆”, means “the change in”. So ∆T(n) is the change in temperature since the previous period, or T(n) minus the previous temperature T(n-1). ∆F(n), correspondingly, is the change in forcing since the previous time period.
Lambda, or “λ”, is the climate sensitivity. And finally tau, or “τ”, is the lag time constant. The time constant establishes the amount of the lag in the response of the system to forcing. And finally, “exp (x)” means the number 2.71828 to the power of x.
So in English, this means that the temperature next year, or T(n+1), is equal to the temperature this year T(n), plus the immediate temperature increase due to the change in forcing λ F(n+1) / τ, plus the lag term ΔT(n) exp( -1 / τ ) from the previous forcing. This lag term is necessary because the effects of the changes in forcing are not instantaneous.
It is the forcing in this equation which is the crux of the matter.
It should relate to forcing of gravity not forcing of the composition of atmosphere.
00
“But Markus, that means the temperature of Earth will always return to a equilibrium, after lags caused by increases or decreases in pressure, relative by our rotation velocity and our position in the planetary system.”
That’s what Einstein told us. E=mc2
00
You know climate scientists really do believe a planetary body can add more energy to itself by the composition of its mass.
Well, the rest of us know planets cannot become suns?
Don’t we?
00
Nice explanation, markus. I always stress to my students that equations are simply declarations of logical relationships, which can be readily translated into normal language. All too often, a student’s education leaves them with a distorted idea of mathematical statements — that they are somehow “more correct” than language, that they can express things that language cannot, or that an equation implicitly requires a “solution”.
No, an equation is simply a logical declaration, which can be right or wrong. My engineering experience is that a significant proportion of equations in the peer-reviewed literature are false on their face, as the units don’t agree on both sides of the equality sign — apples are compared to oranges. Apparently, dimensional analysis isn’t much taught anymore.
The only slip in your equation is that the argument of the exponentional function isn’t explicitly dimensionless, which it has to be. This can be corrected by considering the “1” in the numerator to mean “1 time unit”, and the ‘tau’ to be ‘tau time units’. You might say “this is implicitly obvious”, as so it is, now. However, later on in a derivation, the ‘1’ may appear to be a constant. If the time units are then changed, the equation becomes false. This is exactly how all those inconsistent (and, hence false) equations slip into the literature.
The problem with this equation, markus, becomes evident if you try to use it. There are only two quantities in it that can be accurately defined:
1) The time period, n, because that is arbitrarily chosen.
2) The base of the natural logarithms, e = 2.71828…
Nothing else can be even approximated very well, and that’s where the debate is. The current post does a nice job of constraining those quantities using emprirical data, and showing that the resulting ranges aren’t consistent with the CAGW theory.
00
KR, as usual, has been the main advocate of AGW and has floundered badly, dredging up the usual nonsense about Lindzen 2009 and ignoring Lindzen 2011, referring to wind shear, thoroughly discredited as the apogee of model amphigory, and fiddling around energy transfer between CO2 and the atmospheric mass of N2 and O2.
KR does refer, @ 5.1, to the Palmer et al paper, which is part of a stampede from the AGW ranks which now appear to have discovered that the relevant metric to measure Earth’s warming, or not, is the EEB. the Palmer paper is here.
This paper is badly flawed because it says:
This is directly challenged by Knox and Douglass who note:
Given this, variation in surface ocean temperature is a good indicator of the current EEB; that is, a cooling ocean surface is indicative of a -ve EEB [cooling] and vice-versa.
This obseravtion by Knox and Douglass has been confirmed by the most recent paper on the relationship between OHC and TOA EEB by Loeb et al.
Loeb et al say:
However Loeb et al find a +ve EEB of of 0.50±0.43 W/m−2, that is a range of 0.07 – 0.93 W/m2 [that is, warming]. This finding is significant in respect of the history of the authors of the Loeb paper and also in respect of the IPCC’s and AGW’s climate sensitivity range for a doubling of CO2.
2 of the Loeb paper co-authors, Soden and Allan, were co-authors of this 2002 paper which found a negative TOA radiative balance [negative = cooling]:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/295/5556/841.short
In 2009 Loeb et al found a positive imbalance of 6.5 W/m2; about this finding Hansen noted this:
From:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.1140
The imbalance of 0.85W/m2 is exactly what is required to achieve an increase in GAT of 3.2C for a doubling of CO2, which is the exact climate sensitivity predicted by the IPCC for AGW! What a coincidence! What remarkable scientific serendipity!
Now, as mentioned, Loeb et al 2012 have now found an imbalance of 0.50±0.43 W/m−2, that is a range of 0.07 – 0.93 W/m2 ; or a range covering the AGW climate sensitivity figure!
How can anyone say these guys are not making this up?
00
I don’t think he’s floundered at all. KR could trivially take anyone on this blog, and I suspect wouldn’t find spencer, michaels et al much harder.
00
We already know you believe in fantasies, Tristan.
00
Lysenko must have Mezmerized you with his phrenology, tryst.
00
From all the data that has been collected we can safely say that skeptics are right! And for all you not sures it’s cheaper to be a skeptic.
00
You convinced me!
00
Me too. Smartest comments on this thread thus far.
It most certainly is much cheaper to be a sceptic, not to mention that it’s also the logical way to go.
00
Why do they include the amplification module in their model? Becasue they need amplification to explain the Pleistocene Ice Age. In other words, this temperature data also demonstrates that the currently accepted explanation for the Ice Age is wrong.
00
[…] Nova asks: Who Are You Going To Believe – The Government Climate Scientists Or The Data? Share […]
00
David, you say serious skeptics agree that CO2 causes at least some warming. I guess… a consensus! But I ask, and there may be evidence that I don’t know about…, but what evidence do you skeptics have that CO2 causes climate warming?
There is a theoretical basis, but where’s the emprical evidence? My tentative contention is that trace effects of the trace gas CO2 is, for all practical purposes: always, overwhelmed by the variation of natural factors, as the sun, ocean, clouds etc. Wild speculation about feedbacks is another unneeded complication if it all just doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.
This 3 minute video (at end) shows the classic problem with CO2 (also showing algor in a pivotal deception): there is evidence that CO2 will rise as a result of temp changes (with 800 year lag), but there is NO evidence in this video that CO2 causes climate scale temps to rise. So there must be evidence elsewhere, as I am told here. So please present the evidence if you have any, thanks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK_WyvfcJyg
00
[…] […]
00
The long standing issue is how much warming does CO2 cause, and scientists always seem to smuggle their assumptions about this into every climate-related paper that comes out. For example I suggest this paper’s abstract is courting alarmism:
“Declining atmospheric CO2 during the late Middle Eocene climate transition”, PNAS Jan 2011.
http://ajsonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/311/1/63
First they state the conclusion from their own actual observational study:
Then they go on to make statements which are NOT the result of their own research but are mostly recycled trendy alarmism:
Their facts show CO2 has been much higher in the past, admittedly under ice-free conditions. But their abstract statements are written to presume CO2 has a strong effect on climate, whereas the correlation of course is more easily explained in the other direction: cold oceans absorb more CO2.
No doubt they will be cited widely, with their assumption reported as though it was an observational result.
Warmists sometimes claim the CAGW argument has no dependence at all on the validity of paleoclimate studies. Yet the strong CO2 feedback assumption is often cycled through proxy study papers like this one, perhaps in an earnest attempt to avoid having ancient high CO2 atmospheres provide any reassurance for skeptics. Paleoclimate reconstructions are relevant to testing CAGW, not because we can figure out the CO2 sensitivity figure (because the temperature and temporal errors are too high), but because we have the chance to preview the effect on life of high CO2 and high temperature. It takes the edge off the “C” in CAGW, even if it says nothing about the AGW.
As to whether high CO2 is bad, well, that does seem to depend on interpretation of the evidence:
The business plan of the warmists is now clear: They have tackled their inability to live long enough to profit from the timber industry of 2200AD by instead insisting we pay them today compensation for the boosted timber industry profits that they are going prevent us creating! It’s genius!
00
Actually, if the IPCC are to be believed, the feedbacks are responsible for amplifying CO2’s expected warming by a factor of 9. Not 3, but 9! The IPCC’s logarithmic equation (Ln(C1/C0)X5.35) tells us that the predicted radiative forcing (RF) from CO2 from its current level of 390ppmv to 560ppmv is about 1.9W/sq.m (which relates to a temperature increase of 0.35C at the surface on a baseline temperature of 288C). How the feedbacks could amplify CO2’s warming of 0.35C to 3C (an amplification factor of 9) remains a mystery to my mind. A total RF of 16.5W/sq.m is required to produce a temperature increase of 3C at the surface. If CO2 can only produce a maximum of 1.9W/sq.m then that means the feedbacks must be responsible for 14.6W/sq.m. In Dessler’s paper ‘A Determination of Cloud Feedback’ Dessler gives a maximum theoretical RF from positive feedback from clouds of 1.28W/sq.m. But that still leaves 13.32W.sq.m. Is water vapour responsible for producing that extra 13.32W.sq.m of RF? It must be. According to the IPCC, CH4 is a bit-player too and has only contributed about 0.45W/sq.m. It rests on the assumption that WV is strongly, hugely positive. The IPCC’s models assume that WV remains roughly constant (i.e. that it won’t condense quickly into clouds) as it should do. Unfortunately for the IPCC WV has an incorrigible habit of forming clouds, which increases albedo and acts as a powerful negative feedback by reflecting incoming solar radiation back out into space. Every child knows this. Why don’t the IPCC?
00
[…] […]
00
But current radiosondes, (radiosondes being the basis for many of these arguments against warming) do show warming.
—
And either way, this doesn’t matter! A tropospheric hot spot (THS) is a red herring in terms of discussing climate sensitivity – which is why I pointed out the irrelevance of the papers Dr. Evans pointed to when discussing sensitivity.
In addition, THS is a fingerprint of _any_ warming based upon the moist adiabatic lapse rate, not of greenhouse gas warming. If, indeed, there is no THS, then we apparently don’t understand something about that lapse rate or lower atmospheric circulation.
A cooling stratosphere, on the other hand, is a fingerprint of increasing greenhouse effect – see Randel et al 2009:
If the sun was causing warming over the last 30 years, the entire atmosphere would be warming. But greenhouse gas increases reduce energy flow to space, leaving the stratosphere to cool as less energy is reaching it from the surface. That’s a fingerprint.
00
Yea, that second law of thermo is getting a bit of a work out, Eh!
00
In all Earth average temperature calculations I fail to find a proper description to how the energy budget of the oceans is represented.
The oceans are net energy absorber at the equator. This accumulation of energy is due to the high incoming solar radiation during day and much lower outgoing radiation in the night. These two do not balance. This is no way similar to the ground behaviour as water’s absorption spectrum is very different to solid ground:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/72/Water_absorption_spectrum.png
allowing for the visible light to penetrate deeply into the oceans (to 200 m), near infrared will warm only the first meter and LWIR from clouds will be stopped at the surface. So downwards infrared from greenhouse does not warm the oceans, it is only the sun which does it.
Moreover the oceans do not warm like a rock at the surface, not radiating intensively like sand or rock do when reaching 60-70°C during intense sunny days. The oceans at equator warm and reach their energy balance through the slow migration of waters to other latitudes its place being taken by cooler water coming from the depth or from higher latitudes and through enthalpy.
Only the very surface gets in radiation balance with the surrounding areas whereas the deeper one accumulate heat.
The mass of water that goes slowly to higher latitudes passes by at the point where there is no more energy surplus – when the solar radiation is as low as the night radiation + oceans day radiation. Again nothing to count with greenhouse which only warms the atmosphere but not the oceans. It does not influence the outgoing radiation from the ocean as “back-radiation” is blocked at the very first strata of water and may eventually cause more evaporation but nothing more.
When the mass of water reaches north and south enough to cool it will slowly lose some energy and so cool – but due to its high capacity it takes long until water cools as much as to get frozen. Here again it has to pass the big threshold to freeze the waters which releases much warming in the rest of the water and environment.
Once frozen at the surface, the water from below does not radiate any more – zero radiation to the atmosphere. Ice is a very bad heat conductor so the oceans lose here much less warm as any material would lose at 0°C.
This whole process is very much dependent on the solar insulation and ocean currents. I have not seen a rational explanation to link it to greenhouse or other explanation, so to my understanding the oceans temperature is very much self regulating based on different criteria.
The outgoing radiation budget with averaging over the whole oceans area is not valid – as we see above for the ice covered regions.
As 99% of the energy stored on the earth from sun’s insulation is in the oceans I see the oceans as regulating the earth temperature, the land and the atmosphere are only the tail of the dog. Where is more “energy trapped” as in the oceans? Which gas can trump the oceans in “trapping energy”?
Now maybe I see this with an “ocean bias”, would be glad to see comments and/or corrections, but in my eyes any atmosphere average temperature enhancing discussion should start only after the ocean energy budget is clarified.
Of course albedo plays a huge role, but are not clouds rather a negative feedback which reduces the warm that the oceans would otherwise trap?
00
Lars,
Low level clouds TRAP heat. Clouds also fall as rain – increasing temperature. They bring back energy to the ground otherwise lost to space.
(Then you need to explain why there is a drop in temperature during a thunderstorm) CTS
I may appear simplex in postings – but here on such a forum it is deliberate, so you understand.
(Veiled insult?) CTS
00
Ross James says:
Really? Perhaps you’d like to restate or clarify this claim?
00
Naw, it’s been 24 hours and Ross James has not restated or clarified his claim.
So Ross James has thereby demonstrated a very limited knowledge of atmospheric physics, thermodynamics, and properties of water. (“very limited” is much nicer than saying doesn’t know s**T about)
Would you trust anything else he posts as “accurate”?
00
One question you need to answer to yourself Mr James.
How is it a greenhouse when its hotter outside? Or do we right off the statsophere & mesophere?
00
EPIC FAIL.
Normally I would go to great lengths to explain the error of your ways, Ross James, but in this case you are so far out of the ball-park it hardly seems worth the effort.
Suffice to say that even the much-censored in favour of CAGW and rightly maligned by intelligent people, Wikipedia, gives us a sufficiently adequate explanation of the adiabatic transfer of heat-energy (the rain goes down, the energy is radiated out), to make your above statement absolute BS.
Please do us all a favour and refrain from making quasi-non-scientific semi-religious statements about things you obviously have no grasp of, until you at least can regurgitate the “science” even as your side agrees to it.
The “energy” falls back to earth as rain – what next – Thor’s Hammer makes up any shortfall.
Good grief.
To think people actually waste intellectual energy debating with you you.
00
“The troposphere is the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere and site of all weather on Earth. The troposphere is bonded on the top by a layer of air called the tropopause, which separates the troposphere from the stratosphere, and on bottom by the surface of the Earth. The troposphere is wider at the equator (10mi) than at the poles (5mi)”
So who needs balloons to find the hotspot,just head to Marble Bar.
00
“”Temperature changes in the lower stratosphere show cooling of
~0.5 K/decade over much of the globe for 1979–2007…Trends in the middle and upper stratosphere … show mean cooling of 0.5–1.5 K/decade during 1979–2005, with the greatest cooling in the upper stratosphere near 40–50 km””
The stratosphere is no more than a separation device of pressured gas, warmed by the enhancement of molecules at the earth surface.
Bazinga………
00
How could you possibly say that Markus when you know the correct answer is;
The tropopause is the separation device and the stratosphere is the fridge cabinet, acting as thermostat for incoming rays.
Again Bazinga………….
00
How could you possibly say that Markus when you know the correct answer is;
The tropopause is the separation device and the stratosphere is the fridge cabinet of outgoing heat, cooling incoming rays, as they warm to the pressure of the atmosphere, after preceding through the thermostat of the mesopause, and then onto the thermostat of the tropopause, before again heating closer as pressure increases at the Earths surface, until thermodynamics of the enhanced potential energy completes the system back to the separation device of the troposphere.
A complete system of heat in and heat out that does not affect the first law of energy conservation.
A bit better than that greenhouse nonsense, don’t ya thunk.
Again, again Bazinga……….
10
Markus, you are a troubador, why do you think you can relate philosophy to the science of physics?
I can’t, but it seems, they can’t either.
Do youse need another, Bazinga………
10
Clearly they do Markus, give em this one.
They do not consider a roof to be over the dynamic systems of the oceans, why would they think a roof is over the thermodynamic systems of atmosphere.
Bazinga………..
10
Current AMSU satellite at -0.6C anomaly! check 600mb
00
The article states that skeptics accept the value of 1.1 C of the no-feedback climate sensitivity, for a doubling of CO2. This is wrong. Some of us believe the number is indistinguishable from 0 C. The estimation is based on the assumption that the “structure of the atmosphere does not change”. This is code word for two things. First, that the estimations can be done looking only at the radiative term. This aassumption has never been validated. Second that the lapse rate does not change. If the lapse rate changes as a result of adding CO2 to the atmosphere, then the no-feed back climate sensitivity cannot be estimated at all. Lapse rate is controlled by convection and the latent heat of water, and if a change in the radiaitve balance in the atmosphere interacts with these two modes of heat transfer, then the estimations cannot be done at all.
00
One really big problem that should not go unmentioned is that Venus is NOT a greenhouse and not subject to any greenhouse effect. Greenhouses allow solar radiation to reach the floor, which then heats up and heats the air by conduction; the glass roof and walls prevents convection and the building heats up.
Venus has a permanent cloud deck which prevents solar radiation from reaching the surface. The temperature of the atmosphere is NOT due to composition, but due to the 90 atmospheres of pressure. The fact that it is mostly CO2 is irrelevant.
00
Mate. you’re punching thin air, the fights over, AGW has been K.O.’ed in the 10th round.
Top blue too it was.
Ya wanna have a beer down the pub, and have a laugh about it.
00
I totally agree, but we should never stop getting the science correct in order to prevent another mess like AGW. Sit back and enjoy, but keep your eyes and ears open. They’re working on the next big crisis – species diversity – which is much like nailing jello to a tree.
00
Me, I’m moving onto black holes, they sound like more fun.
00
The overwhelming mistake scientists on both sides have made is that CO2 does not trap heat. It can, at a low rate, convert IR energy to heat, BUT is also can convert heat to IR. It is NOT a one-way process. Other gases can just as well transfer heat to CO2 and it can emit IR.
This, during the day, CO2 and water vapor can actively convert IR to heat and just as easily heat to IR. These compounds are leaks, not traps. BUT, at night, they serve to actively leak energy by converting heat to IR and it’s one-way, as there is no solar input. This is equivalent to drilling many small holes in your greenhouse roof. During the day, you may not notice their presence as the Sun heats the building, but at night it will be noticeable. [Global climate models pretty much do not include night-time and assume solar input 24/7, which is why they do not notice this nocturnal effect.]
The definition for “greenhouse gas” (at Wikipedia) is false. It was designed to guide the reader to CO2 and water. However, as they do not trap heat, what are greenhouse gases?
Real greenhouse gases are nitrogen and oxygen, which do not have any IR emission/absorption bands. When heated by conduction by the surface, these gases have no way to lose heat except by convection and adiabatic expansion.
(They can “lose” it by IR radiation too) CTS
Very simply, CO2 and water vapor are energy leaks that keep the atmosphere cooler than otherwise and the water cycle, with water vapor condensing at altitude and releasing its Latent Heat of Condensation, acts as a huge heat engine that would ramp up it’s activity with any warming, serving to bring the temperatures back down. Let’s not mention the cool rain that falls to Earth and starts sucking up heat all over again. Estimates are that convection/water vapor accounts for 85% of atmospheric heat transfer—the heat that Trenberth cannot find because his warmest glasses cannot see convection.
00
As with any new theory, the wrinkles have to get ironed out, but the UTC is like a lamboborgini compared to that broken down Model T.
00
Hi Charles,
A very interesting piece.
One para that I found interesting was:
“Real greenhouse gases are nitrogen and oxygen, which do not have any IR emission/absorption bands. When heated by conduction by the surface, these gases have no way to lose heat except by convection and adiabatic expansion.” (They can “lose” it by IR radiation too) CTS
Regardless of the comment by CTS you get 10 points from me for simply mentioning “convection and adiabatic expansion” and another 10 for the last para.
Great
00
If global temperatures are indeed still increasing at an alarming rate as warmists claim, then why are they making such a fuss attempting to come up with explanations for missing heat?
Just wondering.
00
Two points about the box diagrams at the start. First CO2 does not form a layer in the atmosphere, nor does it trap heat – don’t forget that it emits IR just as easily and just as frequently as it absorbs it. Second, the outputs are not ‘observed’ temperatures, but rather predicted, or projected if you prefer, temperatures. My next quible is about the sentence ‘The serious skeptical scientists have always agreed with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2.’ I think that would be improved by deleting the definite article at the start of it, and perhaps get rid of the ‘always’, or at the risk of becoming duller, include reference to serious scientists who suggest the CO2 could have a cooling effect (enhancing the daily cooling task of transfering tropical heat polewards), or no appreciable effect at all. This aspect of the ‘debate’ does not appear to be settled. But overall, I like the post and hope that it will have a good impact on the ‘undecided’, those who are perhaps beginning to have doubts about all the alarmism, perhaps because of those mothballed desalination plants being soaked in the rains, perhaps because the fatuity of the carbon tax is sinking in, or because Antarctica seems not to have noticed the CAGW scam and just keeps on getting cooler and icier, or because the snows of Kilimanjaro have not gone, nor have they in the UK. Many more reasons are out there for citizens to raise an eyebrow at the irresponsible words of the alarmists. I hope the Evans piece can be brought to their attention in case they still hold a trace of respect for those climate models.
00
Of course, AGW didn’t make it, it’s DOA. It is deceased for this very reason:
They added a new invalid principal to greenhouse, Co2 forcing, but,
They could not, even with that, explain how physics, models greenhouses, when it’s hotter on the outside.
You cannot match the Science of Physics, to an incorrect philosophical perception of greenhouse.
We are to back where we started;
“Why wouldn’t a man, think and analogy, could correlate to the creation of life on Earth, it’s vessel, the atmosphere?”
The inconvenient truth of the certainty of man to err.
Markus Fitzhenry.
00
KR,
It would help if you’d provide something other than hand waiving on the issue of the missing hotspot. You referenced to Santer bloviating, but failed to mention Santer 08 stopped their “study” in 1999. How convenient. It has been thoroughly debunked for the deception that it is.
The data does not support a tropical tropospheric hotspot as predicted by climate models, period, end of story.
00
“The word troposphere means ‘turning sphere’, which symbolizes the fact that, in this region, convective processes dominate over radiative processes. The troposphere is indeed marked by strong convective over-turnings, whereby large parcels of warm air travel upwards to the tropopause, carrying water vapor and forming clouds as they cool down (the stratosphere, on the other hand is a very stable a stratified environment where heat transfer is mainly radiative).”
As a lay person I can’t understand how one can look for a hot spot in the troposphere at heights where the temperature is around -55 to -65 degrees Celcius.
http://www.atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca/people/loic/chemistry.html
00
That’s cos you’re not a “climate scientist”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiYZxOlCN10
00
Hello 😀
“Who do you trust – the data or the government scientists?”
Well, Government Scientists use data too. So this isn’t data vs scientists – it’s their use and interpretation of data vs yours.
Dr David Evans huh? Every Dr I know, as a matter of principle, only use their academic credentials when discussing their particular field. Otherwise you get guys with very nice phds in electronics telling you about all ocean heat content and getting it wrong. Oh wait.
But that’s an ad-hom (though it is a good rule of thumb for the budding skeptic) I can do better.
1. Lost in Space
[snip – Jason, feel free to make those accusations again, but next time , include some substantiation. David didn’t do either of the things you suggest, but you are free to point out things you think are errors – politely – with some evidence. We look forward to genuine efforts to help us improve the graphs. — Jo]
2. Lost at sea
[snip again ditto]
I think you’ll find if you put it back it fits rather well. And if you show the entire ocean heat content data set from 1993 and not just the one little bit of down in the up down wiggly line it fits very well indeed.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2005/2005_Hansen_etal_1.pdf
[David includes all the data available from the best form of measuring ocean heat content there is – ARGO . You respond with an old 2005 paper, and tell us to search for missing heat content (lost between 2003 and 2010) and somehow expect us to find that heat in records before 2003. It’s nonsense on stilts. Jo]
The wiggly lines on graphs are supposed to be plots of data (remember that stuff you mentioned in the title) – you can’t just move them around.
[snip – he didn’t, you need to substantiate these accusations. Repeating a falsehood does not make it true. – Jo]
3. Hotspot Found
It’s interesting John Brooks reminisced about the UAH temp record needing to be fixed. Because the radiosonde troposphere data was broke too. Change of design in the sensor. Could happen to anyone.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008JCLI2320.1
[Cheers, Thanks for referring to Sherwood 2008. It’s an excellent paper — for skeptics. That was the paper when they distorted the scale of the colours in fig 6. in order to “find” the hot spot. Look at fig 3, there is no hot spot between 100-300hpa. It shows how barrel bottom utterly desperate, unscrupulous, and unscientific they are. Thank you! — Jo]
So. Climate Scientists or guy with phd in electronics who [snip unsubstantiated allegation]. Given that the Climate Scientists are sometimes funded by the public – no contest!
[Yawn. Typical warmist “reasoning” – an ad hom attack, followed by pouring doubt the data, referring to papers he hasn’t read, but he trusts the models without question. Jo]
00
Perhaps, JasonP, you’d like to supply us with a list of all the people with a PhD in “Climate Science”?
Just so we all understand just “who” is qualified to use their “academic credentials” when discussing the subject.
00
Well, Dr Richard Keen has his PhD in Climatology.
You can see what he thinks of CAGW from one of his class quizes, here.
I think it’s safe to assume that he agrees with Dr. David Evans.
00
JasonP.
Do you know that the following people have ZERO science degree in Meteorology or Climatology?
Dr. Hansen (He was trained in physics and astronomy in the space science program of James Van Allen at the University of Iowa. He obtained a B.A. in Physics and Mathematics with highest distinction in 1963, an M.S. in Astronomy in 1965 and a Ph.D. in Physics, in 1967, all three degrees from the University of Iowa)
Dr. Mann (He obtained an A.B. in applied mathematics and physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989, graduating from there with honors. He then studied at Yale University, obtaining an MS in physics in 1991, an MPhil in physics the same year, an MPhil in geology and geophysics in 1993, and a PhD in geology and geophysics in 1998)
Dr. Gavin (He was educated at The Corsham School, earned a BA (Hons) in mathematics at Jesus College, Oxford, and a PhD in applied mathematics at University College London)
Dr. P.J. Jones (Jones holds a BA in Environmental Sciences from the University of Lancaster, and an MSc and PhD from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne)
They routinely go outside of their chosen field of study.To push the log debunked AGW conjecture.Yet have the gall(Like you)to disparage people who DOES have a degree in Climatology or Meteorology.Who do not agree with the main thrust of the conjecture.
Dr. Michaels (Michaels has an A.B. and S.M. in biological sciences and plant ecology from the University of Chicago, and in 1979 obtained his Ph.D. in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison)
Here is a link to many more.People who actually have a degree that strongly relates to the topic of the Climate.Who are not supporters of the long debunked AGW conjecture:
LINK
Now I understand that educational credentials does not prove either competency or credibility of the person holding such a degree.But YOU warmists love to be hypocritical about it.I made this post for the purpose of showing why your comment below is typical warmist bile.
The below is a beautiful example,
Yeah YOU can do better,but will you?
00
If someone claims to predict the stockmarket, the horse races, the weather, the climate, or anything else I don’t perfectly understand, using arguments or technology I may not understand at all, then there is one time honoured way of judging them. Get them to make some predictions. Not hind-casts. Predictions. Wait a while and then judge their predictions.
Well, what did you find?
00
An additional note, one which I made on the previous Dr. Evans thread, is that the Hansen graphs he is showing display the Hansen projections for surface temperature values (as in HadCRUT, GISTEMP, GHCN, etc) – against (as he did before) satellite estimates of surface temperature, which are known to show rather lower values. And, quite notably, were not what Hansen was making projections for.
Apples versus oranges, quite an unfair comparison. If you actually compare the Hansen projections to surface temperatures which is what the Hansen projections were about, you get a very different story.
So again, Dr. Evans has graphed something rather deceptive.
00
Got to admit, I was a bit puzzled by KR’s assertion, after reiterating his claim that anthropogenic CO2 remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years (in post #45.1.1.1.9):
when what I had said was:
I finally got it — when one brings up actual data that contradicts KR’s favorite models (in this case, long lifetime CO2 models), then one is committing the Appeal to Complexity fallacy.
I guess (in KR’s mind), if I only understood these theoretical models as well as he, I would realize that they can still be “true” (“truthy”?) even if they are contradicted by every empirical study (36 of them) done in the real world.
Perhaps KR’s mind inhabits a virtual reality.
00
Hi BobC
The only way to explain CO2 residence time is to look at grass, shrubs and trees and how they love to grow in the presence of heat, sunlight and CO2.
They do grow, and they grow faster with more CO2 in the air and they Sequestrate like crazy.
Vegetation response to varying CO2 is to have a new sequestration unit up and running inside a year or two, not the tens or hundreds or thousands of years proposed by the AGW nutters.
The oceans also are hungry for CO2 and can vary absorption rates of CO2 almost instantaneously to take advantage of additional CO2 in the air.
Nature responds.
00
Hii BobC
Congratulations: “I finally got it ………. Appeal to Complexity”.
There has been a pattern with a number of contributors so that when it looks as though the truth might be exposed all they have to do is start picking at trivia in various papers and bog the discussion down.
The increased Complexity is a sure way to confuse those who are uncertain about the science.
00
BobC – Once again, you are conflating mean residence time for individual molecules with concentration change time in the presence of exchanges in both directions between atmosphere and ocean, and the separate processes of much longer time frame that remove carbon from the atmosphere and ocean.
Your “many empirical studies” are all about mean residence time. In terms of greenhouse effects we’re interested in concentration change time – a completely separate time frame, a red herring.
—
I would appreciate you not creating strawman arguments, or misrepresenting what I say. You argue that said “that anthropogenic CO2 remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years”, when what I actually said was “The reduction in CO2 concentration from an addition to the atmosphere comprises multiple exponential decays” – concentration changes, not individual molecules.
—
My note about your Argument from Complexity referred to:
…which is just silly.
——
All of which is simply side-tracks from the article and thread. Dr. Evans has presented misleading (and in my opinion deceptive) graphics, claimed low sensitivity while presenting papers and arguments about the THS (which isn’t a greenhouse gas signature anyway, but a signature of heating from _any_ cause), and in this recycled article has not made a good argument for his point of view.
00
“”
In terms of greenhouse effects we’re interested in concentration change time – a completely separate time frame, a red herring.””
With respect KR, greenhouse is, the red herring you should be concerned with.
00
[snip. inane]
00
Sorry KR
[snip. Inane]
00
Hi CTS Point taken. (That was JO who snipped you) CTS
Was trying to read some of his comments and kept getting the feeling of being diverted off topic or referred to some link or anything but having the point made in plain English.
There are a lot of reds for those comments that suggest others also feel their time is being wasted.
On the other hand people are responding and that must mean something.
maybe I’m too old and snappy.
(It is better to keep jaws closed and be innocent,than to open them wide and have excitable mod deciding on your guilt!) CTS
00
And you, KR, are demonstrating your inexplictable attraction to hypothetical models (of long lifetime atmospheric CO2) that are unsupported (indeed, falsified) by all available empirical data.
There is, indeed, empirical evidence that the residence time constant (of atmospheric CO2) is quite short, 5-12 years.
There is, also, empirical evidence that what you call the “concentration change time” is also quite short, on the order of 8 – 12 years. The C14 bomb spike measurements, for example, are essentially a classical tracer measurement of that quantity (actually, the “relaxation time” of the system; also called the “Impulse Response Function) — I recall that you knew nothing about tracer measurements, and weren’t willing to educate yourself.
Since, in a linear or quasi-linear system, these two quantities would be very closely related, it would need some actual data showing that the concentrations of atmospheric CO2 follows some other rules. Such data is entirely lacking.
There is exactly NO emprical evidence, whatsoever for the ad hoc models that claim CO2 “concentration change times” of hundreds to thousands of years. They amount to nothing more than theoretical wishful thinking. In addition, none of these data-free models can reproduce the experimental data — either the bomb spike data, or the other residence time experiments. There is no reason to take any of them seriously as anything more than political ploys.
Your argument, on the other hand, seems to be:
Since I don’t (you claim) understand the difference between residence time and relaxation time therefore these flaky models which contradict (and can’t reproduce) ANY of the empirical data must be right.
You need remedial education in logic. (And, it wouldn’t hurt if you tried to understand a little about why the bomb spike measures the IRF of the atmospheric-CO2 system and how that relates to the “concentration change time”.)
——————————————————————————-
Then, there’s this:
So, if you can’t tell how much of the excess C12 in the atmosphere is from anthropogenic sources, and how much is from volcanos, you should just assume it’s all from human activity. Gee, that’s only logical — doing anything other than assuming the answer you want would be “silly”. Perhaps you can tell us what’s “silly” about this article explaining why you shouldn’t do that.
00
In my previous comment, to clarify, the red herring BobC presented was to throw a swarm of papers on mean molecular residence time up as an attempt to argue about concentration change time.
Which (sorry to be harsh, but we’ve gone over this in detail before on other threads) is a completely invalid argument on his part.
(The difference between you and BobC is that he provides empirical evidence and you never did) CTS
00
Thanks, KR, I heard that.
00
Again, you demonstrate your ignorance. The bomb spike measurements (still ongoing) are a direct measurement of the relaxation time of the atmospheric-CO2 system: That is, they directly measure how long it takes an injection of excess CO2 into the atmosphere to be removed — the precise datum you are referring to as “concentration change time”.
The data also shows other interesting facts, such as the mixing time between hemispheres is 2-4 years. The fact that CO2 concentrations in the Southern Hemisphere (where little anthropogenic CO2 is produced) do not lag concentrations in the Northern Hemisphere (where most anthropogenic CO2 is produced) by this amount is a direct indication that human sources are not responsible for most of the CO2 concentration increase.
Too bad you weren’t able to produce a valid argument to that effect. I invite interested readers to look at KR’s attempts to show this on this thread.
Of course, we’re still waiting for you to produce ANY empirical data showing that the hypothetical “long tail” (thousands of years) of atmospheric CO2 relaxation is real. Such data won’t be forthcoming, as it would directly contradict decades of C14 measurements (linked above).
00
CTS – (The difference between you and BobC is that he provides empirical evidence and you never did) CTS
That would be incorrect – as BobC has pointed out, we discussed this at some length on this thread. I had wanted to save everyone the rehashing of that topic…
If, however, we wish a repeat of this discussion, I would point to the IPCC summary on Carbon Cycle Feedbacks, to Sabine et al 2004 noting that “The current fraction of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions stored in the ocean appears to be about one-third of the long-term potential” (basic chemistry), while Archer 2009 reviews the literature on the long term tail of CO2 inputs to the atmosphere: “The models agree that 20– 35% of theCO2 remains in the atmosphere after equilibration with the ocean (2–20 centuries). Neutralization byCaCO3 draws the airborne fraction down further on timescales of 3 to 7 kyr.”
—
In terms of empirical evidence [since everyone here appears to hate models, even when based upon the straightforward chemistry of weathering and reaction rates], Archer 2009 notes “This is consistent with sedimentary records from the deep past, in particular a climate event known as the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, which consisted of a relatively sharp increase in atmospheric CO2 and ocean temperature, followed by a recovery, which took perhaps 150,000 years (Kennett & Stott 1991, Pagani et al. 2006)” (emphasis added)
—
CTS – A minor side note: It’s one thing to enforce moderation policies, another to offer ones opinion while acting as a moderator; that leads to the impression that particular opinions are not allowed here. I don’t feel that I’ve violated moderation here (and if I have, please tell me) – if you offer an opinion on the subject, perhaps you could participate as a commenter instead?
(I was making a short statement about presenting evidence nothing more.You have since answered it) CTS
00
The logical error of referencing models to support other models should be evident. This is what 99% of the literature on CO2 cycles does. It is why the field is a hermetically sealed echo chamber isolated from any real world data.
Nobody here “hates models” KR, we just realize that models need to be verified by actual observational data — an obvious necessity (if you care about being right) that apparently escapes you.
Well, some evidence is better than none — however just being consistent with current CO2 cycle models is not very strong. The (55 Mya) PETM is also consistent with the bomb spike data and measured CO2 atmospheric lifetimes, since those are actual measurements. So the PETM doesn’t represent a crucial “experiment” to decide between the current data and the current theories.
(Why anyone would elevate theories over data is a psychological question I am unequiped to answer.)
But your truncated description of the PETM leaves the impression that it is known that the CO2 took 150,000 years to decay from the atmosphere after the source ended. That is completely unknown — I quote from the Wikipedia article:
None of the models you’ve been promoting can explain how CO2 concentrations — without additional ongoing sources — can drop for 1000 years, then hold steady for 20,000 years before dropping again. This is clear evidence that there were ongoing CO2 sources during the PETM, of unknown magnitude — which destroys any chance that the data can be used to verify today’s models.
In addition, note that there is evidence that the sudden warming may have started as much as 3000 years before the CO2 spike — not exactly a confirmation of it’s currently exalted status as the driver of climate.
00
.
KR,
Let’s make this real simple.
CAGW “theory” claims CO2 up = temperature up.
Observed reality shows CO2 up = temperature up – and down – and up – and down . . .
Therefore CAGW “theory” = FAIL.
That’s it. End of story. QED.
And no amount of links to “pal-reviewed” papers based on impressive, but – as it it turns out – useless “computer model predictions” is going to change that.
.
Come back when you have a new “theory” that hasn’t already been falsified by direct observation.
00
Has anyone on this thread addressed the fact that CO2 is heavier than than air with a specific gravity of 1.52… so it sinks to the ground… doesn’t rise into the atmosphere (so how could it create a greenhouse effect?), doesn’t absorb any more heat than other gases nor does it hold the heat any longer than other gases? As this can easily be shown in a simple science class experiment (http://spinonthat.com/CO2.html), why all the attention given to CO2 as a “greenhouse”gas? Should be obvious to all that the affect of CO2 on temperature is fleeting and inconsequential.
All this arguing about various minutia is really nothing more than an exercise in debating. The bottom line is that the minuet amount of CO2 in our atmosphere (we live in one of only two periods in the last 600 million years with both Temperature and CO2 levels this low at the same time) isn’t worth bothering with (unless you are looking for a way to gain control over all our lives).
CO2 would seem to be the proverbial “Red Herring”!
00
Hi Gene,
Good comment.
I think that in sunlight there might be enough energy to allow full mixing but understand that CO2 expressed from volcanic sources may be able to pool at night and has possibly even led to suffocation of people sleeping in low areas.
00
Your comment about the “red herring” is a reminder to put CO2 in its place.
My comment relates to modeling and how CO2 fits in.
It is quite acceptable when using a model in engineering processes, to take out a small element of a process and scrutinize it. hence the scrutiny of CO2 is OK up to this point.
What you can’t do is use that analysis to then determine the function of the whole model.
The results of any working of a small part of the problem MUST THEN BE RE-INTEGRATED into the model and a full assessment made from there.
The Climate Change people Never re-integrated the CO2 analysis back into what they presented us with.
Had they done that it would have shown a number of important things.
1. CO2 and especially Human Origin CO2 is quantitatively irrelevant compared to Water as a green house gas.
2. The concept of GHG is irrelevant anyhow because in the troposphere the main limiting heat transfer mechanism at work is Convection not radiation.
3. The full “Greenhouse” analysis was never presented because it was always the intention to implicate and damn man’s combustion of coal and oil.
As far as CO2s place in the Earth’s atmospheric heat balance: it doesn’t have one.
It is irrelevant.
00
KR,
Are you the only supposedly educated person that hasn’t heard… CO2 rises an average of 800 years AFTER temperatures rise!
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11659-climate-myths-ice-cores-show-co2-increases-lag-behind-temperature-rises-disproving-the-link-to-
Vostock ice core samples… recent work has tended to show that during deglaciations CO2 increases lags temperature increases by 600 +/- 400 years.[2] Beryllium-10 concentrations are linked to cosmic ray intensity which can be a proxy for solar strength.
00
memoryvault
Minor side note – I’ve never said “catastrophic” anthropogenic greenhouse warming – that’s a strawman argument. I expect climate changes will be expensive, probably painful, but I certainly don’t expect the world to burst into flames. Don’t put words in my mouth.
Temps are about 0.6-0.8C above what they would be without anthropogenic greenhouse gases, and will continue to rise with our emissions. If, however, you insist that temperature increases in a climate system with volcanoes, solar cycles, and the ENSO/SOI would be monotonic with CO2 increases, you don’t understand the issue at all. CO2, while the largest forcing (changing influence) right now, is not the only forcing on climate – there will always be variability up and down around the long term trends.
—
Gene Horner – That’s a reasonable question to ask. In the past, notably in the glacial/interglacial cycle, CO2 has acted as a feedback with a ~500-800 year lag. That’s as a feedback to forcing changes, namely (primarily) insolation due to the Milankovitch cycle, where warming oceans held less CO2.
Now, however, the forcing, the change in energy flows, is from our CO2 emissions, not insolation changes. Later on, perhaps ~500-800 years from now, we will see additional CO2 coming out of the oceans as they warm up, as feedback. Our CO2 emissions are acting as insolation changes have in the past – and on the same order of magnitude. Except we’re not coming out of an ice age – we’re starting from an interglacial, and are going to get warmer.
00
FAIL
Global atmospheric temperatures are claimed to about 0.6 to 0.8 C above where they were 100 years ago. There is not one shred of actual evidence that “anthropogenic greenhouse gases” have anything to do with it.
There is even less “evidence” to support the notion that they “will continue to rise with our emissions”. Especially given the inconvenient fact that said emissions continue to rise, and temperatures are falling.
FAIL
It was not me who claimed that “global warming as a result of increasing CO2 would overwhelm all natural forcings by the year 2000”.
THAT claim belongs fairly and squarely with you cultists, and you beat the rest us with it mercilessly for nearly two decades, right up until a couple of years ago when it became apparent it just wasn’t happening.
EPIC FAIL
Not even the grand gurus of your own cult claim this. In fact, all the CAGW
bullshitliterature accepts that the influence of CO2 alone is very minor. THAT is why they had to invent all thefudge factorspositive feedbacks which are what this article actually refutes.Or did you lose the plot somewhere along the way?
FAIL
Since there has always been “natural variability” in the long term trends, and since the CURRENT variations are neither bigger nor smaller, nor quicker nor slower, nor more nor less, than countless NATURAL variations in the past, there’s absolutely no need to “invent” CAGW to explain something that isn’t happening – outside of natural variation.
.
And finally, the most EPIC FAIL of all:
KR, if it’s not going to be “catastrophic”, then why on earth are we bothering to do ANYTHING about it at all, let alone destroying western industrialised society?
Whatever happened to the “greatest moral challenge of our time”?
00
KR
My understanding is that two separate NASA studies (among others) confirm that the oceans have been cooling since 2003. It would seem that (if this is indeed the case) we will not see much additional stored CO2 added to the lower levels of the atmosphere. Not a problem anyway, as CO2 is too heavy to affect the upper atmosphere, where any “greenhouse” effect would take place.
I have to question with your statement that we are “starting from an interglacial, and are going to get warmer.” Why do you disagree with those climate scientist,that believe that we are coming out of an ice age? There are a number of scientists holding the belief the earth is entering a new glaciation. You must really disagree with that theory.
Even the IPCC admits, there is not enough known about how the atmosphere to make any confident predictions… most of their computer scenarios have not turned out well. No satellite or weather balloon reading has agreed with the IPCC computer predictions that I know of. Perhaps in a decade or two the climate models will be more reliable. The IPCC also has stated their statements are merely reactions to the “what if” computer scenarios.
As the earth has experienced wide swings in climate throughout its existence, what makes a warming fluctuation of less than one degree Fahrenheit in 300 years a “crisis” as the UN and environmentalists claim? What is their real agenda? It’s not science to make the claim “the science is settled”.
CO2 levels of less than 400 ppm are miniscule compared with the 7,000 ppm plus the earth has endured (without turning into Venus I might add).
As the worlds population continues to grow (baring another plague or world war), an increased level of CO2 would be quite beneficial for crop growth (many (most?) greenhouse business’s double or triple the amount of CO2 in their contained atmospheres to increase plant growth). Are some people wrongly worried about what could be a beneficial environmental change?
00
I read an article from the Wall Street Journal, quoting 16 prominent scientists (listed below) that indicated two things.
First; “There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy”
Second; “CO2 is NOT a pollutant, and is exhaled at high concentrations by each of us.” Higher population… more hot air!
The article also noted that In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: “I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible:
Those of you on this thread who are so sure the politicians and environmentalists are telling you the truth might want to reconsider why you have blindly accepted… what I consider to be a scam… without considering the evidence. ALL the evidence. You might also consider the signers of the “Oregon Petition Project”… over 30,000 U.S. scientists that have taken issue with AGW.
The Scientists are:
Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.
00
The reason why carbon dioxide has no effect is contained in Prof Claes Johnson’s “Computational Blackbody Radiation” linked from my website.*
All it would take to disprove Prof. Johnson’s hypothesis is a simple experiment. You just have to show that backradiation can warm something like a metal plate that is already warmer than the cold atmosphere. It appears that backradiation cannot melt frost which is in shade all day long, but who knows, maybe it can warm the oceans (LOL.)
But seriously, I am seeking ten companies to sponsor a reward of $50,000 for the first person or organisation who can do so.
For details watch for my book in about May or June this year and advertisements in the press and other media.
If any company wishes to offer $5,000 please contact me. The 10 companies doing so will get plenty of free publicity I believe.
I don’t believe the reward will ever have to be paid out.
Doug Cotton
* http://climate-change-theory.com
00
Gene Horner – By my count, there are about 9-10 misapprehensions and, quite frankly, blog myths in your last post. If that’s the information you have received, I understand why you might have those impressions (i.e., I’m not blaming you) – but they are incorrect.
memoryvault – In your last post, I count about 8. Although the accusatory nature of the post makes it more of a Gish Gallop… and you have, as I’ve seen, been given enough information already.
—
Either way, I could spend weeks explaining each and every point, what the evidence is, providing you with enough information to make informed decisions about what is really the case. I don’t have the time – particularly as for every misapprehension I discussed I would probably hear another 8-10 from various posters.
So: I would suggest looking these items up – take those last couple of posts, go paragraph by paragraph, look the arguments up, and see what the actual evidence and science on those topics say. Then make your own decisions… I cannot spoon-feed folks.
00
KR, you don’t supply evidence, you supply your opinions. You could do this until Hell freezes over without changing anyone’s mind here.
I have spent weeks trying to get you to provide any evidence whatsoever for your opinions. You don’t seem to understand the concept of crucial evidence (see also here), but instead engage in ad hoc justifications for your pre-existing beliefs.
00
KR, Did you post the way you did so I would have to ask… “what misapprehensions?” Are you afraid that those other posters would supply data that show the misapprehensions are yours? Are the 16 scientists incorrect… I would have serious doubt about that premise!
Talk is cheap KR, and accusations are easily made. I’m not sure if you are having a good time playing devils advocate here, or if you really think your arguments are more valid than the scientists you seem to disagree with.
00
Gene Horner – Which misapprehensions? I would have to say every single statement in both your post here and in memoryvaults Gish Gallop. Looking at those two posts, I have a hard time finding anything that is supported by the data. I would encourage you to take a look through the resources of the link I provided – and evaluate the evidence for yourself.
Actually, I am not. I’m rather appalled by what people will take as evidence from various blogs, and do not enjoy being ranted at (cue memoryvault and others) – but at the same time scientific honesty and personal ethics encourage me to at least present the evidence I know of in the face of rather horrible misapprehensions. But it’s a rather Sisyphean task…
—
Enough. I’ve stated my disagreements with Dr. Evans post, with his graphic distortions, and mis-comparison of Hansen’s predictions with both the wrong emissions scenario and with a different (and lower) temperature record than he was discussing. Most of the rest of this discussion is off topic.
Adieu
00
Gene, MV, others:
My guess is that KR is used to having his opinions taken as fact, and doesn’t quite know how to justify them with data (probably hasn’t really thought that one out). That’s why he has been putting on the superior attitude in his last few posts — it’s all he has left.
I’ve worked with a number of scientists like that — even had some tell me what we were already doing was impossible. Eventually, they learned that facts trump theory (or else they quit working for an engineering company and went back to academia.)
(I’m reminded of the AGW scientists who used to accept public debate challenges, but were totally unprepared for anyone to question their beliefs and demand evidence.)
He says he’s appalled by what we consider evidence, but I suspect he really is appalled that we won’t just take his opinion as gospel.
He has left in a huff, because we demanded empirical justification for his beliefs, and he couldn’t provide it. Maybe next time he will spend a few hours reading some of the background information on Joanne’s blog and will be more prepared.
Won’t be holding my breath, however.
00
BobC – No, it’s really getting tired of folks (like you) who have been pointed at their errors (conflating mean molecular residence time with concentration change time) over and over, but hold on to their unsupportable opinion.
Yes, CO2 exchanges with the oceans and the biosphere. No, it’s not the singlar molecular time of residence in the atmosphere, as there is CO2 coming back as well.
Now – once the oceans/biosphere/atmosphere equilibrate, what processes remove CO2 from those climate compartments, and at what rates? That’s the question you have never answered, and have never acknowledged. And it’s really tiresome to hear you just repeat yourself over and over without paying attention to those longer term processes. You might as well stuff your fingers in your ears and sing “La la la la ….”
Left in a huff? No. Left the current discussion (having made my points regarding Dr. Evans article) in disappointment over the rationality of others? Yes.
00
KR,
Before you make an even bigger fool of yourself than you already have (if that is possible), for your own sake I urge you to get hold of a really simple, high school level organic chemistry textbook, and do some reading.
Then, when (if) you understand it, you can come back and explain to the rest of us what is wrong with the above statement of yours.
Until then, to be honest mate, you’re not worth wasting any more electrons on.
00
KR; Still haven’t grasped the significance of a tracer measurement of a system’s Impulse Response Function — and why the bomb spike measurement is a direct measurement of the “concentration change time” of CO2 in the atmosphere. (It directly answers the question: How fast will an impulse in CO2 concentration decay?)
My view on this is supported by linear systems theory and a hundred year’s of tracer measurements on complex systems. Your view simply represents a stubborn refusal to expand your knowledge.
Nobody denies that. I’m begining to think you have a reading comprehension problem.
You’re right, I have no answer to that, and I’m not very interested. (I have acknowledged it, however — reading comprehension again.)
Why is that not a very important question? Because it involves only 2% of anthropogenic CO2 (not 20% or 30%). Why is it only 2%? Because when the atmosphere and ocean equilibrate, the oceans contain 50 times as much CO2 as the atmosphere. Hence for every 100 units of CO2 injected into the atmosphere, 2 units will remain and 98 will end up in the ocean. (I’m ignoring the biosphere for simplicity.) The rate at which this equilibration occurs is controlled by the exchange rates between the atmosphere and ocean — which rates also determine the mean molecular lifetime.
So, make up all the models you like that predict that the 2% of excess CO2 in the atmosphere will remain for however many thousands of years you like. At current rates, Mankind might be able to double CO2 atmospheric concentrations in 3 or 4 thousand years.
Just don’t try to claim the residual is 30%, in direct contradiction to the empirical data (that you obviously haven’t understood).
I think I probably nailed it when I supposed that you are really bothered that we won’t just take your opinion as gospel. An alternate path might to be to actually engage me in a discussion about linear systems theory and tracer measurements instead of just dismissing the whole subject (which you apparently know nothing about) out of hand.
Nah…Pigs will fly first.
00
Hi BobC
When you quote the other party there is a question: “Now – once the oceans…… equilibrate, what processes remove CO2 from those climate compartments, and at what rates? That’s the question you have never answered, and have never acknowledged.”
I don’t read the other party’s contributions but the question has answers.
For the atmosphere, sequestration by nature (trees anyone), this has been done to death and he pretends not to know.
The oceans take up CO2 which is badly needed in that environment and reduce atmospheric CO2.
The natural decay of rock and soil is washed into rivers , harbors and into the ocean.
The active ingredient of this natural process is Calcium such as Tristan or MattyB or KR may have in their teeth.
The Ca eventually links up with the CO2 and becomes, magically, via HCO3-, a deposit on the ocean floor which hardens to beautiful sedimentary rock.
Quick, think of a name for it. Calcium Carbonate or more commonly ???
CO2 doesn’t pollute anything it just make building stone for half the planet.
00
KR: Since you rely so completely on AGW (anthropogenic global warming) theory which is built on the Greenhouse Gas theory, you really need to read Dr. Pierre Latour’s recent paper questioning (really, refuting) the very existence of a greenhouse warming effect from misnamed “greenhouse” gases (greenhouses do not work as claimed … they insulate against heat loss by restraining convective heat loss).
Latour’s paper is contained in an article by John O’Sullivan (http://www.webcommentary.com/docs/jo120117.pdf).
Latour’s work is consistent with those scientists who authored, Slaying the Sky Dragon – Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory available at http://www.amazon.com/Slaying-Sky-Dragon-Greenhouse-ebook/dp/B004DNWJN6.
00
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/29/making-things-matters/#comment-878941
00
After 300 plus comments i think it is time to summarise the points raised by Dr Evans.
1)CO2 effects on temp
The fact that co2 continues to rise but the temp refuses to budge has lead the warmistas to suggest that there is “something else” a something else that cannot be identified let alone measure. Rest assured when this somethin else goes away AGW will be back with a vengance.
Conclusion: The fact that there is something else the models have not included indicates that the models and therefore the theory has been falsified.
2) Hansen/IPCC predictions
Even the warmbots acknowledge these predictions have not come to fruition so in a =n effort to reduce the damage they have come up with all sorts of reasons as to why, these range from a reinterpretation of what the predictioner was actually predicting to the lowest of low blows……..cherry picking.
Conclusion: The predictions were based on the flawed theory and modelling in (1) so no wonder they got it wrong.
3) Ocean temps
The ocean temps show there has been no warming for the past ten or so years based on ARGO data, the warmbots claim (with some legitimacy) that this is too short a period to measure such things.
Conclusion: If we are to accept this reasoning as valid we should also accept that we, as in everyone has no idea about past ocean temps and the subject should be closed for debate until we can gather data over a time period acceptable to all.
4) Hot spot
First we are told the hot spot is a model produced warming in the atmosphere due to an increase in CO2, when it did not exist we were told it does not matter, then we are told it was found by using GPS data and it turned out it did matter afterall. When pressured to explain the methods by which it was found we were told it is there sometimes and sometimes not and anyway it could be there for any reason.
Conclusion: The whole topic of the hot spot is a sordid affair, truth be told it forms a central plank to the AGW theory and without it the theory is falsified hence the scramble to pretend it exists through GPS data. All this of course makes it difficult for the rank and file believer tp explain, hence the constantly changing version of events.
5) Outgoing radiation
Probably the most poignant point for the warmbots, the theory states that as the planet warms OR will reduce but sadly for these long time belivers the exact opposite is in fact happening. Which is probably why none of them are keen on discussing it as of yet.
conclusion: Time to pack up the soap boxes, bin the placards, cancel the march and go home to find another cause to fight for as the theory of AGW has been falsified.
10
“davidR” … that you cannot see the distortion in the Hansen & IPCC predictions (regardless of ENSO changes) is testimony to your own blindness in following warmist claims without question.
Good science demands skepticism. AGW proponents denounce skepticism. The conclusion should be obvious to anyone.
You would benefit from a reading of Dr. Pierre Latour’s recent paper questioning the assumed greenhouse effect theory. Latour’s paper is contained in a recent article by John O’Sullivan (http://www.webcommentary.com/docs/jo120117.pdf).
00
Bob,
In 1988 the computer models were very simplistic and they have been vastly improved since then. Many of the models at that stage still predicted cooling in the range of possibilities. It wasn’t until the mid 1990’s that the models improved to the point that the more extreme predictions were eliminated and the predictions consistently predicted warming.
Claiming to be a skeptic is not the same as being one. Climate scientists do not denounce skepticism. They denounce disinformation claiming to be skepticism.
Most disinformation is easy to dismiss because of the unscientific way in which it is presented.
00
So today has been my first in depth look at the AGW debate. I spent quite a few hours both at skepticalscience and here. I should first say that I was very surprised at the amount of dismissiveness shown by each side. The comments on each site are like mirror images of each other. I feel that I spent a lot of time wading through useless insults and so on. I think people who are familiar with this field should be more considerate of those passively reading the thread. It is rare for someone to concede in any internet argument. It is just as rare to find in depth discussion of technicalities and methodical issues. As I see it, the primary value of these public arguments lie in providing the interested reader insight as to the controversial aspects of an issue.
Anyway, I would like to give an outsiders perspective… please tell me if I am characterizing the current situation correctly:
It seems that everyone agrees the earth is warmer now than it was in 1900. Atmospheric CO2, as well as, “anthropogenic” CO2 (plus CH4, etc) emissions have been increasing over the same period. The correlation is obvious and I think everyone agrees that this is worthy of study.
Likewise, everyone seems to agree that the earth radiates IR light, and that CO2 absorbs and re-emits IR light.
There also appears to be agreement that variations of +/- 12 K have been occurring throughout earth’s history due to “orbital forcing” with estimates of atmospheric CO2 directly correlated but lagging this pattern. Although the pattern is accepted, there is some disagreement about the quantification here (since this is necessarily based on proxy measurements).
Academically, the big question is whether digging up a bunch of sequestered carbon and pumping CO2 into the atmosphere can also “force” a warming phase detached from the normal glacial cycle.
I think there is also agreement that no one foresees atmospheric CO2 will be present at sufficient levels to directly accomplish this. However, it is agreed that any factor increasing global temperature increases atmospheric water vapor, which could foreseeably force global warming.
This leads to a plausible theory that small increases in temperature due to anthropogenic CO2 can induce increased water vapor which will further increase temperature, cause release of CO2 from natural sinks, etc in a positive feedback loop. The most catastrophic end-game here would be a runaway greenhouse effect turning earth into a place similar to Venus. However, this possibility is extremely theoretical. A less catastrophic effect would be a smaller increase in temperature ( >2 K) which would not be incompatible with life as we know it, but could cause various problems for humanity, at least in the short term. We may want to attempt to avoid this possibility, which requires a rational assessments of the cost, benefit and various probabilities.
So the actual big question at hand is whether the conditional probability of “various problems for humanity” given that “an increase in anthropogenic CO2 can force global warming” is greater/less than the probability of “various other (primarily economic) problems for humanity” will occur given that “we do nothing”. The role of climatologists in answering this is providing an estimate of the prior probability that “an increase in anthropogenic CO2 can force global warming”.
Assessing this probability is problematic. I have noticed four primary problems:
1) Increased water vapor can also condense into clouds, which can function to reflect IR light back to earth, or reflect shortwave light back out to space. The role of clouds under conditions of cooling and warming has not yet been acceptably modeled and there is some preliminary data that they act as a negative feedback during short term temperature variations.
2) There may be unforeseen carbon and temperature sinks or sources.
3) There are difficulties in collecting accurate temperature and atmospheric data both about the present and, even more so, the past.
4) Even if accurate, establishing causation and extrapolating trends from such data is difficult due to the noise introduced by many “black swan” events as well as overlying short-term trends. As such, an unusually high degree of subjectivity is necessarily introduced into the data analysis process.
On the other hand, there is a large body of literature including multiple lines of evidence that do support this theory. Although many of the effect sizes are small, if we trust the data, it is telling us something is going on. On the face of it, this is not really surprising as we are the first species to dig up a bunch of carbon and pump CO2 into the atmosphere in massive amounts.
However, the use of phrases like “incontrovertible evidence” are drastically premature in light of the difficulties mentioned above. This, along with other evidence the field has been politicized (the argument from consensus), indicates that the literature (data and analysis) should be taken with a grain of salt.
00
Well thought through comment. Well done and welcome.
You say..
This is an unfortunate side effect of blogging about a subject for many years, day after day. Not every comment, nor even the majority of comments can be expected to be purely on “the science”.
If the subject does interest you, I urge you to look past the personality clashes, take in information about the various aspects of AGW and ask questions.
And keep visiting complimentary sites to get various perspectives.
Once again, welcome.
00
Yep, will do when there’s time. Plenty of relevant info already in this thread. There is too much to respond to right now, I will digest it and return with questions later. I hope no one finds it rude if I didn’t respond…
00
Hi Stochastic,
As BaaH says above: well done.
A minor comment , but very important.
There is no Greenhouse effect from CO2 in the lower atmosphere.
It took me several years to be given this info by the mainstream scientists who are the custodians of real science.
Being very remote from my original studies I took the UV to IR via CO2 paradigm provided by the proponents of AGW and showed that the Human Origin CO2 cannot be considered in any way as being quantitatively involved or likely to be involved in Man Made Global Warming.
That was quite clear and it was always obvious that the back-radiation theory was a bad joke.
In the last month it has been made quite clear by a number of physicists that the main heat transfer mechanism at work in the lower atmosphere is not radiation but convection.]
The composition of the atmosphere is almost irrelevant when temperature is being assessed because Pressure is the controlling factor.
There is a lot of cunningly disguised disinformation out there.
00
Your problem, Stochastic – assuming you’re genuine – and I have alarm bells ringing – is that you are looking for answers to “science” questions, on two sites where both the promoters and commentators long ago realised “science” has very little to do with “The Cause” and its backers, “The Team”.
At Septic Science what you will find is people dedicated to protecting The Cause, and The Team, and here you will find people committed to exposing what we see as the hidden agenda behind The Cause, and what we see as the scientific fraud committed by The Team to protect and promote The Cause.
I am afraid you will find much the same thing on most “quasi-scientific” sites – regardless of which side of the fence they claim to be on.
If you are indeed genuine might I suggest you try getting your “scientific” facts from someone who has to actually USE science in their profession, as opposed to just “producing” science – mainly to generate grant funds – or supporting OR attacking the science, to defend a pre-conceived outlook on a blog.
I am talking about an engineer. And not just any engineer. Burt Rutan, one of the most prolific and successful aerospace engineers today – designer of White Knight and Space Ship One, amongst many other things, AND a committed environmentalist – has put together a large amount of information that resulted from his own research on the subject.
http://rps3.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm
If nothing else, work your way through his “comprehensive report” at the top of the page.
00
Hi MV
Thanks for the ref to Burt Rutans site.
The top pdf looks great.
🙂
00
Thanks KK, but I can take no credit.
I only became aware of it myself when someone else posted a link to it here on another thread the other day.
I had a quick look, but I was unable to find the comment so I could not credit the original poster. If he/she is reading, please step forward – credit where credit is due.
It helps that as an engineer myself (well originally), AND as an environmentalist, Burt Rutan has been a long-time hero figure of mine. Heck, the guy lives in a totally eco-self sufficient and largely self-built pyramid in the middle of the desert, where he amuses himself designing – and building – the next generation of space-craft that will take our children to the solar planets.
I mean, how cool is that?
But I never knew about the stuff he put together regarding CAGW.
00
MV
“and I have alarm bells ringing ”
Join the club.
So many have started out as seekers after the truth only to later introduce a blatantly warmer concept.
Cunning knows no bounds.
00
Why dont we reserve judgment for now KK.
00
Crakar24
I agree – just wondering about the origin of “Stochastic”
Saw this at Bloomberg on CO2 trading in the EU?
What’s the relevance of “Stochastic” and a trading chart? It’s seems a very stern word for what intrinsically is, “you can’t make up your mind”!
This is probably applicable to CO2 trading maybe!
00
My only problem with Burt Rutan’s effort is that he says that there is a greenhouse gas effect with CO2. It is not important to the main points of his analysis, but it is still perpetuating a scientific myth.
00
Thanks Truthseeker.
I haven’t gone through it in detail yet so can’t comment.
There are many different definitions of what the atmospheric green house was.
My own view was that there was an upper boundary to the zone being heated and so I allowed that maybe the radiation exchange mechanism proposed by the AGW group could exist.
From their own mechanism it was easy to show that man made CO2 was quantitatively irrelevant to the “global warming effect”.
We now find that the only factors relevant to atmospheric temperature are average atomic weight of the air and pressure.
Individual radiation absorption and transfer rates of the component gases is irrelevant in the part of the atmosphere we inhabit.
🙂
00
Stochastic:
Welcome aboard, and nice (partial) summary of the situation. What’s needs to be added is the requirement to verify (at least one of) the various theories before there is sufficient data to decide on any action.
I’m with engineer Burt Rutan here, that a theory that you are going to depend on to inform action must be verified, if disaster is to be avoided.
The first scientist to attempt to model the climate, Edward Lorenz, developed chaos theory to explain the inability to predict what seemed to be deterministic systems. It is generally recognized that weather is such a system, and, since climate is sequential weather, the implication is that the climate is also chaotic. Lorenz demonstrated that chaotic systems have a distinct prediction horizon, beyond which prediction is impossible.
There is only one way to prove that a chaotic system can be predicted, and that is by demonstration. Since the “climate crisis” is only a predicted one, it is especially important that the predictive skill of climate models be subjected to test.
They have been, and to date have demonstrated no predictive skill distinguisable from chance.
As you can see from perusing the posts by those supporting AGW, they are more focused on making ad hoc excuses for prediction failure than they are on making falsifiable predictions that might validate (or invalidate) their theories. Until the issue of predictability is settled, there is no reason to take any risky action about “climate change”. (Cost effective actions, based on prudence is another thing — but these should consider warming and cooling as equal possibilities.)
As to information: I try to include links in my posts that allow interested parties to further research things for themselves. Almost always, (but not the next one) bolded, non-italicized text in my posts indicates an external link.
00
“”It seems that everyone agrees the earth is warmer now than it was in 1900. Atmospheric CO2, as well as, “anthropogenic” CO2 (plus CH4, etc) emissions have been increasing over the same period. The correlation is obvious and I think everyone agrees that this is worthy of study.””
Nobody argrees to that at all. The increase Earths temp relates directly to the Suns isolation since the LIA, as our geologic records show. So often in threads, warmest come after to leave rhetoric.
“”I think there is also agreement that no one foresees atmospheric CO2 will be present at sufficient levels to directly accomplish this. However, it is agreed that any factor increasing global temperature increases atmospheric water vapor, which could foreseeably force global warming.””
Fantasyland. Water vapor doesn’t force global temperatures, clouds are the thermodynamic distribution of heat. Forcing there is not. More rhetoric.
“”There may be unforeseen carbon and temperature sinks or sources.””
Straight out of a dark ages text book, carbon has got nothing to do with forcing. More rhetoric. Forcing is the force of pressure on mass, that’s it. Enough this commentators statements are just rhetoric and not worthy of my dissemination.
00
Basically Stochastic we have made up our minds and we just idle away the time here until the earth/climate tells us who is right and who is wrong. To be honest i gave little attention tio the AGW theory until one day they said “we need to apply a tax” the moment for me was when Al Gore made his movie and the only peice of evidence he gave in two hours was the ice core data which he used to show CO2 drives the temps. Little did people know a new improved method with a higher level of detail had already produced ice core data which showed temp drove CO2. Gore knew this data existed two full years before his movie but he chose to mislead people rather than present facts. Think about this………….if Gore had of told you temp drives CO2 how many copies of his movie would he have sold………..would Gillard have brought in a carbon tax?????????????????????
00
Memoryvault & Stochastic:
S. is correct because it has now been proven that any radiation from a cold atmosphere cannot add thermal energy to a surface which is significantly warmer. See the Radiation page on my site http://climate-change-theory.com
As for SkS, well they only appear to have a majority supporting AGW for the simple reason that they ban people like myself (9 times in fact) who submit scientific information which does not support the hoax that is AGW. One poster there (Tom Curtis) picks on skeptics, posts a lot of the typical arrogant waffle (usually off topic) and then asks moderators to ban the “skeptic” so that TC’s word stands last in the thread making it look as if the skeptic changed his mind and couldn’t respond. Does it remind you of Climategate? (I’ve posted screen captures of rejected posts on my site on the ‘SkS Errors’ page.)
00
Well, just a tiny point, Dr. Evans would have been correct up until about a year ago concerning my agreement that CO2, at the tiny concentrations at hand, contributes to warming. However, I am now not even so certain about that anymore.
In other words, I always thought CO2 made no measurable impact on global warming but have to modify that to “no measurable impact on global temperature … up or down.”
So the question becomes, if mean free path analysis confirms CO2 actually cools the earth a little, how long will it take these charlatans to flip ALL of their claims upside down and tell us the much truer horrors that global cooling will bring upon us from putting more CO2 into the air? Growing glaciers cutting off water supplies, reduction of growing seasons, expansion of black plague, no summer arctic melt causes hungry polar bears to migrate south in search of food – US!, (humans probably taste like chicken to them?), etc.
If you don’t believe me then consider that they already enjoy unfettered access to major news outlets with claims like, (top climate scientists reported today that..) cooler weather is consistent with global warming; CO2 causes more droughts and floods; warming causes more and less snow, etc. Trust me they WILL try to get away with whatever lie they can think of in order to keep riding their government funded gravy train and a lie that CO2 causes global cooling is a much easier lie with which to scare people.
00
Yes, Mike, cooling by CO2 is in fact more likely. There can be no warming because radiation from a cold atmosphere cannot transfer energy to a warmer surface, as per Prof Claes Johnson “Computational Blackbody Radiation.” However, cooling by CO2 takes place in two ways, both small of course …
(a) There is actually some IR radiation in the Sun’s spectrum which CO2 can absorb and send back to space.
(b) Oxygen and nitrogen molecules gain thermal energy by diffusion (molecular collision) from the surface and warm air then rises by convection. These molecules cannot radiate at atmospheric temperatures. So their “heat” must be transferred by collision to carbon dioxide and its colleagues who can then radiate away the thermal energy that was once in the oxygen and nitrogen. Guess what, the oxygen and nitrogen molecules end up cooler. Who knows how hot it might be up there but for CO2?
Further info and links on my site http://climate-change-theory.com
00
Well put Doug.
00
Cracker24 and any warmists hereon:
We don’t have to wait for the climate in the next few years to tell us who’s right and who’s wrong. Physics all along has been telling us. The warmists just don’t understand physics.
The most glaring mistake they make is in saying the atmosphere has warmed the surface (like a blanket) from -18C to +15C. The first figure is a theoretical temperature (call it small t) which is only related to the intensity of radiation via the S-B law which only relates to perfect blackbodies. Such blackbodies are usually other bodies in space which are perfectly insulated by space so there is no heat loss by conduction. In contrast the Earth’s surface is continually losing heat to the first millimetre of the atmosphere by diffusion (see Wikipedia “Heat Transfer” second paragraph) and also into the depths of the Earth’s crust or the oceans. So there is less energy left to radiate.
The actual temperature (call it capital T) is a totally different entity without direction for a start. So you cannot just subtract and get T – t = 33 deg.C, because t is not a real temperature. Without carbon dioxide and its colleagues, thermal energy would still diffuse from the surface into the atmosphere, greatly reducing the radiation, as it does. In fact the net radiation from the surface is probably less than 25 W/m^2, so what value of little t would that give you? Very cold I assure you.
This is why an IR thermometer cannot calculate temperature by measuring the intensity of the radiation and using S-B law. It can only do so by measuring the frequency and using Wien’s Displacement Law which says absolute temperature is proportional to the peak frequency.
So, given the major fallacy in the warmists “science” when they calculated and widely promulgated that 33 degree “difference” between apples and oranges, what confidence could we possibly have in any other deductions of theirs? They are also wrong in assuming radiation from a cold atmosphere can warm an already much warmer surface.
The atmosphere cools the Earth by reducing the amount of incident solar radiation which gets through. Hop out of a spacecraft and see how hot you feel in the sun’s rays. But radiation “temperature” is a very different thing from ambient temperature, both in space and, for example, at the top of a high mountain where the Sun’s rays might feel like 40C but the actual temperature of the air might be -15C.
It is important to remember that radiation is a measure of energy (Watts) transferred through a unit cross section (one square metre) and it is thus a vector with both magnitude and direction, nothing like a temperature. The only “connection” with temperature can be made if a true blackbody is emitting it, that body is not also losing thermal energy by conduction, diffusion, convection, evaporation or any other means. If it does lose energy in such ways then, at the very least, you would need much more information before making any inferences about its temperature.
Yes, the whole Earth plus atmosphere system looks like a blackbody from outer space and some average radiating temperature could be calculated by remembering that it is a spinning sphere, not a flat disk as warmists treat it as being. But whatever temperature is calculated is merely an average temperature somewhere in the atmosphere.
00
Yes Doug that all sounds very nice but it was all a waste of time as they are not listening, so as i said we sit here and entertain ourselves as we wait……and wait…..and wait…..one would think 15 years was enough to wait but apparently not.
00
The wait will be forever because the TOTAL energy effect of CO2 is 3.3 W/M2.This out of 120 W/M2 !
Double the CO2 concentration will produce about a 10% increase total effect of CO2.That brings it up to about a whopping 3.6 W/M2.
Meanwhile just in the Northern Hemisphere at 65 degree latitude.There has been a 32 W/M2 drop in summer energy in the last 6,000 years.Easily dwarfs any alleged increased warming power of the feeble gas.
John Kehr wrote a nice book about the Milankovitch cycle and explains very well how negligible CO2 warm forcing really is.The best I have yet seen and it is so easy to follow.I have the book on Kindle but better to read it on Cloud Reader for the many charts.
He utterly destroys the AGW hypothesis so well.The best demolishing I have even seen.He is qualified to understand the science.Here is his Biography
Link to the book. The Inconvenient Skeptic
It cost me about $5 and got it in 15 seconds after paying.
I strongly suggest that take a look at the book.
00
KR:
What evidence does Sabine provide that the “total anthropogenic CO2 emissions stored in the ocean appears to be about one-third of the long-term potential”? Did he use C14 tracer-measurements? I must say though, I do agree, that the C14 bomb-spike measurements that BobC is referring to does not disprove the IPCC’s claim that anthropogenic CO2 can significantly accumulate in the atmosphere. The nuclear C14 measurements simply tell us how fast CO2 is removed from the atmosphere (i.e. a measure of CO2’s atmospheric residence time) however, according to the IPCC, once human CO2 is absorbed by the oceans it is simply swapping with other CO2 molecules in accordance with the Revelle Factor. The Revelle Factor ordains that only 10% of the CO2 emissions from humanity will remain in the oceans. The upshot of all of this is that about 90% of anthropogenic CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere (obviously these are not the same original human CO2 molecules). This is referred to as CO2’s atmospheric lifespan or its perturbation time.
00
CHIP, I know you were addressing KR, but I feel I need to clarify:
That’s not correct. It would be correct, IF there were no C14 in the oceans — then you would simply be seeing how fast CO2 was removed from the atmosphere.
HOWEVER, at the start of the “experiment” (atmospheric A-bomb testing), C14 was in equilibrium between the atmosphere and ocean. There was as much C14 going from the ocean to the atmosphere as from the atmosphere to the ocean.
(This is almost, but not quite correct, since C14 has a half life of 5000 years and is only produced in the atmosphere. Hence there was a very small excess in the atmosphere, ~0.1% above the static equilibrium value.)
So, the “bomb spike experiment“ is an actual measurement of how fast the atmosphere returns to equilibrium when an impulse of excess CO2 is added; and also what is the residual amount left in the atmosphere after equilibrium is re-established.
(In fact, this is a classic tracer measurement of the system Impulse Response Function — such as has been used on complex systems for at least a hundred years.)
Currently, the answers are:
1) The time constant (1/e time) for return to equilibrium is ~8 years. (This is also the Impulse Response Function of the system, and what KR calls the “concentration change time”.)
2) The residual is <= 3%. (This is still an ongoing experiment, as we watch the C14 concentration continue to decrease. The 3% value is the amount by which the current C14 atmospheric concentration exceeds the pre bomb concentration. This figure may level off where it is, or may continue to decline. It cannot become larger unless atmospheric sources increase.)
This theoretical calculation is rendered moot by the actual measurements of C14.
_______________________________________________________________________________
I see some contradictions in several AGW arguments:
1) The argument from the Revelle factor implies that anthropogenic CO2 is a minor factor in the oceans — only 10% going into the oceans.
2) The claims of dangerous ocean “acidification” imply that anthropogenic CO2 is a major factor in the oceans.
3) If, according to the Revelle factor, 90% of anthropogenic CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, why is atmospheric CO2 concentration only increasing by an amount corresponding to only ~40% of anthropogenic emissions?
3) Actual solubility measurements contradict the Revelle factor argument. (In fact, if the solubility measurements weren’t correct, it’s hard to see how carbonated beverages could be made.)
00
Hi BobC
A great outline.
You comment on ” contradictions in several AGW arguments”.
I think you are being overly generous to the warmers to call your points “contradictions”
when they are “Mistakes” or “assumptions without basis”.
I must admit I have not previously followed the C14 argument wrt measuring Human Origin CO2 levels in various compartments of the oceans and biosphere because I have tried to understand the problems from other view points.
Basic chemistry should dismiss their argument re point 1.
1) The argument from the Revelle factor implies that anthropogenic CO2 is a minor factor in the oceans — only 10% going into the oceans.
There is constant equilibration of CO2 between the air and oceans and so if the oceans hold 98% of all CO2 then they should also hold 98% of “man Made” CO2 leaving 2% of man made CO2 in the air to be eventually (2 years?) sequestered in the biosphere (trees, grass).
Your point 3 illustrates that they have not done a proper mass balance on the arrival and removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. Many sources have just been “disparu” for convenience.
Liked you analysis there.
3) If, according to the Revelle factor, 90% of anthropogenic CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, why is atmospheric CO2 concentration only increasing by an amount corresponding to only ~40% of anthropogenic emissions?
🙂
00
The more you all talk about carbon dioxide, the more I think you don’t all yet understand that it can have zero (0.00000…) warming effect. Backradiation (if it existed) could not warm the surface and any warming of the atmosphere just leads to more energy being radiated away, eventually getting to space because the surface won’t accept it.
00
I am sympathetic with this point of view, Doug. In fact, the only long term (14 years) measurements of downwelling IR from the night-time atmosphere that I’m aware of (over the US’s Great Plains) showed decreasing IR back-radiation over that time, while CO2 continued to increase. The authors concluded that, if there was a signal from the CO2, it was buried in the noise and was unmeasurable.
That is consistent with zero, and I’m willing to accept that the climate effect of CO2 may well be unmeasurable. However, I’m not entirely convinced by theoretical arguments that it IS zero.
(In particular, I’m skeptical of the blackbody/thermodynamical arguments, since the behavior of the Earth-Sun system is more complicated than simple blackbody interactions. For example, the Earth heats up during daylight by absorbing mostly visible radiation from the Sun, which is unaffected by greenhouse gases. At night, the Earth mostly loses energy by infrared radiation, some of which is intercepted and re-radiated by greenhouse gases, and some of that is radiated back to the Earth. This re-radiatiated IR does not have to “heat the Earth” to make the average temperature of the Earth warmer — it just has to slow down the nighttime cooling by increasing the resistance of the energy loss path.
But, isn’t there an entire thread dedicated to this subject?)
I prefer empirical data — why I like the “bomb spike experiment”. It demonstrates, by actual measurement, that humans contribute a trivial amount to atmospheric CO2. So, whatever the real effect of CO2 on the climate is, the Human effect is unmeasurably small.
00
“It would be correct, IF there were no C14 in the oceans — then you would simply be seeing how fast CO2 was removed from the atmosphere. HOWEVER, at the start of the “experiment” (atmospheric A-bomb testing), C14 was in equilibrium between the atmosphere and ocean”.
That’s an interesting point Bob, and I must say, I never considered that. I understand that atmospheric CO2 with C12 and C13 exist in chemical equilibrium with oceanic DIC, but I have never heard of C14 existing in chemical equilibrium with the oceanic DIC. Perhaps it does. I’ll have to look that one up. Thanks for the clarification.
00
A good place to do so is the literature on radiocarbon dating, which depends on an even distribution of C14 throughout the biosystem (including oceanic).
**************************************
I just found an article on the C14 “Marine Reservoir” effect: The CO2 in the deep oceans can be old enough (> 1000 years) that concentrations are significantly affected by radioactive decay. This has to be accounted for in radiocarbon dating of marine bio materials, especially in regions where significant amounts of deep upwelling occurs.
In the bomb spike “experiment” this means that C14 is not in equilibrium with all ocean surface waters — in particular places where upwelling occurs will be deficient (by about 10 – 20%) in C14. This should be taken into account when analyzing the C14 data, and I don’t know if it has. The effect would be to make the real equilibrium time constant longer than the measured time constant, by an unknown amount (but which couldn’t exceed the 20% depletion of deep waters).
Still no way to get “hundreds to thousands” of years out of it — maybe 15 years max.
00
BobC Of course I prefer, in fact insist that empirical data backs up theory. So why is there apparently no published simple experiment showing backradiation slowing down the rate of cooling of some metal plate or whatever at night?
Reason: Any radiation from a cooler atmosphere does not have its coherent energy converted to incoherent thermal energy when it meets a significantly warmer surface. Only thermal energy can affect other thermal energy. You can only add or subtract like things. So no “slowing of the rate of cooling” is caused by any backradiation. See my Radiation page at http://climate-change-theory.com
00
I may disagree with your theoretical analysis, but I agree that you are right about the empirical evidence — there is no real-world evidence that CO2 causes any measurable effect on climate.
As to slowing the rate of cooling, here is a thought experiment:
Consider a calm, clear night in the desert with some constant temperature. A hot brick set out will cool down at some rate. If the brick is wrapped in a blanket, it will cool down more slowly. The blanket will also heat up to some temperature above what it would be without the presence of the hot brick, but less than the brick itself. Hence the blanket will be radiating more IR than it would if the brick had not heated it.
I would say that the brick cooled down more slowly because resistance had been added to the heat loss path. I would leave the blanket’s IR out of it.
00
Good illustration BobC
00
In 1981 NASA’s Dr Hansen made a huge mistake in assuming the Earth’s surface radiates like a blackbody. A further assumption was made that radiation from a colder atmosphere can be converted to thermal energy by a significantly warmer surface. It cannot be, and so it cannot warm or slow the rate of cooling. See http://climate-change-theory.com for more detail.
00
As several have already pointed out it is unclarity about the 1.1°C warming per doubling of CO2.
Can anybody point out to material/experiments where this value is calculated or deducted?
Where does the number come from?
00
Lars
Very good question.
From my own , possibly wrong, assessment I do not give much weight to this constantly debated Icon of warmism.
There are a lot of IF’s in this calculation that counter the validity of talking about it.
A scientific piece of trivia.
00
My backyard experiment (February 5 & 6, 2012) in NW of Sydney metro area.
I shielded a small section of my backyard with a car windscreen shade (silver on each side) which I suspended at an angle of about 45 degrees so that it would not interfere with convection loss and would reflect away upward radiation from the ground. I used a digital thermometer with a metal spike which I inserted into the ground, or held in the air just above the ground for the ambient readings. The “shielded” ground readings were taken under the shade about 20cm from where it came down to the ground, whilst the “unshielded” readings were taken in an open area about 2m away.
Below are the results (temperatures in deg.C) …
time unshielded shielded ambient
21:33 23.3 23.1 22.1
05:34 21.7 21.7 17.7
(a) I found no evidence of “backradiation” slowing the rate of cooling.
(b) My results agreed with those of Prof Nahle (Sept 2011) showing that the air was cooler than the surface and also cooled faster than the surface.
00
Just a question….if CO2 is the main culprit (and they are talking an increase of 1C for a doubling (x2) of atmospheric CO2 (from 0.0028% to 0.0056%); what would happen if CO2 were to grossly increase to about 1% of the atmosphere (x500 which at current rates will be in the year 7000, or so)?
Although I don’t know, I suspect the increase would be in the order of 2-3C. This is because the bandwidth would be saturated and maxed out. And if the feedbacks remain at 0.5, then the actual temp might increase 1.5C from todays average.
Nothing to worry about.
00
Let’s examine the physics to see if Prof Claes Johnson is right …
Suppose you somehow placed a small metal marble-sized ball inside a hollow soccer ball-sized metal sphere and then sucked all air out to form a vacuum inside. Now, let’s assume the small ball was a few degrees hotter than the surrounding sphere. Further assume that the outer sphere is large enough so that there is much more radiative flux coming from it than from the smaller ball. This would be due to its greater surface area which would more than compensate for its cooler temperature.
So, we have a net radiative flux going from the cooler sphere to the warmer small ball inside it.
Will the small ball start to get warmer or start to cool?
Physics says that the flow of thermal energy can only be from hot to cold. But we have net radiative flux going from cold to hot. Hence the small ball must be rejecting (scattering and reflecting) the cooler radiation from the larger sphere. The large sphere will however absorb and convert to thermal energy the warmer radiation from the small ball. They each “detect” the temperature of the other because they detect the peak frequency and that frequency is proportional to the absolute temperature – see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wien's_displacement_law
The significance of this fact of physics is that a warmer Earth surface does not convert radiation from a cooler atmosphere to thermal energy. So the radiative atmospheric greenhouse effect is debunked.
00
Hi Doug,
I love your thought experiments mainly because I’m not a physicist.
I have a question that I hope you will answer in laymans terms for me.
Firstly, I assume that your ball bearing is not touching the sides of the metal soccer ball.
But more importantly, could you rephrase your sentence, “They each “detect” the temperature of the other because they detect the peak frequency and that frequency is proportional to the absolute temperature”
I kinda baulk at the word “detect”. Does Thomas Young’s interference patterns have anything to do with this process?
00
The “detection” takes place through resonance and near resonance usually over a narrow band of frequencies for any particular element at a given temperature. If the incoming frequency is too low there will be no effect because no resonance is created. If it is too high there will be “chaos” and thermal energy generated as a result, such as when the Sun’s light hits the surface. (For anyone not understanding “resonance” – A pendulum will “detect” if you are pushing it with the right natural frequency so that it keeps swinging.)
00
Ahah, thank you Doug.
Resonance I understand.
00
Unfortunately Doug I’m left with further questions relating to the frequencies emitted by both the small ball and the surrounding ball.
Why would the radiation emitted from either object be at the resonant frequency of the other object?
If a resonant frequency is required for the absorption of energy then isn’t it more likely that both balls would reflect the radiation back as it is not at resonant frequency or some suitable harmonic?
Furthermore, doesn’t it take a number of cycles for the effects of resonance to be noticeable?
00
To everyone: Consider a patch of rock being warmed by the Sun in the morning. The IPCC says backradiation will add more thermal energy, so it must warm faster. (It is not just a matter of backradiation slowing the cooling rate – it must be consistent in whatever it does. Either it adds thermal energy or it doesn’t.)
At some time soon after noon the Sun will bring the rock to a maximum temperature before it starts to cool towards evening. When at that maximum will the backradiation cause it to warm more? How could it, becuase that would be transferring thermal energy from a cold source to a warmer body. It is simply against the laws of physics. It simply cannot and does not happen. Yet the IPCC “explanation” of the GHE says it does.
Prof Johnson has proven why it doesn’t in his Computational Blackbody Radiation. The GH theory is debunked.
00
Hi Doug
There is no physical basis for this process.
Heat cannot move against a temperature gradient such as exists between ground level at a nominal 20 deg C to 9,000 metres altitude at a temp of minus 35 deg C.
The Delta of 55 C deg invites energy to the upper atmosphere and no imaginary IPCC process will change that.
It cannot collect and somehow “discharge” to Earth when all the physics professors have gone to sleep and are not looking.
00
Hi Keith. Yes it seems no one on any of the four forums I posted these two “thought experiments’ on has been able to show any fault in the logic. Yet strangely they accept the IPCC hypothesis!
00
Many AGW proponents tend to treat the energy being transmitted by EM radiation as if it were thermal energy itself. Not so, of course, and hence you can’t just take a difference between two beams of light or other radiation and talk about net radiation. For a start the beams are really at all difference angles and may or may not be polarised. They do not normally cancel out.
It is invalid to add or subtract any energy in radiation until it is converted to thermal energy. Then you can add that thermal energy to whatever is already there. But you cannot assume all radiation will be converted to thermal energy when it strikes something. It can be transmitted, reflected, diffracted, deflected or scattered. It will only be converted to thermal energy if its peak frequency is above the peak frequency being emitted by the surface it strikes. So it has to come from a warmer source.
Hence thermal energy is not carried along in both directions when there are opposing beams of radiation. Only radiated energy is carried along. Thermal energy merely appears to be transferred but in fact it simply reappears only in a colder surface when the radiated energy is converted to thermal energy. It is a bit like your voice being broadcast on radio waves and only appearing under certain conditions in a radio receiver.
[Laser emission is actually different, because it is stimulated emission. We do find that, for example, 10.6 micron lasers can melt metal when cutting it. This could not be done with normal spontaneous emission from carbon dioxide at atmospheric temperatures. Why is it so? My best guess is that it is because the intensity is such that the photons arrive faster than the resonating frequencies of the metal, so it can’t re-emit fast enough and has to convert to thermal energy because of the “chaos” created. Effectively the metal is then also undergoing stimulated emission, but the extra photons continue inwards and must cause warming.]
Because the energy in radiation from a cooler atmosphere cannot be converted to thermal energy when it strikes a (significantly) warmer surface, you have no thermal energy to affect either the rate of cooling each evening or the rate of warming each sunny morning.
So any such radiation from the atmosphere cannot in any way affect the temperature of the surface, or indeed the warmer areas of the atmosphere below the cooler level from which it was emitted. OK, there may be some rare weather conditions that result in warmer air a little above the surface, but these situations would be insignificant and have been happening since the Earth formed.
It should be clear from the above that a radiative greenhouse effect is a physical impossibility in the atmosphere..
If you don’t accept this, then you need to set up or find some experiment which actually demonstrates the opposite and actually shows thermal energy appearing to transfer from a cooler body to a warmer one. You could have metal plates isolated in a vacuum container or some similar set up. As far as I can determine, this has never been achieved, yet the IPCC are in effect saying it is happening all the time as their “backradiation” slows the rate of cooling of the surface, and must also increase the rate of any warming.
The IPCC propagates this garbage, so they should attempt to prove it empirically. Their faces will be the only things warming.
00
I came across one of the guys who seems to think “heat” dams up in the atmosphere. If it were to, then the “valley” at the tropopause should show some sign of warming.
Take a look at what’s really going on up there around the tropopause above which the temperature then starts to rise with increasing altitude in the stratosphere, so there’s a nice little “valley” for all your extra “heat”.
Check out what NASA satellites found up there at say 56,000 feet. Then compare 2003 with 2011 – both almost precisely the same around the -63 deg.C value. Here’s the link: http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
Check all the records available (for every year since 2002) and see how little variation there has been. Then tell me what would happen on Earth if it warmed up to, let’s say, -60 deg.C.
00
An excellent paper …
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
“Unfortunately, there is no source in the literature, where the greenhouse effect is introduced in harmony with the scientific standards of theoretical physics.”
“As already emphasized in Section 2.1.5 the constant appearing in the T4 law is not a universal constant of physics. Furthermore, a gray radiator must be described by a temperature dependent (T) spoiling the T4 law. Rigorously speaking, for real objects Equation (70) is invalid. Therefore all crude approximations relying on T4 expressions need to be taken with great care. In fact, though popular in global climatology, they prove nothing!”
00
Here is a simple proof in 10 easy steps why the Greenhouse Effect is a physical impossibility.
(1) The IPCC claim that radiation from a cooler atmosphere slows the rate of cooling of the (warmer) surface, thus leading to a greenhouse effect.
(2) The “rate of cooling” is a 24 hour worldwide mean, so wherever the Sun is warming the surface (any sunny morning) the rate of warming would have to be increased by whatever process is slowing the rate of cooling.
(3) Thus extra thermal energy must be added to the surface by such radiation in order to increase the warming rate in the morning and slow the mean rate of cooling calculated from both day and night rates.
(4) Now the Second Law of Thermodynamics relates to heat transfer which is not the same as energy transfer. Radiated energy can be two-way, but heat transfer between two points is always one way and it is invalid to split such heat transfer into two opposite components and try to apply the Second Law to each. Physics doesn’t work that way.
(5) Hence, the surface cannot warm faster in the mornings due to such an imaginary heat transfer, because that would be clearly breaking the Second Law no matter what. Nor can it slow the rate of cooling because of (4). And in general you would expect the same process to happen whether the surface is warming or cooling.
(6) So, those photons from the cooler atmosphere are not being converted to thermal energy in the warmer surface, as Prof Claes Johnson proved in Computational Blackbody Radiation.
(7) Hence the effect of the photons being either reflected or scattered is that there is no impact on the surface at all.
(8) It is also clear that there is no significant transfer by diffusion or conduction from the atmosphere to the surface because the surface absorbs more solar insolation than the lower atmosphere, and we observe that the atmosphere is generally cooler and even cools faster at night than the surface.
(9) So it really does not matter even if extra thermal energy is trapped higher up in the atmosphere because it does not affect what we call climate, and any such energy cannot make its way back to the surface, except possibly an insignificant additional amount in precipitation.
(10) Hence there is no valid physical way in which backradiation or absorption by carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause a significant atmospheric greenhouse effect.
If I haven’t convinced you, read this paper Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within the Frame of Physics http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
00
And yet it still WARMS
(What still warms?) CTS
00
I have posted my “10 steps” post http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/11/open-thread-weekend-7/#comment-890609 on many other forums (both for and against AGW) with a genuine desire to see if anyone can raise a valid counter argument. The following may help explain and reinforce what I have written there.
Firstly, the actual amount of backradiation must be grossly overstated because the emissivity of the atmosphere is only about 20% I understand and it is colder than the surface and emitting in all directions into a full sphere rather than a hemisphere. So how could NASA’s energy diagram possibly be right in showing similar values for emission from the surface as from the atmosphere. I postulate that the instruments calculate the radiative flux from the temperature assuming emissivity is unity and emission into a hemisphere.
But, whatever the amount of backradiation, it cannot transfer thermal energy from the colder atmosphere to the warmer surface as this would imply a heat transfer from cold to hot, which is against the Second Law of Thermodynamics. When the surface is warming on a sunny morning, for example, and net radiative flux is into the surface, how can additional heat be transferred from the colder atmosphere to the warmer surface against the Second Law. It can’t and all such radiation is reflected or (mostly) scattered and thus leaves no energy behind.
It follows that, since backradiation cannot add thermal energy to a warmer surface, then it cannot increase the rate of warming in the morning or slow the rate of cooling in the evening.
Backradiation is after all low energy radiation spontaneously emitted from a cold source. The peak frequency of the strongly attenuated spectrum is proportional to the absolute temperature (Wien’s Displacement Law) and such frequencies are usually lower than those in the radiation from the surface. Surface molecules “recognise” this and reject the low energy radiation which does not have enough energy to be converted to thermal energy. (See Prof Claes Johnson Computational Blackbody Radiation) http://www.csc.kth.se/~cgjoh/blackbodyslayer.pdf
We see examples of this in radio broadcasts where we know the radiation is even lower frequency than that in backradiation. It is of course artificially generated, but its frequency corresponds to much lower temperatures than normally experienced on earth or in the troposphere. For this very reason it is scattered by the surface and by the atmosphere and is not converted to thermal energy because it is “colder” even than the backradiation. If this were not the case, then it would have been quickly quenched as all its energy would have been used up warming whatever it struck. So it would not travel the distances that we know it does. Basically the same happens to backradiation and it just keeps getting scattered off molecules in both the atmosphere and the surface until it happens by chance to escape to space.
So the (latest version of) the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is (like the first version) a physical impossibility.
00
Prof Claes Johnson has proved in Computational Blackbody Radiation* that energy in radiation only gets converted to thermal energy if the peak frequency of the radiation from the source is above the peak frequency of the radiation from the target.
This essentially provides a mechanism which explains why the Second Law of Thermodynamics also applies for radiative heat transfer, as it does for heat transferred by conduction.
It is not the net radiative flux (or even its direction) which determines whether (and in which direction) thermal energy is transferred. For example, if the emissivity of two bodies is very different, there can be more radiative flux from the cooler one. But all that flux will be scattered by the warmer one and not converted to thermal energy. Only the flux from the warmer one (no matter how weak) will be converted to thermal energy in the cooler one. This “ensures” that the Second Law is valid in all cases because it depends on peak frequency which is proportional to absolute temperature – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wien's_displacement_law
* http://climate-change-theory.com/RadiationAbsorption.html
00
Hello Doug,
I see that you are much interested in the no GH effect angle.There is one at my climate forum that is the location of the longest running discussion on the No GH effect position discussions.
Why not come take a look HERE and see for yourself what it is about.
There are a few long threads discussing over what you are talking about here.We are quite familiar with the topic.
I am the owner of the forum.
00
How about addressing these issues ..
(1) The direction of net radiative energy flow can be the opposite of the direction of heat transfer. if you have a warmer object (say 310 K) with low emissivity (say 0.2) and a cooler object (say 300 K) with much higher emissivity (say 0.9) then net radiative energy flow is from the cooler to the warmer object. Yet the Second Law says heat transfer is from hot to cold.
(2) Any warming of a warmer surface by radiation from a cooler atmosphere violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Consider the situation when the surface is being warmed by the Sun at 11am somewhere. Its temperature is rising and net radiative energy flow is into the surface. How could additional thermal energy transfer from the cooler atmosphere to make the surface warm at a faster rate?
Clearly radiation from a cooler atmosphere cannot add thermal energy to a warmer surface. The surface molecules “reject” radiation which has a peak frequency lower than the peak frequency of their own emission, and so no radiative energy is converted to thermal energy. (This was proved in Johnson’s Computational Blackbody Radiation.), So the atmospheric radiative greenhouse effect is a physical impossibility.
00
Anyone who thinks about these points will realise there is no greenhouse effect …
(1) The direction of net radiative energy flow can be the opposite of the direction of heat transfer. If you have a warmer object (say 310 K) with low emissivity (say 0.2) and a cooler object (say 300 K) with much higher emissivity (say 0.9) then net radiative energy flow is from the cooler to the warmer object. Yet the Second Law says heat transfer is from hot to cold. So, there is no warming of the warmer body by any of the (net) radiative energy going into it.
(2) Any warming of a warmer surface by radiation from a cooler atmosphere violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Consider the situation when the surface is being warmed by the Sun at 11am somewhere. Its temperature is rising and net radiative energy flow is into the surface. How could additional thermal energy transfer from the cooler atmosphere to make the surface warm at a faster rate?
Clearly radiation from a cooler atmosphere cannot add thermal energy to a warmer surface. The surface molecules scatter radiation which has a peak frequency lower than the peak frequency of their own emission, and so no radiative energy is converted to thermal energy. (This was proved in Johnson’s Computational Blackbody Radiation.), So the atmospheric radiative greenhouse effect is a physical impossibility.
00
I think the issue here is “how can CO2 be such a danger to the world, and how is man responsible based on the following.”
Assuming these numbers are correct, CO2 is a gas that makes up 0.04% of the atmosphere. The current rate of CO2 increase is approximately 1.5 ppm per year, and humans are thought to be responsible for 3% – 5% of that 1.5 ppm, or 1 part in 20 million.
As Doug has noted, the IPCC models go against the second law of thermodynamics.
NASA satellites show that supposedly trapped heat (according to IPCC models) is actually flowing out into space, and the supposedly positive “feedbacks” of water vapor and clouds are really negative.
There is no “glass roof” on earth to trap excess heat… it escapes upward into space.
I don’t have the scientific background that many of the responders seem to have, so I try and keep things simple. I do know that contributors like KR seem to have trouble defending their positions, and can’t seem to give examples of why skeptics are wrong.
00
When solar radiation (UV, visible and IR etc) travels through space we do not know what its end effect will be until it strikes something. We will observe its effect and say – there’s some light from the Sun – but it may be more light if it hits a white surface than a dark surface, as a camera exposure meter will confirm. It may generate thermal energy (more or less depending on what it strikes) or it may appear as light as it starts to penetrate the oceans, but end up as thermal energy in the deeper depths. Of course some will be reflected or scattered and strike another target sooner or later, and another etc.
My point is, “heat” is the transfer of thermal energy, but thermal energy is not a fixed amount of energy travelling along with radiation. The energy in the radiation has to go through a physical process of being converted to thermal energy. This happens only for those frequencies in the radiation which are above the natural frequencies that can be emitted by the target, because the target cannot re-emit those frequencies. (The hotter the source of spontaneous radiation, the higher will be the peak frequency.) So solar radiation can be converted to thermal energy in the Earth’s surface, but radiation emitted from a cooler atmosphere cannot be converted to thermal energy in a warmer surface. “Heat” only appears to be transferred (and only from hot to cold) because only radiation from hot to cold will be converted to extra thermal energy in the target.
It does not matter whether you are increasing the rate of warming in the morning or decreasing the rate of cooling later in the day, you still need extra thermal energy to do this. You cannot get this extra thermal energy from a cooler atmosphere, morning or evening. You cannot say the Second Law is not broken because of the direction of net radiation or net heat flow. All that matters is, what actually happens between any two points – one point on the surface and one point in a cooler atmosphere. What goes on between other “points” – a point on the Sun and another point on the surface is irrelevant. The Second Law must apply between any two points.
00
If your bath tub is filling as fast as it can with the hot tap turned on fully it will indeed fill faster if you also turn the cold tap on.
If the Earth’s surface is filling with thermal energy (ie it is warming) as fast as it can on a sunny morning with the Sun shining fully it will indeed fill (warm) faster if you also radiate extra thermal energy from a colder atmosphere if and only if you violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
00
One more question.
Suppose you pass radiation from a slightly cooler object (surface area 5 sq.m, 300 K) through a reflective funnel which concentrates the radiation onto a slightly warmer object (310 K) with the same emissivity of, say, 0.9 but surface area only 0.5 sq.m.
Please explain with suitable calculations how the Second Law of Thermodynamics would actually apply to ensure thermal energy only transferred from the warmer to the cooler object.
I will also post this on several other forums to see if anyone has a correct solution other than mine, which you should know by now if you’ve read my posts.
00
Doug
Where heat transfer occurs between two sources ( and sinks) , the nett transfer is what you see and measure.
The hotter object Cannot get Hotter but the colder one can.
I’m not sure what the point of a reflective funnel is?
It just becomes a hotter source of smaller size.
Why not just start out with that in the first place?
00
KK: The point is that the two plates remain at the same temperature. If you just did calculations and found that net radiation was from the larger to the smaller (because of the concentrating effect of the funnel) then, if you thought like the IPCC and most middle-of-the-road skeptics, you would say that the small plate would get warmer because more photons are heading its way, and the larger one would get cooler. But the Second Law says that can’t happen. Hence the calculations these people use are wrong because they give the wrong answer here. And they also give the wrong answer when the larger plate is a little cooler than the small one, yet heat flows from the smaller to the larger, against the net flow of radiation.
In general, all the IPCC models violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Skeptics need to hammer home this one single point, because it completely nails it. I have never been proven wrong on this.
They should only include the radiation from hot to cold, and never any radiation to any body which is cooler than the source. Hence they should not include backradiation in any calculations becasue it is just scattered by the surface and goes on up to space or to yet cooler layers of the atmosphere. It can never slow the rate of cooling of the surface. Hence the radiative greenhouse effect is a physical impossibility.
00
Correction: They should only include the radiation from hot to cold, and never any radiation to any body which is warmer than the source.
00
KK: Suppose the plates at both ends of the funnel are at the same temperature. The larger plate sends more radiation (concentrated by the funnel) to the smaller plate. So there is net radiation towards the smaller plate, but there can be no conversion of the energy in that radiation to thermal energy. So I’m just demonstrating my point that not all radiation hitting a surface (not being reflected) will necessarily warm it. The IPCC assumes it will. Thus the IPCC is wrong.
00
I’ve gotta be honest.
I don’t know.
I tend to the idea that the concentrated rays will warm the second body, but ?
A concentration is an increase in temp?
00
The problem with your plate analogy is that it is only TWO surface while the earths surface and atmosphere has Hundreds to THOUSANDS of surfaces to work with.
Not even remotely comparable.
00
My two-plate experiment (with a tapered funnel between) is demonstrating a principle of physics which has been denied by the IPCC and even middle-of-the-road skeptics, namely that backradiation from a cooler atmosphere cannot be converted to thermal energy when it strikes a warmer surface, and thus cannot slow the cooling process or increase the warming from the Sun. This is also proven by a certain Professor of Applied Mathematics in a linked paper on the ‘Radiation’ page of my site. and I have explained the physical processes pertaining to frequencies and Wien’s Displacement Law in several posts.
Now at least read my earlier posts or my website before you run off at a tangent again.
00
See http://joannenova.com.au/2012/01/dr-david-evans-the-skeptics-case/#comment-979901 above for a start.
00
[…] […]
00
My posts continue here …
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/19/open-thread-weekend-8/#comment-897342
00
This page http://mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL/thermodynamics/notes/node133.html explains how reflected radiation is broken into two components …
(1) The specular (mirror-like) reflection where angle of incidence = angle of reflection.
(2) The “diffuse” reflection which is deflected at any random angle..
Here the second component is what I prefer to call deflected (or scattered) radiation, as the process is very different from specular reflection. But whatever you call it, it obviously does exist.
This is the process I have been talking about all along. As far as energy is concerned, as I have always said, it is the same as reflection and thus has no effect whatsoever on the temperature of the target, in this case the surface.
This diffuse reflection is what happens when the target is warmer than the source. If such radiation were absorbed and converted to thermal energy there would be a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. That is why you need to know the temperatures of both source and target before you can know the overall absorptivity and emissivity. These factors will be affected by this diffuse reflection, which cuts in when the target starts to get warmer than the source.
Thus, all radiation from a cooler atmosphere undergoes diffuse reflection when it strikes a warmer surface. This is why an atmospheric radiative greenhouse effect is a physical impossibility.
00
(continued from my last post)
I am of course aware that “diffuse” reflection is usually applied to reflection of light which appears to be diffused because of a rough surface. On a microscopic scale, the rough surface may well comprise many small smooth surfaces which simply produce specular reflection at various angles.
So, strictly speaking, the “rejection” of low frequency radiation (from a cooler source) which meets a warmer surface and then resonates and is scattered is yet another different process. But it helps to think of it as diffuse reflection because the end result is the same. My main point is that it can have no effect on the surface temperature because it is as good as reflected.
When IR from the atmosphere strikes a rough Earth surface, you would not be able to distinguish between this scattered radiation and diffuse reflection. In general you will measure inflated values of emissivity as a result. I would suggest that true absorptivity should be expressed as a function of both source and target temperatures. Then its measure should reflect the proportion of the radiation from a source at that temperature which is actually absorbed and converted to thermal energy. In the case of a target temperature greater than a source temperature the absorptivity would thus always be zero.
So this is where models go wrong because they use mean absorptivity measurements which disregard the temperatures of source and target and probably include a lot of scattered radiation anyway. Thus the models end up assuming thermal energy is transferred to the warmer atmosphere simply because they do not rate absorptivity for the relevant temperatures as being zero. Thus they assume violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and are of course wrong as a result. There can be no radiative Greenhouse effect.
00
(continued)
In calm conditions on a clear day we have the Sun (and only the Sun) warming the surface. Its high frequency (high energy) radiation right across its spectrum can be converted to thermal energy (if not already reflected) and this energy flows by conduction deeper into the land surfaces. The radiation itself already penetrates a fair way into the oceans before it is converted to thermal energy in the depths. Meanwhile thermal energy is also escaping the surface more or less as fast as conduction in the land and convection in the oceans will allow it to get back to the surface.
In the morning the rate of warming exceeds the rate of cooling, and vice versa in the evening. In summer the longer hours of daylight may trap some energy that cannot escape before the next morning. This trapped energy may build up as the middle of summer approaches, but escape by the next winter as daylight hours reduce and there is more time for cooling at night.
Now, looking at the cooling process, at least half (maybe 70%) of the thermal energy escapes to the atmosphere by evaporation, chemical processes and diffusion, which involves molecular collisions between the surface and the adjoining air, as in conduction in solids. The remaining energy will be radiated.
However, experiments in such conditions show that the lower atmosphere is always cooler than the surface, and cools faster than the surface at night. Radiation can never transfer heat from a cooler source to a warmer target and neither can diffusion. So these processes can never make the atmosphere warmer than the surface. The Sun also usually warms the surface faster than the lower atmosphere, so it is only very unusual weather conditions which might leave the surface cooler than the adjoining air. The air which is warmed in the morning will rise by convection.
The radiation from the surface may escape to space, but most will be absorbed by some molecules in the atmosphere. These molecules are likely to be warmed and may share some of the thermal energy with other molecules, or simply radiate it in all directions in small bursts.
The radiation which is emitted by the cooler atmosphere will have frequencies which are generally lower than the original radiation from the surface. If some of this radiation gets to the warmer surface it cannot be converted to thermal energy. Instead it is simply scattered by the surface without leaving any energy behind. Its energy cannot be converted back to thermal energy until it collides with something cooler than the original layer of the atmosphere from which it was emitted. Such cooler air will usually be higher up. It may even escape to space and only warm some cooler object in space maybe years later.
So each time any radiation goes back to the surface it will have absolutely no effect on the surface temperature, but will instead make it further towards space on the next trip up, if indeed it doesn’t escape altogether. Clearly there can be no Greenhouse effect.
Footnore: In situations when the relative humidity is high, the moist adiabatic lapse rate is lower than the dry one, so such humidity (as well as clouds) can slow the rate of cooling of the atmosphere, but this can never lead to any thermal energy going back into the surface, so the rate of cooling of the surface need not be slower. In a sense, thermal energy is falling over a smaller temperature step, but it still falls over at the same rate. The air we stand in may well feel warmer partly because there is less evaporation off our skin. In any event, these are just weather conditions which average out and do not relate to or affect climate.
00
Guys, you can stop worrying about endless warming going up forever with carbon dioxide levels. It can’t happen.
The whole Earth system (including atmosphere) has to emit very close to the flux it receives from the Sun. So there will be some temperature – let’s say 255K – which is a mean and is somewhere up in the atmosphere.
The natural adiabatic lapse rate is determined, not by carbon dioxide, but by the acceleration due to gravity, the mass of the atmosphere and, to some extent, relative humidity which mostly averages out. The lapse rate sets the gradient of the atmospheric temperature plot which has to swivel about the 255K mean, so the surface end is warmer and the TOA colder. The drop in temperatures between the surface and the tropopause has been very close to constant in all the years of records shown on the NASA site since the end of 2002.
My point is that the mean surface temperature is dictated by these two values – the 255K (or whatever the exact figure is) and the lapse rate. Carbon dioxide cannot affect either, so neither are under mankind’s control.
Both the surface and the atmosphere will simply shed energy faster if they get a little warmer, thus tending back to the mean.
Don’t try to tell me there is a long term TOA net radiative flux difference. The net radiative flux varies between about 99.5% and 100.5% of incoming radiation. This is just random noise or short-term cycles. Longer natural cycles may have to do with variations in the effective power from solar radiation (affecting that 255K figure) and maybe the thermal energy generated under the surface. Small variations in the latter over many thousands of revolutions of the Earth could have a cumulative effect. The very fact that the terrestrial heat flow is low means that the massive quantity of thermal energy from the surface down to the core stays fairly much the same and brings about a stabilising effect as I have explained on the ‘Explanation’ page of my website. . This also is an additional comfort, so relax!
00
Doug,
You may want to get involved in this new discussion at Tallbloke’s talkshop. It is a thread on your favourite subject!
00
Doug from post # 124,
A straw man statement?
I fail to know of a single climate skeptic who dispute the above quote.So why are you making it appear that skeptics do dispute it?
The rest of your post will not be addressed for the simple reason that you or anyone else DOES NOT really know what the heck is truly going on.The interactions in the climate system is far from being understood because it is so darn complex.I know because I have read so many variations on what the GH effect is by many SKEPTICAL people in blogs and even in the private e-mails debates I am privy to.I quite trying to make sense of it and dropped out.
The endless debates between the (NO GHG effect) camp and the common position of the lukewarmer skeptic (That accepts the CO2 molecular level GHG effect) has become irritating to me because the real fight is with the AGW believers who aggressively advance the unsupported idea that the large POSITIVE feed back is real and will swoop down on us and cook us all to death (yes I know it is hyperbolic).
The fight should be with those who push the AHW conjecture and in using their unverified brand of science tries to implement their overbearing Gian socialist utopian solutions upon the rest of us.The absurd infatuation with Carbon Credits,Wind power,Solar Power (all low mass and therefor essentially worthless for large scale production) and so on needs to be exposed as the Envirowacko weenie baloney it is.
The infighting needs to stop and have all of us get back on the attack against the AGW pseudo science babbling and WIN!
00
Interesting that sunsettommy’s website has this quote prominently displayed …
“It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies.”
00
Sunsettommy: I am only interested in what is the truth my friend, and I will not compromise truth in physics for any lukewarm argument, because, as far as physics is concerned, lukewarmers are just as incorrect. You either violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics (as AGW and Lukewarmers do) or you don’t. Radiation from the atmosphere cannot warm the surface or slow its rate of cooling one iota.
00
Well sunsettommy boy should test what happens after sunset when I (and Prof. Nahle) found backradiation did not even slow the cooling of the surface by 0.1 degree.
But of course, seeing that he refuses to read what I am explaining to him and also to middle-of-the-road “skeptics” about how heat can’t transfer from cold to hot, there’s no point in my wasting time on him. My posts, websites and book (soon to be published) will stand the test of time.
00
Doug, just because you outlast and wear people down (e.g., sunsettommy) with your single-minded focus, does not constitute proof that you are right.
Regarding radiation transfer: You claim that radiation from a cooler object cannot be converted to thermal energy when impinging on a hotter object. What possible mechanism can account for this, given that
a) Both objects radiate a range of wavelengths, given by the blackbody spectrum (assuming they are approximately blackbodies).
b) These blackbody spectrums overlap, even though the bodies are at different temperatures (look at the blackbody spectrums for different temperatures).
c) Hence the cooler object will be emitting some radiation at a shorter wavelength than the radiation peak of the hotter object.
d) The radiation from the cooler object, described in (c), will, upon impinging on the hotter object, be indistinguishable from the same radiation arriving from a hotter object. (Maxwell’s equations do not allow for EM radiation to carry the ‘memory’ of how hot the emitting object was.)
The inescapable conclusion from the above is that some of the EM radiation from the cooler object will be absorbed and converted to thermal energy by the hotter object. The only way this can’t happen is if NO radiation whatsoever can be absorbed by the hotter object, which contradicts the assumption that is is approximately a black body.
The obvious effect of this is that the radiative cooling of the hotter body will be slowed down by the presence of the cooler body, because some of the energy is being returned. This is completely different than there being a NET transfer of heat from the cooler body to the hotter body, which I agree is not possible.
(The above analysis also explains why a room in which the walls (floor, ceiling also) are heated (to less than body temperature, but greater than the air temperature) is more comfortable than a room with the same air temperature in which the walls are cold — your radiative heat loss rate is reduced in the room with warm walls. Try standing near a large window when it is cold out, if you want to experience this phenomenon yourself.)
I think your experimental efforts are commendable and in the best traditions of science. Here is an experiment you can do to test the above analysis:
Take two hot objects (closed containers of heated water would work) and put them out on an insulated platform under a clear night sky. (A clear night in the desert would be ideal, as the sky has a very low radiative temperature then, but a clear night anywhere would work.)
Suspend two identical sheets of metal above the hot containers. These should obscure a significant part of the sky, say 30-60% (from the POV of the containers).
Heat these metal sheets (perhaps with an electric resistance heater) to a temperature less than the hot objects, but above the sky’s radiative temperature. (This could also be done indoors, if both the hot object and the cooler, but still heated sheet are above the temperature of the room.)
Make comparison measurements to determine if the rate of cooling of the hot objects is affected by the temperature of the (cooler) metal sheets above.
I predict you will see an effect — you predict you won’t. Only testing can determine for sure which one of us is right.
00
I didn’t read past this incorrect statement: The radiation from the cooler object, described in (c), will, upon impinging on the hotter object, be indistinguishable from the same radiation arriving from a hotter object.
The temperature information is carried in the peak frequency of the radiation from the source – as per Wien’s Displacement Law – learn some physics.
The computational proof is in a paper linked from the Radiation page on my website. I have also described the physical mechanism relating to resonance in several previous posts.
You need to consider my funnel thought experiment for a start.
00
BobC,
He did not wear me down.
It is the fact that he made a couple of dumb replies to my obvious point (Post 124.2) on why skeptics should stop the infighting and fight the AGW supporters instead.
He is a single issue debater and will not adequately address any other point.He is doing that all over the skeptic blogs.Getting banned one by one for his boorish and know it all attitude.The thread bombings he does is the main cause for his bannings.
This is a fanatic not worth spending much time with as you will quickly find out.
I invited him to my forum because there is a section in that forum specifically for discussing the NO GHG effect argument.I thought he would be happy to confer with a few others who have a similar viewpoint that he expresses here.Including Nasif Nahle who is also a member of my forum.
Doug joined and made ONE post there 6 days ago that has a reply to it the same day.He has visited a couple times since but shows no interest to discuss it.
00
Yes, well the thread on that forum which talks about Claes Johnson’s work is closed with incorrect conclusions I suggest. See my #127 here which might help you also to understand why Claes is totally correct about the cut-off frequency.
The Second Law cannot work in all cases (such as focused emission) unless Claes is correct.
“Backradiation” from the silver lining inside a vacuum flask does not make the coffee any hotter, and nor does backradiation from a cooler atmosphere help the Sun to warm the sand on the beach any faster any sunny morning – which is what the AGW proponents assume.
00
OK One more sentence where I can help by pinpointing the error in your thinking …..
The obvious effect of this is that the radiative cooling of the hotter body will be slowed down by the presence of the cooler body, because some of the energy is being returned. This is completely different than there being a NET transfer of heat from the cooler body to the hotter body, which I agree is not possible.
No it’s not completely different. While the energy is still in the radiation it is not equivalent to thermal energy because it has not yet been converted. It cannot affect the temperature of the target unless and until it is converted to thermal energy. Only thermal energy can be added to other thermal energy with a resulting temperature change. You can only slow a rate of cooling by adding thermal energy. Hence the original thermal energy from the cooler body would have to end up being thermal energy in the warmer one before having any effect on temperature. Hence the 2nd Law would be violated.
My funnel experiment focuses more radiation from a large object onto a small one at the same temperature and made of the same metal material. What happens? Think about it. The only way the 2nd Law can apply is if you always disregard the radiation from cold to hot and only consider the radiation from hot to cold.
Any radiation from cold to hot merely resonates – as it can because the hotter body can always itself radiate at all the frequencies in the cooler body emission. It is as good as if diffuse reflection had happened – no energy is left behind and there is no effect on the temperature of the hotter body.
00
And if I’m still not abundantly clear ..
Obviously radiation from the cooler atmosphere can have no effect on the rate at which the land surfaces transfer thermal energy to the atmosphere by diffusion (conduction-like molecular collision) and chemical processes, nor the rate at which liquid surfaces do so by these processes as well as by evaporation. The effect of all these processes is at least 50% of all cooling, maybe as much as 70%.
(Note that, when the temperature of the adjoining air is close to that of the surface then S-B Law gives a very low value for radiation out of the surface, because you have to deduct a compensating term for the temperature of the air which might be only 2 deg.C lower, for example.)
So for a start, the energy in the radiation from the atmosphere would obviously have to be converted to thermal energy in the surface before it could have any effect on this thermodynamic half of all the cooling.
Now, if it were not first converted to thermal energy, how on Earth can one beam of radiation (with different frequencies and arriving at a different angle) possibly have any dampening effect on some other totally different beam of radiation?
It can’t. Any effect can only happen via thermal energy. If its energy were first converted to thermal energy then the 2nd Law would be violated.
So none of this happens.
00
In case I am still not convincing someone, the AGW models assume backradiation works 24 hours a day – right? So they assume it also “works” when the temperature of the surface is getting hotter on a clear sunny morning and net radiation is into the surface. The assume that, not only does it slow the rate of cooling in the evening, but it still does something in the morning, namely increases the rate of warming.
Now if that is not adding thermal energy from a cooler atmosphere to a warmer surface then I’m a monkey’s uncle. So it is violating the Second Law.
(It is also doing so if it slows the rate of cooling as I explained in #127.)
00
Doug writes,
You will get a lot more attention if you post in the GWS forum there than you will here where you are now being ignored.
I see you at my forum for a short while but not post there.Yet you post all over the internet where you are getting banned for pushing your position so aggressively.My forum will still be there when you finally have the need to talk about what you believe.
00
Doug, you’re simply disagreeing with my conclusion — you aren’t making any statement about my reasoning.
Try answering the question I asked by showing where my reasoning is wrong:
What mechanism supposedly prevents the absorption of EM energy by a hot object from a colder one? Note that some of the EM radiation from a colder object is indistinguishable from radiation from a hotter object, due to the wide (and overlapping) extent of the blackbody radiation spectra from objects of different temperatures.
Hence, if a warm object will absorb radiation from a hotter one, it will also absorb the exact same radiation from a colder one. (This does not violate the 2nd Law of Thermo, however, since the hottest object will have the highest radiant intensity, guarenteeing the NET energy flow is to the colder objects.)
To be specific, according to Planck’s law (which I assume you accept), any object with an emissivity greater than zero and a temperature greater than zero K will emit EM quanta with a wavelength of, say, 1 micron. All one micron wavelength photons are identical — they do not contain information about the temperature of their emitter.
When a one micron photon arrives at an object, it will be absorbed and converted to thermal energy with a probability equal to the object’s absorptivity at that wavelength.
Every blackbody can emit one micron photons, regardless of its temperature, and every blackbody can absorb one micron photons regardless of its temperature. A photon carries no information regarding the temperature of its emitter. Hence a hot object can absorb a one micron photon from a colder object. (This obviously holds for all other wavelengths of EM radiation, as well.)
The net heat flow from hot to cold (and compliance with the 2nd Law) is maintained by the fact that hot objects radiate at higher intensities (more photons/sec) than colder objects, given the same area and emissivity — according to Planck’s Law and innumerable experiments and experience.
The 2nd Law is therefore the result of the emissivity (and absorptivity) of black bodies described by Planck’s Law — the absorption and emission characteristics are not the result of the 2nd Law.
00
You really need to study what Claes Johnson (Professor of Applied Mathematics) has written in Computational Blackbody Radiation even if you (or other readers) can’t follow the calculations. I can assure you that he is correct.
You can see typical frequency distributions in the first diagram here http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/WiensDisplacementLaw.html
All the frequencies for a colder body are included in those for a warmer body.
The common frequencies resonate and that means there is no conversion to thermal energy. That’s how and why the Second Law works for radiation.
Radiation from a hot body to a cold one has higher frequencies which cannot resonate, and because they cannot resonate (and be immediately “rejected”) the energy in those higher frequencies has to be converted to thermal energy, as when solar insolation strikes the land surfaces or the oceans. In contrast, none of the frequencies in radiation from the cold body have to be converted in the hot body.
I have explained all this in previous posts and on my websites. Johnson proves it computationally and Nahle proves it empirically.
Absorptivity is conditional upon the temperatures of source and target. The Second Law dictates that effective absorptivity is zero when the source is cooler than the target.
00
Right… The peak frequency is a characteristic of the ensemble of photons coming from a blackbody — a statistical quantity. The individual photons are indistinguishable from photons of the same wavelenghs coming from a different ensemble (blackbody of a different temperature).
Absorption and emission occur on a quantum level — one quanta at a time. Since you obviously think highly of your physics knowledge, kindly show me where the ensemble information is entered into Planck’s Law — the law that describes absorption and emission of blackbodies.
Learn some physics yourself.
00
See my reply above: “You really need to study what Claes Johnson …”
If you think you are right, then explain the mechanism by which the Second Law applies in the case of greater radiative flux from a large source being focused by a funnel onto a much smaller target at the same temperature and made of the same material, and thus emitting less flux itself. The Law dictates that there can be no change in temperature, but there is clearly net radiative flux from the large to the small.
What happens if the small one is warmed externally by, say, two degrees but still emits less total flux than it receives focused on it from the cooler but much larger one?
You can’t explain, can you?
00
There are four options, not three. Radiation can be ..
(1) reflected
(2) transmitted
(3) scattered by resonating (not converted to thermal energy)
(4) absorbed and converted to thermal energy
You cannot explain the process involved in the Second Law for radiation unless the final sentence in my post above is correct “Absorptivity is conditional … “
00
You need to learn some optics. Any concentrator, whether it is a funnel or a lens, increases the solid angle of the radiation by the same degree it reduces the area. Planck’s Law gives you the radiant intensity per unit area of a blackbody. Since radiant intensity is power per unit solid angle, therefore any concentrator of EM radiation does not change the radiant intensity per area (the solid angle increases inversely with the area decreasing) — which is the characteristic of a blackbody at a given temperature.
Therefore, you can’t change the apparent temperature of a blackbody by using a magnifying glass or funnel to concentrate the radiation. You can’t, for example, heat anything hotter than the surface of the Sun by using concentrators to collect solar radiation.
This is first year geometrical optics, Doug; not some magical effect of the 2nd Law.
00
That’s not what I said. But you can focus the Sun’s rays with a funnel and cook food, which would not get cooked without the funnel. And you can burn paper with a magnifying glass that would not get burned without the glass.
Obviously the source with the larger area is emitting more total energy simply because it is larger. Without the funnel less of that energy would have reached the smaller body. You confuse yourself.
00
Why does a bonfire feel hotter than a match, even though both are at the same temperature (wood fire)? Why does the bonfire feel hotter the closer you get to it?
The amount of energy you receive from the fire (given the same temperature for all wood fires) is solely due to the solid angle the fire subtends with respect to yourself. When the solid angle subtended by the fire reaches pi (one hemisphere), your skin will be at the same temperature as the fire and you will be severely burned. This is why it is fatal to be overtaken by a crowning forest fire, even though the fire might be 20 to 30 meters overhead.
The concentrator increases the solid angle of the radiation (on a smaller surface), which causes the increase in temperature. It’s exactly the same as approaching the blackbody — either way the apparent solid angle is increased.
As I noted previously, you cannot change the apparent temperature of a blackbody by means of optical concentration of radiation. None of your examples show that happening.
I’m not the one who’s confused here.
00
(continued)
I am the first to agree that the funnel does not alter the frequencies contained in the radiation. Hence the target acts in the same way as it would without the funnel, and it does not get warmed because the source is not warmer. You have confirmed that and we agree.
But my obvious point is that, if AGW proponents were correct about backradiation and (more or less) consider the effect relates only to the number of photons received, or the net radiation, then why wouldn’t the extra radiation warm the smaller object?
Their assumption that backradiation increases the rate of warming of the surface when it is already warming on a sunny morning is exactly equivalent to assuming the smaller target in my funnel experiment would get warmed by the net radiation from the larger source, even when that source was then left cooler.
Both scenarios violate the Second Law, now don’t they. You can’t have one and not the other.
00
No, Doug, we don’t: The optical frequencies are irrelevent. What you haven’t grasped is that the radiant intensity per unit area is an invariant throughout a perfect optical system. (It can decrease passing through an inperfect system with losses.) It cannot be increased optically. Since this quantity is characteristic of a blackbody at a specific temperature, you can’t increase the apparent temperature of a blackbody by optics.
Your funnel thought experiment is meaningless, except as an exercise in geometrical optics. It has no relevance to the 2nd Law.
00
Because the radiant intensity per unit area hasn’t changed — so the image of the blackbody still acts like the original blackbody, but at a different distance. You CAN heat a colder object up — as in all of your examples in 132.1 — but you can’t heat a hotter object up.
00
It seems you think I agreed with the IPCC that the extra concentrated radiation would warm the smaller target which was at the same temperature as the source. Quite the opposite! I was just pointing out that AGW proponents are in effect claiming it would. See #135 which I hope provides sufficient explanation of what I am saying.
00
PS BobC
I am not claiming optical entendue is reduced at all. Optical entendue is a function of the area of the source and the solid angle subtended at the source by the target, or more precisely, by the “pupil” of the target which could be the first lens in an optical system such as a camera’s zoom lens system.
The funnel concentrates energy and more energy reaches the target than would do so without the funnel. That is my only point here, and I stand by such. Optical entendue is not reduced in the process – but energy is concentrated. These are quite different things.
00
Sorry = typo; etendue see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etendue
00
Look Bob, all I meant was that you were confused about the point I was making. None of what you wrote is new to me, and I don’t disagree with any of it. We both agree a concentrator (funnel) sends more total energy to the target, but the target cannot be warmed above the temperature of the source, as the Second Law states. The target still “knows” the temperature of the source because the temperature information is carried in the peak frequency of the radiation, not in its amplitude. This peak frequency is in fact proportional to the absolute temperature, as is confirmed by Wien’s Displacement Law.
But my point is that, when “scientists” relate radiation to the Second Law, they seem always to consider two parallel plates at different temperatures radiating at each other. In such a case it is easy to just say, “Oh well, net radiation is clearly from hot to cold, so heat transfers from hot to cold, so all is OK.”
They are, in effect, considering the algebraic sum of positively and negatively directed radiation vectors, as if each were having an effect in transferring some amount of thermal energy.
But what happens if you can somehow filter out the radiation from the hotter body, so only the radiation from the cooler body reaches the hotter one? Or, what happens if you concentrate more radiation from the cooler body onto the hotter one? Then, if you calculate based on two-way radiation concepts, you can get the wrong answer, now can’t you?
So the Second Law of Thermodynamics for radiation can only be valid in all circumstances if your calculations only include the component of radiation from hot to cold.
This invalidates the atmospheric radiative greenhouse conjecture.
The way it must work is in fact the way Prof Claes Johnson has explained. Radiation from the cooler body merely resonates in the hotter one and cannot be converted to thermal energy. You cannot just apply mean absortivity factors which were calculated empirically from radiation from a hotter source. The effective absorptivity when the radiation from a cooler source strikes a warmer target must be zero.
00
The last paragraph confuses me. Does the hotter body “resonate” because the hotter body knows that the energy comes from a cooler body and chooses to resonate rather than heat up a little bit, or is it the energy from the cooler body that knows that it should only resonate the hotter body rather than heat it?
So on the one hand the hotter body, receiving exactly the same energy but from an even hotter body will know that it should heat up instead of “resonating”. Or if the energy from the cooler body instead encounters and even cooler body than the one from which it originated, it will know that it should heat the cooler body instead of resonating.
Am I on the right track with this?
00
I recommend you read some Lewis Carroll — then it will all become clear.
00
Find me a laboratory experiment which shows this. If this were true, lasers at room temperature would not be able to heat objects above room temperature. This is emphatically not true. Long wavelength IR lasers (at room temperature) have been used to vaporize materials deeply enough to create blackbody radiation that peaked at x-ray wavelengths.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is obeyed in blackbody radiation exchanges because, according to Planck’s Law, the intensity of radiation increases with temperature — not because of some “Maxwell Demon” that magically causes absorption to cease based on the unknownable temperature of the source that emitted a particular EM quanta. (A quanta of any wavelength can be emitted by a source of any temperature, according to Planck’s Law.)
It is not enough just to say that the 2nd Law is followed IF radiation behaves this way — it is also followed if it behaves just like has been calculated by Planck’s Law and blackbody theory, as I have outlined above.
It is not enough just to say that there is no detectable GH effect from CO2 IF radiation behaves this way — it is likely that there is no detectable GH effect from CO2 HOWEVER radiation behaves, given the miniscule calculated effect and the probable existance of strong negative feedbacks.
Define a crucial, repeatable experiment that actually discriminates between Planck’s Law, Maxwell’s equations, the usual blackbody calculations vs. your hypothesis. Then do that experiment.
Until you do that, there is no reason to upend our understanding of EM waves, their creation and their absorption.
But, in fact, I think that experiment has already been done numerious times, by using lasers to heat objects beyond the laser’s own temperature.
00
Yes, simple application of Planck’s Law without due diligence places you among those whom I mentioned in the second paragraph in #135.
Now try your best to understand what I said about the fallacy in such thinking by reading the rest of that post #135.
And when you have a few hours to really study Computational Blackbody Radiation by Prof Johnson – and check the computations – as well as Observations on ‘Backradiation’ During Nighttime and Daytime by Prof Nahle – you’ll better understand the errors in the radiative greenhouse conjecture.
Meanwhile think about just how backradiation supposedly delays thermal energy coming out of the surface by diffusion, conduction, convection, evaporation and chemical processes. And just how it would actually foil other radiation coming out of the surface – all of this without transferring any heat from cold to hot.
00
If you can create a Maxwell Demon, all kinds of things become possible. Good luck (I mean it).
00
I would just add that, IMO, there is no definite proof that a Maxwell Demon is physically impossible, despite numerious attempts by many famous physicists. I hold with John Bell who said that “What impossibility proofs prove is a lack of imagination”.
00
Dear me BobC.
Do you seriously think lasers emit at frequencies which are dependent upon the room temperature? Do you know anything about stimulated emission and the huge difference between it and the spontaneous emission we are talking about. Do you know that stimulated emission from a laser (generated artificially of course) causes stimulated emisison in the target, which means additional identical photons are produced which continue into the material in the same direction as the original beam. Thus they do not get scattered in random directions, but their energy has to be converted to thermal energy because they are still too weak to pass right through the material. (Sometimes they have to drill preliminary holes and fill them with special substances in order to cut some metal.)
None of this disproves what happens in spontaneous emission and normal absorption proceses. You are way off track.
There is ample empirical evidence for the Second Law, but the big mistake of climatologists is to think laboratory experiments can emulate atmospheric conditions. I have done my own open air experiments which I am refining and repeating for possible publication in some form later this year. They certainly show no effect from backradiation. A well-known Professor of Physics has published his which show the same, and he has more on the way which will take the world by storm http://principia-scientific.org/publications/New_Concise_Experiment_on_Backradiation.pdf
It’s obvious that you have an agenda to try to discredit me personally on public forums. If that is not the case, you are always welcome to email me privately and I undertake not to make public any such emails from you or anyone else.
You can always debate any details with me on Open threads at WUWT, but I will be posting less elsewhere now that I have handled a wide range of objections and gained a better understanding of how people like yourself have been misled by the AGW hoax, as indeed I was myself in the early stages until a year or two back.
I have been only half surprised, I guess, by the tendency of “scientists” to use formulae without a proper understanding of the prerequisites or limitations of such, and without a natural “feel” for physics which I guess I have developed somehow these last 50 odd years. Einstein sure was right when he said every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he knows … but is mistaken.
My experience on forums will be the basis of a Q&A appendix in my book, but I won’t quote any names or exact comments.
Cheers
Doug
Email me if you wish at [email protected]
00
Addendum: This* indicates that absorptivity is actually determined, not by any warming effect, but by measuring reflected radiation in the visible spectrum.
I am saying that absorptivity cuts out (ie goes to zero) when the source becomes cooler that the target, which of course is not the case by a long shot when making these measurements using much higher frequency radiation than that contained in all spontaneous radiation from the atmosphere.
Hence, for proponents of the radiative greenhouse conjecture to use such measures of absorptivity of light (which are close to unity) and thus to assume the surface absorbs “backradiation” is a complete abuse of physics.
* http://naca.central.cranfield.ac.uk/reports/arc/cp/0601.pdf
00
Doug Cotton, if you bother to look back at older threads here, you’ll find that BobC is hardly a believer in AGW. You’d do better exchanging ideas with him by first removing the rather large chip resting upon your shoulder(S).
By the way, I am paying attention her as I’m sure others are too. This exchange is interesting and a great opportunity for others to learn. JoNova has already addressed the theory of “back radiation” and whether or not the 2nd law is violated.
00
So apart from Doug, is it Tom, Dick or Harry that has the feel?
00
Just one final question …
I am aware (from a reliable source) that spectroscopy indicates that a gas does not absorb spontaneous emission from a source which is cooler than the gas, but the gas does start to absorb when the source is heated to a higher temperature than the gas. However, I cannot ascertain if there is a published paper on this.
Is anyone aware of published experiments of absorptivity which use sources of spontaneous emission which are themselves around 10 deg.C to -60 deg.C, like typical atmospheric temperatures, or ones such as the above spectroscopy one?
00
Everyone
I have updated and expanded my Radiation page now and it seems to me you should find answers and detailed explanations there for any further queries you may have …
http://www.climate-change-theory.com/RadiationAbsorption.html
00
thanks that makes it much clearer.
00
That’s good – it’s the end result of a lot of study.
So you understand now that, for the frequencies which are common to both the source and the target, resonance can occur – up to the extent of the total energy in the radiation from the cooler body. So the net outward radiation is the area between the curves, which is what the Stefan-Boltzmann equation also tells us.
00
Yes, very clear thanks. I’ll speak to some friends about re-writing their texts.
00
Yeah Doug, I’ve been working with lasers since 1968 — how about you?
My point about the 10 micron wavelength lasers (which is the peak wavelength emitted by blackbodies at room temperature) being used to create plasmas hot enough to radiate in the xray region at their peak emission, was that it disproves that photon absorption magically cuts off at any wavelength below the peak emission wavelength of an absorbing black body, and shows that such absorption does produce thermal effects.
What the experimental evidence shows is that any black body absorbs all wavelengths all the time. The fact that a hot and cold blackbody can exchange radiation does not violate the 2nd Law of thermodynamics, since the NET energy flow is always from the hot (and more emissive) body to the cold (and hence less emissive, as shown by Planck’s Law) body.
I’ve asked you to explain what mechanism can possibly cause blackbody absorption to suddenly quit based either on absolute wavelength (disproved by the 10 micron laser example) or on the ensemble peak wavelength of the source, which you have ignored, since there is no such mechanism. In fact, there is no known or potential mechanism which can prevent the absorption of a photon based on the statistical charactistics of another group of non-absorbed photons. The concept requires non-local effects that have never been seen.
Stimulated emission only occurs if there is a population of excited atoms or molecules which can support it. This is relatively difficult to achieve (why lasers weren’t built for 30 years after they were theoretically described) and this is not the case with random targets you aim a laser at. If the target contained the same material used in the laser, some of that material could be excited and participate in stimulated emission, but that would be a specific, not general, case. The Wikipedia article on this subject is fairly good.
Your statement:
seems to indicate that you think that there is a difference between a photon (or, lets use EM radiation, since photons are shorthand for imaginary objects, like “rays” in geometrical optics) that is produced by spontaneous emission and radiation produced by stimulated emission. I know of no experimental evidence of this and you haven’t supplied any.
If you can find this paper, and it says what you think it says, and it can be replicated — that would be paradigm shifting. I’m pretty familiar with spectroscopy (having a half-dozen patents in the field) and I know of nothing like this. This might be a misunderstanding of Correlation Spectroscopy, which has actually been used in satellite measurements of CO2 distribution in the atmosphere. The gases used in fluorescence spectroscopy (another label for the same thing) do not act as blackbodies, but have absorption coefficients that are specific for particular atomic or molecular energy transitions. CO2 acts this way — it only absorbs specific wavelengths in the IR. It will absorb any IR photon at the correct wavelength, however, regardless of whether it came from a hotter or cooler source.
So, produce a specific theory of when Planck’s equation should be ignored and what replaces it. Then, we’ll test that theory. That’s the way progress is made, not by shifting verbal argumentation.
I was perfectly willing to be polite (even complimentary) until you became snotty (on a public forum) — a tone you have maintained (re, the next to last quote above). What goes around comes around. If you would like to hit the “reset” button, I would prefer a conversation in a friendly tone.
00
This is, in fact, precisely what the theory says is happening. It is also, as far as I know, consistent with all laboratory experiments. You obviously think this is wrong, and there is no energy transfered from the cold plate to the hot plate.
Therefore, I suggest the following crucial experiment to determine the facts of the matter:
This link describes a university lab experiment on radiative cooling: A fairly large ceramic resistor with a thermistor thermally bonded to it is suspended by small wires in a bell jar, which is then evacuated. (If you don’t have access to a bell jar and vacuum pump, a large canning jar with a copper tube soldered through the lid can be fairly well evacuated by a cheap aspirator pump that attaches to a garden hose. An altimeter placed in the jar will verify the evacuation, and you’ll want a valve in the tube so you can shut the aspirator off when the jar is evacuated.)
The resistor is heated by current through the wires, then the current is turned off and the temperature decay measured over time. The (near) lack of air in the jar prevents heat loss by air convection, and the wires are small so as not to contribute much heat conduction.
For reasonable temperatures (e.g., don’t let the resistor get red-hot) the glass of the jar is opaque to almost all of the resistor’s blackbody radiation, and in fact is a pretty good blackbody itself. (If you want to make it better still, paint the inside with carbon-black paint.) The resistor is losing heat to the glass envelope by radiation. Throughout almost all of the experiment, the glass jar is colder than the resistor.
The crucial experiment is therefore to measure whether the resistor temperature decay curve speeds up when the glass jar is cooled or slows down when the glass jar is heated (but still kept colder than the resistor).
Standard blackbody theory says you will see a significant difference, your theory says you won’t.
You can use ice bags around the jar to cool it and perhaps a hair dryer to heat it (or perhaps just raise the room thermostat). There are some good ideas in the link about how to quantify and remove the residual effects of convection and conduction.
It is empirical data that ultimately tells us how the world behaves, not theory.
00
BobC said @ #142 “your theory says you won’t.”
__________________________________
Yes it will.
00
If your theory says that the presence of a colder blackbody will slow down the radiative heat loss from a warmer blackbody, then your theory also predicts a greenhouse effect, as that is all that is needed to produce it — backradiation from atmospheric CO2 slows down the rate of radiative heat loss of the Earth.
00
Wait for my work to be published within a week or two. That will rebutt what you say in your somewhat simplistic concept.
00
Just one clue – water vapour molecules are each more effective in setting up standing waves than carbon dioxide molecules, partly because they each do so for more separate frequencies. Multiply this by the ratio of their population in the atmosphere and you’ll see CO2’s effect is absolutely negligible compared with WV which has been around for a while, you know. And both absorb some incoming IR from the Sun and send some of that it back to space also – kind of like an upside-down greenhouse effect don’t you think?
00
BobC
You may be able to find out the details on the spectroscopy experiment from DeWitt Payne as he wrote about it on SoD on the third Backradiation thread if I remember rightly.
My explanation of resonance (in keeeping with the proven computational results of Prof Claes Johnson) is also totally in keeping with recognised formulae in physics. See above for example http://joannenova.com.au/2012/01/dr-david-evans-the-skeptics-case/#comment-983108
Physics textbooks usually consider two identical plates radiating at each other. But modify the calculations for different sized plates with a connecting funnel and what do you think you get? Wrong results: results that can show heat transfer from cold to hot.
If you think laser beams in the UV are generated by heating the machine up to about the temperature of the Sun, or that radio transmissions require broadcast towers to be many degrees below freezing point, well you are entitled to your beliefs I guess.
How about talking about the real atmosphere from which I can detect no effect of the temperature of the ground by all the “backradiation” which is supposed to be about a quarter as powerful as the Sun at noon above the equator.
And how about talking about the backradiation carbon dioxide sends from solar IR back into space – thus cooling?
And how does backradiation slow down evaporation and diffusion (conduction) from the surface to the atmosphere.
And why wouldn’t evaporation and diffusion “make up the difference” even if the backradiation from all different angles and at lower frequencies somehow, by no known process, stops some of that outgoing radiation in its tracks, or at least dampens it even though it has different wavelengths?
Do you understand what stimulated emission actually is? Do you realise that “photons” arrive faster than the natural frequency at which they would be emitted spontaneously, so two identical photons are emitted in the same direction at once. Obviously the target can’t handle the second photon in each pair, so it goes into the target and has to be converted to thermal energy because the “doubled up” wave cannot all resonate.
In more detail, my hypothesis is that surplus energy above that which can resonate will be converted to thermal energy. So the laser beam, even a CO2 one, has plenty of surplus energy. And of course its power can be amplified artificially with a bit of electricity. So it very clearly is nothing like spontaneous emission coming from a bit of carbon dioxide gas. In no way does it debunk what I have been saying about spontaneous emission.
00
In regard to your thought experiment, you seem to think that my hypothesis does not give the same quantitative result in simple radiation situations which don’t have concentrators or special filters. It does, because it’s quantitative estimate of radiation is the area between the curves, which is exactly what correct application of S-B gives when you deduct the compensating term for the temperature of the opposing surface. So of course there will be more radiative flux when the temperature difference increases. This, by the way, is why there cannot be much radiation from Earth’s surface to the lowest layer of the air which may be less than 2 degrees cooler.
00
Doug Cotton;
Are you saying the surface radiation passes through the lowest layer of the air? Or are you saying there isn’t much radiation from the surface at all?
00
BobC, Why couldn’t the above experiment be done as follows:
Set up bell jar and resistor the same. Set the current through the resistor so that it emits IR at the center frequency of co2 absorption. Run the test with the jar filled with normal air, jar evacuated and jar filled with 100% co2. It seems to me that would provide the data to settle once and for all the possibility of co2 caused back radiation.
00
Mark, who is disputing that CO2 radiates and some of that radiation hits the surface?
BobC and I just disagree about whether or not the energy in that radiation then gets converted to thermal energy so that it can help the Sun warm up the surface on a clear morning for example. We just need to foind a way to violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics to do this, don’t we?
Then we have to be sure the radiation slows down the rate of evaporation of the oceans later that day. BobC and the IPCC seem to know the answer, but I just can’t reconcile it with physics. Prof Julius Sumner-Miller (whose lectures I attended at Sydney University Physics Dept) used to ask (as on his TV shows) “Why is it so?”
00
Doug, it seems to me that in my proposed experiment the co2 “back” radiation would either convert to thermal at the resistor or it would not. In other words the reality (or falsehood) of back radiation causing warming.
I believe it is not necessarily a violation of the 2nd law for this back radiation to cause some thermal conversion. However that does not cause me to believe in AGW. Joanne believes co2 could cause SOME warming but at a much lower rate than the IPCC. I do not hold that same notion but I don’t argue with her. The point is there are several areas where the IPCC could be wrong and across the board, much of the science is not as “Well understood” as they tout.
00
In case I have not made myself clear, I believe there is absolutely no physically valid process by which carbon dioxide can cause any warming, but it definitely does cause some cooling by trapping incoming near-IR solar radiation and sending some of that relatively high energy IR back to space. For reasons, see my Radiation page, or for a brief summary see this post: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/23/no-need-to-panic-about-global-warming-revisited/#comment-902194
00
Prof Claes Johnson’s paper is entitled; Computational Blackbody Radiation.
Let’s keep to the topic of (spontaneous) blackbody radiation, shall we, not artificially generated radiation of any kind which his paper is not about.
00
PS I have posted more detail on this thread http://joannenova.com.au/2011/05/why-greenhouse-gas-warming-doesnt-break-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/#comment-983198
00
OK…. where to start?
Mark D @ 145:
That’s an interesting idea. The main problem would be that while the glass acts as a good blackbody in the IR, CO2 absorbs and emits only in a few narrow bands. So, the radiation from the glass would contain much more energy than from the CO2 and hence I would expect that you wouldn’t see much change due to the radiative effects of the CO2 (sort of like in the atmosphere!). In fact, the CO2 might just do the job of the glass in a small part of the spectrum and you would see no change at all. Making the jar from some IR transparent material like Germanium or Silicon would move the experiment out of the reach of the garage experimenter.
Also, the thermal conductivity of the gas would make a large change and you would have to find some gas with a similar conductivity, but no IR absorption bands to do a blank test. I’m not sure what that would be.
Doug Cotton @ 143:
Wow! Nothing I’ve said on this (or any other thread) could lead a rational person with normal reading comprehension to attribute to me the beliefs that you claim I have.
And, you apparently still favor the snarky style:
Actually Doug, I can do the QM calculations that predict it — how about you? Nothing you say about stimulated emission in the rest of that paragraph is correct — I recommend once again you scan the Wiki page.
And lastly,
Doug Cotton @144:
So, your hypothesis gives the exact same answer as the standard blackbody/Planck theory — except in cases of “special” filters and concentrators (which are Maxwell Demons) — in other words, the same results in all cases. Since there don’t appear to be any of these special demons involved in the Earth-atmosphere system, you must then get the same greenhouse effect that everyone else does.
I feel that this conversation has truly fallen through the looking glass.
I’m irresistibly reminded of Lewis Carroll’s poem “Haddock Eyes”
— (whose name is really called “The aged, aged man”
— or maybe “Ways and Means”
— but actually “A-Siting on a Gate”):
****************************
I’ll tell thee everything I can:
There’s little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
“Who are you, aged man?” I said,
“And how is it you live?”
And his answer trickled through my head,
Like water through a sieve.
He said “I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street.
I sell them unto men,” he said,
“Who sail on stormy seas;
And that’s the way I get my bread —
A trifle, if you please.”
But I was thinking of a plan
To dye one’s whiskers green,
And always use so large a fan
That they could not be seen.
So, having no reply to give
To what the old man said,
I cried “Come, tell me how you live!”
And thumped him on the head.
His accents mild took up the tale:
He said “I go my ways,
And when I find a mountain-rill,
I set it in a blaze;
And thence they make a stuff they call
Rowlands’ Macassar-Oil —
Yet twopence-halfpenny is all
They give me for my toil.”
But I was thinking of a way
To feed oneself on batter,
And so go on from day to day
Getting a little fatter.
I shook him well from side to side,
Until his face was blue:
“Come, tell me how you live,” I cried,
“And what it is you do!”
He said “I hunt for haddocks’ eyes
Among the heather bright,
And work them into waistcoat-buttons
In the silent night.
And these I do not sell for gold
Or coin of silvery shine,
But for a copper halfpenny,
And that will purchase nine.
“I sometimes dig for buttered rolls,
Or set limed twigs for crabs:
I sometimes search the grassy knolls
For wheels of Hansom-cabs.
And that’s the way” (he gave a wink)
“By which I get my wealth–
And very gladly will I drink
Your Honour’s noble health.”
I heard him then, for I had just
Completed my design
To keep the Menai bridge from rust
By boiling it in wine.
I thanked him much for telling me
The way he got his wealth,
But chiefly for his wish that he
Might drink my noble health.
And now, if e’er by chance I put
My fingers into glue,
Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot
Into a left-hand shoe,
Or if I drop upon my toe
A very heavy weight,
I weep, for it reminds me so
Of that old man I used to know–
Whose look was mild, whose speech was slow
Whose hair was whiter than the snow,
Whose face was very like a crow,
With eyes, like cinders, all aglow,
Who seemed distracted with his woe,
Who rocked his body to and fro,
And muttered mumblingly and low,
As if his mouth were full of dough,
Who snorted like a buffalo–
That summer evening long ago,
A-sitting on a gate.
00
you must then get the same greenhouse effect that everyone else does.
I guess I would if I also failed to really think about it all.
Hint: There’s a big difference between assumed two-way thermal energy transfer and one-way. The computations give the same result, but the physics doesn’t.
00
For anyone who doesn’t understand why the temperature difference between the surface and the first millimeter of the air is important in determining the radiative flux, that temperature of the air is Tc in the last formula here http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/stefan.html
00
For those who still don’t understand the relevance of the funnel experiment it is this: if (as is the case) the concept (and associated formulae) that you have been using does not give the right answer, even in one special case, then something is wrong with your concept.
No one has responded to all the various problem areas I have listed in #143 and I find it interesting that, whenever I mention these on various formats, no one has a valid explanation or counter argument.
Just one of these points would be sufficient to debunk the AGW models.
If you think you can prove me wrong on even one of these problem areas, then we can continue this discussion.
00
Those who are not familiar with stimulated emission may wish to note that a boson in a state can stimulate or induce another boson into the same state, causing an atomic transition. The atom can be induced to make a downward transition (emitting a photon) if the incoming light’s frequency matches the atomic transition energy. The incoming photon is a boson, and for this reason it stimulates the emission of a second photon in the same state, inducing an atomic transition.
00
Sure:
Most of the energy the Sun gives to the Earth is in the visible (6000 deg K blackbody, peak emission ~500nm wavelength). Most of the energy the Earth radiates back to space is in the IR (~270 deg K blackbody, peak emission ~12 microns wavelength). Hence anything that interfers with the transmission of IR will affect the Earth’s cooling more than its heating.
Pass.
00
Most of the energy the Sun gives to the Earth is in the visible
Wrong: the visible is marked in yellow on the bar below this plot …
http://earth-climate.com/spectral-content.gif
It is generally accepted that the sum of solar UV and visible is about equal to its IR power. So near IR is about half the Sun’s insolation. Such near IR has a far greater warming effect (which is being blocked) than the much lower energy IR backradiation emitted by the atmosphere.
Hence anything that interfers with the transmission of IR will affect the Earth’s cooling more than its heating.
Wrong: The incoming IR has much more energy than the upwelling IR. Carbon dioxide (and water vapour) do absorb incoming solar radiation as shown on the above plot which I’m sure your spectroscopy could reproduce. Thus water vapour and carbon dioxide do send back to space at least half of what they absorb and this reduces the warming of the Sun in daylight hours. Calculations show it has a cooling effect more than 7 times the claimed warming effect, even though both are small. This also debunks the multiplying effect assumed for water vapour.
00
Well, actually Doug, your chart shows the majority of the incoming Solar energy in the visible and the vast majority in the visible plus the near IR (up to ~3 microns wavelength).
Well, not really. Here is a plot (scroll down to fig 6) of CO2 absorption in the IR. Note that there are only two narrow bands where absorption occurs — just over 4 microns and at about 14 microns. Your plot of incoming Solar energy shows only a small amount of the power is near the 4 micron absorption band and you can’t even see (on the scale of the chart) anything at the 14 micron absorption band. CO2, therefore, intercepts a trivial amount of the incoming radiation — certainly not enough to have a measureable effect on the Earth’s warming rate.
Straw man. If you look at this graph (scroll to bottom of page) comparing the blackbody spectra of a 6000 deg K blackbody (approximately the Sun) and an 300 deg K blackbody (~ room temperature), you can see that the solar spectrum is down to less than 1/100 of its peak energy at the 4 micron CO2 absorption band and is less than 1/10000 peak at the 14 micron band. Hence CO2 intercepts a trivial amount of the incoming solar energy.
On the other hand, the 300 deg K spectrum has its peak very close to the 14 micron CO2 absorption band. Hence CO2 has a much larger effect on the total outgoing energy than its effect on the total incoming energy.
00
BobC
February 25, 2012 at 12:55 am
Well, actually Doug, your chart shows the majority of the incoming Solar energy in the visible
___________________________________
No it doesn’t, and it isn’t. It seems like you are assuming the mode indicates the “majority.”
A little less than 50% of solar radiation (as shown by the area under the yellow plot) is in the visible spectrum.
My point is that there is significant absorption by WV and maybe carbon dioxide out of the incident IR. I have seen other plots indicating the CO2 bands absorbed.
The absorption by water vapour negates the feedback mechanism whereby additional WV is supposed to more than double the effect of CO2.
00
You don’t mention that the atom must be in an excited state for stimulated emission to happen — you can’t make a downward transition from the ground (i.e., lowest) state. Excited states are, in general, unstable and short-lived. The difficulty of maintaining a large population of atoms in an excited state is one reason the development of lasers took so long from their theoretical description to practice.
00
the atom must be in an excited state for stimulated emission to happen
Pretty obvious.
For the benefit of others who may not know this: with sufficient radiative power, earlier photons will do the initial exciting, and, if the frequency is high enough, the next photon arrives before spontaneous emission occurs from the excited state caused by the earlier photon. All of which demonstrates how far removed from spontaneous emission is this hard-to-generate artificially generated laser beam.
Now, back to the relevant issues from How about talking about the real atmosphere in #143.
00
What’s pretty obvious is that you don’t know much about lasers. The excited state that supports stimulated emission must be relatively long-lived (it has to persist while waiting for a stimulating photon to arrive). Therefore it is not easy to excite an atom into this state by absorbing the same energy of photon that would be emitted — low probability of spontaneous emission (another way of saying the state is long-lived) equates to an equally low probability of absorption.
It’s a Catch-22: A state that was short-lived enough to be efficiently excited optically would be too short-lived to achieve a population inversion of excited atoms and thus couldn’t support laser action.
Thus the scenario you outline above (and have mentioned elsewhere) is extremely inprobable and accounts for a trivial amount of the interaction of laser-generated light with matter and is irrelevant to the actual observed effects of lasers.
Actual lasers are always pumped to higher energy states (by higher energy photons or other means) which decay to the long-lived state that supports stimulated emission. Again, Wikipedia is a good resource for those who want actual knowledge about these things.
00
Obviously population inversion is required for lasers.
None of this is relevant to spontaneous blackbody emission and the transfer of thermal energy.
Below is an “Abstract” …
00
In my funnel experiment, the net radiative flux can be in the opposite direction to heat flow, and so only the radiation from the warmer body to the cooler one has any effect.
Radiation from a cooler source is rejected and the end result is the same as if it had undergone diffuse reflection. Any amount of radiation from a cooler source can be rejected and there will be no effect on the normal spontaneous outward radiation from the warmer target.
00
The absorptivity of a warmer surface receiving low energy radiation from a cooler atmosphere must be zero as I have proved with simple logic based on my funnel experiment. You cannot produce empirical evidence to support the values of absorptivity assumed in IPCC models for this radiation to the surface. That is the end of the matter and the end of the radiative greenhouse effect.
00
BobC and others.
Here is another chart of the breakdown of solar insolation.
http://climate-change-theory.com/insolation.jpg
Note the reference to most of the infra-red being absorbed by the atmosphere.
Clearly that in the visible spectrum is by no means “most” of the energy. For a start, the UV, X-rays etc have much higher energy than light as you all must know. So the atmosphere has a significant cooling effect during daylight hours, and water vapour has a net negative feedback partly because of this absorption and also due to reflection off clouds.
Seeing that backradiation does not affect climate in any way, there is no way WV could have a positive feedback as assumed by IPCC, thus amplifying CO2 effects they claim.
There simply cannot be an atmospheric radiative greenhouse effect without violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics, as I have proved on my website, and also because every ray of radiation has to be treated as a separate process.
There is no physical meaning associated with, and no physical entity corresponding to “net” radiation. Radiation rays do not combine like, for example, force vectors.
A warm body will not absorb any radiation from a cooler source, no matter how much of such radiation is sent in its direction, as shown in my funnel experiment. And all such radiation has no effect on the normal spontaneous outgoing radiation, let alone the heat loss by evaporation and diffusion followed by convection.
00
I got the (apparently, wrong) impression from your post #134.2 that you understood that your funnel thought experiment could not change the net radiative flux. Re-read my explanation in post #132 about why no optical concentrator (funnel, lens, or whatever) can change the net radiative flux from the object being concentrated and hence cannot change the apparent flux from a blackbody or its apparent temperature. The concentrated light will interact with the cooler (or hotter) object exactly like the light from the original object, if it was at a nearer distance, but smaller in extent. This is completely independent of the spectrum of the object(s).
You have completely misinterperted the effect of an optical concentrator, as shown above. Hence, your funnel experiment would have null result because the net radiative fluxes would be unchanged, not because of some magical loss of absorptivity of the hotter object.
So, why don’t you try the experiment outlined in post #142? If that experiment shows that the nearby presence of a colder object slows the radiative cooling of a hotter object (for whatever reason), then it also shows the essence of the greenhouse effect. Remember, the basis for the greenhouse effect is that radiation scattered/re-emitted from CO2 in the atmosphere will effectively reduce the rate at which the Earth’s surface loses energy by radiation. Whether this happens because the hotter object receives energy from the cooler one (as predicted by Planck’s Law and QM), or whether some magical adjustment happens that results in the hotter object emitting less radiation (in violation of Planck’s Law) as you claim makes no difference.
You have already admitted (post #144) that the hotter object would cool down more slowly in the presence of the cooler one, so you have effectively admitted that the greenhouse effect exists.
00
An interesting correlation between CO2 and population is that a population rise of 1 billion people equates to 20ppm(approx) increase in CO2 (using NOAA CO2 data and United Nations data on population).
Considering that the majority of population rise has been/is in less developed part of the world (again UN data) this is curious.
00
BobC
The funnel experiment does not depend on any violation of etendue. The whole thing is sealed off at the ends by the plates themselves, hence the whole hemisphere of radiation from each plate is trapped and most will be reflected towards the other plate. Etendue considerations are not relevant here as it is not a simple optical system as is a prerequisite for such theory to apply. Clearly there is more radiation from the large plate as its temperature is only a little less than the cooler plate, but its area much greater.
Of course the temperature difference and the amount of thermal energy transfer between hot and cold is determined by the temperatures of the hot and cold objects, being less when the temperatures get closer. This is pretty basic physics.
My hypothesis produces this same result for radiation in all circumstances, whereas SBL does not for the funnel. That does not however affect the natural adiabatic lapse rate of the atmosphere which is a function of the acceleration due to gravity. Even the IPCC gave up on promulgating the type of argument you are still putting forward – due to lack of empirical evidence.
What they talk about now is backradiation transferring thermal energy to the surface. Check out their website. I’m not here to discuss arguments they themselves have already rejected.
My case is set out on my Radiation page here http://climate-change-theory.com/RadiationAbsorption.html and that is all I propose to discuss on any forum. A more detail paper (already completed yesterday) will be released one way or another in due course.
Doug
00
Etendue is conserved here Doug. A less jargony way of putting it is to note that all light emitted from the narrow end will eventually find it’s way to the large end, but light emitted from the large end at an angle greater than some limiting angle determined by the slope of the funnel sides and the length of the funnel will be reflected back before reaching the narrow end. Hence, the assumption that all the light from the large end reaches the narrow end is false. The reason this happens is that a ray starting at some initial angle from the axis will gain 2 x the funnel wall angle with each reflection. After enough reflections, that angle will exceed 90 degrees and the ray will return to the large end. If you do a detailed calculation, you will find that there is no funnel configuration that can achieve the net transfer you assume, and hence there is no reason to hypothesize a blackbody interaction other than the one described by Planck’s Law.
This is the essence of Blackadder’s comment as well.
00
BobC
I said “most” – ie more than 50%. A slight outward slope near the top can start low angle radiation on a downward path. The larger plate can be any number of times bigger than the small one, so “most” will be more than the total which the small plate emits, and that is all that is needed to prove my point.
But, in any event, radiation which goes back to the large plate will not be absorbed and converted to thermal energy because the source and target are at the same temperature. Hence it will resonate and be scattered and, eventually, reach the smaller plate.
The point I have made about “cooler” radiation not being absorbed has also been made by Markus Fitzhenry http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/26/the-skeptics-case/#comment-905670
00
You’re misreading Fitzhenry’s comment — he agrees with me (and Mike Hammer, Jo Nova, Maxwell, and all physics textbooks and all laboratory experiments):
He emphatically does not say that “cooler radiation isn’t absorbed by a hotter object”. Markus’ statement that the laws of thermodynamics are statistical in nature is also in clear contradiction to your frequent claim that
…but in complete agreement with the understanding and use of thermodynamic theory for well over a hundred years.
For your hypothesis to overturn 100 years of physical analysis and theory, you need to come up with a laboratory demonstration that has the potential of falsifying your claim, or falsifying current theory. So far, your “thought experiments”, such as the funnel experiment, are easily explained by the standard theory of thermodynamics, since the funnel is not capable of doing the non-physical concentration you claim. If you disagree, then build such a funnel and measure it — so far, no one has been able to construct an optical “Maxwell’s Demon” (a device whose operation would violate the statistical interpretation of the Laws of Thermodynamics); you would be the first. Don’t expect us to believe it just because you say it, however — demonstrate it.
00
Maybe you should read all of what Markus says at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/26/the-skeptics-case/#comment-905670
Markus has written:
… because that part of the radiated energy intercepted by the warmer body is standing wave communicating information between the emitter/absorber states, on both bodies, it can do no thermodynamic work.
When the cooler body is at absolute zero, the exchange energy is zero. When the temperatures are equal, it is the same as the radiation emitted by either body.
However, it can still do no thermodynamic work and it can only be detected by blocking the energy from the warmer body to the colder body. By counting ‘back radiation’ with the energy emitted by the warmer body, Trenberth is increasing the S-B constant by a factor 1to2.
So for statistical and modelling purposes it is disingenuous to consider back-radiation as a climatic forcing.
AND I have written …
The standing wave has no thermal effect because none of its energy is ever converted to thermal energy. It just sends information back to the warmer body and a part of the warmer body’s radiation goes into the standing wave. The energy radiated by the warmer body which is represented by the area between the curves does get converted to thermal energy because it cannot resonate and thus contribute to the standing wave. The calculations of course agree with accepted physics, but the mechanism is not a two-way transfer of heat, as many appear to have supposed.
But there is no build up of the effect of carbon dioxide due to multiple repetitions of the capturing and re-emitting process envisaged in the IPCC energy diagrams and models. Each carbon dioxide molecule can only play a single role in a very limited sub-section of the total standing wave. Its contribution per molecule would be no more than a molecule of water, and so its total overall effect is comparable with its relative proportion to WV and other emitters in the atmosphere – insignificant.
00
Doug, I find this conversation interesting. I was thinking along the same lines as you some time ago (reflecting on consequences of 2nd law and back radiation, and couldn’t get past the geometrical issues to prove what you are trying to prove. As a two dimensional example, I was considering a smaller circle (higher temperature) inside a larger circle of lower temperature. I figured that the larger emitting surface of the outer circle would transfer more radiation to the smaller warmer circle than the other way around. However, you realize this isn’t true once you consider that the radiation is emitted isotropically from each point on each surface. Not all of the emitted radiation from the outer circle is incident on the smaller circle.
The same is true in your funnel experiment. Not all radiation emitted from the larger plate will reach the smaller plate. Some of it will be reflected back onto itself due to the geometry.
00
See reply to BobC. What gets reflected back onto itself still continues its journey as it gets scattered rather than absorbed, because it can’t be converted to thermal energy. I know this begs the question, so I’m happy to settle for “most.” Your concentric circles did not have mirrors focusing the radiation.
00
Mike and BobC
Look, I will agree that you do have to take account of the fact that the large plate scatters “backradiation” – just as the Earth’s surface does. I was always imagining it this way, but strictly speaking that is probably assuming the result of what I’m trying to prove, hence is circular.
So let’s not talk about funnels anymore.
All you need to consider is what is happening each sumny morning. The surface is warming at, say, 11am. So there is net solar radiation into the surface. Now the IPCC wants you to believe that additional radiation from the cooler atmosphere is supposedly transferring thermal energy from the atmosphere to the surface, thus cooling the atmosphere and warming the (already warmer) surface. This process (which must be considered stand alone) clearly violates the Second Law.
00
Is the rebuttal argument made by Skeptical Science (linked below) answered or addressed in the thread anywhere? If so, I’ve been unable to locate it.
Thanks.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/david-evans-understanding-goes-cold.html
00
There – I’ve just written a rebuttal on SkS.
If you’re quick you might see it before they delete it, as they usually do because they can’t refute my posts.
So I kept a screen capture here http://www.climate-change-theory.com/SkS120229a.jpg
00
As expected SkS deleted my posts (3 in total) and then banned me once again. As usual they tried to say I was off topic, but how can a direct rebuttal be off topic?
Here’s the final reply I wrote which was blocked automatically …
I was pointing out exactly where and why both your own article and his were incorrect in (both) your conjectures that water vapour would have the imagined feedback effect and that carbon dioxide or water vapour would have any effect other than possibly slowing radiative heat loss from the surface – but no direct warming of the surface.
I trust that, if you attempt to rebut any article I have published, that you will give me right of reply. That would seem to be what it is all about. In my mind, comments like “tragically flawed misunderstandings of physics” actually apply quite well to the greenhouse conjecture, and I can prove why they are such with standard physics which I have studied for over 50 years. How long have you studied it?
00
Thanks Jo,
I have published in my website, Observatorio ARVAL, most of this excellent article. The English version is at http://www.oarval.org/ClimateChangeBW.htm and “El Caso de los Escépticos”, the Spanish version, is at http://www.oarval.org/CambioClimaBW.htm
00
Nothing less than this type of “thinking critically” is going to lead to valid conclusions in the climate debate. Not even the AGW proponents have been able to think critically enough like this example which, if you do think critically, will demonstrate why the greenhouse conjecture is false ….
Consider a metal plate enclosed on one side with a “perfect” insulator. It is dangling out of a satellite and collecting the full blast of the Sun on its uninsulated side. Say it is between the Sun and Earth and its plane is perpendicular to the line between Sun and Earth. Assume it is not affected by radiation from the satellite.
Say the Sun warms it to 330K at equilibrium. Now pull it into the shade of the satellite and turn it 90 degrees so it faces space and not the Earth or satellite. It will radiate virtually all the amount represented by all the area under its Planck curve, like a blackbody. So it “wants” to do this. You time how long it takes to cool to, say, 280K then to 200K
Now repeat the experiment, but when it is in the shade of the satellite face it towards the Earth.
We know the radiation from the Earth has the same flux (close enough) to that from the Sun which it receives. So will it stay at 330K because of this? I suggest the IPCC’s energy diagram concepts might “prove” that it would in fact do so, because they imply that the temperature would be a function of the number of photons received..
No. It will cool more slowly than before, but how does it “know” to do so? It still “wants” to cool faster. The slower cooling cannot be caused by a transfer of thermal energy from the cooler Earth system. The only other way is for radiation from the Earth to interfere with the plate’s radiation, and this can only happen with a standing wave.
It will take longer to cool down to 280K and it will stop cooling when in equilibrium with the Earth.
But only some of the Earth’s radiation will have any effect. Its rate of cooling will be slowed down and gradually come to a halt at whatever is the weighted mean temperature of the Earth and atmosphere – perhaps around 255K.
So at equilibrium the Earth’s radiation is split into two “sections” – some which is below its mean temperature and thus has no effect because it forms standing waves with the plate at 255K, and some above that 255K “cut-off” which is maintaining the plate’s temperature also at 255K.
It was the UV, visible and maybe some near-IR in the Solar radiation that was able to heat it to 330K.
So heat is not automatically transferred wherever “photons” roam. Heat cannot be transferred by radiation from a cooler atmosphere to a warmer surface. All that happens is that standing waves of radiation send a message to the warmer surface to slow down its rate of cooling each evening, so our evenings are more pleasant for our night life.
But each molecule of carbon dioxide cannot play a greater role in producing standing waves than each molecule of water vapour which outnumbers it by at least 25:1 when water vapour is 1% of the atmosphere. So doubling carbon dioxide is like increasing water vapour from 1.00% to 1.04% of the atmosphere. Given that it can already get up around 4% without too much of a problem, let’s sleep comfortably in the not-much-warmer nights. Actually, carbon dioxide cools us more anyway by sending some of the Sun’s IR back to space.
00
nailed it! Time to publish.
00
‘Time to publish.’
And yours Gee Aye are published at which house?
00
Hi Markus
My Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics is indeed about to be peer reviewed and maybe published within a next or two.
Forgive me if I have missed your reply, but I really would appreciate any reference to the standing wave concept you have mentioned in other posts, and with which I also agree by logical deduction. The information cannot be sent by thermal energy transfer from cold to hot, and nor can radiation interfere unless it is in a standing wave situation with the same path, frequency and amplitude. This all ties in well with Claes Johnson’s “resonating” in his Computational Blackbody Radiation
00
Hi Doug,
I’m traveling right now, but on return tomorrow, I will flesh out what I can and get it to you over on your blogsite,
Regards,
00
Doug,
Explain this:
The Cosmic Background Radiation, ‘CBR’, (thermal radiation at a blackbody temperature of 2.7 deg K) was discovered by receiving it with a large horn antenna.
When the horn antenna was pointed at the sky, its noise temperature was several degrees more than its ambient temperature, as measured by the microwave equipment. It was receiving the radiation from the CBR which was obviously absorbed by the antenna and converted into electrical current (the only way it could reach the receiving equipment at the other end of the transmission line).
The antenna and transmission line were not superconducting — hence any current in them would be partially converted to heat energy due to the finite resistance.
Hence, we have radiation from a blackbody at 2.7 deg K (deep space) adding thermal energy to a structure at the ambient outside temperature (probably ~ 280 deg K).
Standard thermodynamics has no problem explaning this — your theory says that the CBR should be undetectable.
00
BobC – The cosmic ray detection is similar to an IR bolometer (or microbolometer) detecting temperatures lower than those of its sensors. See my reply here: http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/fun-stuff/#comment-70015
00
several but now I am vowing to go for open access journals. Frankly the greedy old journal houses give me the…
00
Comments:
1) If the plate cools more slowly when facing the Earth than when facing space (for whatever reason), that confirms the existence of the greenhouse effect. This is because:
a) If the atmosphere were transparent, the nighttime Earth would be cooling radiatively to space.
b) Since the atmosphere is not transparent to longwave IR, the nighttime Earth is radiatively cooling to something above the radiative temperature of space, so (according to what you just said) cools more slowly.
The atmosphere is transparent to shortwave IR (less than 4 microns), where the vast majority of the Sun’s energy is radiated, so the daytime heating is not affected by the atmosphere’s (partial) absorption of longwave (> 4 micron) IR — but the nighttime cooling is (as you have admitted) slowed down. Therefore, the average temperature of the Earth will be increased.
2) Actually, that would slow down the cooling — just like pouring water into a leaky bucket slows down the rate that it empties. This is the explanation in standard thermodynamics (accepted for the last 150 years or so) and there is no experimental evidence that it is wrong.
No amount of thought experiments, even those involving “critical thinking”, can establish facts about the world — you must demonstrate the existence of your standing waves, or whatever mechanism you postulate. If you are simply postulating an alternate mechanism which has the same effect as standard thermodynamics (as it seems), you will get the same results — e.g., the greenhouse effect.
00
(1) It confirms well known physics – nothing more. Reduction in radiative heat loss is made up with (compensated by) additional heat loss by processes listed in (a) below. Also, the role of carbon dioxide in setting up standing waves that reduce the radiative heat flow is less than 4% (probably even less than 1%) of the effect of water vapour, which can set up many more standing waves per molecule than can carbon dioxide.
(a) You are forgetting about evaporation, conduction, chemical processes and diffusion followed by convection. And what happened to the adiabatic lapse rate which is a function of the acceleration due to gravity? As I said before, Bob, yours (and the IPCC’s) approach is grossly oversimplified and ignores numerous factors in the real world, some of which you’ll be able to read about in a week or so if you haven’t been following my posts on several forums.
(b) Space has no temperature. Your statements about absorption of incident solar radiation are not at all accurate. You could start by studying the yellow areas indicating absorption in the plot on my page http://earth-climate.com/CaseAgainst.html
Bob – there really is no need to feed me the IPCC line – I’ve spent thousands of hours studying all this and was fooled by it myself in the early stages until I discovered where they went wrong – something you have yet to learn it appears.
00
Well Doug, it looks like you have no rational answers to my questions in #164.2, as you have resorted to irrelevant comments and smears:
What’s that got to do with anything I said? The relative effectiveness of various greenhouse gases is a valid discussion when trying to decide how significant their effects are — it is irrelevant to your claim that the greenhouse effect doesn’t even exist.
I’m not forgetting about them — we were never even talking about them. The discussion has been about the behavior of blackbodies; specifically, if they always absorb radiation as well as emit it. Thermodynamic theory says they do — you say they don’t: I merely asked for some evidence that you are not wrong, and you can’t supply it. You seem to claim (in post #144) that your hypothesis always gives the same result as classical thermodynamics. If that is so, your hypothesis must also predict the greenhouse effect, since classical thermo does. You have not been able to reconcile this discrepancy. If your hypothesis comes to a different conclusion, then you should be able to define a crucial experiment that will distinguish between it and classical thermo. This is the standard scientific method, but you won’t (or can’t) follow it.
The Cosmic Background Radiation has the spectrum of a blackbody at 2.7 deg K. This is commonly considered to be the temperature of deep space. I’m surprised you don’t know that.
No, the Second Law of Thermodynamics (as can be found in any textbook on thermodynamics for the last century) is a statistical law, which can’t be violated by any individual event — it only applies to the statistical tendencies of large numbers of events. It is only your “Second Law” which controls individual events, and you have supplied no evidence that it is true.
Then, you end with smears:
As anyone who read a small selection of my posts here would know, about the only thing I agree with the IPCC on is that there is no reason to scrap classical thermodynamics for a speculative theory which allows for no greenhouse effect.
In fact, baseing your objection to the IPCC’s politically motivated, fraudulent and junk science on your belief that classical thermodymanics is wrong makes it seem like you agree with them that IF the greenhouse effect exists, then we have a big problem. The post we are (supposedly) commenting on here (before you hijacked the thread) by Dr. David Evans shows clearly that that is not so — the IPCC alarmist claims are wrong even though classical thermodynamics is right and the greenhouse effect exists.
In contrast, I disagree with the IPCC on these issues.
1) I think that the effects of CO2 on the climate are undetectable, due to the many negative feedbacks and unknown drivers in the climate system.
2) I think that the evidence is clear that Anthropogenically-produced CO2 can, at most, contribute only a tiny amount (~3-4%) to the observed increase of atmospheric concentration over the last 60 years — the rest is due to undetermined natural causes (see here and here for example).
3) I note from the last 60 years of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, that CO2 is on track (and has been for that entire time) to double in the next 150 – 170 years (near constant geometric rate of ~.4 – .5%/year) — that is, by about 2172. Apparently, the IPCC has failed to notice that the CO2 concentration is not accelerating as they have continually predicted.
4) And finally, it is obvious from numerious proxies and paleo-data that the current increase in global temperatures (~1 deg C since the Little Ice Age) is nothing unusual in the Earth’s history — hence there no reason to assume that this time, Humans are responsible, or that it represents a problem.
The data doesn’t support (in fact, falsifies) the IPCC’s claims. It isn’t necessary (or wise) to make up new and unproven theories of physics to counter them. You might look at this quiz that a friend (a PhD climatologist at the Univ of Colorado) gives his classes on this subject.
[this was hung up in moderation briefly because of the number of web links] ED
00
BobC said we could warm a hot 330K plate with radiation from the cooler Earth. How much could we warm it Bob? Perhaps we could boil a billy by just holding it over a patch of soil.
He said: it only applies to the statistical tendencies of large numbers of events
Well we do have a large number of events. How many molecules are involved in events within the metal plate? The Second Law always applies on a macro scale between any two points in the earth’s system, and we may presume elsewhere wherever there is matter in the universe.
Only the radiative component of surface cooling is slowed down by radiation from a cooler atmosphere – let’s say 96% by water vapour and 4% by carbon dioxide. But then the other components of the surface cooling rate (evaporation, diffusion etc) are speeded up by compensating amounts for reasons explained in my paper which will be published in English by Wednesday and soon after that in German.
00
I can only see three possibilities here:
1) You’re not too smart, or have reading comprehension problems. If so, I’m sorry.
2) You’re being deliberately dense. If so, it’s getting old.
3) You really think that misrepresenting what people say is a valid argument. If so, see point #1.
I have made an honest effort to address your chameleon-like theory directly, suggesting possible crucial experiments to either validate it or falsify it. This has obviously been a waste of my time, as you obviously aren’t the slightest bit interested in discovering whether your theory is right or wrong. It apparently is a religious thing.
Far be it for me to interfere with someone’s religion. However, you should understand that this religious belief is not harmless, and you do absolutely no good to the fight against the abuse of science that is CAGW. I will probably continue to post analyses of this pathology occasionally, to keep too many people from being sucked in. When you decide to do real science and devise a crucial experiment, I’ll be interested.
00
Hi BobC
“I can only see three possibilities here:”
There are little clues here that Doug is a highly enthusiastic amateur with no scientific training bar what has been picked up from the net.
It is disconcerting to see someone who almost “has it” but doesn’t have the foundations covered properly and occasionally accuses the wrong people of pushing the IPCC line..
Just watch for the book, there may be an explanation in the foreword.
🙂
00
(2) You said Actually, that would slow down the cooling
Yes it would indeed, but I said it cannot happen. Surely my statement (which you quoted) is perfectly clear. The Second Law of Thermodynamics would be violated if radiation from the Earth’s surface were thermalised in a warmer metal plate cooling from 330K. And there is an exact analogy with radiation from a cooler atmosphere which cannot transfer thermal energy to a warmer surface as the IPCC models “calculate” that it does. So the models are wrong. You have only to look at Trenberth’s or NASA’s energy diagram to see they are claiming backradiation is thermalised in the surface. It isn’t.
Regarding standing waves – see my request to Markus (2:06pm) and his response. There is an earlier post by him (somewhere) about standing waves.
00
BobC
Firstly I have not ever intended to “smear” you personally. I also agree with many of your points about temperature and CO2 trends. You would only need to look at my original site http://earth-climate.com to know I accept that there are natural cycles. There is further discussion at the end of my Home page on the newer site http://climate-change-theory.
But we are never going to convince governments to change policies if we only argue about temperature trends, because there is still an underlying trend of 0.05 deg.C per decade which could well continue for 200 years before heading down to the next LIA about 500 years after that maximum.
The likes of Mann, Trenberth et al have dished up pseudo physics which claims that any radiation warms anything, and that the Second Law is still obeyed because they say (like yourself) that it can be “averaged out” over different processes. That’s why I said I didn’t want to hear IPCC stuff from you – I know what they say, and I also know it’s not accepted physics in any textbook like you and they seem to think. They have not managed to alter Wikipedia much on that one, but they certainly have on a lot of other items.
I have studied physics for over 50 years and have to disagree with you over the issue of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It is a macro law, meaning it may not always apply for individual molecules, but it certainly does for any object big enough for the human eye to observe. And it certainly does for the Earth’s surface and atmosphere. My publication Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics is right on this topic and will be available (in English) within 4 days and subsequently in German also. Everything within this is solidly based on standard physics I can assure you.
In as much as a “Greenhouse Effect” is supposed to involve thermal energy returning from the atmosphere to the surface (as it does from the top of a greenhouse to the lower air levels within) then it does not exist. There is no net slowing of the rate of cooling of the Earth’s surface because the energy exits by one means or another.
Ever since the Earth was formed there has been an insulating effect in the atmosphere due to the adiabatic lapse rate which is a function of the acceleration due to gravity. Hence oxygen and nitrogen are the major (98%) players in that. The insulation of the atmosphere keeps us cooler during daylight hours and warmer at night, for otherwise we would see the extremes as on the Moon – assuming we had at least some air to breathe down here.
Carbon dioxide does not have just a little warming effect – it has absolutely no net warming effect because its cooling effect is greater than any warming effect, and any 4% contribution to the slowing of the rate of cooling is offset by other processes such as evaporation and diffusion cooling at a faster rate. There is absolutely no AGW due to carbon dioxide or methane.
[could I suggest both of you start again with what you agree on?] ED
00
Hi Doug
Nobody is going to argue with that. A good clear outline.
In my own rebuttals of CAGW I have never included the possibility of the magical return of ground origin IR energy being able to re-heat the Earth.
That is totally preposterous from a thermo point of view as we all seem to agree.
Another problem in communication on this topic is that everybody has their own concept of the “greenhouse effect” in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Confusion arises when there are thought experiments that include concentrating lenses because the exercise doesn’t seem to add to the discussion but it doesn’t hurt to explore ideas as long as we don’t get lost in side alleys of the search.
🙂
00
KK:
Suppose hypothetically in 1000 years time the base of the atmosphere were 8 deg.C cooler than now. The underground temperatures a few meters down were only 1 deg.C cooler because they take a long time to change because of the “thermal inertia” under the surface right down to the core. Every day a lot of thermal energy flows into the surface from the Sun, and back out again at night.
But before it can flow in early in the morning it has to “bounce” off the surface and warm the base of the atmosphere up by, say, 7 degrees before it can start to flow underground. So it starts doing that later in the morning than it would have if the temperature of the atmosphere was only 2 degrees cooler. So less heat flows in. But there is still capacity for much more heat to flow out that afternoon and night, nearly all of it from the Sun that day. The reverse happens if the atmosphere is warmer. So that’s how the underground surface temperatures stabilise the climate. It’s all been on the Explanation page of http://climate-change-theory.com for many months.
Can I suggest that, before you misinterpret what I write yet again, could you please wait till Tuesday or Wednesday when I expect the peer-review process to be completed and my writings on all this published.
00
Doug
Bounce as in “it has to “bounce” off the surface and warm the base of the atmosphere up by, say, 7 degrees before it can start to flow underground.”
is not a scientific term
I think you would find fewer problems if you either explained new term like bounce or left them out.
You get a lot of bounce at the poles from all the ice and snow.
Is that what you mean?
00
Sure, in saying “bounce” I was just trying to save words for what I thought was obvious. The solar radiation temporarily warms the very outer millimetre or so of the surface because that could have cooled up to the 7 degrees mentioned. The thermal energy then diffuses back into the first mm of the air, because it cannot venture deeper into the land surfaces because the underground temperatures a little deeper down are much warmer. (It would if they were slightly cooler of course.)
Over water it will cause evaporation. Some radiation will also be involved of course.
As I said, see the Explanation page http://climate-change-theory.com/explanation.html because I don’t have time to keep writing this all again and again on forums, when it’s already on my site. The same will apply for my 10 page peer-reviewed publication later this week which will summarise all the key points I have been making, and is the culmination of over 1,000 hours study on all this.
00
Doug
I’m not misinterpreting anything.
I’ve never heard of the physical concept “bounce” in relation to heat transfer.
That’s all.
What I was drawing attention to was the use of terms which are not clearly defined.
The greenhouse effect is one such term. To you it apparently means the famous “back radiation”.
Bak-Rad cannot exist, it is thermodynamically crazy.
I’m not sure why you spend so much time on proving it wrong. It doesn’t exist.
There are other inconsistencies, such as these two paragraphs which you write:
“”There is no net slowing of the rate of cooling of the Earth’s surface because the energy exits by one means or another””.
and in apparent contradiction?
“”The insulation of the atmosphere keeps us cooler during daylight hours and warmer at night,””
Incidentally, this last paragraph could be interpreted as a my view of the “greenhouse” effect where heat transfer occupies a finite time rather than being instantaneous.
Good luck with your peer review.
00
KK & BobC:
Seeing that KK has some doubts, I did my physics degree at Sydney University under well known professors Harry Messel, Werner Von Braun and Julius Sumner-Miller (who ran the TV series “Why is it so?”) from 1963 to 1966 inclusive, having won one of their scholarships together with three other academic scholarships and a university prize. When I topped one course the lecturer subsequently asked (and paid) me to mark university assignments. Altogether I completed nine years of tertiary education. I have tutored hundreds of secondary and tertiary students since in mathematics and physics and been principal of a large tutoring service. All this has required ongoing study of physics which I have loved ever since gaining one of the top positions in Physics in the NSW Leaving Certificate in 1962. Tell me about your own background in physics.
The paper I was talking about is in the process of peer-review (two already agreed to publication) and should be on line at a well known climate site within the next four days. Hopefully you will both find it explains the physics in more detail than I have toime for here.
00
So, I have a BS in math and in physics, and a MS in electrical engineering. I have 17 granted patents and many more unpatented inventions. As an engineer, I have found that many promising theoretical arguments in the literature don’t work out in practice. Also, there are examples where practical devices violate accepted theory. (Aluminum refinerys are one example — they don’t work well if you design them depending on the near universally accepted Lorentz force equations — large currents in liquid conductors experience longitudinal forces not present in the Lorentz equation. Another is the way that high volume, high temperature water electrolyzers are operated clearly violates the Second Law — although industrial engineers are generally smart enough not to bring it to anyone’s attention.)
This is why I like empirical data and am skeptical of theories which can’t be tested by means of empirical experiment.
You don’t mention giving any talks at conferences. I have, and it is not unusual to get hard, even hostile, questions from the audience. If you give an answer like you did in 164.2.1.1.1 (Essentially: “I’m going to pretend you said something stupid and then make fun of it”) you would be booed off the podium. This is the response of a know-nothing smartass — nobody here (except perhaps Catamon) is impressed by this style of “argumentation”.
If K.K. is right, and you really do have something interesting to say, quit acting like a smartass and learn to answer the hard questions.
Bottom line: If you can’t define a crucial experiment that differentiates your theory from the generally accepted theory that ideal blackbodies always absorb (and thermalize) all radiation incident on them (which assumption clearly explains all the available data) then you have nothing but verbiage. Defending it with logical fallacies (strawman arguments) merely reinforces that perception.
00
BobC i suggest the onus is on the IPCC to produce an experiment which shows backradiation actually warming something. I’ve done backyard experiments which I’ve reported on forums where there was no effect, and so has Prof Nahle in a published paper on Observations of Backradiation … at http://principia-scientific.org/
I’ve described a simple experiment with two wide necked vacuum flasks filled with sand or soil, one shielded from backradiation at night and the other not. Just ensure air can escape by convection under the shield by sloping it at about 15 degrees. Use plate glass with windscreen shield on top or aluminium foil. What’s to stop you doing this yourself?
Explain to me …
(1) why you think “high temperature water electrolyzers” violate the Second Law.
(2) why broadcast low frequency rdaio waves are not absorbed by the atmosphere or surface which each emit at higher frequencies. Clearly they are not converted to thermal energy because we know they travel long distances.
(3) If backradiation were thermalised in the surface, about half the thermal energy would exit by evaporation and diffusion, just like other thermal energy from the Sun. It’s all the same. By the temperature difference between surface and the adjoining air is often only 2 or 3 deg.C. Physics tells us that the first lot of energy leaving after being absorbed from solar insolation will have already “used up” all available exit paths, so no further energy could escape. This would mean extreme heating, which is not observed.
(4) Explain why the latest 12 month period just ended Feb 2012 was almost exactly the same as a 12 month period ending in 1991 as per the red line at http://www.drroyspencer.com/
If you’re quick I may be able to add my response to (1) in the FAQ appendix to my paper which I believe may be published later this week. Hopefully that will make it all clearer – so far two peers have been happy with it.
00
Bob – If any cooler object could warm a warmer object by radiation, you could hold something cool over an insulated flask of warmer water and the radiation would penetrate the water to some depth before getting thermalized. The extra thermal energy would then start to exit by the warmer water rising slowly towards the surface by convection. But before it can exit you could put an insulated lid on the container and thus trap the extra energy. You could keep doing this until the water nearly boiled. I am not saying you have created energy, but you have certainly transferred thermal energy from a cooler body to a warmer one. Take the cool one far away and the energy won’t go back to it when you remove the lid. And yet you say this would not be in violation of the Second Law?
00
I agree completely, and they have totally failed to produce any evidence that CO2 has a detectable effect on the climate. [Note to ED: See, we do agree on some things!] This, however, has nothing to do with whether or not your hypothesis is correct.
Nothing at all. I’m perfectly willing to accept your results that the effect of backradiation is not easily detectable. If I do an experiment, it would likely be a version of the one I described in post #142
I promised Jo I would not get into that again. I tossed that into a thread (here at post #59) and the discussion didn’t end until I ended it (at Jo’s request) at post #310. If that discussion isn’t enough for you, I would be glad to send you some references on the subject via email — just let me know.
I used to be a radio amateur (KN0ELL). Ground-guided waves have a limited transmission distance precisely because they ARE absorbed by the ground. It might take hundreds of miles for long wavelengths, but it is not forever. Sky waves can go much further (around the Earth, sometimes, on a few milliwatts) because ionispheric conditions change and sometimes the reflection of radio waves at certain frequencies is very efficient. In general, the atmosphere is very transparent to radio frequencies — but that’s not because radio frequencies are “colder”; it is also quite transparent to the peak blackbody radiation at 6000 degrees (green light from the Sun).
Your point #3 makes no sense to me. My experience with cooking and welding is that the more you heat something up, the faster it loses energy. There is no “using up of heat escape paths” threshold. “Physics” doesn’t tell us that, either — or else it would be wrong.
How in the world would I know that? The climate is a chaotic system that nobody understands.
Kindly post a reference to your paper when it publishes.
00
Doug Cotton @ 168: What you are describing is a version of Maxwell’s Demon. If you could do this you would not only violate the Second Law, but you would become famous.
00
@ Bob and Doug
You two have been having a terrific discussion for quite some time now. I don’t want to interfere, nor do I have the time to get into a deep debate about this fsacinating subject. But if you’ll allow me, I’d like to submit the following for both your considerations.
If I have an object A at a given temperature, and I introduce a cooler object B near it, can I ever get object B to a temperature higher than object A?
e.g Our body temperature at 37degC. If we were to hug a cooler object, the highest temperature that object can get to is 37DegC.
Likewise, the blackbody temperature of Earth (according to the greenhouse hypothesis) is 255K. If we were to place an object on the surface, the highest temperature it can reach is 255K.
But the greenhouse theory says if I move that object up from the surface a little, then it will ‘back radiate’ and warm the surface under it to a temperature higher than 255K.
This just doesn’t make sense. I’d need some mighty convincing to believe that thermal exchange via radiation enhances temperature whilst thermal exchange via conduction does not.
Any thoughts?
00
Hi Baa H
Yes. Back-radiation can’t happen.
It is so thermodynamically impossible there is no reason to even bother disproving it.
🙂
00
Hi Baa;
I welcome some actual logic in this discussion. Doub has resorted to simply making stuff up.
i.e. Regarding radio waves being absorbed by the ground:
Apparently the world really is “black or white” for Doug. In the real world, no macro object can have either 1.0 or 0.0 absorbance, but always something in between.
Regarding your question:
(I think maybe what you meant is: “Can object B cause object A’s temperature to rise?”, since that is congruent to the question of whether GH gases can cause the Earth’s surface temperature to rise, even though they are at a lower temperature themselves. In other words, the Earth’s surface is object A and the GH gases are object B. At any rate, this is the question I will answer. If this assumption is wrong, you can tell me.)
There are two answers:
1) If object A has no heat source, then obviously it can’t ever get hotter by absorbing energy from object B. Think of A as a leaky bucket losing water at a certain rate. If B adds water to A at a lesser rate than A is losing water, the water level in A cannot ever rise — however, it will drop at a slower rate than it would without the contribution from B.
2) If object A has an external source of energy (other than B), then its temperature is determined by an equilibrium between incoming and outgoing energy. By slowing the outgoing energy, you can raise its temperature and hence the rate of outgoing energy to balance the incoming. Imagine object A is a toaster, receiving energy from the electrical power cord. It reaches a temperature such that its heat loss equals the energy input. Now you drop a (colder) blanket on the toaster. This puts resistance in the energy loss path (but none in the energy input path), with the result that the toaster gets hotter until the energy loss and gain are again balanced. (Don’t try this indoors, or with a toaster and blanket you care about.)
The Earth is more like situation #2, since it is receiving short wavelength (~.5 micron) energy from the Sun. Greenhouse gases only affect long wavelength energy ( > 4 microns ) where the energy from the Sun is minimal, but the radiation from the Earth is significant. GH gases slow the rate at which the Earth’s surface loses heat by radiation, at a given surface temperature, by redirecting some of that energy back to the Earth’s surface. Since the incoming energy from the Sun is not affected, the (average) surface temperature will rise until the energy loss again equals the energy gain (on average).
This is the Greenhouse Effect. It’s existance is easily derived from the standard theory of thermodynamics and blackbodies. Its significance is quite a different discussion. The post we are supposedly responding to (Dr. David Evan’s) shows that the effect is insignificant for any rational consideration, by empirical measurements.
00
No Bob, that’s not what I meant at all. I’ll reword the Q.
I have a terrestrial surface (say made of clay and dirt) at 255K. I spread upon it more clay and dirt about an inch thick. Can the temperature of the newly spread clay and dirt reach ABOVE 255K?
The answer surely is no, it can only reach a maximum 255K.
However this time if I raise that inch thick clay and dirt about a metre above the surface, can it reach a temperature above 255K?
The greenhouse theory says yes it can. In other words, according to the GH theory, thermal exchange via radiation can increase the original temperature, whereas thermal exchange via conduction can not.
There has to be a thermodynamic law being broken here. If there isn’t, one should be written.
Humbugs 5th law of thermodynamics: Thermal exchange can not create energy.
00
Baa;
So, what you’re asking is: Can thermal exchange by blackbody radiation alone (between A and B) cause A’s temperature to exceed B’s? (Regardless of what the initial temperatures are.) Or, to put it even more clearly: Can there be a net transfer of energy from a cooler object to a hotter object by blackbody radiation alone?
Remember, we are assuming that A has no other source of energy other than radiation from B — which is most definitely NOT the case with the terrestrial greenhouse effect, see my post #168.2.1.2.
The answer is: No, there cannot. You can SAY that this is BECAUSE of the second law — but that obscures the physical proceses going on — the Second Law is the RESULT of these processes, not the other way around. The Second Law of thermo, in other words, is nothing more than a statement of what happens BECAUSE of the physical proceses occuring.
So, what are the proceses, and how might you modify them?
Quantum Mechanics (QM) predicts that the absorptivity and emissivity of a process are identical. They are, in QM, the same process with the time variable reversed, and the physical description is uncommitted to a particular direction of time.
So, let’s take the two objects, A and B, both blackbodies with the same emissivity. QM (specifically, Planck’s Law) says that the rate at which they will emit energy (per unit surface area) is proportional to the fourth power of the temperature times their emissivity (a dimensionless number between 0 and 1). No matter how you arrange them, given the above rules, only the cooler one can gain temperature (and even it might not do that, depending on how close the hot object is).
If we arrange it so that the radiation has nowhere else to go (by putting both into a perfectly reflecting sphere, for example) then the only result is that they both end up at some intermediate temperature between the initial temperatures. Exactly what temperature that is will depend on the stored heat energy ratio between the bodies.
But, what if you could build a screen that let light go in one direction, but not the other? What if you could coat body A, for example, such that it had a large (~1) absorptivity but a small (~0) emissivity? (Or, what if, in Doug’s thought experiment, you could build a funnel that forced more energy to go towards A than was allowed to go towards B?) Then, A would continually gain energy from B, but would not lose any (or as much), regardless of its temperature, so A would eventually become hotter than B, no matter what it’s initial temperature was. This would definitely violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. (Note, that it wouldn’t violate the First Law — conservation of energy — however, since no energy is being created, only transfered.)
James Maxwell considered these kinds of filters: He imagined “demons” that could let photons pass one way but not the other, or let only hot atoms pass a portal between vessels, etc. (That’s why these kinds of imaginary concentrators of energy are generically known as “Maxwell’s Demons”.
So far, Doug’s and Maxwell’s thought process are the same. Here is where they diverge, however:
1) Maxwell tried to imagine how to build such filters. No matter what he considered, he was able to show that they wouldn’t work. So, he hypothesized that such energy concentrators were in principle impossible. (Note that this hypothesis can’t be proven from any known physics. To say that it is proven by the Second Law of Thermodynamics is circular reasoning, as the Second Law depends on such concentrators being impossible to devise.)
2) Doug imagined how to build these filters (his “funnel” experiment) and simply assumed that he could do so. Since he assumes that the Second Law is a fundamental law of nature (not something that is derived from the quantum nature of heat) he jumped to the conclusion that the absorptivity of a blackbody MUST diverge from it’s emissivity in just the right way (no absorption of photons from colder objects) to maintain the correctness of the Second Law.
The problem with Doug’s “solution” is two fold:
a) First, it can be shown that none of his ‘Maxwells Demons’ will work, so he is trying to fix something that is not broken. If he disagrees, he should build and test them.
b) Second, by postulating that the absorptivity diverges from the emissivity, he throws out the laws of QM, and doesn’t give us anything to replace them with, other than vague statements. This is not something to be done lightly, on the basis of unverified thought experiments.
BUT: The above description has NOTHING TO DO with the greenhouse effect. The Greenhouse Effect is more like putting a cold blanket on a hot (and plugged in) toaster and having the toaster get hotter. Again, see my explanation in post #168.2.1.2.
00
No Bob, with all due respect, that is NOT what I’m asking. And I said so at 168.2.1.2.1 in reply to your attempt at clarification at 168.2.1.2
You asked…
I replied…
I’m not sure how I can be any clearer. Let me try this…
Given current solar insolation, the Earth surface blackbody equilibrium temperature is 255K. Do you agree?
If we were to add an extra one inch layer OF THE SAME MATERIAL AS THAT OF THE EARTH SURFACE, will the new equilibrium blackbody temperature also be 255K? The answer must be yes.
Now, if we were able to raise this one inch layer up off the surface by a metre or so, what will be the equilibrium temperature of the surface, taking into consideration that the one inch raised layer WILL BACK RADIATE.
That is all I’m asking. I’m fully aware of the many posts around the blogs about cooler bodies causing warmer bodies to get still warmer and or to cool slower etc i.e Spencers “Yes Virginia” Eschenbachs “Steel greenhouse” etc etc.
I want to establish if there is a difference in thermal exchange between conduction and radiation. What thermal exchange will take place if 2nd body is attached to the firat body, compared to the thermal exchange that will take place if the 2 bodies are seperated by a small distance.
00
OK, I’ll try to stay on track this time 😉
Sounds right to me.
I agree, the answer is yes.
The equilibium temperature will still be 255K. What does “backradiation” have to do with anything? It doesn’t matter if two objects exchange energy by conduction or by radiation, the equilibrium temperature will be determined by the point where input energy and output energy (for each object) are equal.
———————————————————
Let’s consider some more complicated scenarios:
Forget the Sun (perhaps we are in a cave) — the source of energy is now an electric heating coil shallowly buried in the surface. We evacuate the cave, so no heat can be lost from the surface by conduction to the air or convection. We also specify that only a trivial amount of heat can be lost by conduction into the ground. Thus, the only way the surface can lose energy is by radiation. We crank up the power until the surface reaches an equilibrium temperature of 255K. At this point, the energy input (via electricity) equals the energy loss (via radiation).
Now, we add your floating layer of material above the ground. The heating element is still putting the same amount of energy into the ground — therefore, at equilibrium, the new layer MUST be at 255K so it is radiating away (upwards) the same amount of energy that is being input by the electric coils.
As seen from the roof of the cave, this HAS to happen because:
If less energy is being radiated from the top layer (T less than 255K), then energy would have to be accumulating somewhere, and the system would not be at equilibrium yet.
If more energy is being radiated from the top layer (T greater than 255K), then more energy is coming out than is going in which is not possible.
So the top layer, at equilibrium, is at 255K.
But what temperature is the bottom layer now at? Remember, it is the layer that the energy is being input into (via the heating coil). If it was at 255K, then it would be radiating that amount of energy (as before), but the top layer (which is also at 255K) would be radiating the same amount of energy back, so the bottom layer would not be losing any energy at 255K. Since it is still receiving energy from the heating coil, but not losing any, it will heat up until the difference between what it is radiating upwards and the top layer is radiating downwards equals the electrical input. The bottom layer, therefore, will reach equilibrium at some temperature greater than 255K.
The same thing will happen regardless of whether the two layers exchange energy by radiation, conduction, convection or any other way. You have added resistance (insulation) to the outgoing energy path of the lower layer, but haven’t changed the input energy (electrical), so it gets hotter.
Other analogies:
________________________________________________
Imagine a toaster, receiving power through the electrical cord and heating up until it is losing the same amount of energy by radiation. Now, I throw a blanket over the toaster. I have added resistance to the energy loss path, but the same amount of energy is still coming in, so the toaster will heat up until the two are again in balance. A warm coat on a cold day does the same thing.
_______________________________________________________________
This is analogous to what happens to the Earth: The surface is heated mostly by visible and near IR light from the Sun (wavelengths less than ~4 microns). Water vapor and CO2 are transparent at these wavelengths, so the energy is injected straight into the surface (analogous to the electric coils). At 255K, however, the Earth’s blackbody radiation spectrum peaks at about 12 microns, where water vapor and CO2 are not totally transparent. Some of the energy absorbed by these gasses is radiated back to the Earth, slowing down the rate it is losing energy. Since it is still receiving the same amount of energy from the Sun (on average) its temperature must rise (on average) to bring the energy loss rate up to the energy gain rate.
__________________________________________________________
Take a bucket that is leaking, say, one gallon per minute and has an input hose delivering one gallon per minute, so that the water level remains constant. If I capture one quart per minute of that water and pour it back into the bucket, it is then leaking a total (net) of 3 quarts per minute, but still has an input of one gallon per minute. The water level will then rise until the net leak becomes one gallon per minute again (at a gross leak rate of 5 quarts/min). (This could happen because of increased pressure on the holes, or because the bucket overflows.)
*************************************
All of these situations are analogous to the poorly-named Greenhouse Effect. None of them violate any of the laws of thermodynamics. No physical theories need to be changed to explain what happens.
That the Greenhouse Effect exists is certain, and can be understood with many analogies, and is consistent with Quantum Mechanics (which treats absorption and emission as strictly local actions) — and with the standard theory of thermodynamics. However, with regards to the Earth, there are many problems with a believable quantitative calculation of the greenhouse effect. The net effect (given its real strenth, and after the negative feedbacks that permeate the climate system) seems to be too small to actually measure.
But, and I can’t emphasize this enough:
The post we are (supposedly) responding to — Dr. David Evan’s — shows that even if you accept the IPCC’s calculations of the Greenhouse Effect empirical data shows it to have a trivial effect on the Earth’s climate. This, of course, also follows from the inability to measure any effect.
It is a capital mistake to hitch the crucial fight against the CAGW power grap to a theory that requires Quantum Mechanics to be seriously wrong — first, it has an infinitesmial chance of being correct, and second it is not necessary.
00
My Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics has been peer-reviewed and will be published Tuesday or Wednesday this week, and I’ll give you the link when it is. It is 10 pages and will cover all your questions in detail.
Meanwhile you may all wish to read a very important item today at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/04/new-study-shows-a-clear-millennial-solar-impact-throughout-holocene/ in case you don’t think it’s all natural climate change.
00
ED Could I suggest both of you start again with what you agree on?] ED
What I am saying is summarised in full in a 10 page paper currently undergoing peer-review and hopefully about to be published on line later this week. Most of the content has been on my websites for many months, but I can umderstand that people prefer to read peer-reviewed material, so that’s why I have persued this course of action. I anticipate that any objections raised in future will have already been answered therein, so I shall just quote the section number(s) that contain my response.
00
If you want to claim that backradiation transfers thermal energy to the surface, then what’s the limit? It would be all or nothing I suggest.
But those energy diagrams show backradiation comparable with the original solar radiation, so it certainly ought to have a noticeable effect at night warming the exposed sand which is flush with the top of the wide necked vacuum flask. You wouldn’t expect the temperatures to be the same or no more that 0.1 deg.C apart (being the limit of reading of my thermometer) just before dawn after a whole night of backradiation. But they are.
And that’s why the IPCC cannot produce an experiment showing backradiation warming anything. Every time they try (as surely someone must have) it fails to do so.
00
BobC
Read the section about radiation between two bodies http://www.nzifst.org.nz/unitoperations/httrtheory5.htm
When the source is cooler than the target you get a negative result because you would be violating the Second Law.
But apply it to radiation from the warmer surface and you get a positive result, but you have already taken backradiation into account.
The formula does give the right result, but the physical interpretation of thermal energy going both ways is incorrect.
00
No BobC
Physics does not say a perfect blackbody absorbs everything unless it is at absolute zero.
Note what Wikipedia says (where I have bolded …)
A black body is an idealized physical body that absorbs all incident electromagnetic radiation, regardless of frequency or angle of incidence.
A black body in thermal equilibrium (that is, at a constant temperature) emits electromagnetic radiation called black-body radiation. The radiation is emitted according to Planck’s law, meaning that it has a spectrum that is determined by the temperature alone (see figure at right), not by the body’s shape or composition.
A black body in thermal equilibrium has two notable properties:[1]
1.It is an ideal emitter: it emits as much or more energy at every frequency than any other body at the same temperature.
2.It is a diffuse emitter: the energy is radiated isotropically, independent of direction.
An approximate realization of a black body is a hole in the wall of a large enclosure (see below). Any light entering the hole is reflected indefinitely or absorbed
00
Doug:
You Say:
Then you quote Wikipedia:
As I read that, it says that a perfect blackbody absorbes everything — it says nothing about temperature. The part about selective absorbance due to the temperature of the source is your hypothesis — it is not part of standard thermodynamics.
00
Why do you suppose Harvard makes a point of saying the gas which is aborbing is cool and the blackbody hot? Experiments show that when the gas is hotter than the blackbody there are no absorption lines.
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~jbattat/a35/cont_abs_em.html
00
Let’s take this offline. It’s making the mods edgy. I’ll read your paper when it comes out.
[I don’t think the Mods are edgy about this exchange. However it would be nice if both of you could appear in some of the newer threads.] ED
00
ED… please no no NO! Not in another thread.
[Gee Aye, I get your point. Lets NOT take THIS discussion to new threads! I was thinking new comments about different subjects on new threads.] ED
00
I have only read fragments of the comments on this thread but have found it intriguing and have vowed to keep coming back until I finally work out what it is about.
00
please fill me in when you do
00
“have vowed to keep coming back until I finally work out what it is about.”
After 195 I’m starting to get discouraged.
00
Where is Winston?
Churchill that is.
“Never in the annals of human science have so many words been written about so little to the benefit of so few.”
This thread is absolutely fascinating.
🙂
00
And again …
“We usually see absorption spectra from regions in space where a cooler gas lies between us and a hotter source.”
from http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/ir_tutorial/spec.html
I don’t believe they and Harvard would each make a point of the fact that the gas is cooler unless they knew there is no absorption when the gas is warmer than the source. Hence ..
(1) The gas can “distinguish” between when the source is hotter or colder than itself. (Johnson’s “cut-off” frequency.)
(2) In the case of a gas the absorption stops when the source is no longer warmer than the gas.
(3) Whatever process causes the gas not to absorb could just as easily apply to liquids and solids
(4) Radiation emanating from a cooler part of the atmosphere and heading towards the surface would not be absorbed by a warmer layer of the atmosphere, even if it struck water vapour or carbon dioxide molecules identical to that which emitted it.
(5) Even if this only applied to gases, we thus know that radiated heat can only transfer to cooler areas of the atmosphere and so heat transfer is generally upwards except in the stratosphere.
00
If Body A is 300K, Body B is 150K and Body C is 0K then application of SBL clearly indicates that more (net) radiation goes from A to C, than from A to B. Hence the “best” and so the “perfect” blackbody is at absolute zero. Such a body can absorb everything. Warmer ones don’t, as observed in the gas in #173 and #174. Wikipedia referred to being “reflected indefinitely.” Doesn’t that sound like a standing wave.
You’re welcome to email me at [email protected] but I trust the Mods will realise that this is an absolutely critical point in the whole AGW debate. The surface (and lower atmosphere) do not thermalize radiation from a cooler part of the atmosphere.
If gas has “selective absorbance due to the temperature of the source” as I suggest Harvard and others confirm – and anyone with a spectrometer could confirm – then why should not the solid and liquid forms of these molecules do likewise.
Radio waves would not be absorbed by any gas at atmospheric temperatures, based on Harvard above. Those bouncing along the ground are obviously deflected by objects that possibly reflect them back in the direction of their source. This is rather like ions that are prolific at times of high solar activity, and can scatter radio waves and interfere with transmissions. They are not absorbed, for if that happened all radio waves would be absorbed the first time they strike the surface.
00
So, what makes it “absolutely critical” given that David Evans has shown (in this post) that the GH effect is inconsequential, even if you take everything the IPCC claims about it as gospel.
Sounds more like “completely irrelevant” to me (w.r.t. the AGW debate).
00
Kinky:
Let’s just call it “radiation from the atmosphere.” It would be most unusual if molecules up there only radiated towards space and never towards the surface. You had better read http://principia-scientific.org/publications/New_Concise_Experiment_on_Backradiation.pdf
Then read #173 to 175. Keep watching for my publication soon on http://principia-scientific.org
00
Doug
A small question.
There is of course energy radiated towards the Earth.
Question.
Do you know how far it gets towards the Earth?
ie. can you physically estimate the “path length” of this radiation?
00
Doug
here is a clue: the temperature gradient that this “radiation ” is moving against has delta (temp gradient) of say 55 C deg from say 8 km up in the atmosphere to ground.
How far do you think any radiation emitted at h = 8,000 m would get towards earth?
🙂
00
Some gets straight through the atmospheric window. None would be absorbed by warmer molecules below it, but could be delayed by temporary standing waves, but it might get all the way when the standing waves are broken. So I’d say a fair bit of it would get through to the surface, but I don’t know and you don’t know.
But there’s also backradiation that starts anywhere from the first millimetre upwards. Go and read Prof Nahle’s Observations on Backradiation at Principia Scientific.
00
There are two broad classes of radiation from the atmosphere. ..
(1) That which results from spontaneous emission after a molecule has ended up in a warmer (maybe excited) state due to radiative absorption or from molecular collision. Any of this radiation which heads to warmer targets (lower atmosphere or surface) will by the first half of a standing wave and the second half comes back to it from the warmer target it hit.
(2) That which emanates from the surface. This heads into the atmosphere and strikes cooler targets at various altitudes. Some of its energy thermalizes, and some just forms the first half of a standing wave which comes back to it. The cooler the target was, the more it will be warmed and the less will be the effect of the standing wave on the rate of cooling of the surface. So molecules closer to the surface have more effect on the rate of cooling, but each CO2 molecule is no more effective than each water vapour molecule.
[In contrast, the IPCC models assume CO2 sends far more photons back per molecule than water, so they claim the overall effect of only about 4% as much CO2 as WV is that each contributes similar amounts in total. But the concept of standing waves puts each molecule on an equal footing, so CO2 has nowhere near the effect of WV.
00
Answer.
It’s not going to get very far.
00
I stick by my answers in the above two posts.
What do you say happens when it doesn’t get very far?
00
Q “”What do you say happens when it doesn’t get very far?””
A It certainly won’t get to ground; it’s on the way home to that great heat sink in the sky.
00
Kinky:
The surface temperature has reached an approximate equilibrium point over the life of the Earth. That is affected by the atmosphere, in that the days are cooler and the nights are warmer. You have only to compare the Moon.
But when talking about the recent addition of more carbon dioxide, I am saying that the radiation from CO2 in the atmosphere could slow the radiative component of cooling resulting from heat transfer from surface to atmosphere, but even if it did (to a very small extent) then the other processes (evaporation, diffusion etc) would compensate by increasing their rate of cooling, so that the total effect would be no change in the overall rate of cooling.
00
OK
I take this as answering my 165
🙂
00
There is still an underlying ~1,000 year trend which is rising at a reducing rate, currently about 0.05 deg.C / decade. See plot at end of page http://climate-change-theory.com
There is a current article on WUWT about confirmation of the 1,000 year cycle, which is also mentioned in my paper to be published this week.
00
Why does a gas not absorb radiation from a cooler emitter? Spectrometers only show it absorbing when the emitter is warmed to a temperature greater than the gas. https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~jbattat/a35/cont_abs_em.html
The warmer gas does not absorb and then re-emit. Re-emission in all directions would not fill in the absorption lines observed by the spectrometer because it would not compare in intensity with direct radiation from the source. The radiation from the emitter forms standing waves which run along the same paths as the incident rays, and can thus interfere with them before any absorption takes place.
This has to be the case. Consider a ray of backradiation penetrating a small distance into the ocean. If it were to get converted to thermal energy by absorption, the energy will not be re-emitted straight away via radiation from a few cm/inches under the surface of the ocean. Instead, the warmer water will rise to the surface by convection and at least some of it will evaporate and only some be radiated. There would have been a “completed (macro) transaction” in which that.radiation (from lots of molecules in a cooler atmosphere) warmed (a layer of) water below the surface of the ocean. This clearly would violate the 2nd Law.
So there is a difference between this and a standing wave. If there is conversion to thermal energy then there has to have been a violation of the Second Law.
All backradiation is only standing waves which do not transfer thermal energy to the surface.
00
Generally a gas absorbs if there are energy level transitions that can be excited by the incident wavelengths. It has nothing to do with temperature, except that, as the temperature of a gas increases, the population of unexcited atoms decreases. There is nothing like the sudden threshold effect you think exists, however.
You say:
…but then you make the correct statement that:
So, absorption and re-emission would still leave the absorption lines visible. I don’t think you know what you are saying from one sentence to the next.
As for this claim:
Funny, that’s what correlation spectrometers do all the time. An expert on spectrometry you are not.
00
BobC
You are wasting your time trying to “teach” me what I already know. There are no filters, funnels or Maxwell demons in my paper. I don’t need them.
I have suggested you wait to read it, and then keep any discussion relevant, rather than assuming what you think will be therein.
But in the meantime. I’ll leave you with just one question …
What happens when radiation from the atmosphere penetrates some small distance into the ocean waters? Does it warm the water which then rises to the surface by convection and causes more evaporation?
00
I don’t know Doug — why don’t you tell us.
And while you’re at it, let’s hear your convoluted explanation for this:
I participated in the design and construction of a static air temperature radiometer for the US Air Force. It is difficult to measure this from a supersonic aircraft, since any probe must either be moving supersonically w.r.t. the air (which is then heated by the shock wave), or the air has to be decelerated, which heats it by compression. (The static temperature is the temperature of the air before it is disturbed by the aircraft.) We solved the problem by focusing a radiometer on the air 10-20 feet away from the aircraft, in a place where the shock wave had not yet reached.
The instrument worked well, and could measure air temperatures down to about -50C. The entire instrument, including the detector, was at room temperature. According to your hypothesis, our device could not have absorbed radiation from a gas that was 60-70 deg C colder, yet it did. Interestingly, there is no problem with this if you stay with standard thermodynamics (and don’t junk Quantum Mechanics).
No doubt you have a fabulously convoluted, nonsensical, and possibly self-contradictory explanation for this in your fantasy physics. Fortunately for the USAF, you weren’t on the project.
00
The answer to your question is already written in my paper – see the section on microbolometers when it’s published. I’m surprised you can’t work it out yourself.
BTW, my grandfather (Prof Leo Cotton) was a brother of Prof Frank Cotton who invented blackout suits which gave the allies a significant advantage in WWII. So you might not have had to devise your gadget if such suits were not around.
Now you still have more thinking to do to answer my questions above and below. “I don’t know” is not good enough Bob.
00
Yeah, I’ve noticed that not knowing something doesn’t slow you down at all.
Tell you what, Doug: I’ll answer your irrelevant questions after you present the new theory of Quantum Mechanics required by your non-statistical ‘theory’ of thermodynamics (see post #183.1).
00
Well, that’s at least as good as any of your other arguments — I’m convinced now 🙂
Turns out, I used to fly a lot of aerobatics in the 1970s. I could easily pull 7-8 g’s (+ and -) in maneuvers (in my home-built aircraft). I couldn’t affort a g-suit (and the aircraft didn’t have the infrastructure to operate it anyway) so just had to rely on conditioning and muscle tension to maintain blood presure to the head. g-suits don’t work for negative g’s, BTY.
00
Just decided to google it out of interest – first time I’ve read it on good old Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-suit
00
PS BobC and anyone else
Maybe just this as well…
Spectroscopy proves that a gas will not absorb when it is warmer than a spontaneous emitter, but it does start to absorb when the emitter is warmed and its temperature becomes greater than that of the gas.
(1) How does the “gas” know when to start absorbing?
(2) What is the absorptivity of the gas when it is not absorbing?
(3) Is its emissivity the same as its absorptivity both before and after the emitter gets hotter than the gas?
00
Generally a gas absorbs if there are energy level transitions that can be excited by the incident wavelengths. It has nothing to do with temperature
_________________________________________
My understanding is that there is no absorption regardless of whatever gas is used if the gas is warmer than the spontaneous (near) blackbody emitter. Show me some evidence of what you claim.
My comment about the absorption lines being visible was that, the absence of such lines did in fact prove absorption was not happening and the blank result could not be blamed on emission filling in the gaps. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear – it was originally on another forum where there had been more prior discussion.
Finally, regarding correlation spectrometers, see Fig 3 and you will note they are working with balance – in a similar way that IR thermometers work. The sensors are warmed with electric input, but they are simultaneously trying to cool by emission. The second component in the “balance” will be reduced by the presence of a relatively warm object (A) or increased by a cooler one (B). Both A and B can be cooler than the sensors. Their different temperatures will (by way of standing waves) alter the rate of radiative cooling. In order to detect such, it is usually necessary to keep applying external warming to the sensors.
So far, Bob, absolutely nothing you have proposed has debunked anything I have said in my paper and there are already answers therein. I cannot yet count your statement about the possibility of warmer gases absorbing emission from a cooler source because you have not provided evidence. I know my “evidence” is a bit scanty, though I can’t see any other reason for those sites saying the gas had to be cooler, so I’ll suggest to a certain Physics Professor that he might come up with an experiment with various gases.
00
Note that in the Quantum Mechanical description of emission and absorption (more technical description here), nowhere is the temperature (a statistical quantity itself) of the absorber or the remote emitter considered. Indeed, in the Quantum calculations referenced above, the emitter and absorber are individual atoms or molecules, and have no statistical properties associated with them. In QM all photons of the same energy are identical — there is no quality about a single photon that can possibly identify the statistical nature of the ensemble in which it’s individual emitter resided.
QM has an unbroken track record of correctly describing experimental results for over 80 years — even when the predicted results contradict long-accepted theories like Relativity, or seem extremely bizarre.
Now, you are claiming that the standard QM calculation of the probability of an atom absorbing a photon is in error. Somehow, it must now take into account the temperature of the emitter. All photons of the same energy are not equal (according to you), but must contain somehow the information about the temperature of the ensemble of atoms in which the lone emitting atom resides. Likewise, the absorbing atom must somehow know what the statistical characteristics (e.g., temperature) of the ensemble of atoms in which it resides. (What happens to isolated atoms trying to absorb photons, anyway? How far away does the next atom have to be before it can no longer be considered part of an ensemble? The mind boggles.)
It appears that you don’t even realize that you are scrapping this remarkably successful theory — much less supplying any replacement.
Perhaps you could demonstrate how to use ‘standing waves’ to explicitly calculate the absorption probability of an individual atom? After all, we can no longer (according to you) use the standard QM calculation — what should we replace it with, and why should we bother since there is no evidence it is wrong?
You are the one claiming that Thermodynamics and Quantum Mechanics are really completely different than the way they have been successfully used for the last 100 years. It is up to you to provide evidence.
Basically, your initial assumption that the Second Law of Thermodynamics must apply at the individual atomic level (even though it is derived from the statistical nature of heat, and there is no reason to consider it other than a statistical law) leads you to junk (perhaps unknowingly) the most successful and well-tested physical theory in human history (Quantum Mechanics). Just maybe, it is your assumption that is wrong instead?
00
P.S. Doug; Your justifications for re-defining the interpretation of the Second Law is based upon your claim that the standard interpretation of thermodynamics incorrectly describes the observed interaction of blackbodies and results in absurb claims for the greenhouse effect.
You are wrong about this, because you assume impossible characteristics for optical concentrators (your funnel thought experiment), you assign properties to the greenhouse effect that the standard calculation from thermodynamics does not predict, or you misrepresent statements in papers. (I have covered some of these problems here and here.)
Your claim that optical concentrators would violate the Second Law if it weren’t re-interpreted in your fashion is based on ignorance of optical principles that were settled over 150 years ago. Your claim that the greenhouse effect violates the Second Law is a Straw Man argument, based on a mis-interpretation of the predicted effect.
There are no experimental results that cannot be explained with standard thermodynamics and QM. (If hotter gases couldn’t absorb radiation from cooler gases, then NASA has wasted many millions of dollars over the last 40 years orbiting correlation spectrometers — and the data on the atmospheric distribution of various gases that they report must be completely made up — just another problem for your theory to explain.)
00
BobC
Another point about spectrometers is that, like the original IR thermometers, some of them work on measuring frequency so that they then use Wien’s Dsiplacement Law to calculate the temperature. Bolometers, on the other hand, depend on the temperature changes in sensors. They are more limited when it comes to measuring very low temperatures, whereas frequency measurements can do so of course.
Furthermore, some such as this spectrometer can actually detect the maximum wavelength which WDL equates to 2.821434 times the peak frequency. This allows measurements down to about 35.4% of the absolute temperature represented by the peak frequency.
00
DeWitt Payne first drew my attention to warm gases not absorbing when the emitter was cooler, but starting to do so when it got warmer. (It was somewhere on the third Backradiation thread at SoD.)
I understand that the “cooler” wavelengths then suddenly start to appear. But why didn’t they when the emitter would have been emitting their frequencies when it was cooler than the gas, provided it was not less than 35.4% of the gas absolute temperature? The fact that they didn’t (if they didn’t) would confirm what I and Prof Claes Johnson have been saying, at least for gases.
Although I have asked DeWitt for a reference, he is rather as another said of him “DeWitt Payne, is very much science first, and he’s done something which is very interesting. Unfortunately, getting the documentation/post from him is sometimes like pulling teeth.”
00
BobC
You may well have good knowledge in certain fields, but when you indicated that you thought that photons don’t carry information about the temperature of the source, quite frankly I lost any confidence that I might have had in your knowledge in this field, simply because you do not appear to be aware that the energy of a photon is based entirely on the frequency (wavelength) of the radiation, and that the peak frequency is proportional to the absolute temperature. Thus the mode of the energy of photons in any particular radiation with a Planck distribution is proportional to the temperature of the source.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wien%27s_displacement_law
I am here to learn and possibly be corrected by any who have advanced knowledge in some area. Indeed I have corrected my original thinking on some issues, funnels for example. But I expect to be quite busy soon responding to questions about my paper, now dated March 8th as there has been a minor delay due to my decision to write more in an Appendix.
I will remain fairly silent now, but would suggest that you don’t delve into areas of physics which appear to be beyond your current knowledge, and certainly don’t make hand-waving comments such as the above which display fundamental lack of knowledge of some undergraduate physics.
00
I was right that lack of knowledge doesn’t slow you down.
What I said is that an individual photon carries no information about the temperature of its source. You seem to think that blackbodies radiate at a single wavelength, given by Wein’s law, so if you measure the wavelength of a photon, you know the temperature of its source.
Astounding that you don’t yet know that a blackbody at any temperature radiates at all wavelengths. It’s the distribution (intensity as a function of wavelength) that changes with temperature, and the distribution is a characteristic of an ensemble of photons, not any single one. Wein’s formula only gives you the peak wavelength of the distribution.
Take a look at the blackbody spectra in the very link you referenced — note how every temperature of blackbody graphed emits photons over a wide range of wavelengths.
For instance, all the blackbodies (at the different temperatures graphed) emit photons with a wavelength of 1.5 microns. So, when you detect a photon of 1.5 microns wavelength, what temperature blackbody did it come from? Quite obviously, you can’t determine the temperature of the source from a single photon. You seem to have a serious lack of comprehension here.
This isn’t even undergraduate stuff, Doug — it’s what I read in popular science books in grade school.
00
PS Bob
You don’t seriously think I disagree with quantum mechanics, do you, or that I am not aware of it or somethin – even though I started learning about it in 1963 and have taught many students since then?
It requires an understanding of energy states in order to understand resonance (as described by Prof Claes Johnson) and thus how standing waves are formed.
00
Author: BobC
Comment:
OK, I’ll try to stay on track this time 😉
Sounds right to me.
______________________________________
No, Bob, 255K is totally wrong for numerous cogent reasons explained in the Appendix to my paper which you’ll be able to read on or after March 8th.
I really must sign off now that I can see you are completely bluffed by the IPCC hoax.
Bye
00
BobC
Who cares what an individual photon does? We are talking climate – a somewhat large scale. You are wrong anyway, because each photon does in fact have its own energy level which relates to a frequency and thus to a temperature.
And you don’t think I know anything about Planck distributions and how SBL is derived by integrating over such distributions. Do I have to copy and paste my own statement just because you don’t seem to understand the word “distribution” in this …
“Thus the mode of the energy of photons in any particular radiation with a Planck distribution is proportional to the temperature of the source.”
And you are wrong yet again about blackbodies radiating at all wavelengths. You don’t seem to know about the maximum frequency stipulated by Wien’s Displacement Law.
Does the Earth’s surface radiate in the UV wavelengths? Yes or No?
00
This is getting pretty tiresome, Doug, but I’ll have one more go:
Because it is individual photons which are absorbed or emitted by individual atoms and molecules. This local phenomenon is what is very accurately described and predicted by the appropriate Quantum Mechanical calculations. These calculations do not have any variables that relate to temperature — not of the emitter, the absorber, or anything about the ensemble to which they may or may not belong.
Hence, when you say that absorption is dependent on the temperature of the ensemble which contains the emitting atom, you are saying that the absorption probability isn’t given by QM. You are saying that QM does not apply here. You have not supplied a quantitative alternative, only vague handwaving. You are alergic to anything like an empirical test of your ideas. I can only conclude, therefore, that your ideas are bunkum.
WE are talking about the behavior of blackbodies — except you keep trying to change the subject. Not too surprising, given your ignorance of the subject. Perhaps you shouldn’t have pretended to be an expert.
Right, right, and wrong. You still seem to think that each blackbody radiates at only one frequency, thereby allowing you to determine the temperature of the blackbody a photon came from by it’s frequency. Once again, look at the blackbody spectrum graph from your own link. Note that all 5 distributions graphed (each for a different temperature blackbody) radiate photons of 1 micron wavelength. So, when you detect a 1 micron wavelength photon, which distribution does it come from? (Hint: the correct answer is “You can’t tell.”)
It would be sufficient, Doug, for you to either acknowledge that you can’t determine the peak wavelength (mode) of a distribution of photons from a single photon — or else let us in on the magical method by which this can be accomplished.
Wien’s Displacement Law does not specify a maximum frequency of photons emitted — it specifies the photon frequency at the peak intensity of the Planck Distribution. It is derived by noting that the photon frequency of the peak energy of the Planck Distribution at different temperatures is always proportional to the temperature. Perhaps you are misled by the way Wein’s law is written in the above link — it is (paraphrasing): F(max) = K * T, where K is some proportionality constant, T is the absolute temperature and F(max) is the frequency of the peak of the distribution.
Note, F(max) is NOT the maximum frequency emitted, only the one at the peak of the intensity distribution.
That would depend on how closely the Earth’s surface approximates an ideal blackbody. For an ideal blackbody, there is no maximum frequency of photons emitted (although they get pretty sparse as the frequency increases).
Take a look at Planck’s Equation again (remember, this equation is the definition of the radiation spectrum of an ideal blackbody):
Note that, other than physical and numerical constants like Boltzman’s Constant, Planck’s Constant, pi, etc. there are only two variables that go into the equation — photon frequency, and absolute temperature. The output (left side) of the equation is the distribution intensity for that temperature and frequency. (Wein’s Law is derived by finding the frequency which gives the max intensity for each temperature and noting that the two are proportional to each other.)
Please note that, for any temperature greater than zero, there is an output for every possible frequency. There is no maximum frequency in the Planck Distribution for an ideal blackbody.
00
Hi Bob and Doug
I admire someone who wants to get in and sort out the reality of AGW but there are a few things that jump up at me in this thread.
First, no matter how much theoretical physics you may know, the solution to real thermodynamic problems is, in the end, a Practical Solution based on actual experience .
Practical thermodynamics is a job for experts in that field and consultation between several people is essential with the emphasis on what actually happens rather than why it happens.
The CAGW Modellers have fallen into this trap. You CANNOT make a model of any process unless you know WHAT is happening. Why it happens is of secondary importance.
There is a feeling of “re-inventing the wheel” here.
It was good to see Dougs page which treated heat balance between the atmosphere and Earth.
Residual core heat is something we know of but which is never mentioned in AGW rants.
I checked this out some time ago and off the top of my head I think the loss of core heat was about one quarter of a watt per m2.
We all know that we should stay on the path but with AGW the difficulty is finding the path.
🙂
00
The only thing we need to PROVE is this:
Man Made CO2 has NO effect on Earths atmospheric Temperature over time.
This is a scientific and engineering and thermodynamic truth.
We can split hairs and say that there are obvious UHI effects and that the heat we create must have an effect. Both of these comments are technically correct. There has to be some effect we know that from common sense.
The only problem is that it is extremely small, the effect CANNOT be measured, except in UHI situations, and the man made CO2 effect is totally irrelevant in assessment of earths total climate.
We must push this to stop the CAGW dragon. It is still alive and sucking tax dollars.
00
I agree 100%. I think I’m going to stop responding to Doug any more — I don’t really understand people who don’t want to know if they’re right or wrong. I build things, and I certainly don’t want to build something that doesn’t work. I got peeved when he started insulting me and misinterpreting blackbody theory at the same time — but so what, it’s not my problem.
Well, really it’s up to them to prove that there’s a problem. They won’t do that, and they won’t respond to any proofs we come up with. I tend to agree with some of the other threads that, since this is basically a political power grab, it must be fought in the political arena. Good proofs of how lame CAGW is are useful, though: They can be used to humiliate politicians you need to get rid of.
I think that basing any counter-argument on new, unproven physics is a real bad idea however — even if you’re right, it won’t be accepted for a long time, and if you’re wrong, it will be used to humiliate you.
00
You suggested earlier that I read your Lewis Carroll quote. I’m sure there are many that describe your persistence or Doug’s memory photons (I was joking in 135.1 but now realise that it was accurate). how about this;
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” said Alice.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the cat. “We’re all mad here.”
00
BobC
Whilever you refuse to study the computational work and cogent arguments of Claes Johnson, Professor of Applied Mathematics, in Computational Blackbody Radiation (as linked on my Radiation’ page at http://climate-change-theory.com ) which thousands have already read, but not yourself it seems, then you and I are never going to agree.
My paper on all this should be published soon – I was up till 2:30am incorporating improvements, some suggested by reviewers – so I suggest you wait until you have a clear understanding of what I am saying (in about 11 pages) seeing that your are not interested in reading my website.
Of course there is a range of frequencies in any blackbody radiation. But that from a cooler body always finds, in a warmer body, that there are matching molecules that can resonate and scatter the radiation in such a way that there is no conversion of any radiated energy to thermal energy. Whatever the cooler body can “dish up” to the warmer one, its Planck curve stands bigger and taller and can defend the whole lot.
Even when the hot one radiates to the cold one, not all of its radiated energy is converted either, only that which corresponds to the area between the Planck curves. The rest (which can be matched by the cooler body) also undergoes resonant scattering and takes its energy with it to the next molecule where it may be rejected in full if that was warmer than the new (lower) temperature equivalent. If the next target was cooler, the energy would be split between warming the target and continuing in a weaker scattered ray.
00
KinkyKeith
You are quite right about the terrestrial flow being so low. That’s why the heat under the surface stays so constant because there is good insulation there. That’s also why the temperature plot from the core to the surface is so hard to raise, even in perhaps hundreds of thousands of years – so climate is stabilised by the following mechanism – see my page witten Sept 2011 http://climate-change-theory.com/explanation.html
00
BobC
(1) You still seem to think that each blackbody radiates at only one frequency
(2) the absorption probability isn’t given by QM
_____________________________________________
(1) Totally incorrect of course. I am not a junior high school kid.
(2) Having studied QM since 1963, I have indeed been able to explain the connection between energy states and radiation of photons in my paper, probably more accurately than you presently understand, as I guage from your posts, for you don’t yet understand the concept of resonant scattering.
Go and heat just below the surface of a lake with backradiation (at night) and watch the radiated energy converting to thermal energy. Measure the warming effect if you can. Note the warmer water rising back to the top of the lake, then causing evaporation so the energy from the backradiation eventually warms the clouds when the latent heat is released up there a few days later. WOW, who needs the Second Law? When it rains you’ll get more back and be able to start all over again.
When a nut fell on her silly little head …
Oh Dear, the photons are falling … that’s what Henny Penny said.
00
Congratulations; although you aren’t likely to get much credit for it, Einstein having beaten you to it in 1916.
00
And you don’t think the work of Einstein could be extended?
You have no idea of what physical processes happen when there is opposing radiation, Bob.
00
KK and Bob
I’m particularly busy and tired after working till 2:30am on refinements to my paper following suggestions by two reviewers. It may be delayed, but not for long now.
There really is no point in my wasting time with you when you are obviously not prepared to read my sites, and probably not my paper either. The paper will now serve as a substitute for the proposed book, partly because I don’t want people to assume I am in it for the money. I have spent well over a thousand hours of private study (with some consequences for my income as you might expect) and I have done this out of interest and because of an obvious need to help quell the hoax that is AGW.
Please wait for my paper and, if you don’t read it, I will quote section and paragraph (or page from my websites) in response to anything you question or doubt.
PS You may find this URL easier to remember – it has links http://douglascotton.com
00
I’ve just been notified of a slight delay with my paper (now about 13pp) as the coordinator is unavailable for a few days. However, they are very happy with it and expect to launch it next week.
00
can hardly wait
00
I’m just going outside for a while.
I may be some time.
00
O H Dahlsveen says on WUWT:
March 8, 2012 at 1:14 pm
I do not believe the theory of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect (AGHE) to be a “misnomer”. I think it is just plain wrong
_______________________________________
Basically you are correct. There can be no transfer of thermal energy from the cooler atmosphere to the warmer surface by any physical process, radiation or otherwise. However, we have to acknowledge that radiation from the atmosphere does slow the rate of radiative energy transfer from the surface to the atmosphere. This is why it can be warmer on moist nights. However, on balance, other processes, mostly evaporation and diffusion (conduction) will make up for any reduction in radiative flux, because of the stabilising effect of the massive store of thermal energy beneath the outer crust, which is not due to the very slow rate of terrestrial energy flow.
There is also a cooling effect due to water vapour and CO2 etc as these absorb downwelling IR radiation from the Sun and send upward backradiation to space.
The temperature gradient in the atmosphere is determined by the mass of the atmosphere and the acceleration due to gravity, both close enough to being constants. All the claims about 255K are based on the false assumption that the surface is anything like a blackbody. It’s not because it’s not insulated from losses by diffusion and evapoation. Less than half the energy exits by radiation. So, not only is that 33 degree figure based on a totally incorrect 255K figure, but it also ignores the fact that there is an adiabatic lapse rate that has nothing to do with backradiation.
This is a very brief summary of my peer-reviewed paper being published next week.
00
You’re covering a lot of territory there Doug.
Some interesting additions to the thermal behaviour of the system.
Earth’s stored energy concept as a reservoir is interesting.
Not sure where this fits in: “CO2 etc as these absorb downwelling IR”
🙂
00
KK
Yes “a lot of territory” is right. You’ll find the paper covers everything I consider debunks AGW – all the culmination of extensive research – yes a lot of territory, possibly more than any paper I’ve seen, and more accurately I would like to think.
Regarding solar downwelling SW radiation – see the graphic headed “Solar Radiation Spectrum” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation and note the absorption in the IR range – mostly by WV but some by CO2. Remember too that SW solar IR has higher frequencies / energy than LW surface IR.
Furthermore, atmospheric radiation cannot transfer thermal energy to a warmer surface – it can only slow the radiative cooling rate, not the rate of cooling by evaporation or diffusion. And the colder the source of atmospheric radiation, the less is its effect.
The thermal energy in the Earth’s oceans, when compared with that beneath the outer crust is like a small ice cube or a hot stone in a swimming pool. The temperature of each of the small items will tend towards the temperature of the water. So too will the oceans tend towards the temperature of the crust beneath them, whether they were warmer or cooler.
00
“”Remember too that SW solar IR has higher frequencies / energy than LW surface IR””
Had never looked into that too much but very logical that long wave IR is not going to produce much heat wherever it strikes on the way back out.
Corollary is that taking out much higher energy component before it hits the ground has the potential to be important.
00
Yes, Kinky, any radiation in the atmosphere follows a kinky path, being scattered in random directions each time it strikes a molecule. If that molecule is “cooler” than the radiation, then it gets warmed by absorbing that portion of the original radiation represented by the area between the Planck curves. So the radiation continues just as if the cooler molecule had emitted it, that is with less energy. If it strikes a warmer molecule, including those on the surface, it just gets deflected (scattered) without losing any energy on that encounter. Probability dictates that, eventually, it will get to space and strike some target up there – who knows when? By the time it gets back to the surface its “temperature” will be that of the coolest molecule it encountered in its zigzag path, so it just depends how high it got in the troposphere.
There’s a plot on my paper showing the absorption by WV and CO2 in the IR radiation from the Sun. This is why the thermosphere is actually hotter than the surface, a fact not often mentioned.
00
Willis wrote on WUWT: the guesstimated range of climate sensitivity hasn’t narrowed in any significant fashion. It’s still right around 3 ± 1.5°C per double of CO2, just like it was in 1979.
_________________________________________
Indeed, and they still don’t recognise, even though it’s been pointed out numerous times, that the sensitivity calculation is based on completely fabricated “physics” which assumes, firstly that the Earth’s surface only loses thermal energy by radiation – hence their 255K figure – and then they say that 33 degrees is due to water vapour and trace gases, when in fact it’s not 33 degrees at all (because the 255K is wrong) , and whatever it should be is due to the acceleration due to gravity, which determines the adiabatic lapse rate. Then, to cap it off, they put back evaporation and diffusion (wrongly named convection or thermals) into their energy diagrams, thus admitting their mistake in assuming that the surface only radiates like a perfectly insulated blackbody does.
They also neglect the cooling effect due to absorption of solar radiation in the SW IR range, followed by upwelling “backradiation” to space. This SW IR has more energy per photon than does the LW IR from the surface. And backradiation to space does prevent warming, just like reflection, whereas backradiation downwards cannot transfer thermal energy to the surface – it can only slow the radiative component of surface cooling, not the evaporative of diffusion processes.
Hence there is absolutely no basis whatsoever for any warming sensitivity when, in fact, carbon dioxide almost certainly has a very slight net cooling effect.
00
when will your journal lift the media embargo?
00
seriously when?
00
I’m just going outside for a while.
I may be some time.
00
what is out there. Say hello to the waning moon.
00
Prof Claes Johnson has fully endorsed my 6,600 word Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics and it’s now ready for publication within about 30 hours at http://principia-scientific.org/ a site which I chose as being most in keeping with th eprinciples I subscribe to.
“Principia Scientific International is a self-sustaining community of impartial scientists from around the world deliberating, debating and publishing cutting-edge thinking on a range of issues without a preconceived idea of outcomes.
“PSI has identified that there are currently two opposing methodologies at conflict:
“Traditional scientific method: borne of the Age of Enlightenment and which gave rise to the technological advances of the industrial revolution.
“Post-normalism:* pre-deterministic approach where policy and outcome dictate the kind of ‘science’ needed to justify it. The most culpable purveyors of this modern malaise are national governments, NGO’s and big corporations.
“PSI ASSOCIATES are steadfast in their support of the traditional scientific method … “
00
good for Claes. Goven his sparse publication record I’m surprised he did not collaborate and push for co-authorship.
00
Doug, it has been pointed out that Professor Nasif Nahle “Observations on ‘Backradiation’ during Nighttime and Daytime” has an mathematical error in it. If you go to page 8 and the “Summarised Dataset”, the “Daytime” column has a transposition error where the 207.4 W value should be 270.4 W (336 W – 65.96W). This needs to be re-visited to ensure that it does not affect the subsequent analysis and conclusions.
00
shh
00
The error was only a transcript error and it has nothing to do with the conclusions because I didn’t use those numbers to get conclusions, but the databases obtained from measurements. I noticed the error and I corrected it on the PDF at:
http://www.biocab.org/Concise_Experiment_on_Backradiation.pdf
00
my jaundiced but probably insightful through experienced side sassy:
“Principia Scientific International is a self-aggrandising community of deluded amateurs from around the world grafting, selling then publishing cutting-edge narrow thinking on a range of issues with a preconceived idea of outcomes.
00
And who are you, Mr Anonymous?
“deluded” would appear more appropriate to apply to Michael Mann et al.
00
[snip]
[stop baiting. I’m very tempted to snip the last six or more of your posts in this thread] ED
00
fair enough ED. The proof is in the pudding not the parody. Thanks.
00
Oh, and it’s interesting to note that said Michael Mann did not even have his PhD* when he started telling the world about hockey sticks. At least a fellow author on PSI, Prof Nasif Nahle would appear better qualified, if qualifications are what you seek. And perhaps Claes Johnson, Professor of Applied Mathematics has a bit over the likes of Mann.
* Mann was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. He obtained an A.B. in applied mathematics and physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989, graduating from there with honors. He then studied at Yale University, obtaining an MS in physics in 1991, an MPhil in physics the same year, an MPhil in geology and geophysics in 1993, and a PhD in geology and geophysics in 1998
00
you can snip this one. I have a sweet spot for reading my output and with the computer on my lap (like now!), my astigmatic eyes do not meet the challenge.
00
[…] sister article Climate Coup—The Science (a more mainstream version of The Skeptic’s Case) contains the science foundation for this essay. It checks the track record of the climate models […]
00
Truthseeker
March 12, 2012 at 7:11 pm · Reply
Doug, it has been pointed out that Professor Nasif Nahle “Observations on ‘Backradiation’ during Nighttime and Daytime” has an mathematical error in it. If you go to page 8 and the “Summarised Dataset”, the “Daytime” column has a transposition error where the 207.4 W value should be 270.4 W (336 W – 65.96W). This needs to be re-visited to ensure that it does not affect the subsequent analysis and conclusions.
The error was only a transcript error and it didn’t affect the conclusions because I didn’t use those numbers to get conclusions but records. I noticed the error and it was corrected on the pdf at:
http://www.biocab.org/Concise_Experiment_on_Backradiation.pdf
00
Nasif Nahle, thankyou. I got this correction from another source on another blog (Tallbloke’s Talkshop). I also noticed later that the subsequent analysis was not affected by the transposition error.
00
I often make the point that the use of relative surface areas for land v. sea (roughly 30:70) is not appropriate. The amounts of thermal energy are in the ratio of more like 6:89 I believe. Whatever ratio is estimated ought to be used to assess so called “global temperatures” because it is total thermal energy we are needing to measure. I know temperatures are not a direct measure, but weighting this way is at least better than 30:70. Clearly a square km of deep ocean has more thermal energy than an equivalent land area.
We nearly always seem to see slower rates of increase in the underlying 1,000 year cycle when we consider sea surface temperatures. Obviously any gradient should be calculated over a 60 year (perhaps 59.6 year) period so as to eliminate the effect of the 60 year cycle. When you do this, say from March 1952 to Feb 2012 I believe you will find a trend gradient of only about 0.05 to 0.06 C degrees per decade. Even if you then bring in land temperatures with about 6% weighting it obviously won’t make much difference.
I would further suggest that 0.06 C degrees per decade is more in keeping with the variations from the mean of the 1000 year cycle, giving us a total variation in 500 years between maxima like MWP and minima like LIA of 3 C degrees. At the most, I suggest that history shows no more than plus or minus 2 C degrees above or below the level trend of that 1000 year sinusoidal-like cycle. So, a mean rate of increase of 0.08 C / decade seems likely. The fact that the current rate is lower (and perhaps only 0.05 C / decade) indicates an approaching maximum probably within 50 to 200 years.
My point is, of course, that there is no evidence of any effect at all from CO2 if you agree with my estimate of 0.05 C deg / decade in the last 60 year period.
The reason carbon dioxide has no significant effect on the rate of radiative cooling of the surface is that it has a limited number of frequencies “standing up against” the full Planck spectrum radiated by the surface. Furthermore, it cannot affect the rate of cooling by evaporation and diffusion (followed by convection) and these rates will increase to compensate.
The rates of warming and the physics are both covered in my comprehensive peer reviewed paper Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics being published within the next 12 hours at http://principia-scientific.org/
00
[…] sister article Climate Coup—The Science (a more mainstream version of The Skeptic’s Case) contains the science foundation for this essay. It checks the track record of the climate models […]
00
My paper is published now at http://principia-scientific.org/publications/psi_radiated_energy.pdf
00
OK Doug, I just read it.
My criticism still stands. You don’t like the standard thermodynamic calculation that assumes heat is transfered both ways between a hot object and a colder one, even though you admit that it gets the right answer — net energy transfer is from the hot one to the cold one — consistent with the statistical interpretation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
You assume that energy can only be transfered from the hot object to the cold one (not NET, but ANY) because you want to promote the Second Law to a law that MUST be obeyed in EVERY microscopic interaction. This, then leads you to postulate physical mechanisms which cause this to happen.
You are a little vague about describing these mechanisms, and don’t follow the logic far enough to realize that these mechanisms involve extreme non-local effects. For example, how does an atom in a hot object become aware of the temperature of a distant object, even though (as you admit) the single photon impinging on said atom is incapable of carrying such information.
And, then there is the problem that none of these physical postulates you are piling on top of each other has any experimental evidence supporting them. This is particularly so, because you admit that the standard calculations (which completely forego such additional postulates) always get the right answer.
You create this morass of unverifiable assumptions apparently because you insist on believing that the Second Law must hold for any physical interaction whatsoever, instead of it being a statistical law as classical thermodynamics assumes. You advance no justification for this belief — neither empirical nor philosophical.
Since classical thermodynamics — which assumes that the Second Law is statistical in nature, and emission and absorption of radiation takes place strictly at the local, atomic level — always gets the right answer, what is the point of your theory?
00
The Second Law does hold in any macro situation, and it is macro situations I am talking about. You are too influenced by “post physics.”
The molecules don’t have to be aware of the source temperature – the information comes in the frequency distribution. Each frequency resonates if it can. It won’t be able to if the other body does not have a matching frequency. This only happens if it is hotter.
It’s 4.11am here and I must get to bed. Will get back in a few hours.
00
So Doug: Give me an example of a measurable effect that classical thermodynamics calculates wrong, and your theory gets right. What I mean by ‘wrong’ is that the measurement diverges from what classical thermodynamics predicts. Assumed, unmeasureable effects don’t count — only effects that can be verified by measurements.
If you can do this, you will make a convert of me.
00
Give me an example of a measurable effect that classical thermodynamics calculates wrong
It’s not classical thermodynamics that gets it wrong – it’s climatologists using “post physics” (that says radiation from cooler to warmer is converted to thermal energy) who get it wrong.
The example you want is in the paper where it refers to atmospheric radiation supposedly penetrating beneath the surface of warmer water and warming a layer of water a few mm below the surface even more. As my experiment shows, it doesn’t. It undergoes resonant scattering at the surface and heads back into the atmosphere and eventually to space.
So I take it you’re now converted?
00
Experiment
Last night (March 15, 2012) I decided to repeat my earlier experiment, but this time with water rather than soil. I have two identical wide necked vacuum flasks, a digital meat thermometer (measuring to 0.1 C degree accuracy only) ,a sheet of plate glass (off a small coffee table) and a (folded) car windscreen shield (reflective silver.) The glass is mounted on 4 bricks standing on end and in each corner, and the shield is on top of the glass with two extra paver bricks on top. The glass should absorb most radiation from the surface without reflecting much onto the shielded flask. The glass is at a slight slope – about 10 degrees, because my back lawn is sloped. This allows for air to escape by convection.
I started with water at the same temperature that had been in an open container outside for over two hours. I observed the following temperatures in degrees C: ..
Time, Covered, Uncovered, Ambient, Cloud cover
10.55pm 21.7 21.7 21.1 some at about 45 degrees – none overhead
11.55pm 21.5 21.5 21.5 light cloud – full cover overhead
12.55am 21.4 21.1 19.6 some at about 60 degrees – none overhead
1.54am 21.1 20.8 18.0 – no cloud
5.08am 20.3 19.5 19.0 – some at about 45 degrees – none overhead
Conclusions
(1) It is noted that, although the air temperature (about 15cm above a grass lawn) rose when clouds came over, the water continued to cool. It is generally accepted that the moist adiabatic lapse rate is less than the dry rate. We can probably assume that the wind which moves the clouds also brings moist air that moves between the clouds and the surface. There would be a lower lapse rate in this body of air and that would tend to reduce the usual small step down between the surface and the air. For example, at 11.55pm with full cloud cover there was no step down at all, but by 1.54am under clear skies this step was 2.8 C degrees
(2) The water exposed to “backradiation” actually cooled faster than the shielded water. The glass cover collected moisture due to condensation, and both the glass and the drops of water would have radiated onto the water in the flask and, as would be expected, slowed its rate of radiative cooling. The glass and water drops would also have reflected some upwelling radiation.
(3) Even though the energy diagrams show only a little more upwelling radiation from the surface than downwelling “backradiation” (about 7% more usually) it is clear that the effect of upwelling radiation and convection on the glass was far greater than the effect of all the downwelling radiation. This is to be expected from my hypothesis, because the effect on the rate of cooling depends on two aspects of the radiation – the temperature of the source and the number of frequency bands under the Planck curve for the source. The Earth surface has virtually all the expected frequency bands, compared with carbon dioxide having very few. And both the surface and the glass were of course much warmer than the mean temperature of the various sources of radiation in the atmosphere.
(4) So not all radiative flux is “equal” when it comes to any affect on temperatures, this being in keeping with the hypothesis. There was no indication that downwelling radiation from the cold atmosphere was significantly affecting the rate of cooling of the exposed water, but radiation from the wet underside of the much warmer glass cover clearly had a significant effect on the rate of cooling of the water shielded from most backradiation .
Photos: http://climate-change-theory.com/expt_photos.jpg
My paper: (Click Radiated Energy … ” at http://www.webcommentary.com/docs/jo120314.pdf
00
Addendum to experiment
In order to check that the apparatus did indeed shield atmospheric radiation successfully, I took further readings at 1:53pm (Australian Eastern Daylight Saving Time) on March 16, 2012. It is a clear day with hardly any cloud, none directly overhead. The ambient Temperature in open shade was 31.9 deg.C and the air under the shield was 32.3 deg.C. The water in the flask exposed to sunlight was 29.1 deg.C and that in the shielded flask was 20.5 deg.C, being only 0.2 deg.C above the 5:08am reading taken before sunrise.
I would comment that, considering the energy diagrams show comparable radiation leaving the surface to that from the Sun reaching the surface, then, allowing for the Sun only shining a bit more than half the time at this time of the year in Sydney, then why would not the backradiation have demonstrated something like half the extra 9.6 C degrees which the Sun has warmed the exposed water in a similar time? Clearly the backradiation is not doing what the IPCC claim it does.
One has to ask, why didn’t the IPCC arrange such simple experiments before hoisting their conjecture upon the world?
00
BobC
Firstly the SLoT applies in a macro environment, which I suggest the Earth system is. You have to be able to measure temperatures of the objects between which thermal energy is transferred.
So, yes, I believe the statement in Wikipedia that says …
In classical thermodynamics, the second law is a basic postulate applicable to any system involving measurable heat transfer …
Secondly, you continue to give me the impression that you have nor studied what I have written in the paper. You keep asking questions like how an atom knows the temperature of the source of radiation. This is covered in the paper. If there were no “information” transfer in nature then the SLoT could not apply for radiation, could it?
To others:
Some have asked about the peer-review process for my paper so I quote from http://www.webcommentary.com/docs/jo120314.pdf
“What is unique here is that the pioneering “peer review in open media” (PROM) requires authors to be responsive to real time criticisms and suggestions from fellow scientists who, as reviewers, share notes and suggest improvements while third parties can watch as it happens.
“”Cotton’s paper was put online and discussed among a panel of reviewers from various diverse disciplines for several weeks. This is the key to PSI’s more robust assessment. “It’s far better when outside experts add their voice to the review process, as was recommended by the Oxburgh Report (2010).” For those who don’t recall, the British government commissioned a panel of experts to evaluate evidence of misconduct by climatologists after the “Climategate” scandal. The Oxburgh Report recommended more reviews by outside experts.
“The PROM system addresses that need and encourages a real-time dialog between author and reviewers ensuring that feedback is heeded and acted upon. “This is the way more science should be done in this age of instant high-speed document transfer,” adds O’Sullivan. “The author got invaluable input from his reviewers and he acted upon the feedback he got, plus the reviewers were able to satisfy themselves of the validity of Cotton’s research because they saw precisely how the author collated his evidence and substantiated his findings.”
“In a series of email exchanges the four reviewers, Dr. Matthias Kleespies (environmental scientist), Alan Siddons (radiochemist), Hans Schreuder (analytical chemist, ret.) and Professor Claes Johnson (applied mathematics) ensured that expertize from various scientific disciplines was applied constructively and thoroughly, unusual for the assessment of climate science papers.”
00
And you continue to give me the impression that you don’t pay attention to what you say. In the paper you say the information is carried by the radiation distribution. However, a single atom exposed to a single photon at a particular point in time does not have access to the distribution information, which is a statistical property of a group of photons, and is not determinable from a single photon. In Quantum Mechanics, the probability that an atom absorbs a photon does not depend on statistical characteristics of other ensembles of photons that are not involved in the process (or, even anywhere near the atom). Claiming that the absorption probablility is so dependent, is equilivant to saying that QM doesn’t apply here. Handwaving arguments about “resonant scattering” and “standing waves” does not equal an alternate theory (demonstrate a calculation of absorption cross-section using these ‘principles’, if you disagree — then we will have something to actually measure).
BTY: If such standing waves existed, they could be measured. You predict they exist, Classical Thermodynamics does not. That is the kind of measurement I’m talking about — not whether or not downwelling radiation from the sky can be measured in an uncontrolled backyard experiment. There is no evidence that the results of your experiment are not equally well explained by the classical theory of blackbodies and heat transfer.
Your experiment is consistent with numerious other experiments which show that clouds (and water vapor, in general) have a vastly greater effect on surface temperatures than that of CO2, which is largely unmeasurable. This result is not dependent on claiming that the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist, or claims that classical thermodynamics and Quantum Mechanics are wrong.
Once again, give me an example of a measurable effect that classical thermodynamics gets wrong, and your theory gets right. Just to be sure you get me: Classical Thermodynamics does not predict that CO2 is a significant driver of climate on Earth. I’m not responsible for, nor do I agree with, flaky ‘science’ by the Climate Crew.
If Classical Thermodynamics and Quantum Mechanics are as wrong as you claim, it should be easy to find a laboratory experiment that so demonstrates.
00
The following points are made in my peer-reviewed paper now published on at least four sites and linked from my site http://climate-change-theory.com
(1) Radiation from cooler parts of the atmosphere to warmer parts of the surface cannot transfer thermal energy, but can slow just the radiative component of surface cooling, which is less than half the cooling, probably about a third.
(2) When radiative cooling is slowed, the rates of evaporative cooling and diffusion (conduction) followed by convection will increase for reasons explained in my paper.
(3) The energy in each photon is proportional to the frequency of the associated radiation.
(4) Short wave (high frequency) infra-red radiation (making up about half of the total solar radiation) thus has far more energy per photon than does long wave (low frequency) infra-red radiation from the atmosphere, which is mostly well below freezing point.
(5) The effect which radiation from the atmosphere has on radiative cooling of the surface depends upon both the temperature of the region from which it originated and the density of frequencies in that radiation.
(6) Carbon dioxide radiates far fewer frequencies than water vapour, and each radiates fewer than a blackbody.
(7) Hence each carbon dioxide molecule has far less effect on the radiative rate of cooling than each water vapour molecule, of which there are usually about 20 to 50 times as many.
(8) So carbon dioxide is like a picket fence with most of its pickets missing, standing up against full blast radiation from the surface.
(9) Any warming effect of carbon dioxide is cancelled because of the reasons in (2) and, because of those in (4) there is a significant cooling effect as it sends back to space at least half of the high energy photons it captures from solar radiation.
(10) Hence carbon dioxide has a net cooling effect, but such is absolutely minimal compared with the effect of water vapour which also has radiative cooling effects, but possibly some warming effects also about which we can do nothing.
00
Let me put this way …
(1) Radiation sets out on its journey from an object with a frequency distribution represented by the appropriate Planck curve for its temperature.
(2) Not all the possible frequencies may be present if the object is not “composite” but is, perhaps, a single gas or several gases with limited emission bands. If this is the case, this radiation will have less effect on the radiative cooling rates of warmer composite bodies than would perfect blackbody radiation with the full range of frequencies that are allowed by the Planck curve
(3) When the radiation strikes a blackbody target, that target, if cooler, will only be able to match and resonate with a portion of the emitting source’s radiation. The extra source radiation, corresponding to the energy between the Planck curves will be converted to thermal energy, but the rest will undergo resonant scattering. So the radiation is split.
(4) If the target is warmer, all the radiation from the source undergoes resonant scattering.
(5) When radiation strikes a target, that portion that resonates (be it all or part) takes the place of radiation for which the target would have had to use its own energy. Hence the target, even if warmer, will cool more slowly, as is observed.
(6) The target becomes a new source. It, like the original source, still radiates all it can under its Planck curve, but it is using some or all of the energy it received from the original source. Hence “new” radiation sets out which may be thought of as containing some or all of the energy of the original source, plus some of its own it it was warmer than the source.
(7) If you were to follow the passage of any particular parcel of energy, some of it would be “dropped off” at each target that was cooler than the last, but not targets which were warmer than the last.
(8) So the surface also just scatters “cooler” radiation from the atmosphere, and all radiation gets to space eventually. There it continues in the same way, striking targets perhaps every few years or centuries or whatever, until its energy gets down to the base level of about 2K to 3K I understand, as is observed in background space radiation. This means nothing much is colder than that out there.
The above process overcomes the problem of assuming two-way radiation is associated with two-way heat transfer, including transfer from cold to hot. The latter would violate the Second Law, and so cannot happen.
Hence the above postulate is a far more likely alternative.
But that is not all there is when considering the role of carbon dioxide, as my paper explains – see http://climate-change-theory.com
00
Doug, you’re still trying to fix something that isn’t broken (and you’re breaking a lot of other things while you’re at it).
What you’re describing, which is coherent scattering (with a matching suppression of emission from the hotter body), would indeed be indistinguisable from simple absorption and re-emission as far as the heat and energy flows are concerned. So, you get the same answer as classical thermodynamics, which assumes absorption and re-emission — what is the point?
Your point, apparently, is this:
But, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is derived statistically from micro events by assuming that they all happen independently of each other, is considered to be a statistical law (whenever micro events are considered), and therefore can’t be violated by micro transfers of energy from a cold object to a hot one as long as the macro transfer is from hot to cold — which is guarenteed by the stronger emission of the hotter body, according to Planck’s Law.
So, apparently, when faced with a choice between changing your understanding of the Second Law (to comply with the standard interpretation and derivation) — or deciding that all Quantum Mechanical calculations of absorption cross-sections are meaningless and replacing them with vague statements about “standing waves” and “resonance”, you choose the latter.
The least you could do to (attempt to) justify such a bizarre path would be to tell us WHY you think the Second Law needs to be re-interpreted — especially since it ALREADY explains all the measured phenomena.
Even more bizarrely, your conclusion in point #5 “…the target, even if warmer, will cool more slowly” [in the presence of radiation from a colder object], is all that is needed to derive a greenhouse effect — The Earth’s surface will hence cool more slowly (radiatively) due to radiation from the colder GH gasses in the atmosphere above.
*********************************
HOWEVER: Should you choose to subject your completely unnecessary demolition of Quantum Mechanics and Thermodynamics to an empirical test, there is a measureable difference that would exist:
Consider what would happen if the radiation from the colder body were passed through a polarizer before impinging on the hotter body. Now there would be a significant difference between coherent scattering replacing some emission by the hot body (your hypothesis) — which would result in the radiation from the hot body becoming partially polarized (to the extent that scattered radiation from the colder body has replaced emissions from the hot body) — and absorption and re-emission, in which radiation from the hotter body would remain unpolarized.
I won’t be holding my breath waiting for you to do this test.
00
“But, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is derived statistically from micro events by assuming that they all happen independently of each other, is considered to be a statistical law (whenever micro events are considered), and therefore can’t be violated by micro transfers of energy from a cold object to a hot one as long as the macro transfer is from hot to cold — which is guarenteed by the stronger emission of the hotter body, according to Planck’s Law.”
Shrug, that’s some assumption. Since that assumption breaks the 2nd Law then surely you are required to prove it actually happens, if not able to, then all that ‘statistical’ is doing here is creating an illusion of reality of a micro level simply by claiming it fits.., how is this science?
If it is reality on a micro scale then you must show by what mechanism this becomes the macro real thermal 2nd Law. Otherwise you end up with nothing stopping the colder from heating the hotter ad infinitum.
00
What assumption? If you follow my links, you can see how the Second Law of Thermodynamics can be derived from the behavior of blackbodies embodied in Planck’s Law — that they always absorb all incident radiation and emit according to the Planck distribution corresponding to their temperature. Quantum Mechanics adequately explains the absorption and emission behavior of micro systems as strictly local processes, and this explanation is completely consisent with Planck’s Law and hence with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. These “assumptions” have been subjected to innumerable empirical tests over the last century, and are about as well established as the fact that the Earth orbits the Sun.
Being able to derive the Second Law from the assumption that Planck’s Law is correct and emission and absorption are local processes cannot be characterized as breaking the Second Law. You’re not making sense. What you’re doing is making up your own version of the Second Law — it is you who need to prove that this version reflects reality.
It is science because we go from an hypotheses (Planck’s Law describes the absorption and radiation charactistics of a blackbody) to deriving the consequences of that hypotheses (Second Law of thermodynamics, measureable heat flows, etc) and then those consequences are tested. Even Doug admits that the classical theory of thermodynamics gets the experimental data right.
What is not science is making up hand-waving arguments, neglecting to derive their consequences except for a narrow range of data (this is known as ad hoc theorizing), and refusing to subject the results to an empirical test (such as I suggest in 210.1).
00
Everyone should note Turnedoutnice’s comment at http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/03/global-warming-as-cargo-cult-science/#comment-39322
Roughly 60% of the thermal energy from the surface to the atmosphere does not transfer by radiation. Only about 40% is radiated back. So, if radiation from a cooler atmosphere really did transfer thermal energy to a warmer surface (and the Sceond law of Thermodynamics really could be thus violated) then only 40% of that thermal energy would then exit (a second time) by radiation. So you have much more radiation into the surface than out of it. You have expected water to run uphill by itself and fill a water tank at the top of the hill, just because you know the water is going to flow down pipes to people’s homes sometime in the future.
Thermal energy does not transfer both ways between hot and cold as Planck and Co originally claimed. Botzmann got the right result mathematically, but he did not guess the right physical process. I suggest that is what is in my paper.
http://www.webcommentary.com/docs/jo120314.pdf
If you think you can better explain how radiation from a cooler source does in fact slow the radiative rate of cooling of a warmer body then please put forward your ideas. But any ideas which depend upon compounding thermal energy, some of which is assumed to result from the radiation from the cooler body to the warmer one, will not wear with me.
00
,b>Yes BobC: The radiative rate of cooling of a warm surface is most certainly slowed by radiation from a cooler atmosphere. That’s what my paper is all about.
So it’s time you read it, rather than assuming you think you know what;s in it, and that the above automatically causes carbon dioxide to have a net warming effect, because it doesn’t.
00
I have run a lot of analytical chemistry spectroscopes (XRFs, RAMAN, LIBS, you name it). These seem to give consistent spectra whether the excited target is warm or cold. The detectors tend to be at a constant temperature. Doesn’t your physics suggest that results should vary in some way? Is your analysis only applicable to “warmth”? What do you predict I should see if an xray photo excited an electron in say, titanium, which then drops back down to its relaxed state while emitting some energy at a different wavelength to the excitation wavelength. Should I detect a difference when it gets warmer (as often happens as a result of the analysis or just the ambient temperature in the machine). What if my object was originally colder than the detector and the emitted radiation had the potential to warm the detector – would I fail to detect it?
00
Everyone
There is an informed discussion on Roy Spencer’s site about all this, with over 400 posts so far.
You might care to pick up here http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/03/slaying-the-slayers-with-the-alabama-two-step/#comment-39517
Because I really don’t have time to focus on more than just two threads now, this one of Roy’s and my own thread on tallbloke will have to do..
On tallbloke we are moving on to discussing FAQ 1 in the paper.
Link to paper here http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/03/slaying-the-slayers-with-the-alabama-two-step/#comment-39517
Link to tallbloke recent posts start here: http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/doug-cotton-radiated-energy-and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/#comment-20365
00
Correction: Link to paper here http://www.webcommentary.com/docs/jo120314.pdf
00
BobC
March 21, 2012 at 2:17 am · Reply
“Myrrh
March 20, 2012 at 10:42 am · Reply
Shrug, that’s some assumption.
What assumption?
The assumption you gave here:
““But, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is derived statistically from micro events by assuming that they all happen independently of each other, is considered to be a statistical law (whenever micro events are considered), and therefore can’t be violated by micro transfers of energy from a cold object to a hot one as long as the macro transfer is from hot to cold — which is guarenteed by the stronger emission of the hotter body, according to Planck’s Law.””
If you follow my links, you can see how the Second Law of Thermodynamics can be derived from the behavior of blackbodies embodied in Planck’s Law — that they always absorb all incident radiation and emit according to the Planck distribution corresponding to their temperature. Quantum Mechanics adequately explains the absorption and emission behavior of micro systems as strictly local processes, and this explanation is completely consisent with Planck’s Law and hence with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
You’re jumping from statistical to Planck to the 2nd Law without showing any connection. How can quantum mechanics adequately explain it when the principle is uncertainty? And anyway, in passing, Planck’s idea that a black box heated so no light could get out would produce infinite amounts of ultra violet is a catastrophe of his own making, why should it? That in trying to solve a non-existent problem they staggered their way to ‘quanta’ still doesn’t explain a non-existent effect… 🙂 (http://www.pbs.org/transistor/science/info/quantum.htm)
So consistent with what? Experimentally and industrially in every way the 2nd Law isn’t broken in any of its parts.
These “assumptions” have been subjected to innumerable empirical tests over the last century, and are about as well established as the fact that the Earth orbits the Sun.
So let’s have it, show proof that that heat flows from colder to hotter on the micro level.
They are still assumptions. As I said, all that this ‘statistical’ explanation did was to take the law that heat always flows spontaneously from hotter to colder and created a micro scenario which begins by breaking the 2nd Law and then justifying it by saying it is the net of these assumptions that obeys the law.
You have no rational reason for assuming the law is broken on the micro level. The Law stands unbroken until and unless you prove that on a micro level it is broken.
And as I’ve pointed out, you then have to show the actual mechanism by which the imagined net obeys the law – why should it? If heat can flow from colder to hotter on a micro level then it can do so on a macro – you have no way of stopping it to get your ‘net’.
You can make up any imaginary scenario from ‘assumptions’, but you are breaking the 2nd Law in doing so here.
You have neither shown the law is broken on a micro level nor produced any mechanism which gives you the net, just claiming it does is not science. Pigs can fly.
“Since that assumption breaks the 2nd Law then surely you are required to prove it actually happens”
Being able to derive the Second Law from the assumption that Planck’s Law is correct and emission and absorption are local processes cannot be characterized as breaking the Second Law. You’re not making sense. What you’re doing is making up your own version of the Second Law — it is you who need to prove that this version reflects reality.
From emission and absorption are local processes to claiming the local micro process breaks the law is quite a leap – where’s the joined up writing?
You’re the one creating a different version of the 2nd Law which is that heat always flows spontaneously from hotter to colder. You have added to this that on the micro level it doesn’t apply!
And then, because you have no way of getting back to the 2nd Law you create a magical ‘net’, it just suddenly appears out of nowhere and solves your problem, which you created for yourself in the beginning by your assumption about the micro level just as Planck created an imaginary ultraviolet catastrophe because he thought the laws of physics predicted it..
“…how is this science?
It is science because we go from an hypotheses (Planck’s Law describes the absorption and radiation charactistics of a blackbody) to deriving the consequences of that hypotheses (Second Law of thermodynamics, measureable heat flows, etc) and then those consequences are tested. Even Doug admits that the classical theory of thermodynamics gets the experimental data right.
The experimental data always shows that the 2nd Law isn’t broken, that heat always flows spontaneously from hotter to colder. You have no experimental data to show that on a micro level this imagined assumption scenario of heat flow from colder to hotter even exists.
Until such time as you can show that the 2nd Law is broken on the micro level the only assumption you can make rationally in science, is that it also applies on a micro level.
And if you’re going to keep claiming your assumption is reality then produce the mechanism that stops heat travelling from the colder to the hotter as net, because until you do so you have no way out of continuing to break the law on a macro scale from this assumption. (Which is exactly what all the ‘backradiation’ arguments of the AGWSF energy budget do.)
What is not science is making up hand-waving arguments, neglecting to derive their consequences except for a narrow range of data (this is known as ad hoc theorizing), and refusing to subject the results to an empirical test (such as I suggest in 210.1).
Just who is neglecting to derive their consequences here…? You have no way of stopping the colder from continuing to heat the hotter ad infinitum!
In 210.1 all you do is claim some magical statistical scenario derived from the 2nd Law – i.e., you have begun with the 2nd Law as a premise and made up a scenario on the micro level which itself begins by breaking the law!
” But, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is derived statistically from micro events by assuming that they all happen independently of each other, is considered to be a statistical law (whenever micro events are considered), and therefore can’t be violated by micro transfers of energy from a cold object to a hot one as long as the macro transfer is from hot to cold — which is guarenteed by the stronger emission of the hotter body, according to Planck’s Law.”
Assumptions, assumptions, assumptions, you have given no valid science to back up such an assumed micro world, in which you can’t tell both the position and direction and speed at the same time anyway… :), nor that the 2nd Law is derived from such.
Statistical maths didn’t come in until the fifties iirc. I think you’re just superimposing one thing on another out of context and not joining it up because it doesn’t.
The only real net in heat flow, obeying the 2nd Law, is in the net of heating and cooling events as the hotter loses heat in heating the colder which in turn will lose that heat gained as it passes it to the colder next to it, until an equilibrium is reached.
00
Yeah Myrrh, OK…
You appear to have no actual knowledge of statistical mechanics at all. I don’t know where you got your “information” on thermodynamics, but your concept of it is at variance of what the theory has been for the last 150 years.
For instance:
Well, you don’t ‘rc’ — statistical mechanics started with the kinetic theory of gases published by Bernoulli in 1738. (Maybe you were thinking ‘the 1750s’, in which case you were almost right.)
All your questions would be answered if you would just purchase (or look up online) and study an introductory text on the subject. I’m not going to try to produce a primer here.
However, here’s an analogy you might see:
Gases flow from places of high pressure to places of low pressure. This could be considered a “Law”, and you could say that this always happens. Anytime you connect a vessel containing high pressure gas to one containing low pressure gas, the gas flows from the high pressure vessel to the low one.
So, let’s suppose we connect a tube between a high pressure gas cylinder (cylinder ‘A’) and a lower pressure one (cylinder ‘B’). According to our “Law” (“Flow is ALWAYS from high pressure to low pressure”) the direction of gas flow is from cylinder A to cylinder B. This is easily verified at the macro level.
Can we therefore conclude that ALL of the molecules in the tube are ALWAYS moving in the direction from A to B?
No, we can’t. According to the kinetic theory of gases, the molecules in the gas are moving at an average speed of approximately the speed of sound and their directions are randomly determined by collisions with other gas molecules and the walls of the container. So, assuming the gas flow is subsonic, at any one time a great many molecules are traveling UPSTREAM, in the direction from B to A.
OMG! The LAW of gas flow has been broken! We must immediately postulate that each molecule “knows” the direction of the pressure gradient and there are unknown physical phenomena which will prevent ANY molecule from EVER moving in the wrong direction.
OR — You can go to the link on the Kinetic Theory of Gases above and see that the aforementioned “Law” (gas flow is always from high pressure to low pressure) can be easily derived as a statistical property of any sufficiently large group of molecules, while allowing any individual molecule to travel in any direction at all.
This is what the kinetic theory of gases accomplished 250 years ago — that all the macro properties of a gas can be derived as statistical properties of large numbers of randomly moving molecules. This appears to be a new concept to you.
Intuitively, there more gas molecules on the high pressure side so, even though all molecules have an equal chance of moving in any direction, there are more moving from high to low than the other way. Imagine that you start with a box that has all the molecules on one side (say ‘A’) and none on the other side (side ‘B’), then let them move in random directions. (There is a Java simulation of that here.) At the very first time step, there will be no molecules moving from B to A, simply because there aren’t any molecules in B. Eventually, there will be equal numbers of molecules in both sides and no more net flow will occur, although individual molecules will still be zinging around in random directions, as always.
The “Law” is a statistical consequence of the random motion of the molecules and their average density.
Watch the Java simulation, then try to imagine the same thing happening with blackbodies and radiation. The cases are analogous.
00
Note the word “process” in the Clausius statement:
No process is possible whose sole result is the transfer of heat from a body of lower temperature to a body of higher temperature.
The Second Law can be illustrated with a hose used as a siphon to empty a swimming pool, for example. It works if the other end of the hose goes down a slope and is significantly below the bottom of the pool.
The water flows and entropy increases because we have a single process. The SLoT requires a single process, as is obvious in everyday life.
If you cut the hose at the highest point you now have two processes, and the water no longer goes upwards from the pool.
Any heat flow from a cooler atmosphere to a warmer surface is a single completed process. The energy is not constrained to return by radiation or to do anything in particular. It could be conducted elsewhere in the surface for example.
Because it is a single process from atmosphere to surface, there is no justification for saying that any subsequent process can create a net effect and thus excuse the violation of the Second Law. It would be like water flowing uphill to the town’s water tank on the basis that it would subsequently flow further downhill through pipes into houses. But there is no constraint enforcing this, as there was with the siphon before the hose was cut. After all, the tank might leak.
Hence, thermal energy cannot transfer spontaneously from a cooler atmosphere to a warmer surface. Fullstop.
See my publication Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
http://www.webcommentary.com/docs/jo120314.pdf
00
Two points:
1) I believe Clausius was talking about observable, macro processes. Statistical Thermodymanics demonstrates how micro heat transfers can be in any direction, yet the macro effect is that net heat is transfered from high to low temperature. This is analgous to the Kinetic Theory of Gases which shows how gas flows from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure, even though any individual gas molecule can move in any direction with equal probablility.
2) Laws of Nature are created by observation and induction, and are always to some degree provisional. Inviolate Laws of Nature are not created by authoritative pronouncments by Rudolf Clausius (or anyone else).
The Atomic Theory of Matter has long been adequately verified, as well as the statistical derivation of the Laws of Thermodymanics based upon it.
By hypothesing that atomic events MUST be controlled by a statement by Clausius that clearly was about MACRO events, you are not only ignoring all of atomic theory and statistical thermodynamics (both highly verified theories), but you are also committing a logical catagory error — you are assuming that Nature MUST obey (your conception) of Natural Law, instead of acknowledging that Natural Law is simply our best guess as to how Nature behaves.
Currently the best guess is based upon modern Statistical Thermodynamics, not 100 year old pronouncements by dead physicists.
00
BobC
March 21, 2012 at 7:28 am · Reply
Yeah Myrrh, OK…
You appear to have no actual knowledge of statistical mechanics at all. I don’t know where you got your “information” on thermodynamics, but your concept of it is at variance of what the theory has been for the last 150 years.
For instance:
“Statistical maths didn’t come in until the fifties iirc.
Well, you don’t ‘rc’ — statistical mechanics started with the kinetic theory of gases published by Bernoulli in 1738. (Maybe you were thinking ‘the 1750s’, in which case you were almost right.)
All your questions would be answered if you would just purchase (or look up online) and study an introductory text on the subject. I’m not going to try to produce a primer here.
I think statistical maths came in around the fifties and I still think what you’re doing is mixing terms, or rather ideas from that because, there is no proof in this ‘statistical’ you posit that on a micro level heat is able to travel from colder to hotter. It is as you said, an assumption. That doesn’t cut it.
You can’t begin with an assumption that breaks the 2nd Law and expect to get the 2nd Law come good.. That’s simply so illogical. You’re either misreading something or, I don’t know. But clearly you’re making no effort at all to connect with what I’m trying to say here. It’s not for me to ‘go read up on it’ – you’re the one defending that it exists, you produce it.
However, here’s an analogy you might see:
Gases flow from places of high pressure to places of low pressure. This could be considered a “Law”, and you could say that this always happens. Anytime you connect a vessel containing high pressure gas to one containing low pressure gas, the gas flows from the high pressure vessel to the low one.
So, let’s suppose we connect a tube between a high pressure gas cylinder (cylinder ‘A’) and a lower pressure one (cylinder ‘B’). According to our “Law” (“Flow is ALWAYS from high pressure to low pressure”) the direction of gas flow is from cylinder A to cylinder B. This is easily verified at the macro level.
Can we therefore conclude that ALL of the molecules in the tube are ALWAYS moving in the direction from A to B?
No, we can’t. According to the kinetic theory of gases, the molecules in the gas are moving at an average speed of approximately the speed of sound and their directions are randomly determined by collisions with other gas molecules and the walls of the container. So, assuming the gas flow is subsonic, at any one time a great many molecules are traveling UPSTREAM, in the direction from B to A.
OMG! The LAW of gas flow has been broken! We must immediately postulate that each molecule “knows” the direction of the pressure gradient and there are unknown physical phenomena which will prevent ANY molecule from EVER moving in the wrong direction.
Gases are subject to pressure gradients. Again, you’re simply assuming that in reality they flow in both directions. Here, however, I might just have an inkling of where you’re going wrong – I think you’re giving the movement of the individual molecules the properties of ideal gas which has no properties, etc., extrapolating from an out of context description of molecules in ideal gas law, which are applicable to high temperature and low pressure and thermal equilibrium, and which no real molecules actually obey anyway.
I’ve come across this before as I was trying to work out how AGW claimed that carbon dioxide could stay up in the atmosphere accumulating for hundreds and thousands of years, when in real life it was heavier than air.
This was at the beginning of my exploration about all this, I became interested when I found that people were arguing about it. A very much AGW warmist began giving me instruction – a PhD in physics who teaches his subject. When I questioned this aspect he told me that carbon dioxide was an ideal gas.. the red flag now is when someone mentions ‘walls of the container’..
Anyway, he claimed it was ideal, that carbon dioxide would spontaneously mix in the atmosphere of empty space at these great speeds by bouncing off other molecules doing the same. That’s when I discovered that he no longer had any concept of real gases. None whatsoever. I think that is how it is with you too.
Because there is such utter confusion created by this AGWSF meme there is no longer any understanding of our real atmosphere. Your atmosphere is the empty space of the ideal gas in its container..
Carbon dioxide is a real gas, it has weight and volume and attraction, subject to gravity, an ideal gas doesn’t have these, it has no real properties – but you lot wouldn’t know that, that’s why you don’t notice that the whole of the Water Cycle has been taken out of the energy budget. You don’t know how clouds are formed in your atmosphere, they just appear magically.
And, you don’t know that in your atmosphere you have no sound.. That’s why you don’t have convection, you just have radiation in a vacuum..
You’re talking about an imaginary world created out of descriptions of ideal gas, I’m talking about the real world.
OR — You can go to the link on the Kinetic Theory of Gases above and see that the aforementioned “Law” (gas flow is always from high pressure to low pressure) can be easily derived as a statistical property of any sufficiently large group of molecules, while allowing any individual molecule to travel in any direction at all.
This is what the kinetic theory of gases accomplished 250 years ago — that all the macro properties of a gas can be derived as statistical properties of large numbers of randomly moving molecules. This appears to be a new concept to you.
Not at all, as I explained earlier, there is a real net in heat transfer, but it is always from hotter to colder, the net of these events can be statistically considered, if say, one wanted to calculate how long it would take to heat something up. And it would take into consideration all that involved, the medium and amount of work put in, etc. in the transfer on heat; the molecule using its heat for work in heating up another molecule will lose that energy, the molecule being heated by it gains it kinetically, one loses heat the other gains it, these are the real events in heat flow amenable to statistics.
But again, I think you’re mixing up context in your analogy to your confusion. High pressure gases are colder, they are therefore more dense and they always flow from high to low because they’re more dense than gases at low pressure.
The obvious real world example of this is in our weather system – and within that it’s clearly seen in the difference between inshore and offshore winds. Land heats up more quickly than water and so in the day when the Sun is heating both equally at the coast the air above the land will heat up more quickly thereby becoming less dense, an area of low pressure, the high pressure colder air over the ocean will move into the space beneath the rising hot air, those lovely cooling sea breezes on a hot day at the seaside are this. Cold air sinks, hot air rises.
So, exactly what are you are saying in your kinetic description and how does that relate to heat flow from hotter to colder?
You have still not produced anything that shows that on a micro level heat flows from colder to hotter.
Intuitively, there more gas molecules on the high pressure side so, even though all molecules have an equal chance of moving in any direction, there are more moving from high to low than the other way.
Er, are you sure about that? High pressure therefore high density, doesn’t mean that there are more molecules, just that they’re more squashed, heavier mass. Gases are compressible. It’s not that there’s more of them that they’re moving, they’re moving because they are colder and heavier and sink and so will flow under lighter warmer less dense molecules. Hot air, low pressure, rises, it will go above the colder denser higher pressure.
But, Again, you’re just claiming these are moving in both directions which is as before, you begin with an assumption that breaks that law so as before without any logic to support saying it. How does that happen? What is the mechanism which gives you this? Until you can provide such a thing then you, quite frankly, you don’t make any sense.
What does make sense is that in every observation in all times heat always flows spontaneously from hotter to colder – the spontaneously is intrinsic to the 2nd Law (it takes work to change that direction) – until you can provide anything even remotely logical to explain why that isn’t happening on every level you’re just, confusing yourself.
Imagine that you start with a box that has all the molecules on one side (say ‘A’) and none on the other side (side ‘B’), then let them move in random directions. (There is a Java simulation of that here.) At the very first time step, there will be no molecules moving from B to A, simply because there aren’t any molecules in B. Eventually, there will be equal numbers of molecules in both sides and no more net flow will occur, although individual molecules will still be zinging around in random directions, as always.
The “Law” is a statistical consequence of the random motion of the molecules and their average density.
That’s just meaningless in context of the 2nd Law which is about heat transfer and exchange for work, you’re just back to your out of context ideal gas volumeless weightless without any attraction hard dots of nothing randomly bouncing off each other in a vacuum and superimposing it on the 2nd Law.
Watch the Java simulation, then try to imagine the same thing happening with blackbodies and radiation. The cases are analogous.
Far better you get your head around what heat flow is.
And, give me what I have requested, the mechanism by which heat flows from hotter to colder to get your ‘net’ when you claim that heat flows from colder to hotter.
Please, think about that question.
And, this word ‘net’ you use, as far as I have explored was never used with the 2nd Law and I don’t see it used now on pages of real world descriptions of the law, it’s out of place in the 2nd Law.
And answer my question.
——————————————————————————–
00
Myrrh, Doug:
Look guys; You can’t establish facts about the world by philosophical argumentation — anymore than Medieval philosophers could actually determine how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Facts about the world can only be established by observation — Gallieo and Frances Bacon won this argument centuries ago.
For example, Myrrh says:
So, you conclude that CO2 doesn’t mix in the atmosphere, based on your argument. Has it ever occured to you to check actual measurements of the distribution of CO2 in the atmosphere?
**************************************************
At any rate, here is an easy experiment you can try to decide if your philosophical conclusion is correct:
Buy a bottle of peppermint oil. The primary ingredient (and the one that can be detected by the Human nose in vanishingly small concentrations) is Menthol, C10_H20_O, with a molecular weight of 156 — nearly 5 times as heavy as O2, 5.5 times as heavy as N2, and 3.5 times as heavy as CO2.
Pick a place and time where the air is still. In a house in summer with no fans or air conditioners running and when the air has stratified (hotter above) so that there are no convection currents would be ideal.
Position several people on a staircase and have the person at the bottom open a bottle of peppermint oil. Tell the others to raise their hand when they smell it.
You will discover that the heavy peppermint oil easily moves upward through still air at several feet per second, despite gravity. If you do the same experiment, but have the person at the top of the stairs open the bottle, you will find that the difference made by gravity can’t be measured by an experiment this coarse.
This result is easily explained and the rates predictable by the Ideal Gas Theory.
*************************************
And Doug; Can you explain why you are willing to throw out modern physics — Statistical Thermodynamics and Quantum Mechanics — based on the statements of a physicist in the 19th century? You have yet to come up with a measurable crucial experiment to show if you are right, and you have ignored several that I have suggested.
*****************************************
Bottom line fellas: All you have is argumentation. If you can’t come up with experimental evidence — and I mean experiments that Statistical Thermodynamics and Quantum Mechanics gets wrong and you get right — then you have nothing.
(And Myrrh — the fact that you know nothing about these theories does not imply that I am obligated to teach them to you. They are not secrets; beginning texts and tutorials are easily available to anyone who is interested.)
00
BobC
Clausius was talking about observable, macro processes
2) Laws of Nature are created by observation
________________________
Don’t you see your self-contradiction? Temperature has to be observable – ie macro scale. Sure statistical thermodynamics “explains” the observed temperature, all based on probabiliies.
But to assume similarities between diffusion in gas (in all directions, not one-dimensional) and processes such as …
(1) Radiation from cold atmosphere to warm surface
(2) Conversion of thermal energy in that radiation when received by the surface
(3) Conduction of that thermal energy perhaps deeper into the surface
(4) Evaporative cooling into the atmosphere
(5) Diffusion back into the atmosphere
(6) Some radiation of about 40% of the original energy back into the atmosphere
and to not realise that these are each independent processes is, frankly, naive.
Step (2) above does not happen
The rest of this post is contained in my publication …
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/radiated_energy.pdf
Do not reply without reading such.
00
BobC (and Myrrh)
Since writing my last post I have now read Myrrh’s long one, with which I agree.
Let me just throw in this, apart from what is in my paper, which is right on this very topic Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics …
The SLoT applies on a macro scale to any process, and basically says entropy will not decrease unless (external) energy is added.
So, let’s simplify it to cases where nothing else such as phase changes is involved and no external energy is added. Then it becomes the traditional concept that (spontaneous) heat flow is always from a warmer body to a cooler one. Seeing that we could not observe the law in operation unless we were talking on a macro scale (where we can measure temperatures of each “body”) we can leave aside the statistical focus because that is taken care of in the determination of the two temperatures.
What then is a process? Well, for a start it can be a lengthy process, such as the Sun warming a body all morning. Other things being equal, its temperature will increase continually during this longer process. Hence, in a continuous process we can expect the SLoT to apply even in a short (measurable) time slot within the longer process. (Any section of a straight line has the same gradient.)
But I suggest a “process” must be independent of any other process, in the sense that the second process is not constrained by the first. For example, think of a siphon – a hose extracting water from a swimming pool. It only “works” if there is more water falling on the far side (going down a slope below the level of the bottom of the pool) than there is water rising out of the pool. Now I know it’s all to do with pressure differences, but it is an adiabatic process once it has been started with some energy input, such as water under pressure in another hose from a garden tap.
My point is that we cannot separate the upward flow from the downward flow in this siphon because the upward flow operates iff the downward flow is also operating. So the whole up and down flow is a single process, and thus entropy does increase.
But, in the atmosphere, and even between two parallel metal plates, the radiation in each direction cannot be compounded into a single process because that in one direction is not forced to happen by the other. For example, once the radiated energy is converted to thermal energy, then it can go elsewhere by conduction or any process. You could put a large ice block on the other side of a thin plate and conduction would be increased. Likewise, in the Earth’s surface there are several exit modes (conduction, evaporation, radiation etc) and different routes for each to take.
That then is the reason why the process of radiation from a cooler atmosphere to a warmer surface is a separate process which must obey the Law. Hence, by law, no thermal energy can be transferred. This dictates that the radiated energy is not converted to thermal energy and thus, in the circumstances, the absorptivity of the surface for such radiation is zero.
That is where the models go wrong as explained in my paper. Please consider reading it.
00
Doug, I read your paper over a week ago and commented on it. Who isn’t reading whose posts here?
00
Myrrh:
You ask:
It’s pretty elementary. Let’s take a simple example: Imagine two parallel plates of large extent (so we don’t have to consider edge effects), separated by some nominal distance, say 1 meter, both of which approximate ideal blackbodies. (Two sheets of steel painted black will do.) Further imagine that they are in a vacuum and conductively insulated on the back sides so we can ignore heat transfer by everything except radiation towards each other (which is, after all, the part of Statistical Thermodynamics that Doug claims is wrong).
Heat one plate to 200 deg K and the other to 400 deg K. The macro statement of the Second Law says that heat flows from the hot one to the cold one. This is also the conclusion of Statistical Thermodynamics and the Planck description of blackbodies. You want to know how that can be, so follow along:
1) According to the Stefan-Boltzmann Law (derived by integrating Planck’s equation over all photon frequencies), the 200 deg plate will be radiating about 90 Watts/square meter of electromagnetic wave energy.
2) Also according to the S-B law, the 400 deg plate will be radiating 16 times as much energy, about 1440 Watts/square meter.
3) So, according to Statistical Thermodynamics and the properties of blackbodies, the hot plate will be absorbing 90 W/M^2 of energy (and turning it to heat, since that’s what blackbodies do) from the cold plate. At the same time, the hot plate is radiating away 1440 W/M^2 of energy, for a net loss of 1350 W/M^2.
4) In the meantime, the cold plate is absorbing 1440 W/M^2 from the hot plate while it is simultaneously radiating away 90 W/M^2, for a net gain of 1350 W/M^2.
Note that, since the hot plate is losing 1350 W/M^2 and the cold plate is gaining 1350 W/M^2, the NET heat flow (1350 W/M^2) is from the HOT plate to the COLD plate.
Q.E.D.
*********************************************
Now, Doug says this doesn’t happen — his authority is statements by 19th century physicists. (Doug doesn’t explain why these physicists should be considered authorities on theories developed after their deaths.)
What Doug says happens is something completely different — but that has exactly the same effect.
It was this characteristic of Doug’s ‘theory’ that reminded me of what the White Knight said to Alice:
But I was thinking of a plan
To dye one’s whiskers green,
And always use so large a fan
That they could not be seen.
Doug’s theory is not equilivant to Statistical Thermodynamics, however (except for this one case) — it implicitly denies that the absorption and emission of radiation by atoms is a local event, that can be calculated using only local variables. By ‘local’ I mean that, for example, whether an atom absorbs a photon of radiation does not depend on things that are not in the immediate vicinity of the atom, such as the statistical properties of large collections of distant photons or the temperature of distant bodies. Therefore, it denies the correctness of Quantum Mechanical absorption cross-section calculations which ignore non-local phenomena.
Apparently, Doug sees nothing wrong with throwing out a large chunk of well-verified modern physics and replacing it with — nothing. He doesn’t see the need for any empirical evidence either. He’s just right, because he has read Rudolf Clausis’ statements about heat, and has decided that that’s the last word on the subject, despite the fact that Clausis died before any of the modern theories were developed, and the experimental data supports the modern theories, not Doug’s unsupported interpretations.
As I said before: All you have is argumentation. If you can’t come up with crucial experimental evidence, then you have nothing.
00
hot plate will be absorbing 90 W/M^2 of energy (and turning it to heat,
Gong! Your statement above violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
00
Well thanks for that link, Doug. IMO, nothing you have said here (or anyone has said at Spencer’s site) refutes Spencer’s argument that the Greenhouse Effect is real. I encourage any interested parties to check it out.
00
Yes interested parties please do, where you may see that BobC is not quite correct.
By the way, BobC, why don’t microwave ovens melt ice?
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/03/slaying-the-slayers-with-the-alabama-two-step/#comment-41045
00
Myrrh; You’re on the Internet — why don’t you use it for some research, instead of just making things up that you would like to believe?
A Google search on “statistics” brings up the Wikipedia site as the first hit. Scroll down to the “History” section and read that:
Your refusal (or inability) to do basic research goes a long ways toward explaining your eccentric beliefs about thermodynamics.
00
Well, come on BobC.
Let’s see your own research as to why microwave ovens do not melt ice?
Like, why doesn’t the ice absorb LW radiation?
After all, the IPCC said LW radiation from carbon dioxide is melting the world’s ice and going to flood us all out.
I’m still waiting, Bob, and Pete and Roy and anyone?
00
Where the heck did this come from?
…
Just went to the kitchen and melted two smallish (automatic ice maker) “cubes” (really, sort of crescents) in my 700W microwave oven. Took slightly over 70 seconds.
Certainly, I would expect ice to absorb microwaves more slowly than water, given its dielectric constant of ~3 compared to ~80 for water (presumably because the polar water molecules are not as free to move in ice). On the other hand, it does absorb microwave energy and does melt.
****************************
Next exciting installment — my “research” on Whether Pigs Can Fly . (Have to wait until I can get up to the inlaws ranch in Montanna, however.)
00
I’ve not read down yet to see a refutation of your experiment but this is how I think it will go (actually this is not a bad criticism – how would you determine that it was the microwaves doing the melting?)
“no no… the small amount of free water on the ice cubes was heated by the microwaves, this in turn lead to melting of the ice (via direct contact with warmed water or via vapor) and the newly melted water was then heated etc etc until the ice was all melted.”
00
Hi Bob, congrats on your efforts to enlighten Dougy but if you are hopin for any recognition from him that he has seen the light forget it. His head is stuck firmly where the sun don’t shine, a stance adopted by the other 39 members of John O’Sullivan’s (pseudo?-)science publishing company PSI (http://www.gofundme.com/1v39s&aff=GFMse).
I speculate that it Dougy who made that latest £50 donation to John’s appeal for funds. The money is urgently needed in order to further his ambitions to be the CEO of an internationaly recognised publishing company. Unfortunately at his present rate of success (£450 in 14 months) it will take him until 2023 to set it up as a Community Interest Company in the UK or its equivalent elsewhere.
You may be interested in looking at my more detailed comment which is presently in moderation.
Best regards, Pete Ridley
00
Firstly, any slowing of the radiative cooling due to carbon dioxide, methane, etc is absolutely minuscule. The Energy diagrams try to attribute all the backradiation to about 2% of the molecules in the atmosphere. For some strange reason they also assume more goes towards the surface than to space. These 2% of molecules at colder temperatures than the surface, are accused of radiating about as much as the maximum which S-B law permits the surface itself to emit. How can they? Their own Planck curves must limit them to only 2% of what the surface radiates if they were the same temperature, and closer to 1% when they are on average about 40 degrees cooler than the surface.
So the energy diagrams overstate the radiation from WV and trace gases by about 100 fold.
In fact, oxygen and nitrogen can cause radiation by acceleration of electrons in grazing collisions, rather than emission due to quantum energy steps which requires much greater temperatures. So it is apparent that the remaining radiation from the atmosphere comes mostly from oxygen and nitrogen molecules as they collide.
Furthermore, as a result of the limited frequencies in carbon dioxide emission, its effect on rates of radiative cooling is far less than that of a blackbody or a metal plate in the classic experiment with two metal plates radiating towards each other. This is explained more in my paper.
It is doubtful that carbon dioxide would slow the radiative cooling each afternoon and evening by more than, say, a minute. There is ample time at night for that minute to be “made up” with extra cooling by evaporation and sensible heat transfer, which could be faster and/or last longer until the surface gets back to the long term base temperature supported by the “thermal inertia” of sub-surface temperatures, as discussed in Appendix Q.3.
For more detail on how the process works, refer to a page I wrote last September here:
http://climate-change-theory.com/explanation.html
A footnote for PB I did “hunt” for a difference. I had a shielded and unshielded wide necked vacuum flask, and the shielded one cooled more slowly. The unshielded one cooled almost as fast as the air. You seem to be forgetting that the IPCC energy diagrams show more backradiation than they do incident solar radiation. Even allowing for day/night variations in solar insolation, there is very clearly no effect anything like what can be calculated from the energy diagrams if in fact the radiation were absorbed.
But if a microwave oven can’t melt ice, what effect can much weaker backradiation from carbon dioxide have on all the snow and ice covered areas of the globe, just for a start?
_________________________________
Perhaps the most fundamental mistake made by climatologists when they attempt to apply physics is to do what PB does, namely to pull out the equations of Stefan-Boltzmann and Kirchhoff and apply them in circumstances where they just don’t apply, and were never intended to apply.
There is a tendency to assume everything acts like a blackbody and all we have to do is adjust for emissivity and absorptivity, which themselves are assumed always equal (when in fact they are not) and constant, which they also are not for different temperatures of source and target.
For example, we know the surface absorbs SW solar radiation and yet emits LW radiation. Even the timing is not simultaneous, as more absorption takes place in full sunlight. But most importantly, the surface acts nothing like a blackbody just adjusted for emissivity. In fact, the sensible heat transfer (diffusion followed by convection) and evaporative cooling dominate radiation. These processes keep the air temperature which we measure (1.5 to 2 metres above the surface) just a little cooler than the surface, rarely more than 4 C degrees cooler except in unusual weather events. If you then apply S-B equations to determine radiation you should be deducting the “backradiation” in the process of doing so. This is the correct way to apply SBL. You don’t then double count the backradiation as further radiation from the clouds or whatever. It has already been taken into account in determining what is in fact a very small amount of radiation from the surface. In fact, there is more radiation, but it will be counted as radiation from the atmosphere after it is scattered by the first target it hits. So, again, we have to be careful not to double count.
But, as far a cooling the surface itself goes, radiation plays a relatively small part. Calculations show that the radiative loss would only exceed the other losses if the surface were about 100 deg.C. But it seems that the physics formulas for evaporative cooling and diffusion have been overlooked.
So you need to forget concepts like emission = absorption and everything gets radiated according to S-B equations and so on, and think about what’s really happening and whether there is any marginal effect due to extra carbon dioxide, being about 1 molecule in 2,500 other air molecules, trying to slow down the rate of radiative cooling of the whole surface in a David and Goliath battle which David is losing this time.
00
So Doug:
I agree with you that CO2 has a trivial (perhaps even unmeasurable) effect on the Earth’s climate.
What I disagree with you about is your contention that:
1) The only way this is possible is if the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist, and therefore;
2) Statistical Thermodynamics and Quantum Mechanics are wrong.
Not only is there no empirical evidence of this, there is overwhelming evidence that you are wrong. Statistical Thermodynamics and Quantum Mechanics are possibly the most accurate and verified physical theories Humans have yet produced.
I agree with Roy Spencer: The greenhouse effect is real and has some effect on the Earth’s temperature, but any forseeable increase in CO2 in the atmosphere won’t have a significant effect.
In addition, I think that there is sufficient evidence that Humans don’t have a significant effect on atmospheric CO2 concentrations, anyway.
00
.
Microwaves not melting ice provide an example of what I deduce in the paper, namely that there must be another process apart from reflection, transmission and absorption resulting in thermalisation. There is at least some LW radiation entering the ice which is not reflected, not transmitted and not being thermalised. Indeed, I did read papers which referred to scattered radiation observed coming from ice. Whatever you call the process, “resonant scattering” or “pseudo scattering” it does exist and explains why radiation does not always have to be thermalised in a solid. The SLoT is obeyed because this process “selects” when it occurs by the temperature differences between source and target.
In practice, it is just a matter of corresponding frequencies resonating when they find their match. So you can visualise the two Planck curves like picket fences (with the shape of the curves) facing each other. Carbon dioxide only has a few pickets compared with the surface whose pickets are so close there are virtually no gaps. The “fence” for a cooler source will always be fully contained within that for a warmer one – see Section 3. This is the process whereby radiation from one body has an effect on the radiative cooling rate of another body.
The Earth’s surface, as it sheds energy to the atmosphere, uses up some of its radiating capacity handling the resonant scattering in which it is easier and faster to use the energy in the incident radiation (rather than its own supply of thermal energy) for the new radiation which exactly matches that component of the incident radiation which is also under its Planck curve. If the source was cooler, all such incident radiation will have a distribution that is under its own curve. Only if the source were warmer would there be a surplus (between the Planck curves) that does some warming. So heat transfer by radiation can only be from hot to cold (as we knew by SLoT) and this mechanism which is described in more detail in the paper appears to be what happens.
.
00
Doug,
Ice is a very peculiar material. Its resistance to compression is anomolously high, compared to other materials. This stiffness causes the phonon energies (vibrational states) to be rather high, resulting in low thermal conductivity, and probably (although I couldn’t find an explicit experiment) is the reason it does not absorb much in the microwave spectrum — the photon energies of the microwaves do not reach the minimum energy necessary to excite phonons (lattice vibrations), so the absorption is by multiple photon absorption, a very much less efficient process.
Sadly for your theory, the properties of ice are adequately explained by Quantum Mechanics, and there is no need to assume a different physics.
00
I liked my explanation better. Fewer words.
00
.
BobC
Microwaves do not even excite anything in water, let alone ice. If you do the calculations they have far too little energy per photon.
In water they cause 180 degree flipping of water molecules in synchronisation with the wave motion of the radiation. As the molecules flip they create friction with other flipping molecules, and that is what causes generation of thermal energy, not the normal process which happens when solar radiation strikes water – totally different. The microwaves even have to be such that standing waves are created in order to achieve the flipping. But in ice there is no room for the flipping. And such is the case in nature when low energy LW radiation from a cooler source strikes a warmer surface – there is no generation of thermal energy (ie no heat transfer from cold to hot) which the IPCC energy diagrams wrongly imply happens.
.
00
.
So Bob, my whole point is that, just like microwaves, low energy LW radiation from CO2 in a colder atmosphere will not be absorbed and its energy converted to thermal energy in a surface covered in ice or snow which is at a higher temperature than that in the atmosphere from where the emission originated.
The reason has to do with the resonance process which Prof Claes Johnson explained, and which I have referenced (as Ref [3]) in my paper. The conclusions of Johnson are also supported by the SLoT which would not function in nature if his hypothesis weres not correct – for reasons explained in great detail in my paper (Sections 1 to 5.)
.
00
In case anyone has read Pete Ridley’s attempt to rebutt my microwave experiment, I responded …
Firstly, the flipping action (in synch with the wave motion) is illustrated here – see the next two pages also
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/microwaves/water_rotates3.html
Pete has used plastic bowls which probably got warmed a bit themselves. I used special microwave bowls made of special material that does not get warmed at all in a microwave oven.
My whole point was to demonstrate that there was ample energy in the first minute (maybe 90 seconds if volumes are greater) to boil an equivalent volume of water from, say, 5 deg.C, but not melt the ice. I demonstrate that there is ample energy in the water to then melt the ice within the same time frame when I poured the boiling water onto the ice.
So clearly virtually all the energy went into the water and hardly any into the ice, even when they were there together at the same time and for the same length of time. There was ample energy to melt the ice and warm the water quite a few degrees and achieve the end result after mixing. But that did not happen.
Obviously, if you extend the period you will eventually warm the container (especially a normal plastic container such as Pete probably used) and the container will warm and melt the outer layer of the ice, and the water so formed will start to melt the ice. But the ice is melting by conduction from warmed water. If the microwaves were melting it there would be melting throughout the ice cubes, not just at the surface. This is why defrosting mode turns power on and off, in order to allow time for conduction from heated water to melt the ice in frozen food.
Even the fact that many materials do not warm much in microwave ovens shows that the heating is mainly achieved by radiation at just the right frequency to flip the H2O molecules through 180 degrees and heat them by friction between molecules. The molecules in ice are too close to flip, as the above linked website explains. This is not thermal absorption, because the frequencies are too low, just as they are for radiation from a cooler atmosphere which also will not transfer thermal energy to all the ice and snow covered land surfaces.
And this makes an absolute farce of the IPCC claim that the most warming on the whole globe will occur at the North Pole – even up to 6 or 8 degress by 2100, so they say.
So we know the radiation enters water, but there is no quantum excitation involved which brings about conversion of radiated energy to thermal energy in the same way that solar radiation warms water. We have demonstrated that the frequency makes a difference, and the fact that ice and other materials are not warmed, proves that it is as described, with heating being by friction only.
Sorry, Pete, but once again you are not right.
00
D J Cotton @ 228, 230, 231: Re: Water and microwaves.
All you’re noticing is that some materials are transparent to EM radiation at some wavelengths, and absorb or reflect other wavelengths.
This is already obvious to anyone who has a glass window in the wall of their house.
This is adequately explained by Quantum Mechanics and our knowledge of materials. It has absolutely nothing to do with the temperature of the radiation source. It has very little to do with the temperature of the material, unless it undergoes a phase change such as water to ice.
For example, microwave ovens often use EM waves at 2.45 GHz, with at wavelength of 12.2 cm. Heating at this frequency is primarily by the dielectric heating effect, and therefore is proportional to the dielectric constant of the material being heated.
The difference between the absorbence of ice and water at microwave frequencies is a consequence of the difference between their respective dielectric constants of 3 and 80, and has nothing to do with the temperature of the radiation source.
**********
It’s not really possible to decide what the absorbance of ice is at a wavelength of 12 microns (25 THz) [thermal radiation scattered by CO2] based on its absorbance at a wavelength of 12 cm (2.5 GHz) [typical frequency of a microwave oven], as the frequencies are different by a factor of 10,000 and the physical mechanisms responsible for absorption will be totally different.
To get these values, the most reliable way is to measure them. Both water and ice have significant absorption peaks at around 3 microns and 11 microns wavelength. In addition, ice has an absorption peak at about 66 microns wavelength (still 400 times higher frequency than a microwave oven).
A blackbody with a peak radiation wavelength of 11 microns will be at 272 deg K, and one with a peak radiation wavelength of 66 microns will be at 44 deg K. Hence, ice will absorb (and thermalize, since that is what happens to absorbed energy) radiation from both atmospheric CO2 (in the 10-14 micron range) and blackbodies at the extremely low temperature of 45 deg K — significantly colder than liquid nitrogen at 77 deg K.
There is not even a hint of theory or empirical data that suggests that absorbance of EM radiation has anything to do with the temperature of the source. Your theory that is does is completely without theoretical or empirical support and contradicts current physical theory (QM, Statistical Thermodynamics) and many direct measurements (links above).
You appear to have completely swallowed the IPCC’s claims that the greenhouse effect of CO2 would have (if it exists) a significant effect on climate, and therefore you MUST conclude that such greenhouse effect doesn’t exist at all — regardless of what this assumption does to established theory and well-verified measurements. This is not only a losing proposition (all the evidence is against you), but completely unnecessary: As Roy Spencer (and many others) have shown, the IPCC’s conclusions depend on models that have been shown to be unphysical, including assumed strong positive feedback effects that don’t exist in the real world.
The whole “Slayer” movement is barking up the wrong tree, and discrediting themselves scientifically. I don’t really care what they or you do, but I’m not going to pretend it’s real science, and I’m going to do what I can to avoid letting the warmistis use it to discredit skeptics. The way to fight bogus science is not with more bogus science.
10
.
The aim with microwave oven experiments is to prove that there are things which don’t get heated by the LW radiation in microwave ovens. What happens to all those photons? IPCC assumes photons transfer thermal energy to solids and liquids (like the land surfaces and oceans) regardless of the frequency of the radiation. They don’t if they come from colder regions of the atmosphere, which is nearly always the case. Microwave ovens demonstrate that at least some LW radiation doesn’t warm some things.
The black metal plate in my microwave oven does not get warmed by the oven’s LW radiation, whereas the same metal plate does get warmed in front of an electric bar radiator also emitting LW radiation with intensity of the same order of magnitude. The difference is in the frequency.
And this is the whole point of what we are discussing. Radiation with lower peak frequency than that for the emission which the target is emitting, will not transfer thermal energy to such a warmer target.
The computational proof is in Ref [3] of my paper – linked from http://climate-change-theory.com – which is why I don’t need to include computations therein. Furthermore, the quantification of the process I describe has the same mathematics as is well known and well documented for calculating heat transfer between hot and cold bodies, so I also don’t need to repeat those computations in my paper. A simple explanation that the difference in the areas under the Planck curves is obviously the area between those curves is sufficient, knowing that the smaller curve is (at all frequencies) below the larger curve for the warmer body.
As I have said several times, people will not understand my argument until they read and study the whole paper. It would be preferable if commenters would indicate that they have read the paper and then quote Section or FAQ numbers and paragraph numbers to which they are referring.
There are other topics in the Appendix, including the temperature analysis which shows carbon dioxide has had absolutely no effect on climate. Do I assume that, since no one has argued about that point (which I first raised days ago) that you all agree with it? That point alone is sufficient to overturn the AGW conjecture, I suggest, and it is empirical evidence in my paper supporting the theory. So why do some of you keep saying there is no empirical evidence in my paper, or no computations when I have explained why such are not required?
.
00
Indeed the existing empirical evidence (as Joanne documents in the Skeptics Handbook ) is sufficient to overturn the AGW conjecture — so why do you feel the need to make up a fantasy physics that not only has no empirical foundation, but also claims that well-verified physical theories are wrong? Does this not seem rather bizarre to you?
So, the black metal plate absorbs optical frequency EM radiation and reflects microwaves. Not much you can conclude from that, other than it is an observed fact.
That’s definitely not a valid conclusion — if it were, then water at room temperature could not absorb microwaves either and heat up as a result. That ice absorbs Long Wave Infrared (at 11 microns, about where CO2 absorbs and re-emits) is also an observed fact.
Theoretical calculations do not trump observed facts. That is about as logical as a man claiming the road he is standing on doesn’t exist because it isn’t on the map he is looking at.
00
.
BobC and others
Virtually nothing at room temperature converts the low frequency radiation in a microwave oven to thermal energy by absorption which causes quantum energy changes.
It is not because the objects are transparent. The black metal plate certainly isn’t. Why would ice be transparent and water opaque?
The process involves friction as explained on this page and the next two ..
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/microwaves/water_rotates3.html
Why should low frequency radiation from the cold atmosphere be all that different when it strikes a warmer surface?
What empirical ground do the IPCC have for their implicit assumption that all photons will warm the land and ocean surfaces?
.
00
So, who cares if it causes ‘quantum energy changes’, as long as it causes the material to heat up? Aren’t we talking about EM radiation heating stuff up?
This is the mechanism by which water ABSORBS and THERMALIZES microwave radiation. It’s called dielectric heating.
Because the H2O molecule in ice is not free to rotate as it is in liquid water, so can’t respond to the low frequency electric fields the same way. The dielectric constant of a material is a measure of its ability to respond to DC or low frequency electric fields, and hence is also a measure of how well it can be heated by alternating fields. The difference in mobility of H2O in water vs ice is reflected in both their dielectric constants (water, 80: ice, 3) and the degree to which they absorb microwave radiation.
Well, maybe because the difference between the frequency of LW IR (from the cold atmosphere) and microwave radiation (from a klystron) is a factor of 10,000. The response of a material to radiation in one of these disparate bands is not a predictor of its response to radiation in the other band. Actual measurements have determined that ice does absorb radiation at wavelengths near 11 microns, which is similar to what would be emitted by the atmosphere.
00
.
Why carbon dioxide does not affect climate
Firstly, let me clear up a common misconception about microwave ovens heating things with “cooler” radiation. When microwave ovens heat water there is no quantum energy excitation as is involved when a cooler object is warmed by a hotter source of radiation. All I am wishing to demonstrate is that this natural thermalisation process does not occur in nature when the spontaneous (natural) radiation comes from a cooler source. So I am dismissing microwave ovens as being any contra-proof because a totally different process is involved. The very fact that they do not warm most composite solids does in fact support the hypothesis. At the same time, it provides contra evidence against the IPCC assumption that all photons warm any solid or liquid regardless of relative temperatures.
But let’s now keep the discussion to what’s relevant in natural processes between the atmosphere and the surface. We are not going to see spontaneous emission of such low energy (“cool”) radiation (equivalent to < 1K) having any noticeable effect on the surface. Microwave ovens work because they deliver (artificially) far higher intensities of such radiation than would occur naturally.
I am very well aware of what the "post normal" science claims about a greenhouse effect, having studied their propaganda extensively. Absorbing of such radiation does not make a greenhouse effect. Those that absorb are the very ones emitting radiation which will cool the atmosphere as it takes all its energy to space, even if it is scattered off the surface of the Earth first.
Water vapour and carbon dioxide also absorb direct incident Solar radiation for which the photons have about five times the energy of those leaving the surface. When at least half of these incident photons are sent back to space I suggest we see a clear-cut cooling process. Indeed, all the absorbing and reflecting of solar insolation prevents nearly 30% of the Sun's "heat" reaching the surface in daylight hours.
Now, narrowing it down to carbon dioxide and perhaps methane, these gases have very little effect on the warmer surface. Their radiation does not actually transfer additional thermal energy to the surface. All it can do is slow down radiative cooling, which is just one component of the cooling of the surface. The radiation itself is not slowed, just the cooling because some of the energy needed comes from the incident radiation, not the energy in the surface.
So, the surface "looks" out the atmospheric window and sees space (at 2.7 K) to which it can radiate full blast. It also sees a few spectral lines of radiation from about 1% of the atmosphere which is water vapour. And it sees even fewer spectral lines from even fewer carbon dioxide and methane molecules. This radiation from the atmosphere comes with a variety of effective temperatures, so the warmer radiation is more effective than the cooler.
However, the subsurface is (at say 200 metres deep) at a very constant temperature that is unlikely to change significantly within a thousand year cycle. Even if it does, there is indication that it would do so in a 1000 year cyclic pattern, there being also longer and shorter natural cycles. This sub-surface temperature controls and stabilises climate, basically because of the massive "thermal inertia" of all the energy beneath the outer crust. The stabilisation process causes other heat loss processes to compensate for any slower radiation, if the latter were even significant.
Finally, a closer look at the temperature records does in fact display evidence of a 60 year cycle superimposed on the 1000 year cycle. The effect of the 60 year cycle can be removed in order to study the underlying 1000 year cycle. It is then seen (Appendix Q.1) that the rate of increase has been reducing over the last 100 years or so from about 0.06 C degrees / decade to about 0.05 C degrees / decade. This is to be expected because we can extrapolate the 1000 year cycle to a maximum in about 50 to 200 years' time at the most. Absolutely all climate change can be attributed to these natural cycles and there is no effect whatever that relates to anthropogenic causes.
For more detail on all this, please see my paper which is now linked from my site
http://climate-change-theory.com
.
00
You’re simply wrong about this. The potential energy of a dipole in a field is quantized and can only be changed by the absorption or emission of discrete quanta of energy. The internal energy states of atoms and molecules are characterized by much larger quanta (because of the higher strength fields involved), but the principles are exactly the same.
This is, in fact, a common calculation done in first year Quantum Mechanics, and is the principle behind Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The basic mechanism behind MRI is easily demonstrated in a undergraduate laboratory, where the protons in hydrogen nuclii, which have a permanant magnetic dipole moment, will exhibit a distinct absorption line in radio frequencies (typically in the 10 – 20 meter wavelength band, for common laboratory magnets) depending on the strength of the magnetic field they are placed in. This result can only be explained using QM and considering the quantized energy levels of a dipole in an external field — you cannot predict the discrete absorption line with classical theory.
So, although the absoption of microwaves by water is commonly described as if it were a continuous process (which is fairly accurate, since the quanta involved are very small), it is demonstratably a quantum process and is not conceptually different than the “quantum processes” you assign to absorption of higher energy quanta.
00
BobC
Actual measurements have determined that ice does absorb radiation at wavelengths near 11 microns, which is similar to what would be emitted by the atmosphere.
Freezing point (0 deg.C) corresponds to 10.6087 microns, and 11 microns is about -9.7 deg.C
So what is surprising? Plenty of ice would be colder than
-9.7 deg.C in polar regions. And the atmosphere above it would usually be colder still.
00
Well, that is an answer to your question of why the IPCC would assume that radiation from CO2 in the atmosphere could warm ice.
In addition, measurements also show that ice has an absorption band at around 66 microns, which corresponds to the peak radiation from a blackbody at 45 deg K (-228 deg C), which contradicts your hypothesis, since no ice in the Arctic will be that cold — nor was the ice used in the experimental measurement that cold.
00
.
Jeff Condon attempted to rebut my paper, then deleted my response of which I have kept a screen capture. This is typical of the suppression which is common among those battling to support the AGW conjecture.
Author’s response
There is absolutely no need to present equations …
(a) because the document Reference [3] approaches the topic of one-way heat transfer with ample computations
(b) because I have clearly explained in words the very obvious fact that the area between the two Planck curves is the difference in the areas under the curves, because Wien’s Displacement Law confirms that the curve for the cooler body is fully contained within that for the warmer body. This is supported with a graphic and link regarding WDL.
Hence I am obviously saying that the standard equations for radiation between two plates (and similar) still apply. Thus the standard equations for heat transfer also apply. I state that such equations give the correct result in Section 4 which is about quantification in such instances. There is absolutely no need to reiterate standard equation of physics here, but I do never-the-less provide a link (Ref [4]) to an article containing such computations involving the difference of the two Stefan-Boltzmann calculations for the two temperatures involved. This is ample coverage of all the computations that are relevant.
The statement “Thus radiation from a cooler atmosphere cannot transfer thermal energy to a warmer surface” is doing nothing more nor less than applying the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Any contrary statement, or implied error, is in fact, in itself, contradicting standard physics.
Engineering applications neither prove nor disprove either hypothesis (one way or two way heat transfer) for the very reason that the mathematical computations give the same result for each hypothesis. (I remind you, the area between the curves = the difference in the areas under the curves.) So, yes, science has already “empirically verified” what is in my hypothesis, just as much as it has in the conjecture made by the early physicists over a hundred years ago, that there “must” be a two-way heat transfer. This was their best guess at the time, perhaps because they had no concept of the resonating and scattering process proven computationally by Claes Johnson, a professor of applied mathematics which is a discipline closely related to physics.
In no way have I undermined “the foundation of literally millions of functioning devices” because I have not come up with anything different in terms of computational results relating to heat transfer, either in quantity or direction.
“How often a photon is absorbed by a solar cell is very well quantified and is based on the material in question”
Well, yes it may be “very well quantified” but, because there has been a philosophy that absorption is a fixed proportion, regardless of the temperature of either source or target, all measurements have been carried out with incident solar radiation or some other light source equivalent to a warmer source of spontaneous radiation. Once again, a reference [10] is provided which explains the methodology. Furthermore, my reading on this particular issue has subsequently confirmed that absorptivity does in fact vary even by a full order of magnitude at different temperatures. More experiments are planned which are expected to confirm these facts.
It would seem that the reviewer has read little more than half the paper, as no comment is made on the content of the Appendix.
If he finds no counter argument to items such as Q.1, Q.2, Q.3 and Q.7 then he would appear to be accepting the conclusions of the body of the paper, regardless of his criticism thereof. For example, in Q.1, I demonstrate that there is no evidence of any anthropogenic effect showing in the temperature records. In Q.3 I discuss the stabilising effect of the “thermal inertia” in the massive quantity of sub-surface thermal energy, right down to the Earth’s core. The conclusion is spelled out at the end of Q.7 namely “This leaves nothing but the resonant scattering hypothesis to explain reality and such a hypothesis negates a key assumption which is fundamental for there to be any validity in the Anthropogenic Global Warming conjecture”
The reviewer has criticised me for not quoting what are standard equations anyway, but he has not addressed nearly half the paper, nor quoted even one sentence therein which he has been able to specifically refute using standard physics.
His hand-waving comments bear no substance, display complete misunderstanding and are lacking in any supportive evidence, either documented as theory, or as empirical evidence, that is contrary to any statement in the paper.
.
00
Here’s the problem Doug: If the above statement is true, then your hypothesis is no different than the classical hypothesis (except for requiring a number of ad hoc assumptions), and can not derive any different outcome in any circumstances, so you will have to look for some other way to disagee with the IPCC’s conclusions — what you wrote in post #238 is a good start.
The problem is, you use the above statement when asked, for example, to describe a crucial experiment differentiating the two hypotheses, but revert to assuming differences whenever it is convenient, such as:
So, which is it Doug? Either your hypothesis gives exactly the same results as the standard theory, in which case it also predicts the exact same things — or it gives diferent results, in which case you should be able to identify a crucial experiment.
00
See #239 below
00
Here’s a lovely fairy tale about the greenhouse conjecture … but oh so typical
http://www.global-warming-geo-engineering.org/global-warming-science-1.html
This is the epitome of inaccurate descriptions and incorrect “facts” often quoted by climatologists. Compare what is said there about incident solar radiation with the graphic in my paper. There is an implication that “most” is in the visible, whereas about half is not. Then it is assumed that 99% gets through to the surface, whereas nearly 30% is either reflected or absorbed by the atmosphere. This “inconvenient fact” means that there is in fact a cooling effect, especially for water vapour, but even for carbon dioxide as well. This is discussed in Section 6.where the above mentioned graphic shows far more than only 1% absorption of incident solar radiation.
In his list of heat transfer processes there is no mention of evaporative cooling. But he dismisses everything except radiation when subsequently talking about the “Earth.” He is obviously, at that point, talking about the full Earth-plus-atmosphere system, but then he starts talking about the Earth being “pretty cool” at about 300K – which could only relate to the surface. So, by this process, he has got any thoughts out of the reader’s mind regarding evaporative cooling and sensible heat transfer between the surface and atmosphere. And at no point does he explain how the atmosphere (which may now be,, say, -29 deg.C instead of -30 deg.C at some middle level) is going to warm the surface and/or the air at about 1.5 to 2 metres above the surface where the temperature is recorded in the climate records.
He then mixes his terminology, saying that “the cooler a body is the lower its wavelength.” Well, actually its wavelength gets longer and its wave number gets lower. Which does he mean when he says the wavelength gets lower? He hasn’t quite caught up with the talk about backradiation, so his explanation appears to rest on claiming that the carbon dioxide molecules get warmer. But if they do, there’s not much energy left for all the backradiation. And if they do get warmer, what’s to stop them re-radiating and getting cooler again. After all, if the backradiation is similar to the upward radiation, there there’s no energy at all for any warming in the atmosphere.
Was this explanation intended just to bluff young kids?
00
Spot on, Doug,
There is enough junk science in AGW to sink it several times over. They have gotten many things wrong, including denial of Solar effects and claiming absolute knowledge of feedbacks and climate drivers.
Not to mention, the near total absence of predictive skill of their models.
00
.
A better explanation regarding microwave ovens and lasers
Until you study the paper, right through to Appendix Q.7 (which answers the issue of “what’s the difference” between one-way and two-way heat transfer) you won’t really understand how it works and why I have deduced that it can’t happen any other way.
The Second Law specifically states that it applies to an adiabatic process. So …
(1) there must be no energy added – which rules out microwave ovens, lasers, radar, radio etc.
(2) there must be only one process – this has to be an independent process.
I explain how (spontaneous) radiation which matches radiation from the other body will resonate (as Claes Johnson explains) and not transfer any thermal energy to the other body, but appear to be scattered as new radiation takes its place and uses up equivalent radiating capacity, but not any energy from the target – only energy from the incident radiation.
Now, this matched two-way radiation is that which corresponds to the area under the Planck curve for the cooler body. This is the same as the S-B calculation for the cool one, because the S-B equation is merely the integral of the Planck function – ie the area under the Planck curve.
Now if one body gets warmer the extra radiation (corresponding to the area between the Planck curves) does all the warming as it, and only it, is absorbed in the cooler body. Remember that the Planck curve for the cooler body is always fully contained by that for the warmer body, so there will always be resonating capacity in the warmer body for all the radiation from the cooler body.
In artificially created radiation in a microwave oven or laser, the intensity is greatly increased well above natural levels. Hence, we no longer have a Planck shaped curve at all. The peak frequency of such radiation may well be that of a cooler body, but the distribution of its radiation would now be a narrow curve rising well above the height of the peak of the warmer body. So there is a surplus which the warmer body cannot resonate with, just as if the source had been much warmer than itself. Hence it is not at all surprising that artificially generated radiation can heat water and cut steel with a laser. Such situations do not violate the Second Law (or my hypothesis) because both the Law and the hypothesis were only ever intended to apply for (natural) adiabatic processes.
I’m sorry that I didn’t explain it perhaps quite as clearly as this before. However, the concept is set out in the paper and this seems a fairly straight forward extension of the idea. I do discuss lasers and microwave ovens in the Appendix, but may expand a bit there (as a result of this discussion) if I ever do a revision of the paper. So please let me know if you consider the above to be a better explanation that hopeful you can all understand now.
.
00
I didn’t realise (but should have guessed) that dear old Dougy Cotton was spamming his “Slayer”-supporting nonsense over here as well as everywhere else that he can. I wrote a response to his recent comment over at Joanna’s “Congo … ” thread (http://joannenova.com.au/2012/03/a-gongo-idea-a-government-funded-job-destruction-program/#comment-1026932) and the moderator suggested that I post it here.
Dougy continues his ranting all over the blogosphere. His “ ,, Of course you’ll find Ridley everywhere in his relentless attempts to support the AGW hoax in which he must have a personal vested interest, I suspect. .. ” is typical. If he bothered to look beyond his nose-end he’d find that I’ve been blogging against the UN’s IPCC Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change (CACC) propaganda since 2007. Dougy persists in making declarations that have no basis in fact and expects everyone to accept his word as though he has a direct link to the source of all truth. He does say (but in a different context) “ .. I know there will be many reading this site who have doubts about the truth of all this .. “ (http://www.savedbythelamb.com/ – yes, that’s another of dear Dougy’s many blogs promoting his varied– mostly business – interests. See http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-172459 Para. 3 for details).
Dougy is very proud to have had his blog article “Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics “ accepted by that pseudo-science publishing company formed by John O’Sullivan’s “Slayers” and given the pretentious name Principia Scientific International. Dougy insists on referring to his blog article as a paper and claiming that it has been peer-reviewed, trying to give the impression that it has been properly reviewed by those who are competent in the relevant physics when in fact it has only been reviewed by “Slayers” or and by mathematician Professor Claes Johnson.
It should not be overlooked that Doug Cotton is no more a physicist than I am, despite his claims to the contrary, which is why he would not be able to get his article published in any “learned society” journal of merit.
Dougy has been spamming on several blogs about putting ice cubes in microwave ovens and finding that they didn’t melt. He described his demonstration (it is not really worthy of being referred to as an “experiment, any more than his blog article is worthy of being referred to as a peer-reviewed paper) as follows “ .. Empty a tray of small ice cubes from your frig into a microwave container which does not get warm itself in a microwave oven. Refill the ice tray and empty the equivalent amount of water into another such microwave container. Put both in the microwave oven for about a minute. The water will boil but none of the ice will melt. Then (outside the oven) pour the boiling water onto the ice and it will melt in less than a minute, demonstrating the above explanation that the heat comes from friction in the water (where molecules are free to move) rather than absorption which would have melted the ice .. ” (http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/doug-cotton-radiated-energy-and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/#comment-21110).
In response to my comment on that thread (http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/doug-cotton-radiated-energy-and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/#comment-21284) Dougy spammed his response on March 28 at 5:26 AM at Dr, Roy Spencer’s “Slaying the Slayers ,, “” thread (http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/03/slaying-the-slayers-with-the-alabama-two-step/#comment-41441).
He explained “ .. . My whole point was to demonstrate that there was ample energy in the first minute (maybe 90 seconds if volumes are greater) to boil an equivalent volume of water from, say, 5 deg.C, but not melt the ice. I demonstrate that there is ample energy in the water to then melt the ice within the same time frame when I poured the boiling water onto the ice. So clearly virtually all the energy went into the water and hardly any into the ice, even when they were there together at the same time and for the same length of time. .. ” (http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/doug-cotton-radiated-energy-and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/#comment-21110).
I say “flipping nonsense Dougy. Your demonstration is flawed” (just as was CACC campaigner Professor Iain Stewart’s “Climate Wars” demo (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-133756 Para. 9). It did not demonstrate what he claimed. What he demonstrated was that, depending upon how cold his ice and water were at the start of heating, after “about a minute” his ice had absorbed sufficient energy to not only bring it up to near melting point but had actually melted some of the ice inside. (try heating the ice again and smashing it to pieces with a hammer – he’d get plenty water then, just as I did). Since a significant amount of the ice was already melted (absorbing all of that latent heat of fusion – 40 times that required to raise its – and water’s – temperature through 1C) there was sufficient energy in the boiling water to melt the remaining ice.
No need for the “flipping molecule” magic that Dougy has hypothesised.
Dougy speculated (again from a position of total ignorane) that:
– “ .. Pete has used plastic bowls which probably got warmed a bit themselves .. ” – no, the temperature of my dry bowl in the microwave for 5 minutes heats hardly at all (although the oven plate beneath was darned hot) and the heat in it made little impact upon a fresh block of ice straight from the freezer.
– “ .. Pete may have left some water in his the second time .. ” – again no, I used not the same but an identical bowl, bone-dry from the cupboard. Of course the heat from my hand may have had a small but insignificant impact on the result, just like the addition of CO2 to the atmosphere through our use of fossil fuels etc. has on the different global climates.
(I notice that Dougy took his ice cubes from his “frig” and it would be interesting to know what his “frig” temperature is, but I doubt if he bothered to check that as part of his demonstration. As all scientists should be aware, all such details are the essence of a properly conducted experiment.)
He also declared “ .. defrosting mode turns power on and off, in order to allow time for conduction from heated water to melt the ice in frozen food .. ” – wrong again, it’s to prevent the water from boiling and possible causing the defrosting food from exploding due to steam pressure.
Of course, I am no more a physicist than Dougy is so, like he, I could be totally wrong about all of this stuff to do with latent heats and thingies like that. Unlike Dougy, I am eager to learn from those who have more knowledgeable than he or I have, so please enlighten me.
Regarding the “Slayers”, Dr. Roy Spencer said “ .. The anti-greenhouse crowd’s bible seems to be the book, Slaying the Sky Dragon – Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory .. ” (http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/03/slaying-the-slayers-with-the-alabama-two-step/) . I disagree about that being a “bible” or a “book”. It is simply a hodge-podge collection of previously published blog articles plus a Chapter (21) by lead-Slayer John O’Sullivan outlining his original ludicrous plan to use PSI to take legal action against powerful government agencies like NOAA. I also disagree about there being a “crowd”. In Jan 2011 John was claiming “ .. a group of 36 respected international scientists and related professionals .. ” (http://www.gofundme.com/1v39s&aff=GFMse). 14 months on he has raised £450 of his targeted £15,000 (including that first £350 donation from a family member) and a few days ago Doug is now claiming that PSI membership had reached the staggering figure of 40 (http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/03/global-warming-as-cargo-cult-science/#comment-39184). “Crowd” – no! “insignificant gaggle” – yes!
As for the “Slayers” and their publishing company PSI, well, that’s a fascinating tale dating back to 2003 when John O’Sullivan’s 20-year teaching career came to an abrupt end. I still have a fair bit of research to do in order to fill in all of the details before I am ready to publish my own “factional” novel, filling in the gaps between John’s two novels “Vanilla Girl” and “Summit Shock” (http://www.myspace.com/mrdarrk/blog , http://cupboard55summitshock.blogspot.co.uk/2008/03/and-what-is-cupboard-55_31.html and http://www.blogcatalog.com/blogs/summit-shock-american-court-corruption).
Trust me, it’s fascinating. You can get a preview on Professor Judith Curry’s “Letter to the dragon slayers” thread, starting with US investigative journalist Andrew Skolnick’s comment of October 15, 2011 at 3:13 pm (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-122654) – Enjoy.
Best regards, Pete Ridley.
00
And tell us all your great hypothesis about how nature ensures that the Second Law of Thermodynamics works for radiation.
Being such a good physicist, no doubt you will realise that there needs to be a better explanation than the flawed two-way heat transfer one – and after all, you don’t agree with the IPCC who use that – or perhaps you can’t perceive that such would violate the SLoT.
So just what is your theory, Ridley?
As you probably don’t understand mine, loop back to Loop back to http://joannenova.com.au/2012/01/dr-david-evans-the-skeptics-case/#comment-1027396
00
PS Ridley
Until you publish a rebuttal of my paper, perhaps on tallbloke’s talkshop, I’m not really interested in debating off topic subjects with you.
Here’s a link to Jeff Condon’s rebuttal and my response, which you’ll also find on my website. I look forward to responding to your rebuttal in like fashion and ridiculing you also, as I did for Jeff.
Abmittedly my site only gets 500 to 800 hits a day, but you know I like spamming blog sites, now don’t I – especially in response to your official rebuttal, being so superior at physics as you must be.
00
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/doug-cotton-radiated-energy-and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/#comment-21498
00
Dougy, when are you going to get it into your rather solid cranium that you have not published a “paper” you have simply produced a “blog article”. Only when it has been properly peer-reviewed by competent physicists and been accepted for publication in a respected “learned society” journal will it be worthy of the description “paper”. In my opinion the people who you say reviewed your article prior to publication on the blog of the pseudo-science publishing company PSI hardly qualify as competent physicists, the best qualified (Professor Claes Johnson) is a mathematician, not a physicist.
You not only proudly boast about having your article posted on the PSI blog but are again boasting about the number of visitors to (hits on) your web-sites (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-167405). Do you get paid by the hit? Perhaps you are falling too much under the influence of the head-“slayer”, PSI CEO and Legal Consultant, who boasts that “ .. In 2010 John O’Sullivan established himself as the world’s most popular Internet writer on the greenhouse gas theory of climate change (Google) .. ” (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-o-sullivan/19/6b4/84a , http://john-o-sullivan.suite101.com / , http://www.blogger.com/profile/04719257903632828427 , etc. etc. etc.).
It’s very kind of you to suggest that I am “ .. so superior at physics as (I) must be .. ” compared with yourself but as I keep telling you, I’m no more a physicist than you are. Don’t feel so bad about your ignorance, you’re in good company, but you really must try to listen to what those who know what they are talking about tell you. Try to open your mind.
You ask “So just what is your theory, Ridley?” but, like you, I have never offered one. I leave it to competent physicists to do that. That’s a significant difference between us Dougy, I know my limits whereas you live in a fantasy world where you have knowledge denied to others. All that you have done is jump on the back of mathematician Professor Johnson’s hypothesis (perhaps hoping to get a share of his coveted Nobel Prize? – but don’t hold your breath).
Talking of hypotheses, I do have one about the attempts by paleo-climatologists to reconstruct past atmospheric CO2 concentration from air “trapped” in ice for decades, centuries and millennia, but that’s another issue (http://globalpoliticalshenanigans.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/smogbound-on-molecular-fractionation-in.html). I also have one about the motives behind the formation of PSI ((http://www.gofundme.com/1v39s&aff=GFMse)) but I’m still researching that one – I’ll let you and the “Slayers” know when I publish my paper (oops, sorry, blog article). As I said earlier “ .. You can get a preview on Professor Judith Curry’s “Letter to the dragon slayers” thread, starting with US investigative journalist Andrew Skolnick’s comment of October 15, 2011 at 3:13 pm (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-122654) – Enjoy. .. ”.
Best regards, Pete Ridley
00
No, Claes Johnson is a professor of applied mathematics, not pure mathematics as you imply. Applied mathematics is a discipline which is very similar to physics. Do you suppose that, in private study perhaps, such an intelligent person would not have studied further physics?
Then there was Nasif Nahle, professor of physics who also read the paper prior to publication and had no reason to suggest any alteration.
Then on PSI we have two climatologists, several PhD’s, including chemistry and various other disciplines among nearly 40 members. Do you suppose you have better knowledge of atmospheric physics than Pierre Latour (who has rubbished Roy Spencer on his own site) and Dr Matthias Kleespies? People like Hans and Matthias didn’t just “review” my writings, they became actively involved spending many hours writing suggestions and modifications, determined that we should all “get it right” even though this meant delaying it over two or three weeks.
There really is no point in continuing discussion with you if you are not prepared to answer the question I have asked in bold at 3:07pm and show other readers just what your understanding of physics really amounts to, of which I am aware but they are probably not so enlightened.
Being now involved in numerous internal emails from PSI I would like to assure other readers that there is ample knowledge of atmospheric physics among PSI members – far more accurate than that at IPCC & Co.
I can easily recognise your level of physics, having tutored hundreds of students in the last 50 years. The very fact that you don’t even display any personal thoughts on such physics indicates to me that you are as gullible as those who listened to the young Michael Mann (even before he gained his PhD) who misled the world with his hockey stick analysis of daytime only-land-without-ice tree ring data.
Can’t you get it into your head that I am saying that the early physicists (the ones you believe) got it wrong when they assumed heat transfer is two way. The reasons are in the first 5 sections of my document which people can find on any of seven sites, or linked from my own.
00
I mentioned previously about Dougy taking a hammering on Roger Tatterall’s thread and in my last comment about Dougy jumping on the back of Professor Johnson’s hypothesis and. The latest comment there (http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/doug-cotton-radiated-energy-and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/#comment-21651) is worth looking at as it discusses the flaws in Professor Johnson’s simplistic model upon which his hypothesis is based.
Best regars, Pete Ridley
00
.
Ridley
With your demonstrated lack of any private thought whatsoever about atmospheric physics, you wouldn’t have a clue who’s hammering who, because you have shown over and over again that you just don’t have a clue about the real truth of what’s going on in the atmosphere. I have rebutted all criticism on all posts of which I am aware.
You, by your own choice and dogma, are just plain gullible regarding the greatest hoax in human history. Roy Spencer, for example, just got rubbished by members of PSI who have been discussing how to hit him hard for a few days now, and have succeeded.
I make no apology for being so direct now, for the time has come to be so. Your actions, if they have any influence, will contribute to the deaths of many.
Before you say, write or do anything in life, think about what it is that you hope to achieve.
For my part, it is saving lives, improving health and lifestyle among those who suffer, and will continue to suffer in developing nations due to the misdirection of such massive funds which could serve humanity in a far more effective way than achieving zero effect attempting to control climate.
.
00
I forgot to provide the link to my comment about Dougy takng a pounding on Roger Tattersall’s threrad – http://joannenova.com.au/2012/03/a-gongo-idea-a-government-funded-job-destruction-program/#comment-1027700
Pete R
00
I would just make the comment that all I take from Prof Claes Johnson’s Computational Blackbody Radiation is the concept of resonating radiation for that going from cold to hot.
The straight-forward logical argument in Sections 2 to 5 in my paper, I suggest, points to the necessity of there being some such process. Whether it is technically resonating, scattering or even reflection, its effect is such that …
(a) Identical radiation is re-emitted.
(b) the overall radiation from the target, if a (near) blackbody, is still limited by the Planck curve
(c) There is a reduced rate of loss of thermal energy from the target, because the incident radiation must occupy equivalent radiating capacity in the target and supply the energy, thus avoiding the need for the target to use up some of its own stored thermal energy.
Note also that the postulate that the radiation which resonates is equivalent to that under the Planck curve for the cooler body would appear the most elegant and logical. But if you disagree, please suggest any other possibility except two-way heat flow, as the latter most certainly would violate the SLoT.
So, can anyone suggest any other process having these characteristics (a) to (c) above, or (having read what I’ve said in the paper) can you explain how nature ensures that the SLoT is not violated by spontaneous radiation in an adiabatic independent process?
Not only does the mechanism I have postulated (which is different is some aspects from Claes Johnson’s) explain the observed heat transfer, but it also explains how and why the intensity of artificially produced radiation (such as in a microwave oven) can heat water, fat and sugar molecules without violating the SLoT.
00
Note Pierre Latour’s response to Roy Spencer ….
Just an excerpt … he says it was he who …
explained to you and Virginia why back-radiation from cold CO2 is not absorbed by Earth’s surface since it would violate the laws of thermo and constitute a PMM12. I doubt you would endorse such a scheme.
So your assertion: “Infrared absorbing gases reduce the rate at which the Earth loses infrared energy to space.” is proven FALSE.
The above analysis clearly demonstrates that IR absorbing gases do not reduce the Earth’s ability to cool to outer space. No amount of obfuscation or straw-man arguments will be able to get around this fact.
.
00
.
Summary of Key points
My “model” is in the paper. It does not depend critically upon Claes Johnson’s computations which approach it all a little differently by assuming “strongly attenuated” Planck curves and thus considering it sufficient to work with the frequency modes therein. That is the reason br1 is uncomfortable with the calculations, but the end result is the same, namely that heat transfer is always from hot to cold.
If you think about it, there has to be only one-way heat transfer, so nature has to “know” somehow when to reverse the direction when one body that was cooler is then warmed above the other’s temperature.
I don’t care if you call the process resonance, scattering, resonant scattering or (as some are starting to call it) pseudo scattering. Here “pseudo” is not implying that it doesn’t exist – rather it is acknowledging that it is new radiation exactly equivalent in frequency and intensity to the radiation that “matches” in either body, viz that represented by the area under the cooler Planck curve.
The main point about the Second Law which AGW proponents gloss over is the fact that it applies to a (single) process (between two specific objects) and that process is independent. It even applies between the start and end of any short (measurable) time slot within that process. For example, if your coffee is cooling over, say, 10 minutes, then you can look at any intermediate time slot of, say, 30 seconds, and it will still be cooling.
But, on the subject of independence, this is where they go wrong in assuming that two-way heat flow just has a net effect and all is OK if that “net” effect is from hot to cold. However, there are always two independent processes involved here. And this can be seen quite clearly in the real world. For example, if backradiation were to warm an already warmer layer of water just millimetres below the surface, then there is no dependence between that (invalid) heat transfer and any subsequent “opposite” heat flow (usually back to some other location) such as convection to the surface of the water followed by evaporative cooling.
Dependence between two opposite transfers of potential energy can occur in, for example, a siphon. The upward flow of water happens iff there is a greater mass of water falling on the other side of the siphon. So the up and down flows of water are not independent processes, but rather just one process in which entropy does in fact increase. But if you cut the hose at the top, you then have two independent processes, so the water no longer flows in an upward direction. There is an exact analogy with heat flow, and the “hose” is cut with any atmospheric processes. So there can be no heat transfer from a cooler atmosphere to a warmer surface.
The above is an outline of my opening argument in Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. There must then be a process of one way heat transfer which accounts for all such heat transfer from hot to cold. We know the end result can be calculated from radiative flux represented by the area between the Planck curves for the two bodies.
I have suggested (building on Claes resonance concept) that two-way radiated energy, corresponding to the area under the Planck curve for the cooler body, all just resonates (gets scattered) when going each way between the two bodies. But as one body gets warmer (and its Planck curve always includes all the area under that curve for the cooler body) then just the extra radiation represented by the area between the curves transfers from hot to cold, in agreement with well known results.
But we also have to acknowledge that the radiation from the cooler body does slow the radiative component of cooling of the warmer target. This is known physics, but it is not because of two-way heat flow. Instead the radiation from the cooler body supplies energy to the target which takes the place of energy it would otherwise have converted to EM energy from its own supply of thermal energy. It cannot, and does not radiate more than S-B allows, and the scattered radiation is included in that quota. Hence the target cools more slowly, but still radiates just as much as per S-B adjusted for emissivity of course. Note that absorptivity must be a function of temperatures of both source and target, being zero when the source is cooler.
The other processes of heat transfer from surface to atmosphere will compensate for any slowing of the radiative component, so there is no net effect because the total Earth system still radiates the same to space. This statement is further supported in the Appendix Q.3.
.
00
Douglas Jeffrey Cotton’s arrogance is beyond belief. On the thread that Roger Tattersall dedicated to his nonsense (http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/doug-cotton-radiated-energy-and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics) he has had detailed explanations from contributors of the flaws in his understanding (based upon Professor Claes Johnson’s simplistic model), particularly from individuals using the false names Tor and br1. Despite their efforts, on this A p r i l F o o l’s day Doug declares “ .. Every relevant equation in “standard physics” is based on a false assumption .. don’t tell me yet again that I need to read physics textbooks. I have been helping university students learn their physics ever since I majored in it .. I know what the books say, but such is in error because the early scientists were mistaken .. they were obviously wrong .. You cannot argue successfully against this point, but it is not in textbooks yet.
.. So please don’t respond yet again with “standard physics” which is the very thing I am refuting .. ”.
(http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/doug-cotton-radiated-energy-and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/#comment-21719 and #comment-21733 #comment-21734)
Although he has been trying very hard recently to prove otherwise, Doug is not a complete idiot. He does at least now “ .. acknowledge that the radiation from the cooler body does slow the radiative component of cooling of the warmer target .. ”. Hallelujah, he accepts that the “greenhouse effect” is real. Now all that he needs to acknowledge is that with that constant source of energy coming from the Sun there has to be a compensating increase in the temperature of the Earth until balance is restored – ignoring the many other processes that also contribute to the distribution of energy within the global system of atmo/aqua/cryo/litho/bio/spheres.
Finding that he was taking a pounding over his blog article posted on the blog of the virtually unknown science-fiction publisher Principia Scientific International started by John O’Sullivan and his “Slayers” it seems that Doug has had to call up reinforcements – Professor Claes Johnson has come to his aid (http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/doug-cotton-radiated-energy-and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/#comment-21742). Strange that he chose to enter the fray there on A p r i l F o o ls’ Day. Maybe he’s getting worried that Doug will be awarded that Nobel Prize for Physics instead of himself.
It should be interesting following the responses to his comment.
Back in October Professor Johnson declared “ .. I am not a member of any group subject to group thinking,
in particular not the slayers group .. ” (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-122522) but I wonder if he has rejoined the “Slayers” gaggle as a member of PSI.
Best regards,
Pete Ridley
00
.
Show me one “pounding” Ridley that I have not been able to demonstrate to be false.
You say He does at least now “ .. acknowledge that the radiation from the cooler body does slow the radiative component of cooling of the warmer target .. ”
Stop your weak attempts to try to demonstrate that I have changed my understanding or belief regarding well known basic physics. Read the last paragraph of Section 5 which states the very thing you think I’ve just learnt now, rather than 50 years ago.
Then in your naive way you think my acceptance of this well known fact means that I accept that the “greenhouse effect” is real.
It is only you who thinks there is a connection, for the simple reason that you have not understood the key points in the paper. You just sit there gullibly lapping up the garbage dished out by the IPCC with their equally simplistic conjectures that ignore balancing effects of other cooling processes which accelerate. And you have no comprehension of how carbon dioxide and water vapour help keep the surface protected from incident solar IR.
No to you, if radiative cooling is slowed by CO2 by less than 1% the amount it is slowed by water vapour, you think AGW is proved beyond doubt. Keep writing garbage Ridley, and I’ll keep exposing your ignorance. Just don’t read my paper or you might anticipate my response, and that would kill the fun.
Go and read what Prof Claes Johnson just wrote on my tallbloke thread – linked above.
To other readers, once again you have only to compare what I actually wrote in the paper with the totally incorrect assumptions Ridley has just made with his simplistic view of the atmosphere and surface system.
.
00
Now now Dougy, calm down or you’ll blow a gasket. Try taking some of those “snake-oil” remedies that you appear to have such faith in and peddle. It’s no good responding hastily like that – read more carefully and then think about your response, write it down then review it very carefully to ensure that you haven’t missed an important point. Most particularly, look carefully to see if anything in your response makes you look even more ignorant (and arrogant) than the impression you have already given throughout the blogosphere. Don’t forget that once it’s posted it is there forever – no denying that you said it.
I said of you “ .. Now all that he needs to acknowledge is that with that constant source of energy coming from the Sun there has to be a compensating increase in the temperature of the Earth until balance is restored – ignoring the many other processes that also contribute to the distribution of energy within the global system of atmo/aqua/cryo/litho/bio/spheres .. ”.
Now, think carefully about ALL of what is there.
As usual, if anything that I have said here is considered to be unfair or a misrepresentation of the facts then please let me know and I will consider whether or not a retraction or apology is warranted. The last thing that I wish to de is misinterpret the evidence and present a misleading picture.
Best regards, Pete Ridley
00
Hi again Dougy, I see that someone hiding behind the fals name pb has just made virtually the same point as I did about the fact that you “ .. acknowledge that the radiation from the cooler body does slow the radiative component of cooling of the warmer target .. ” (https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/doug-cotton-radiated-energy-and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/#comment-21759).
Just for once try listening to those who disagree with you – you may learn something.
Best regards, Pete Ridley
00
.
.
Just for once read my replies which rubbish PB and yourself, Ridley.
.
You really are an April fool not even waiting for my response to PB which appeared quite promptly showing just how far away from understanding my paper is our friend PB – just like yourslef.
Go read the last paragraph in Section 5.*
The more you misquote and misunderstand me, the more fun I have showing others how ridiculous and impatient you are.
Go have fun while I sleep, as I’m signing off now for night as it’s after 11pm Sunday here in Sydney.
* In fairness, there would be a slight slowing of the rate of cooling when the temperatures approach each other, because of the way in which the area between the Planck curves reduces. But this only applies to radiation, so evaporation and diffusion could easily compensate and it does not mean energy is added to the surface or the atmosphere.
.
.
00
.
Claes Johnson (professor of applied mathematics) writes …
Doug Cotton is the only reader who have articulated that he has read and understood the analysis. It is however not difficult to understand if you only give it a try without negative prejudice.
To only see the shortcomings of a model and none of its virtues is non-constructive negativism.
Those who do so are asked to provide a proof of Plank’s law themselves which they understand. To only repeat some dogma without understanding is parrot science and not real science.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/doug-cotton-radiated-energy-and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/#comment-21742
.
00
Doug, you have claimed:
But you can’t demonstrate anything to be false, since you have demonstrated nothing at all.
All you have done is to argue that your interpretation of thermodynamics and the behavior of blackbodies is right and the standard interpretation is wrong, even though you get the exact same results as the standard interpretation.
Now, your latest (#251) suggestion sounds just like a missionary telling me to “read the Bible with an open mind, and I will find belief”.
To Hell with belief — science is built on demonstration — so demonstrate a laboratory experiment which your hypothesis gets right and standard QM gets wrong. I’ve suggested several potential crucial experiments that aren’t too hard to do. Your complete disinterest in actually testing your hypothesis strongly suggests that you have nothing but hot air.
Now, you’re trying the “Emperor’s New Clothes” tactic: You’re the only one who understands the professor — the rest of us must be dumb. Perhaps we had better pretend to understand too.
It’s not science, Doug. Facts are established by empirical measurements, not arguments. Show us you have faith by at least trying to define a crucial experiment.
I suspect you won’t do this, as it constrains future ad hoc arguments, which would be just another indication that you have nothing.
00
I don’t have to “demonstrate” the Second law of Thermodynamics.
The onus is on the IPCC to demonstrate empirically that there is, as they claim, any effective slowing of the cooling rate of the surface due to carbon dioxide. Their whole argument is nothing but hand waving incomplete conjecture (based on flat Earth models) and they have never ever proved that heat transfers with radiation that goes from cold to hot, or that CO2 slows the overall rate of cooling of the surface.
They haven’t even proved that climate change is due to any anthropogenic effect over and above natural cycles. I have proved in my paper that sea surface temperature records since 1900 do not show any evidence whatsoever, and the rate of warming is slowing.
They know they can’t prove it, so they use “post physics” based on manipulation of publications, pressure on editors of journals and the media and a false bit of half baked “physics” they picked up which several physicists now realise depended on a false assumption that the SLoT could be applied to the “net” effect of two independent processes. All of which is like saying your car will roll up a hill if there’s a bigger downhill run on the other side.
It’s all a hoax, Bob and others. You cannot prove otherwise. I will take on any climatologists – even several at once against me, in any public debate on TV or radio anywhere in Australia at least, to start with. Any media just contact me – no fee involved – even though it will be a top rating debate.
So I ask one final question yet again: what is your theory about the mechanism by which nature ensures that the Second Law of Thermodynamics applies fro radiative heat transfer?
Now, I’m on tallbloke’s talkshop only now – it’s linked two posts back.
00
You’re claiming that the Second Law is significantly different from what has been the normal interpretation for the last 100 years (that the Second Law is a statistical law that applies to large ensembles of atoms, but is not a constraint on individual quantum events).
Your interpretation doesn’t just affect the derivation of the greenhouse effect (although, bizarrely, it doesn’t really affect that, since you claim your interpretation gets the same results as the standard) — it also implies that the standard method of calculating interactions between atoms and EM waves (in Quantum Mechanics) is completely wrong, since the standard method takes no account of the temperature of the source of the EM waves or the temperature of the absorber. This has measurable consequences in properly designed laboratory experiments. I suggested one such here.
Nope: Nobody can make you test your hypothesis (nobody is interested in your ‘demonstrating’ the Second Law) — but your refusal to do so strongly implies that you know your theory is nothing but B.S. and snake oil.
*******************************************
First: It’s not my theory — it’s standard Statistical Thermodynamics and Quantum Mechanics.
Second: I explained it to Myrrh here.
You keep pretending that there are measurable phenomena that standard Statistical Thermodynamics gets wrong, but you can’t identify any.
I’m sure the commentors there are adequately qualified to debunk your specious claims. I’ll leave them to it — I’ve had enough.
00
Yes, moderators, you have indeed put up with the numerous posts by Ridley which are in many cases rude “Dougy” and off topic – such as reference to “snake oil” http://joannenova.com.au/2012/01/dr-david-evans-the-skeptics-case/#comment-1028269
They are also without substance, carefully selecting other posts on other sites which I hadn’t had a chance to respond to, and referring to “pounding” etc, even though his own understanding of physics leaves something to be desired.
All I said was that tallbloke’s talkshop is better modified. Your site is about average IMHO, with room for improvement I suggest – just constructive criticism, not “slamming”. Ridley’s posts are rarely approved by Roger.
BTW, my paper (published on seven sites now) is far from being “one note” – perhaps you missed the Appendix. Roger has had several thousand views on the dedicated thread in which he published the paper. You can’t prove anything wrong in the paper – no one has.
00
The intensity of the radiation from carbon dioxide cannot at any point exceed the limit of the Planck function. The gaseous atmosphere cannot radiate as much as the solid surface, and carbon dioxide cannot radiate more than 1/2500 of what the atmosphere could radiate. The radiation from all oxygen and nitrogen molecules (due to acceleration of electrons during collisions) must make up the rest of the observed and necessary atmospheric radiation, because water vapour, CO2 and its colleagues have to be limited by their Planck curve.
Then, because of the limited frequencies within carbon dioxide’s Planck distribution at atmospheric temperatures, the effect of all carbon dioxide on the radiative rate of cooling of the surface is absolutely minuscule – far less than 1% of the effect of all water vapour.
Then, as explained in my paper, (supported by empirical proof and further explanation in Appendix Q.1 and Q.3) there is absolutely no overall net effect on the rate of cooling of the surface because other cooling processes compensate for any slowing of radiative cooling.
The rate of cooling of the Earth’s surface is not affected in any way whatsoever by carbon dioxide. The sensitivity of climate to carbon dioxide levels is not positive, but could be negative due to backradiation of solar radiation to space.
Before you write again on this thread, all further discussion will be on the tallbloke’s thread which is dedicated to my paper.
00
Note:
There is some confusion (as usual) in the mind of Peter Ridley that the Planck function is its own integral. The Planck function (for radiative intensity) is usually plotted against either wavelength or frequency for any given temperature You will see examples in the first graphic in my paper. Without reading the paper you probably won’t understand my reasoning in the above post. Ridley wouldn’t understand it even if he did.
Future discussion is best continued by picking up at Prof Claes Johnson’s comments on my thread http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/doug-cotton-radiated-energy-and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/#comment-21742
00
This is where climatologists go wrong …
When hot and cold bodies are radiating towards each other it’s not the numbers of “photons” going each way that does the trick ensuring that the “net” effect does not violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Rather, it all has to do with the intensities of the radiation at various frequencies as per the Planck distributions for the hot and cold bodies radiating towards each other and, most importantly, which frequencies resonate. See Sections 1 to 5 of my paper. http://principia-scientific.org/publications/psi_radiated_energy.pdf
Photons don’t cancel each other out in mid air. The early physicists could only explain it all by assuming their EM energy was first converted to thermal energy in each body. This seemed OK energy wise, because thermal energy can indeed be compounded. So more seems to leave the hot body than it receives, and more is received by the cool one than it emits.
But, the processes each way are independent. In the surface/atmosphere case, more than half the energy from the surface transfers to the atmosphere by evaporative cooling and sensible heat transfer, so where are the photons for that energy?
Because the processes are thus clearly independent, the cold to hot process would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Hence, the assumption of two-way heat transfer is wrong, the early physicists were wrong and we need another explanation.
It is just such an explanation which Prof Claes Johnson and I have been talking about in our papers.
00
Doug, you’re mixing up metaphysics and physics.
The laws of thermodynamics are based on observations and apply only to observables.
Within this framework, the two-way transfer of radiatative energy between blackbodies of different temperatures (which is mandated by Planck’s Law) does not violate the Second Law of thermodynamics — i.e., heat is observed to transfer from the hot body to the colder one (as I explained to Myrrh here).
Thus, there is no violation of the Second Law which applies to observables.
Your (and Johnson’s) reasoning is based on an imaginary Second Law of Thermodynamics (apparently handed down by God) which MUST apply to every interaction in the Universe without exception — a domain unobtainable by any Human-constructed law based on observables without an extreme leap of faith.
Hence, you are attempting to promote Thermodynamics to a religion from a theory of observable phenomena — for which it is currently perfectly adequate.
Your new “religion of Thermodynamics” has no relevance to anything in the real world which can be measured.
If you disagree with this (do fish swim in the sea?), then give me ONE experiment in which there is an OBSERVABLE difference between statistical thermodynamics and your theory. You have even admited that there is no observable difference between them — showing that your claims that your hypothesis disproves the greenhouse theory are false.
00
I’m sorry, BobC, but you are mistaken.
I have given examples in my paper (and here) where the individual transfers are clearly independent and shoul be observable. Consider backradiation warming a layer of water 1mm below the surface, for example. Make the water colder than the atmosphere and you observe it warming. But not if it’s warmer. Shield something from backradiation at night and it’s no different from an unshielded object.
When the Sun is already warming the surface at 11am some sunny morning, net radiation is into the surface. Does backradiation warm it more by actually transferring thermal energy to the surface?
No.
You are quoting “post physics” BobC, which is clearly pseudo physics and incorrect. The Second Law is quite plainly stated. It does not allow cold to hot with some foreknowledge that more heat will return to the atmosphere. That doesn’t happen on a warm sunny morning, for example. You cannot stretch the laws to suit yourself.
You are mistaken, BobC, and I cannot stress that enough.
Take your calculations with you, Bob – they do not represent the processes that are really happening in the real world. Plenty of physicists are now backing me up, including near 40 member scientists at Principia Scientific International. Go tell them they are all wrong.
One of these days, study my paper.
00
You want another example, BobC?
A microwave oven can warm items with water molecules in them, including liquid water. This does not violate the SLoT simply because energy is added using electricity. But it can only melt ice by conduction from adjacent water molecules that it has already warmed, not by direct action on the ice.
But the process is nothing remotely like the normal natural absorption of sunlight which also warms water and melts ice.
Not all photons striking water or ice molecules automatically convert EM energy to thermal energy as happens with solar radiation. If they did, as you imply they do because you assume there is two-way heat flow which results in an apparent net one way flow, then why does far less energy flow into ice in a microwave oven than into water?
00
That’s not an example of a crucial experiment, Doug, since it is easily explained by standard Statistical Thermodynamics, QM and the known properties of the materials.
Still waiting for a crucial experiment — one which you get right and QM gets wrong. Not holding my breath.
00
The IPCC implies with their energy diagrams that the electromagnetic energy in radiation from a cooler atmosphere is all converted to thermal energy in a warmer surface, contrary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics because it would be an independent process. There is certainly no contrary statement, or any footnote for the energy diagrams.
The IPCC does not specifically state that only the solar radiation transfers thermal energy to the surface, whilst the backradiation does not do so, but only slows the radiative component of cooling for that component of the radiation from the surface which does not get through the atmospheric window. Yet this in fact is all that can happen.
The above is the kind of explanation that should have been what was in their most comprehensive explanation of their GH conjecture, for the benefit of scientists.
Even then, they should further have discussed what compensating effects there might be in the rates of evaporation and sensible heat transfer, both of which would obviously increase if radiation did less for its share of the cooling. It is well known that these processes accelerate if the temperature gap widens, as it would if radiative cooling slowed. None of this is in any IPCC explanation, now is it?
00
BobC
For more detail and discussion of how and when statistical methods are applicable, see my three posts starting with this post.
00
So…I looked at the posts. What’s the takeaway here? That everyone who knows 2 cents about physics kicks your a** in a logical exchange?
You’re delusional, Doug. You want to convince us that Thermodynamics and Quantum Mechanics are wrong, but you can’t find a single experiment where they are measured to be wrong. Making the same unsupported claims over and over does not establish facts about the world.
00
Since he featured my PSI publication, Tallbloke (Roger) has just published another of the six publications on the Principia Scientific International site.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/joseph-postma/
Compare: http://principia-scientific.org/publications/Copernicus_Meets_the_Greenhouse_Effect.pdf
By the way, PSI members (nearly 40 of us now) far outnumber the original eight authors who have been called the “Slayers” after the title of their book.
PSI is a rapidly growing group of scientists and others with appropriate knowledge who have banned together to expose the AGW hoax.
00
A final note …
Tallbloke’s comment on the ‘Slayers’ …
This is what Roger has just written yesterday …
In the rush to condemn all things associated with ‘the Dragonslayers‘ some babies may have been thrown out with the bathwater. A lot of non-scientific baggage comes along with some of their members, and this has coloured people’s perceptions. However, because this is a site which sticks to discussing the science, and ‘censors’ off topic and inflammatory comment, we can dispassionately examine the scientific content without having discussion degenerate into a ruckus of noisy invective and insult. Last year on Judith Curry’s site ‘Climate Etc‘, this fate befell Joseph Postma’s paper on the greenhouse effect. It was a technical paper, and argument over its more controversial aspects and ‘slayer politics’ submerged its central point, as I noted at the time. Ulric Lyons has drawn my attention to a less technical paper by Joseph reiterating this central point which I think merit’s discussion.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/joseph-postma/
00
I’ve decided to leave you all with a brief summary of key points in my Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
1. An analysis (Appendix Q.1) of the gradient of the gradient of temperature trends since the year 1900 shows a declining rate of increase, going down from 0.06 to 0.05 C degree per decade. Linked papers support the observation of natural 1000 and 60 year cycles. In particular, the current long-term rate of increase is totally in keeping with the known rise since the Little Ice Age, and a maximum can be expected within 50 to 200 years at the most. There is absolutely no anthropogenic influence demonstrated.
2. A new hypothesis is put forward which explains the resonant scattering mechanism leading to the observed slowing of radiative cooling of the surface by the cooler atmosphere. This mechanism is found to depend, not only upon the intensity of the backradiation, but also upon the density of frequencies involved and the number of spectral lines. The conclusion is that CO2 has far less effect per molecule than water vapour molecules. Furthermore, all that can be affected is about 20% to 25% of all surface cooling, namely that component of radiation which does not go straight to space through the atmospheric window.
3. In Appendix Q.3 consideration of the Earth’s stabilising effect provides proof that other cooling effects (mostly evaporative cooling and diffusion followed by convection) will accelerate to compensate, so that there is no overall effect on the rate of surface cooling, and thus no effect due to carbon dioxide, even that already present in preindustrial times.
4. Various issues which may be thought to counter the argument are discussed in the Appendix and discounted one by one.
00
So Doug: I can agree with the conclusions of your first 3 points, which together show that the AGW hypothesis is false.
Regarding point #2, however: What is the motivation for a new hypothesis, when Statistical Thermodynamics and Quantum Mechanics, as they have been understood for 100 years, completely explain the observed data and come to the same conclusions about CO2 vs WV, the atmospheric window, etc?
00
What is the motivation for a new hypothesis, when Statistical Thermodynamics and Quantum Mechanics, as they have been understood for 100 years, completely explain the observed data and come to the same conclusions about CO2 vs WV, the atmospheric window, etc?
There is a huge difference when you understand the mechanism by which the rate of radiative cooling is slowed during the process of resonant scattering.
This results in the degree of slowing effect being related not only to the temperature of the source, but also the number and position of the spectral lines in the emission. Those lines which are at significantly different frequencies from the peak have lower intensity because such is restricted by the Planck curve.
AGW proponents make out that all the CO2 has nearly the same effect in total as all the water vapour, whereas I say it has probably less than 1% the effect of all water vapour, as each molecule has less effect due to few frequencies (spectral lines) in its emission.
[I will duplicate this post on the thread at tallbloke’s because it is an important FAQ which is in fact also addressed in Q.7 in the Appendix.]
00
But all you’re done, Doug, is to hypothesize a new mechanism, and you admit that the hypothetical mechanism always gets the same answer as standard statistical thermodynamics (although, it’s not clear how you come to those answers, as you have exhibited exactly NO calculations based on your hypothesis).
Your hypothesis appears to have no advantages whatsoever over the standard theory — and in the case of generating numerical predictions, serious disadvantages. That might be a “huge difference”, but one that is a huge step backwards.
************************
Although, if by “huge difference” you meant that your hypothesis gets different answers than Statistical Thermodynamics in a measurable experiment, then you need to do that experiment. Simply telling me how your hypothesis gets the same answers as Statistical Thermodynamics just reinforces its uselessness.
00
If a certain volume of water flows in a creek which skirts around the base of a mountain and ends up in a lake, the result is the same (quantitatively) as if it had somehow flowed up the mountain and down the other side into the same lake.
If I subtract 3 from 5, the result is the same as 2.
If I imagine that there is impossible two-way heat transfer, the result of such imagining is the same as if there really had been just one way heat transfer equal in magnitude to the difference between the components of the imaginary two-way flow.
Do you get it yet, Bob?
Don’t you think there is a difference between ….
(1) All CO2 has about the same effect as all water vapour
(2) All CO2 has less than 1% of the effect as all water vapour
Do you ever read more than the first sentence in my posts, Bob? Little wonder you display such total misunderstanding of what I am explaining.
00
I see that Doug Cotton continues the spamming campaign that he has been running for several weeks now all over the blogosphere promoting science (fiction?) publishing company Principia Scientific International (PSI) and his own blog article. As Watchman said sarcastically on Dr. Roy Spencer’s “Global Warming As Cargo Cult Science” thread (http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/03/global-warming-as-cargo-cult-science/#comment-39128) “ .. Isn’t this “paper” in Principia Scientific? Are you suggesting this is a “peer reviewed” scientific journal? .. What a prestigious honor to be published there! .. ”.
It also looks as though Doug may have been daft enough donate the latest $50 to the PSI begging bowl (http://www.gofundme.com/1v39s&aff=GFMse).
On 26th Dec. 2010 Doug’s hero “dragon slayer”, PSI CEO and Legal Consultant John O’Sullivan made an appeal for $3000 to the 17-strong group of us involved in E-mail exchanges in which John was trying to persuade others to help him set up PSI as a Community Interest Company. His plan, outlined in his Chapter 21 of his cobbled together collection of blog articles “Slaying the Sky Dragon”, was to take legal action against some of the most powerful government agencies in the world, such as NOAA, using mandamus petitions. On 28th Dec. 2010 John claimed that “ .. beating the AGW fraud in the courts – its the only serious game in town .. ” (see http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-126001 etc.).
That appeal (amounting to a trivial $180 each) failed miserably, with Hans Schreuder (PSI’s CFO) and Oliver Manual offering $500 each, Miso Alkalaj offering Euro100 and Tim Ball (Chairman) offering to make an undisclosed contribution. Other members of the group refrained from making any offer of a contribution, which says appears to sum up their confidence in John’s plans for PSI.
That internal appeal having achieved little John’s next begging bowl came out on 17th January in front of a much wider group, via the gofundme site, where he claimed to need money for the purpose of “ .. supporting Principia Scientific International (PSI). Help us bring about change .. Give generously for this good cause knowing you can help to counter the creeping folly of misguided societies that appear to have been commandeered by political lobbyists and shills serving self-interested corporations or misguided national governments .. ” (http://www.gofundme.com/1v39s&aff=GFMse).
Having failed miserably once again to attract much more than loose change into his begging bowl with that appeal despite that initial donation of $350 (from a member of John’s family in the USA!) the next bowl went out 12 months ago begging “ .. Help asked for Dr. Tim Ball in legal battle with Dr. Mann .. ” (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/08/help-asked-for-dr-tim-ball-in-legal-battle-with-dr-mann/).
In my opinion it would be prudent for anyone considering making donations to John’s appeals or getting involved with PSI to first read carefully the comments on Professor Curry’s “Letter to the dragon slayers” thread (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/). There are over 1300 to get through but if that is too much then those contributed by Andrew Skolnick, some of the “Slayers” and me are worth reading.
John seems to have set a trend for begging for money for good causes relating to the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change (CACC) hypothesis. We now have the “other side” begging for money for “The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund: Protecting the Scientific Endeavor” (http://climatesciencedefensefund.org/). This one appears to have been initiated yesterday (4th April) by staunch CACC supporter Scott (Super)Mandia who begged “ .. Help the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) raise money to cover the costs of Dr. Mann’s legal defense as well as other scientists who face similar challenges .. ” (http://profmandia.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/support-climate-scientists-look-cool-doing-so/).
Eye-catching sales gimmicks seem to be a must for this kind of begging.
John O’Sullivan had his offer of “ . If you contribute £60 (Sixty British Pounds) or more (approx. US$100) we will ensure you receive a copy of ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory’ plus a bonus book (two volume pack RRP: $38.98) .. ” – most science fiction books are far cheaper that than!
Scott Mandia offers “ .. $25 .. t-shirts .. $150 .. three of the t-shirts and a copy of Climate Change: Picturing the Science .. $300 .. a hockey stick signed by Mike Mann.. $1000 .. 16×20 signed silver gelatin print by Joshua Wolfe .. ”.
It seems that there is much more support for the CACC supporters’ begging bowl than there is for John’s. He only managed to raise £450 14 months in his PSI bowl, despite that initial £350 boost in the first hour. That recent additional £50 (from Doug?) hasn’t inspired anyone else to throw any spare change into the bowl. On the other hand it is claimed that for Scott’s bowl “ .. The outpouring of support was overwhelming. In less than 24 hours, Scott received $10,000 in small donations from scientists, students, and other concerned individuals .. ” (http://climatesciencedefensefund.org/about-us/).
Here’s a link especially for Doug Cotton http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/a+fool+and+his+money+are+soon+parted.html.
Best regards, Pete Ridley
00
Pete Ridley:
I looked at the Judith Curry link “Letter to the Dragon Slayers” and it confirms my fears about the negative impact this group is having on serious skeptics. Judith re-publishes Grant Petty’s letter to the D.S. group, in which he is able — due to the Slayers’ complete ignorance of modern physics — to slip in the following whopper:
One wants to say to Grant: “Have you ever read the Climategate emails? What the Hell does it sound like to you?”
Fortunately, Curry’s alert commenters didn’t let it slip past: As one said:
But unfortunately, the net effect of the Slayers is that they make skeptics easier to attack. Not everyone is as sophisticated as the above commenter.
00
Hi BobC (ref. April 7 at 1:46 pm), thanks for having a look at Professor Curry’s “Letter to the dragon slayers” thread, which provides a lot of useful information about John O’Sullivan’s “Slayers” and their science(fiction? Publishing company Principia Scientific International.
I asked Professor Petty to get involved in those E-mail exchanges because I was keen to have someone with proven expertise in the area of atmospheric physics try to help the “Slayers” see where they were going wrong. Professor Petty was extremely tolerant of the abuse that he received during those exchanges and persevered with his efforts for several weeks, from 27th Sept. to 18th Oct. – 4 days after the letter that is the topic of this thread (e.g. see my comment http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-139848 Para. 6).
I fully support your opinions about the negative impact that the “Slayers” are having on the arguments of those who are sceptical of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change (CACC) hypothesis. During the discussions that we had in Dec. 2010/Jan. 2011 about John O’Sullivan’s ludicrous plan to set up PSI as a CIC and take legal action against government agencies I repeatedly pointed out how this might happen (e.g. see http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-134549).
Best regards, Pete Ridley
00
BobC
When are you going to explain with your “post physics” what happens to the radiation in a microwave oven which fails to warm many objects?
I’ll copy below an email I wrote yesterday regarding a potential rebuttal of my paper by a certain “Jeffrey” whose surname I shall omit here … but you could replace with “Bob” ..
Yes I think an attempted rebuttal of my paper would be a great opportunity for us all to get together and expose the “post physics” (referred to on the PSI website) for what is really is. (Ooops – sorry about the quote marks.)
Yes, post physics that can’t even explain why photons from the sun can raise the temperature of a black metal plate which I take out of my microwave oven, but unfortunately the photons inside the oven don’t manage. Mind you, a mug of water will get somewhat hotter in the MW oven than it would in a couple of minutes in the sunshine. We just need the right photons.
Yes, we can expose the flat Earth models which don’t recognise that the real world actually does have sunny mornings when their imaginary net radiation is all going into the surface.
And we can expose the physics that can’t tell me if my coffee will get warmer or cooler in the next two minutes because it won’t have reached equilibrium by then. And, after all, if I step outside with it some night, that backradiation which is at least half as powerful as solar insolation is sure to warm it a bit first. Well, maybe, we just don’t know, because it could get hotter first, then cooler – that’s all OK because all that matters is that it’s cooler at equilibrium. And seeing that we only have to ensure that entropy increase at equilibrium, we could also arrange for water to flow uphill, into the town’s water tank and, over the next few weeks, further down the hill to all the houses where it could finally be at equilibrium – or could it? Nature calls.
And our post physics which can quite happily have radiation from a cooler atmosphere warm a warmer layer of water just below the surface could, of course, be used to get some free energy, because the warmer water could evaporate into the clouds, come down as rain into our dams and flow through our hydroelectric power plants, all thanks to the wonderful backradiation from our -45 deg.C atmosphere. Yes, it’s all possible because, sooner or much later, there will be some equilibrium when we can say, “Ah! The Second Law works after all.” As we observe of course, the world is constantly in equilibrium. /sarc (I put sarc there because Jeff missed it in Section 1.)
Yes, indeed, it is good to make our friend Jeff actually read the paper and find out that I knew (from 50 years’ experience in physics) all the formulae he tried to teach me, and that my hypothesis gives the same results and explains how radiation from the atmosphere slows the radiative component of surface cooling – well, not the bit that gets through the atmospheric window, but all the remaining radiative cooling. What a shame that the other cooling rates like evaporative cooling and diffusion (molecular collision between solid and gas) accelerate and thus completely wipe out the effect of the trace gases on the overall rate of surface cooling. What a bother when we have to devise a greenhouse effect.
I think we should just leave carbon dioxide to its cooling role as it absorbs some of the 2 micron incident solar IR radiation and sends half its energy spacebound in upward backradiation. And just to think, those 2 micron photons (pretty big things) had five (5) times the energy of the 10 micron ones from the surface, and we never got to enjoy their warming effect.
Maybe by the time Jeffrey gets to the end of my paper he may realise that the very purpose for my writing of the paper was to expose the fallacies in the post physics he worships – and plans to use to refute it.
I just hope he finds a good explanation as to why that microwave oven can’t do much to its metal plate or a few ice cubes with its high intensity, but low frequency radiation.
00
BobC (continued)
In regard to the issue of calculations, that matter was covered in my response to (another) Jeff on his “Air Vent” blog …
Click here to read my post which he deleted to save embarrassment.
When you can answer the question about microwaves not warming some things then perhaps we can continue this discussion. But to date you display a complete lack of understanding of what is clearly explained in my paper.
00
Well Doug, I HAVE answered that question multiple times: see here, here, here, here, and here for examples.
It’s clear we aren’t even having a “discussion” as that would imply we are responding to each other’s arguments. I have tried to respond to your arguments, but you clearly don’t even read mine.
I have read your paper twice now (I think that’s enough, without being paid!) and it exactly mirrors your statements in this thread — you simply make the same unsupported claims over and over again and claim that any criticism is due to “not understanding”.
“Discussing” something with you is like painting the Forth Bridge. (Actually, worse, as painting the Forth Bridge accomplishes something useful.)
00
Many so-called sceptics are not really basing their arguments on the true physics of the atmosphere. By failing to do so, they are demonstrating that they also have fallen for the IPCC bluff that radiation from a cooler atmosphere (including so-called backradiation, but also initial radiation) can transfer thermal energy to a warmer surface.
This is not correct physics and the sooner this is made clear to the public the better. True physics, backed up by basic phenomena such as the fact that radiation in a microwave oven is not absorbed in the usual sense of the word, shows why this is the case. No one has ever proved anything to the contrary in any empirical experiment, and never will.
The only thing any such radiation from the atmosphere can do is slow down that third or so of surface cooling which occurs by way of radiation that does not escape to space via the atmospheric window. Radiation from the atmosphere can have absolutely no effect on evaporative cooling, chemical processes or sensible heat transfer. These non-radiative components plus the radiation to space make up about 70% of all surface cooling. Furthermore, the effect of carbon dioxide with its limited frequencies is far less than a true blackbody, and less per molecule than water vapour. No gas can radiate outside its Planck spectrum (ie more than a true blackbody) and so there is no way that carbon dioxide (1 in 2,500 molecules) can contribute a very large amount of radiation anyway.
The other cooling processes merely accelerate and compensate for any minuscule slowing of radiative cooling. Thus there is absolutely no warming attributable to carbon dioxide. It is time for sceptics to get their facts right and stop giving in to part of the hoax. Only truth will prevail in the long run.
00
On February 2 at 11:21 am dear old Dougy said to BobC QUOTE: .. no “slowing of the rate of cooling” is caused by any backradiation .. UNQUOTE (and once again invited visitors to his web-page). He repeated the theme (and the invitation!) at 12:16 pm. then again and again and again (6th, 10th, 12th, 13th, 16th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd, etc. etc.). Now Dougy is at least acknowledging that “ .. The only thing any such radiation from the atmosphere can do is slow down that third or so of surface cooling which occurs by way of radiation that does not escape to space via the atmospheric window .. ”.
What he now needs to think about is that slowing down the rate of cooling even more by adding more IR-absorbing gases might mean that there has to be a restoration of balance between incoming solar and outgoing IR radiation. (To make it easier he can make the simplifying assumption that all other processes affecting the temperature of the global system remain unchanged).
On 2nd March Dougy boasted proudly “ .. My Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics is indeed about to be peer reviewed and maybe published within a next or two .. ” – but what a let down. It was “peer reviewed” by members of the science(fiction?) publishing company Principia Scientific International “ .. a group of 36 respected international scientists and related professionals .. ” (http://www.gofundme.com/1v39s&aff=GFMse) who have to go begging for charitable donations because they apparently cannot afford a mere £417 each in order to set themselves up as a limited liability company.
NB: John O’Sullivan, PSI’s co-founder, CEO and Legal Consultant (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-o-sullivan/19/6b4/84a) declared 30th Dec. “ .. Advancing Principia Scientific International as a Community Interest Company .. our next objective: defeating NASA GISS, GHCN and NOAA in the federal court in Washington D.C. – http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-128005 Para. 4).
What that objective has to do with peer-reviewing and publishing scientific papers beats me.
In my opinion the fact that Dougy has climbed into bed with PSI says it all.
Best regards, Pete Ridley
00
I spoke of the frequent incorrect use of formulae by climatologists, so let me give you examples …
A certain Jeffrey A Glassman in an email to myself had tried to convince me that the energy in each photon is proportional to the wavelength of the radiation. Well, does that mean that the photons in shortwave solar radiation have less energy than those in longwave radiation coming from the atmosphere? Try “frequency” Dr Glassman.
Then, if we go back to a paper often relied on by Lindzen and Spencer, namely Manabe and Wetherald’s 1967 Thermal equilibrium of the atmosphere with a given distribution of relative humidity we find them saying that …
the heat capacity of the Earth’s surface is zero.
That then becomes the basis for assuming that the surface acts like a perfect blackbody. But a blackbody has to be totally insulated from any heat loss by any process other than radiation. Too bad about evaporative heat loss, chemical processes or sensible heat loss, let alone conduction underground and downward ocean currents. And don’t worry about the solar radiation which penetrates 100 metres below the ocean surface and can’t exactly cause immediate radiation back up again, let alone radiation identical with the incident shortwave solar radiation.
So what sort of credibility can we place on a statement which says the surface radiates like a blackbody having a certain much quoted temperature?
Nor does Kirchhoff’s Law apply to the surface, simply because it is not a blackbody, or a grey body with a certain emissivity. It’s emissivity is not equal to its absorptivity because not all the absorbed energy exits the surface by radiation – nowhere near all in fact.
00
Seeing that Ridley did actually start to talk about his vague physics, let me remind people that my statement that back radiation causes no overall slowing of the rate of cooling of the surface stands regardless of the amount of carbon dioxide, which, incidently has an absolutely minuscule effect on the radiative component of cooling because there are relatively few frequencies in CO2 radiation, even compared with water vapour. All water vapour in the atmosphere probably has much more than 100 times the effect of all carbon dioxide, so doubling carbon dioxide would be like adding 1% to all water vapour.
In any event, for reasons explained in Appendix Q.3, no matter how much the radiative component decreases, the other components of surface cooling will increase to compensate. Hence, the overall rate of cooling is not affected. Hence the same amount of energy enters the atmosphere. Hence there is no net effect on climate. Hence Ridley, as usual, is wrong because he never reads all of what I write, so excuse the bold this time.
00
BobC
Yes I had read your comments and links regarding microwave ovens. But you have not yet come to grips with the fact that the process of heating water molecules is not (atomic) absorption, nor are the microwaves reflected when they don’t warm and nor are they transmitted in the strict sense of these words.
Instead, they undergo resonant scattering because the frequency is below cut-off. This is the process which Claes and I talk about, and, yes, I repeat myself because people just refuse to try to understand it. You have it before your eyes in a microwave oven.
The microwaves do not get absorbed by anything. The heating that is observed is not an atomic absorption process at all, but a dielectric process (as you pointed out) which involves mechanical friction at a molecular level, not atomic.
The absorptivity of all matter is zero (0.000000.) for such low frequency radiation. Likewise, the absorptivity of the Earth’s surface is zero for all radiation from a cooler atmosphere. The IPCC are wrong in their assumptions that it is > 0.
00
So, what happens to them then? Does the energy of the microwaves just disappear? Are you suggesting the the First Law of Thermodynamics (conservation of energy) is violated?
Your hypothesis causes a lot of collateral damage to the rest of physics.
Can you be more specific: How do you calculate this cut-off frequency and what is the physical mechanism which creates it? Try to avoid just hand waving and post some actual equations.
And I shall repeat myself — there is nothing that goes on in a microwave oven that is not already well explained by Statistical Thermodynamics, Quantum Mechanics, and the known properties of various kinds of matter. A microwave oven does not constitute a crucial experiment for your hypotheses, as I explained here. (Unless, of course, you are really claiming that microwave ovens violate conservation of energy in some measurable way).
I’m starting to doubt that you ever really studied physics at all. When microwaves heat something, (some of) their energy is absorbed and converted to heat. It is not possible for the microwaves to be not absorbed (continue on with the same energy as before) and yet cause something to heat up without violating conservation of energy. I don’t think you are really suggesting that energy is not conserved — I just think that you can’t deduce that what you say is equivalent to that.
That seems to be your whole M.O. in a nutshell — you make hypotheses which (invisibly to you) trash vast swaths of empirically-verified physics — all to satisify the demands of a hugely-expanded definition of the Second Law of Thermodynamics for which there is no empirical or phisolophical need.
(FYI: Mechanical friction is, at the atomic level, a quantum process involving inter-atomic and inter-molecular attractive forces. The discription of a process as “mechanical friction” is a classical approximation which is not an argument against the quantum processes beneath it. I also explained this at the previously linked post and gave examples from MRI.)
If this were true, no “low frequency” radiation would ever be destroyed, or even interact with other matter, since nothing could extract energy from such radiation. It would be harder (indeed impossible) to detect than neutrinos. Radio wouldn’t work, nor would microwave ovens.
How to explain then that, e.g., ice, is measured to have an absorption band at around 66 microns, which corresponds to the peak radiation from a blackbody at 45 deg K (-228 deg C)?
Your hypothesis Doug, is:
1) Completely useless, as it doesn’t explain any measurable phenomena that is not already adequately explained by Statistical Thermodynamics, and
2) Obviously false, as it implies that known phenomena don’t exist.
00
Dear old misguided Dougy seems to think that it is some kind of accolade that “ .. PSI members are in agreement and I have received emails from J.O’S. commenting very positively on my posts and internal emails – eg “Nice work, Doug.” .. ” (http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/03/slaying-the-slayers-with-the-alabama-two-step/#comment-43352). Let me try to bring him to his senses.
On 22nd July 2010 during the time that he was collecting together his gaggle of “Slayers” John E-mailed me “ .. Pete, Thanks for getting in touch. Just read your link- you’ve done excellent research on this and you’re spot on with the analysis over the woeful failure of the IPCC to appoint expert statisticians. There’s scope here for a joint follow up article- I’d be delighted to collaborate with you and put both our names on a co-authored write up .. I’d like to propose you consider coming in on a book project I’m currently developing with leading GHG skeptic scientists. Would this appeal? .. ”.
Then on 24th Dec. 2010 “ .. Pete, Your involvement with PSI is most welcome. Many thanks, too, for rightly drawing our attention to the often overlooked ice core fiasco that has stupidly been set as a “Gold Standard” of climate proxies. Your ongoing research is invaluable to the debate and I would certainly welcome your submission of a chapter on this key issue for our next ‘Slayers’ book scheduled for publication for April/May 2011. To further advance the authority of your research I would heartily recommend that you speak with Hans Schreuder who I know is well placed in advising on the complex chemistry of atmospheric gases .. ”.
Although other members of the group at that time, such as Tim Ball, Alan Siddons, Cliff Saunders did try to give assistance on this vexed issue from their contacts analytical chemist Hans came up with no help whatsoever. (Cliff Saunders is another of those original members who have dissociated themselves from the group.)
John followed up with “ .. From the input gelling together from Alan, Cliff, Tim and Pete there is clearly scope here for another compelling publication via PSI’s publishing subsidiary. We now have a well-knit team to advance further such volumes to follow our successful ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon’ book. Hans Schreuder and myself now have all the necessary means to work with you gentlemen to bring this together if you feel able to co-author such a volume .. ”. My involvement with that “well-knit team” was not s welcome when I started challenging John’s ludicrous plan to set up PSI as a CIC and taking legal action against powerful government agencies like “ .. NASA GISS, GHCN and NOAA in the federal court in Washington D.C. .. ” (Dec 30 2010).
Hans’s reacted to my “PSI & Due Diligence” objections with an E-mail on 6th Jan. 2010 to John (BCc Joe Olson?) “ .. J&J You are digging a trap into which we will all fall if you guys insist in keeping this pest in the fold. He is, IMHO, a spy who has so far very successfully infiltrated the hub of our undertakings. His constant questioning, bordering on demanding to know, of what we are all doing is self-evident yet again below. Look at the mailing list he is brazenly using to demand to know what our “other pressing business” is – what the (f*** spammed out) has that got to do with him?! He has nothing to offer that we do not already possess. If you insist on keeping this clown in the loop, than I am out of it, simple as that. My sixth sense has yet to be proven wrong and I do not like this pest one bit .. ”.
Be warned Dougy, if you dare to challenge the PSI leadership you too could be excommunicated.
Best regards, Pete Ridley
00
As dear old Dougy has decided to climb into bed with the “Slayers” and joined their PSI blog let’s take a closer look at what they are all about.
In Oct 2009 the general public were made aware of the disingenuous nature of certain aspects of CACC science with the release of the first batch of “Climategate” E-mails. John O’Sullivan may have seen Climategate as providing another career opportunity. His 20-year teaching career had come to an abrupt end in Feb. 2003 (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-148855) and he appears to have tried several different career paths since then (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-132934 Para. 4), the latest being CEO and Legal Consultant to the PSI blog (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-o-sullivan/19/6b4/84a) .
It seems that John only started assembling his team of “Slayers” in early 2010, pulling together a group of sceptical climate change bloggers and persuading them to join him and contribute to that cobbled-together hodge-podge of blog articles “Slaying the Sky Dragon”. The names of members of the original group started appearing in E-mails that I had from John in Spring 2010. There were Hans, Alan Siddons and me in April, Kent Clizbe (now dissociated) later that month, Joe Olson, Martin Hertzberg and Tim Ball in May, Charles Anderson, Piers Corbyn (now dissociated?) and Will Pratt (now dissociated) in June (Dr. Roy Spencer was Ccd on many of those E-mails so perhaps John was trying to get him involved too).
Then came John’s invitation on 3rd July 2010 “ .. Friends, Co-author with me on my new book project .. John .. ” and the outcome, the “Slayers” claiming to be “Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory” (http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/slaying-the-sky-dragon-muddled-confusing/). The comments on Lucia’s thread say it all, especially the final one by Steve Mennie “ .. this tome was definitely not to be taken seriously .. ”.
In his latest offering on Professor Judith Curry’s “Letter to the dragon slayers” thread (http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/#comment-191263) dear old Dougy says of the PSI blog membership numbers “ .. about 36 of us now .. ”. On 19th March it was “ .. a growing membership of PSI (now over 40 I understand).. ” then on April 4th it was “ .. nearly 40 of us now .. ”. So from over 40 to about 36 in less that a month. When I dared to suggest on 26th Sept. to John O’Sullivan about “ .. what appears to be a dwindling group of “Slayers” he retorted “ .. your unsubstantiated claim ( in effect, a lie) about the Slayers being in decline is laughable .. ”. Come on Dougy, lets all have a good laugh. Since “transparency” is claimed to be so important to the PSI blog what’s the real number of members. I speculate 10 at the most.
As usual, if anything that I have said here is considered to be unfair or a misrepresentation of the facts then please let me know and I will consider whether or not a retraction or apology is warranted. The last thing that I wish to do is misinterpret the evidence that has been made available to me and present a misleading picture to others.
Best regards, Pete Ridley
00
Although I no longer read his posts, I have satisfied myself that Ridley’s knowledge of physics is very limited. When I once asked if he had studied it beyond first year university, he avoided replying and never has.
I am proud to be an active member of Principia Scientific International and, as such, I am in daily email contact with many of these main stream scientists, including professors and PhD’s in various disciplines such as physics, applied mathematics, chemistry, climatology and astro physics. The numbers are approaching 40, including well known new members just announced.
What I write are not just my theories. We are all in agreement that standard physics and empirical results back us up.
00
Hi Dougy, in true “Slayer” style you persist in avoiding pertinent questions. I repeat ” .. lets all have a good laugh. Since “transparency” is claimed to be so important to the PSI blog what’s the real number of members. I speculate 10 at the most .. “.
Best regards,Pete Ridley
00
You’re causing a bit of trouble, I note, Ridley …
http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/
(and five other threads at Judith Curry completely wiped.)
Joanne Nova might do well to note that Judith Curry has had to removed all threads with Ridley’s comments on the Slayers, PSI and its CEO.
For example ….
http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/
00
There is a flaw with the idea that the doubling of CO2 will always give a 1.1c temperature increase. The heat trapping ability of CO2 is logarithmic. So the heat trapping ability decrease as more CO2 is added.
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/4-carbon-dioxide-is-already-absorbing-almost-all-it-can/
00
Robert g
And what exactly happens to this “heat trapping” … ? Do you know what heat is? You make it sound like it’s stored potential energy, rather than thermal energy in transit.
How does any of this thing you call “heat” find it’s way from a sub-freezing atmosphere back to the surface – let alone have some effect on climate?
If you are interested in finding out why carbon dioxide cannot have any effect on climate at all you may wish to start with the paper linked from my site
Any radiation from a cooler atmosphere to a warmer surface undergoes resonant (or pseudo) scattering. An example of pseudo scattering can be observed in your microwave oven. The low frequency radiation which it produces is not absorbed by atoms in any matter. None of it is converted to thermal energy in the manner that radiation from sunlight would be converted in the same objects. The only way microwaves warm anything is by causing water molecules to flip through 180 degrees twice as each wave passes. This causes frictional heat to be generated due to grazing collisions with other flipping molecules. Food is cooked by heat conduction from the water molecules.
00
BREAKING NEWS
NASA SCIENTISTS DEMAND END TO GW FRAUD
Continuing man-made global warming fraud triggers a mass NASA rebellion. Rebels demand U.S. government pulls plug on the climate catastrophe cult. Dozens of top experts including astronauts and engineers trigger meltdown in American space agency.
http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/nasa-in-mass-revolt-over-global-warming-fraud/
00
For the benefit of those who have just joined this thread, I will summarise some of the main points in the paper, and add further explanation, such as that regarding microwave ovens. This should answer questions raised above. However, any who advocate that all radiation causes a transfer of thermal energy regardless of the temperatures of the source and target, or that there is some entity representing “net” radiation are asked to read the paper for my response.
Of course radiation can go in all directions. It does so in a microwave oven, but not everything gets warmed in the oven by normal atomic absorption. In fact there is absolutely no atomic absorption involving changes in electron energy states. Instead, liquid water molecules in the food are quickly rotated (flipped or “snapped”) through 180 degrees twice with each passing wave of radiation. It is molecular friction which warms the water, not atomic absorption such as happens in the Sun. The molecules in ice are too close to rotate, so ice is not melted this way. (See experiment in an earlier post above.) The defrost cycle turns power on and off in order to allow time for heat conduction from water to ice. The oven demonstrates that low frequency radiation does not act like high frequency radiation, even if the intensity (flux) is greater.
This is because of the main hypothesis in the paper that radiated energy from a source which is cooler than a target is not absorbed and converted to thermal energy by such changes in electron energy states at the atomic level. If the radiation from such a source is spontaneous, then the peak frequency in its Planck curve is proportional to its absolute temperature by Wien’s Displacement Law. If thermal energy were transferred from such a cooler source to a warmer target then that process, if independent, would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics (SLoT.) There are several pages in the paper explaining why this is the case, so I ask you to read Sections 1 to 5 in this regard.
Radiated energy is not thermal energy. It has to be converted to thermal energy, and that only happens if the source of the radiation was warmer than the target. Some or all of the radiation can and will resonate with the target. When this happens it supplies energy to the target, yes, but the energy is used by the target to do some of its own radiating. It can use it because it is identical in frequency to what it can emit itself. And this happens because the Planck curve for a cooler body is always fully contained within that for a warmer body. So the two-way radiation which corresponds to the area under the Planck curve for the cooler body just resonates in each body and gives it energy that can only be used for new radiation. Because the new radiation is identical, it looks as if the original radiation has been scattered. Hence the term “pseudo scattering” or, as I call it in my paper, “resonant scattering.”
So the process is not in any way violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics (SLoT) because the radiated energy is never converted to thermal energy. However, there is additional radiation in the warmer body which corresponds to the area between the Planck curves. This is the energy which does get converted to thermal energy in a cooler target. And, since S-B calculations are based on the integrals of Planck functions, the normal calculations (subtracting the two S-B values which represent areas under the large and small curve) still apply, because the difference is the area between the curves.
So you may think of radiation being scattered each time it strikes a target, but only “dropping off” some of its thermal energy when it meets a cooler target. The new radiation then continues just as if emitted by that target, so more thermal energy is only dropped off iff the next target is cooler than the last one.
Because the incident radiation supplied radiated energy to the cooler target, that target does not have to convert some of its own thermal energy in order to radiate what it is “allowed” to radiate as per the Planck function. Hence the target’s rate of radiative cooling will be slower, as we observe. So, yes, a wooden table in your back yard may stop dew forming on the ground below it because the table is warmer than the atmosphere and thus slows the cooling more. This is because gases in the atmosphere are cooler, and also because ones like carbon dioxide don’t radiate with a full Planck spectrum. Instead they just have a few spectral lines of radiation which can resonate with the surface. So carbon dioxide is like a picket fence with most of its pickets missing, standing up against a full flood of radiation from the surface. Even water vapour molecules can do much better when it comes to slowing radiative cooling of the surface.
Whilst the calculations are the same, there are huge differences in the physical consequences. These are explained in the FAQ’s in Appendix Q.7 of my paper. Because there is no conversion to thermal energy, there can be no subsequent heat transfer to other bodies instead of radiation. Hence, in the case of radiation from a cooler atmosphere, there can be no effect upon the rates of cooling by evaporation, conduction and other sensible heat transfer mechanisms. Nor is there any slowing of the radiation that gets through the atmospheric window to space. So only about a quarter of all the surface cooling is affected, and only by a minuscule amount by carbon dioxide with its limited range of frequencies.
Now, the temperature of the surface is stabilised by both the underground temperatures and, more importantly, the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface. The temperature gradient in the atmosphere is governed by the adiabatic lapse rate, and that in turn is controlled by the force of gravity. So, if that gradient is represented by a simple linear equation y = mx + b then m is fixed by gravity and b is controlled by solar insolation which only varies a little beyond our control. Thus surface climate is beyond our control and any slowing of the radiative cooling is simply compensated by an increase in sensible heat transfer.
So there is no overall slowing of the rate of surface cooling, no transfer of thermal energy from the atmosphere back to the surface, and so no greenhouse effect.
00
For the benefit of those who have just joined this thread (is anybody really paying attention?) I would also advise reading some of the posts critical of Doug’s hypothesis and paying attention to how he tries to answer them.
For a quick tutorial on the Standard theory of Statistical Thermodynamics, and how Doug’s extension of it is unneccessary (he doesn’t explain anything that isn’t already explained — including microwave ovens) and completely unsupported by actual data, I would suggest looking at this post
00
Bob C
I agree with most of your comments regarding Doug Cotton however recommending SoD’s interpretation of the Second Law is a mistake.
SoD mixes up radiation, energy and heat as being almost identical.
Hopefully you know better than that.
00
Since each is convertable to the others, I don’t see any insurmountable problem, other than perhaps creating confusion with sloppy terminology. However, SoD spends a lot of time on the greenhouse effect, which probably causes anyone who believes in the Slayer hypotheses to tune out.
I will switch to the Wikipedia reference on the Second Law — although it is somewhat heavy going. Perhaps the best part of the Wiki article is that it quotes Rudolf Clausius’ statement of the Second Law (which seems to be popular with the Slayers):
Obviously, this does not preclude the transfer of radiation from a cold object to a hotter one, as long as that is not the sole result of the process — if the hotter object is simultaneously transfering more energy to the cold one than the cold one is to the hot one, then this statement of the Second Law is not violated. This seems to be missed by the Slayers.
Of course, when Clausius made this statement 150 years ago, he was talking about heat engines and heat flow. He knew nothing about the quantum theory of radiation, and black bodies were not explicable under the physics of his time. Why the Slayers insist on elevating this old statement about heat engines to the level of a statement from God (while simultaneously misinterpreting it as well) is anybody’s guess.
00
Bob C
What is the difference between;
Someone who actually believes that radiation from a colder body can spontaneously heat a warmer body.
A clueless person who doesn’t know the difference between the terms radiation, heat, energy and work.
When they say that radiation from a colder body can spontaneously heat a warmer body they are in direct conflict with the second law.
You say
“Since each is convertable to the others, I don’t see any insurmountable problem, other than perhaps creating confusion with sloppy terminology.”
I am coming to the conclusion that your grasp of the second law is in need of revision.
The second law IS ALL ABOUT the difficulty and efficiency of the interconversion of these quantities.
To get confused about these terms means they cannot have understood the second law.
You say
“Of course, when Clausius made this statement 150 years ago, he was talking about heat engines and heat flow. He knew nothing about the quantum theory of radiation”
Clausius tested the second law for radiation using mirrors and lenses!
Are you trying to say that the second law does not apply to “the quantum theory of radiation”
If so you are in direct conflict with any university physics text that I have read.
00
On the contrary, the Second Law can be derived from Planck’s Law. Modern textbooks on thermodynamics always start from Quantum Mechanics and derive the Laws of Thermodynamics.
what ‘difficulty’? Thermodynamics can be derived from Planck’s Law which simply assumes that these quantities are always being converted each to the other in all directions at the microscopic level. You are wrongfully assuming that, because it may be hard to build an efficient heat engine to produce macro work, that therefore the quantum conversion of radiation to heat and vice-versa is ‘difficult’ in the microscopic realm.
If you don’t understand that as derived it is a statistical law that only holds in the limit of large numbers and not a “universal” law that MUST hold for ALL quantum transactions whatsoever (as the Slayers irrationally assume without empirical or philosophical support), then it is you who need to revise your knowledge.
00
Bob C we are making progress
1. I’m glad that you agree that the second law derived via the Carnot Cycle in no way is contradicted by a derivation via statistical mechanics.
2. When we are discussion the Sun/Earth/Atmosphere we are most definitely in the MACRO domain.
3. Where did you think I said the second law is ““universal” law that MUST hold for ALL quantum transactions whatsoever”?
I said no such thing!
At the micro level and for small numbers it does not absolutely hold for all interactions.
But the efficiency of conversion of solar energy into electrical energy in a photocell has an upper limit set by the second law in exactly the same way as a heat engine of Carnots time.
Its sad that professionally qualified people who should know better ‘spin’ their narrative on the climate to suggest that the cold atmosphere can heat the warmer Earth surface.
00
Indeed we are — I agree with almost all of what you say.
I appologize for lumping you in with the Slayers — it was intellectually lazy of me.
I don’t think this is a fair description of the Greenhouse Effect (which I assume you are refering to).
Let me use an analogy: When it’s -40 C in Montana at my inlaws ranch, it would be suicide to go outside for any length of time without proper clothing. But, when I wear my down parka, I can stay (relatively) comfortable. Even though no part of the parka ever gets up to my body temperature, it helps me stay warm by adding resistance to the heat loss path.
Greenhouse gases allow the Earth to accumulate more heat from the Sun (through short wavelengths, where the Sun’s radiation peaks), by adding resistance to the radiative heat loss path of the Earth (at long wavelengths, where the Earth’s radiation peaks).
I happen to believe, from sufficient data, that the GH effect (of CO2 especially) is a relatively trivial part of the climate’s heat budget mechanism — but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.
00
BobC
As I thought initially there is not much that I would disagree with you on w.r.t. Doug.
SoD’s site has a lot of accurate and interesting material on the climate.
However on the second law he is not a reliable source, although in the link you provided there is a good discussion.
The slayers do not have a unified view on the climate or on science for that matter.
Claes Johnson does not believe in photons whereas Joseph Postma does.
I think that Joseph Postma has made a positive contribution to the climate debate.
00
The Science of Doom (SoD) article to which BobC linked is not a peer-reviewed publication, whereas my paper is. But even if SoD’s article were reviewed, SoD (in his Backradiation series) reiterates the false conjecture that there are only three possible outcomes when radiation strikes a solid – (1) reflection (2) transmission (3) absorption. This is a mistaken view, and does not, for example, explain what happens when microwave radiation strikes ice. When I attempt to explain this on his site he merely deletes my explanation because he has no answer but does, no doubt, have a personal financial interest in maintaining the status quo. Here are screen captures of some deleted posts. In contrast, I have no such financial interest and do nothing but spend a lot of my time studying and writing about atmospheric physics just out of interest and altruistic motives.
You seem to place a lot of confidence in Boltzmann (and Planck) – why not in Claes Johnson who has the benefit of hindsight over an extra century or more of physics?
Boltzmann and Co were wrong in assuming that the net heat transfer between hot and cold bodies was the result of the algebraic sum of two actual heat transfers in opposite directions. Only one heat transfer occurs in nature. There is no spontaneous heat transfer from a cold body to a hot body.
Boltzmann was also wrong (to a degree at least) in his H-theorem because it was dependent upon the assumption of molecular chaos. That assumption has a degree of error in it because, after a collision, the velocities of the molecules involved are no longer independent.
So I take quantitative results of statistical mechanics with a grain of salt, though I suggest no one really knows just how inaccurate or otherwise they may be.
In any event, there is no need for such when considering the issue of radiation between regions of the surface and atmosphere, where “region” refers to a mass of at least several picograms in which we would normally expect the temperature to be measured as sufficiently uniform. After all, with the atmospheric region being perhaps 1 to 100+ C degrees cooler than the surface below it, we need hardly have any doubt as to which region is the warmer and which the cooler.
Maybe you would like to apply statistical mechanics to the issue of microwave radiation not warming or melting ice cubes.
00
BobC There is nothing in SoD’s two-star example that is not correctly explained by both the SLoT and the process of pseudo (resonant) scattering which Claes and I describe. Furthermore, the scattering explains what happens in a microwave oven – nothing else can. You have certainly not produced any evidence of even understanding just how different are the processes between when ice is placed in the sun compared with the microwave oven. The absorptivity of ice for radiation such as that in the microwave oven is zero (0.0000000..) and your statistical mechanics will give the wrong answer if your input is wrong.
I don’t take any notice of hand-waving statements like “some of the posts critical of Doug’s hypothesis.” So do please post links to, say, three posts which, in your opinion, seem to successfully refute anything I have written. However, I strongly suggest you at least look for my response and, if you don’t understand why such response sucessfully counters their arguments, I will endeavout to explain in more detail, if it is not already covered in yesterday’s fairly comprehensive summary above. Please read beyond the first paragraph which you quoted.
This all comes down to a belief system, Bob. You, and many others, still believe in Boltzmann & Co, whereas Claes and I believe they were in error on the issue of two-way heat transfer. You have no more empirical evidence to support your viewpoint than we do. If you think science had gone as far as it can a century ago, that’s fine, but there have been errors in science and medicine in the past that have been discovered decades or centuries later. Have you read my paper yet BobC?
00
If anyone wants to ask further questions about my paper, please do so on the tallbloke’s talkshop thread where you will find my thread among the most commented in the left margin.
00
Genuine statement through current NASA employee …
“My son is a nuclear physicist with NASA and knows GHG theory is bogus and NASA distorts AGW data. BHO won’t allow Civil Servants to express skepticism. James Hanson is actual spokesman for NASA on GHG theory, picked by Al Gore and BHO”
This was said by a father to a contact I have who spoke personally with that father on April 13th.
00
The problem Doug, is that you say things like this are a consequence of your hypothesis:
which are in direct contradiction to measured results — e.g., ice, is measured to have an absorption band at around 66 microns, which corresponds to the peak radiation from a blackbody at 45 deg K (-228 deg C).
Your hypothesis is therefore falsified — Q.E.D.
The empirical evidence that I just linked shows your hypothesis is wrong. You simply ignore any evidence — and refuse to even consider crucial experiments. For you, it certainly is a belief system — it certainly is not based on empirical evidence.
Multiple times. Either you’re lying about reading my posts (I don’t really care) or you have serious short-term memory problems.
00
BobC
ice, is measured to have an absorption band at around 66 microns, which corresponds to the peak radiation from a blackbody at 45 deg K (-228 deg C).
I just about give up on you Bob. Frankly by this comment you demonstrate that you haven’t a clue what I’m talking about. Why don’t you just try the microwave ice experiment – equal small quantity of water and ice in separate microwave bowls which have been cooled overnight in fridge. Operate for 60 to 90 seconds. How long would it take the Sun to warm the water that much? Well then try each bowl in the Sun for, say 15 minutes, because it delivers less energy in 15 minutes than the oven does in a minute.
The absorptivity you mention was not measured using low frequency radiation from the atmosphere. It was probably measure using high frequency radiation from a visible light source. Don’t you understand why these two situations are vastly different? Have you read Johnson’s paper yet and understood his key point?
Firstly, unless the ice is at close to 44K (for 66 microns) that absorption band will be strongly attenuated as it will be off to one side or other of the Planck curve.
Secondly, ice will indeed absorb radiation from a warmer source if the ice is at 44K, but it will not do so if the source were colder than 44K, because such radiation would merely resonate with that 66 micron band. You don’t have any such experiments to prove me wrong, now do you?
00
experiments with ice at 44K are few and far between.
00
Sure I do, Doug: I described a simple one in post #210.1, but you’re too chicken to try it.
You will never actually do a crucial experiment to test your hypothesis — you have made it perfectly clear that all you will ever do is talk. As they say out West: “You’re all hat and no cattle.”
00
But Bob… your test does not involve enough complexity or manifestly absurd operating conditions. I mean why not complicate things by comparing two completely different compounds like ice and water?
00
The polarising does not disprove anything for one moment. Your assumption which would result in the radiation from the hot body becoming partially polarized (to the extent that scattered radiation from the colder body has replaced emissions from the hot body is incorrect, because once again you show that you do not undertstand the difference between scattering and pseudo scattering which would not be polarised.
Experiments which I have done with both atmospheric radiation and microwave ovens certainly support my hypothesis. Likewise, spectroscopy demonstrates the hypothesis operating.
Sure, these experiments don’t prove it for all possible frequencies and temperatures, but they certainly don’t disprove it, and I suggest that they support it.
However, microwave ovens do in fact disprove the IPCC assumption that all radiation gets absorbed (if not transmitted or reflected) and warms any solid.
The problem all along Bob is that you don’t understand the line of logic I put forward, nor the computations which Claes has. Each of us, along with dozens of other colleagues of ours have all come to the same conclusion. You don’t have to believe it – that’s your prerogative, but if you study the papers and numerous posts (brought together more completely on the tallbloke thread) then you will hopefully at least understand it. When you reach that stage, you may be able to pinpoint some error perhaps, but so far all your suggested experiments etc have done nothing but demonstrate your misunderstanding. The issue of the emission lines of ice was an just another example of such misunderstanding – and now you still think polarising the radiation prooves your point with what amounts to a Maxwell demon.
With over 5,000 views of the tallbloke thread on my paper, not a single comment has disproved anything I have said.
00
This ‘pseudo scattering’ is a pretty handy thing — it apparently takes on whatever characteristics are needed at any one moment to support whatever argument you are currently making to avoid a crucial test of your hypothesis.
I naturally assumed that it would conserve polarization, since you previously described it as:
and etc, etc. Remarkable stuff, this ‘pseudo scattered’ light — perhaps you would like to give us a mathematical description someday, so the rest of us could draw the same contradictory conclusions about its properties as you do.
BTY, I predicted that you would do nothing but talk, and your last post verifies that prediction nicely — Q.E.D.
You keep claiming that you’re going to stop posting here, and then disappointing us. I’ll have to let you have the last word if I intend to get on with my life, but I’m reminded of an experience an acquaintance and I had in the small (pop. 1000) town of Green River Utah in the early 1970’s:
The locals at a hotel were playing a game they called “bottle pool” (billiards) — where coke bottles were precariously balanced upside-down at various spots around the table. Sometimes you lost points for knocking over a bottle and sometimes you got points.
After watching the game for 30 min, we thought we understood it and dropped $10 on the table to challenge the champs. This was pretty high stakes for a game in rural Utah in the ’70s. We started winning right away (we were pretty good pool players), but when we were about $30 ahead, a ‘new’ rule appeared, just in time to ensure the other team’s victory. How could we object? We hadn’t heard of the game until that evening. So, we incorporated the new rule into our play and made up lost ground.
This was the start of a pattern — every time we got $50 ahead, another rule was
made upremembered just in time to defeat us. We would accept the new rule without comment and start winning again.After about an hour and a half, the atmosphere started to get strained: Our opponents (who were drinking more than we were, as we had to fly ourselves out in the morning) started having trouble remembering all the ‘rules’, and the other locals weren’t too pleased that the local champs were being definitively beaten by a couple of strangers that had just waltzed in out of the night. (Literally, as we had walked to the hotel from the unpaved airstrip across the road.)
We decided that this was a good time to pack it in, while everyone could still pretend that it was just a friendly competition.
Perhaps it’s past time for that here.
Note to Doug and the “Slayers”, however: As long as you refuse to identify and perform laboratory tests that have the potential of either verifying or falsifying your hypothesis, you will (justifiably) not be taken seriously.
00
Pseudo scattering involves new radiation from the target which just uses the electromagnetic energy in the incident radiation. That energy was not converted to thermal energy and then back again to electromagnetic energy. Yes, I said “identical” when thinking of just frequency distribution and intensity. The issue of polarisation was not considered particularly relevant when discussing radiation from the atmosphere to the surface. But, being effectively new radiation, it would not have any reason to be polarised. In any event, issues like polarising filters, or filters of any kind have long ago been considered to be just “Maxwell Demons” which you can read about on Wikipedia or elsewhere.
If there is any further discussion, may I suggest we all transfer to this newer thread, picking up from this comment ….
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/04/new-evidence-our-record-warm-march-was-not-from-global-warming/#comment-44353
Or, if you wish, you can write on the tallbloke thread. Tallbloke and RoySpencer will be the only sites I reply on in future as my time is limited.
00
Uh Doug … polarizing filters are not “Maxwell Demons” — they exist, can be bought cheaply and don’t violate any laws of physics.
BTY, by your description of “pseudo scattering” it would have to be polarized, if the incident radiation was polarized:
But, you cannot get radiation with orthogonal polarizations to interact in any way, except through the intermediary of absorption and re-emission. Even then, polarization is partially maintained, depending on the time lag. Scattered radiation (e.g., essentially no time lag) is always polarization maintaining. If this were not so, then polarized glasses would have no detectable effect, 3D movies wouldn’t be possible, etc.
So, is coherence maintained? Let us know how you are coming up with these answers — you seem to be reading from a playbook the rest of us don’t have. Don’t just say “read my paper” — it doesn’t explain it either. (Or, if it does, perhaps you could go through the steps and show us how.)
00
Pseudo scattering involves new radiation from the target which just uses the electromagnetic energy in the incident radiation. That energy was not converted to thermal energy and then back again to electromagnetic energy.
It has to have these properties by logical deduction. You can place whatever characteristics (such as polarisation) you wish upon it. It makes no difference to the basic necessities ….
(1) The energy in the incident radiation cannot be converted to thermal energy (SLoT violation would occur.)
(2) The rate of cooling of the target has to be affected in accord with standard S-B calculations, and this happens because electromagnetic energy (not thermal energy) is supplied by the incident radiation, so the target does not need its own thermal energy.
Why do you find this so hard to understand, Bob? It seems hundreds (maybe thousands) of other silent viewers don’t have trouble understanding it.
00
Your faith in logical deduction doesn’t seem to extend to risking being wrong by identifying and performing a crucial experiment. If you have so little faith in your deductions, why should anyone else?
Much safer to keep the option of coming up with new ‘deduced’ properties that avoid any real test.
Manifestly untrue. The Second Law of Thermodynamics, as it was formulated and has been understood as a statistical law of heat transfer is unfazed by hot objects absorbing radiation from colder objects, as I explained to Myrhh here. It is only your pecular reimagining of the Second Law that would be violated, and you are completely uninterested in any empirical tests that could confirm or falsify this interpretation.
More likely, everyone is incredibly bored with this thread by now.
00
Joanne Nova might do well to note that Judith Curry has had to removed all threads with Ridley’s comments on the Slayers, PSI and its CEO.
For example ….
http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/
00
Yes, well Bob when you have an explanation (better than mine) as to why all that intense long wave radiation in a microwave oven does not warm everything it strikes, including the large black metal tray in my oven, then we can progress with this discussion.
00
Doug i can confirm that your explanation of “how a micro wave oven works” is correct now how this relates to your views on second laws etc i am not sure.
Of interest most people have no idea why there is a screen with little holes in it behind the glass or indeed why there is a groove in the plastic where the door and the chassis makes contact, is it any wonder then that they dont know how a micro wave works?
00
Prof Claes Johnson points out that when radiation strikes a target its energy is not converted to thermal energy in the target if its frequency is below the cut-off frequency for the target. This is how and why the Second Law of Thermodynamics is not violated when radiation goes from cold to hot. The MV radiation has very low frequencies and is an example of such low frequency radiation not being absorbed and its energy converted to thermal energy by the normal atomic process. Thoes who think photons warm anything they strike cannot explain this lack of warming in a MW oven.
00
How do you measure the frequent of a target?
00
I requested that Doug let us in on his secret method of calculating things like absorption cut-off frequencies (see here), but he refuses to answer any question with enough specificity that it would inhibit his ability to pivot his handwaving ‘explanations’ in the future.
It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Slayer ‘theory’ is anything but BS and hot air, based on a unique interpretation of thermodynamics which has no empirical or philosophical support.
BTY Doug; Your theory would appear to forbid multi-photon absorption (where an atomic transition is excited by multiple photons, each with only a fraction of the required energy). It should be amusing to see how you try to spin this, since every one of the exciting photons would be below your “cut-off frequency”. (This effect is currently being used to image live biological specimens, as well as being the method by which all green laser pointers work.)
00
The Models are still wrong no matter how many “peer reviews support AGW” QED, Its a FINE Warm Sunny day I like it that way. Thank-you Mr Evans. 😉
00
[…] discrepancy between modeled and observed ocean heat content (OHC), for example by Roger Pielke Sr., David Evans, and Bob Tisdale. All of the associated analyses by these individuals focus on a paper by […]
00
[…] The Skeptic’s Case […]
00
[…] discrepancy between modeled and observed ocean heat content (OHC), for example by Roger Pielke Sr., David Evans, and Bob […]
00
[…] discrepancy between modeled and observed ocean heat content (OHC), for example by Roger Pielke Sr., David Evans, and Bob […]
00
Can someone post the literature reference(s) that shows the direct effect of doubling CO2 is between 1 and 1.2C? I’ve searched and searched, and can’t find a paper that shows calculations and separates out the direct CO2 effect from the feedbacks. Papers will start out suggesting they’ll do just that, then do a few of the preliminary calcs, but then they skip the steps to calculate the direct effect, only listing the compounded estimate. Other papers simply state the direct effect at 1 to 1.2C, referencing other such statements but no calculations.
To calculate this, one would need line-by-line absorption data for the mixtures of gases at different heights (pressures & temperatures) in the atmosphere. One would need to determine the current saturation of these gases to see how much is available for absorption. Does any paper show these calculations?? I can’t find any. From my rough estimates, it’s very saturated. Hardly any is available for further absorption.
00
Hansen 1984 is where it comes from. The IPCC still quote him. – Jo
00
Hansen 1984 used and provided some initial numbers, but the 3.7 W/m^2 per CO2 doubling currently accepted (which leads to ~1.1C direct temperature change) is a somewhat lower estimate that actually comes from Myhre et al 1998.
This was computed using HITRAN spectral data and multiple radiative transfer models which numerically calculate radiative exchanges through multiple vertical atmospheric profiles (tropical, northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere). From this they derived the simplified relationship of:
ΔF = 5.35*ln(C/C0)
A doubling of CO2 using this approximation produces 3.7 W/m^2 additional forcing, which under present conditions and using the Stefan-Boltzmann relationship (emissivity to space of ~0.612, initial power P of 240, change to 243.7) leads to a direct temperature change of 1.1 C.
The IPCC use the 3.7 W/m^2 doubling value with a +/- 10% uncertainty.
01
Thanks, All. Great leads! I’ve printed and read Myhre et al 1998, which cites some other papers that should discuss the details of the three models–presumably how the Beer Lambert equation is used with line-by-line data (or parameterizations that approximate it) to estimate the direct effects of CO2. I’d been looking for that in the papers of the Super Stars, but couldn’t find it.
The Hansen 1984 discusses justification for their feedback multipliers, but I couldn’t find any details on where the direct effect was found. The feedback multipliers seem to be empirical, along with a little gut feel, and tuned by very poor and highly adjusted surface temperature and proxy data.
00
This analysis is meaningless in the real world, as it simply assumes the magnitude of various feedback mechanisms which are too complicated to currently model accurately. It implicitly assumes that the Earth responds as a simple blackbody.
When one does the rational thing and attempts to directly measure climate sensitivity, you get a value about a third as high.
In a rational world, this would be taken as evidence that the climate models’ parameterization of various feedback mechanisms is in error.
Those who are politically driven to come to a pre-determined conclusion, however, attack Idso’s experiments any way they can, including using numerious logical fallacies. It would never occur to them to try to repeat or improve upon them — the sole goal is to discredit them, as a threat to their politically-driven agenda.
00
Note that the actual effect is not to raise incoming power (as estimated in my last post), but rather to reduce emissivity to space – by roughly 0.01 per doubling of CO2. That lowered emissivity (as per the Stefan-Boltzmann relationship) requires higher temperatures to emit the 240 W/m^2 coming in.
However, for a first-pass estimate of temperature change from forcing delta’s, estimating it from a changing power is reasonably accurate.
02
[…] suspect. The 1990 First Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted a rise in global surface temperatures of 0.3oC per decade. The report provided a “high […]
00
[…] what in summary is a Contrarian case? Others might have different views, but Dr David Evans (via Bruce of Newcastle) presents the following: The air and ocean temperature data shows that the […]
00
[…] a “high estimate” and a “low estimate” rise. Today, global temperatures remain well below the IPCC’s low estimate. Contrary to model projections, temperatures have been flat for the last […]
00
[…] a “high estimate” and a “low estimate” rise. Today, global temperatures remain well below the IPCC’s low estimate. Contrary to model projections, temperatures have been flat for the last […]
00
Volcanoes are notorious for exhaling mantle-derived CO2, so why are atmospheric CO2 measurements being collected from atop the volcano that is Mauna Loa? Wouldn’t uncontaminated CO2 readings be best collected from sites that are devoid of carbonate rocks or geologic features that are known to emit CO2? Also, shouldn’t such collection sites be well removed from vegetation since this is known to absorb CO2 and hence might yield misleading low readings?
10
[…] science debate, the red-herring sideshows, the deathly silence of the mainstream media about the scientific data, the tactics of the “regulating class” who would rule us using fake man-made global […]
00