“Skeptics” are described as if they are one small block of fringe extremists, but not only is half the population skeptical in some sense, in this debate I am not on either extreme, but a centrist, smack in the middle. On the one hand, alarmists are convinced the climate is headed for a catastrophe, and on the other some people are convinced there is no greenhouse effect at all. Wes Allen, sits in the middle with me, and he’s been engaged in an intense debate with people on both ends of the spectrum. After a scorching critique of Tim Flannery’s work, he has swung his attention the other way. Here is his synopsis of the Slayers book, for discussion, and I’m sure it will generate a long passionate defence and debate, just as previous posts on this topic have. (eg: Why greenhouse gas warming doesn’t break the second law of thermodynamics and So what is the Second Darn Law?). I know the Slayers are keen to discuss their ideas. I’m hopeful people can remain polite, as that’s where progress may be made… many thanks to Wes here who has done a diligent write up, and has gone to great lengths to get the details right. The man is in a relentless pursuit of answers. Some may prefer to read the full PDF, I’ve only posted parts of the first 4 pages here. Sorry I can’t post it all up, but it is long! – Jo
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Is the Greenhouse Effect a Sky Dragon Myth?
A Dialogue with the Authors of Slaying the Sky Dragon
Dr D Weston Allen – meet the author here 30th September 2012
INTRODUCTION
My book, The Weather Makers Re-Examined, published in 2011 by Irenic Publications, was a comprehensive and damning critique of Tim Flannery’s alarming best seller which claimed ‘we are The Weather Makers’. I now examine Slaying the Sky Dragon (SSD), a full frontal attack on the greenhouse theory or ‘sky dragon’ by eight authors who refer to themselves as the ‘Slayers’ (p.358) – a term I adopt when referring to them. This 358 page book was published in 2011 by Stairway Press in WA (USA).
Defining the sky dragon
The ‘greenhouse theory’ gradually evolved from the seminal work and limited understanding[i] of Joseph Fourier in the 1820s, John Tyndall in the 1860s, Svante Arrhenius in 1896-1908, Guy Callendar in 1938 to Gilbert Plass in the 1950s. It holds that solar radiation penetrates Earth’s atmosphere to reach the surface which is warmed by the absorption of this electromagnetic energy. The warmed surface emits infrared radiation, and much of this outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) is intercepted by trace gases in the atmosphere. Some of this energy is radiated back to Earth’s surface where it is absorbed as thermal energy, thus enhancing solar warming of the surface by day and slowing cooling by night. Since glass on a greenhouse also absorbs and re-radiates infrared (IR) radiation, this atmospheric phenomenon became known as the ‘greenhouse effect’ (GHE), and the trace gases are referred to as ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG).
As real greenhouses work primarily by limiting convection, and GHGs by promoting it, SSD refers to them as ‘IR-absorbing gases’. Comprising less than half of one percent (0.5%) of Earth’s atmosphere, these gases are scattered somewhat unevenly through the atmosphere and across the globe. Most of the GHE, particularly over the tropics, is due to water vapour (H2O) and clouds in the troposphere, the bottom layer of the atmosphere where convective mixing and weather occurs. The tropopause, separating the troposphere from the stratosphere, increases in altitude from about 8km over polar regions to about 17km over the tropics. Above the stratosphere is the cold mesosphere (about 50-85km altitude) and then the very warm thin thermosphere which merges into the exosphere (at 350-800km altitude depending on solar activity). The troposphere contains about 80% of the mass of the atmosphere and the top of the atmosphere (TOA) is generally considered to be about 100km above Earth’s surface.
Without any IR-absorbing GHGs in the atmosphere, all radiative energy losses balancing solar input would occur at Earth’s surface. According to the laws of radiation, the average temperature at the surface would then be about -18⁰C, nearly 33⁰C colder than the observed mean value. While IR is radiated to space from the surface and atmosphere, the average loss occurs where the temperature is actually -18⁰C at an altitude of around 5km. The more GHGs in the atmosphere the higher this average radiative layer; and since the temperature below it increases by about 6.5⁰C/km (the lapse rate), the higher this layer the higher the temperature at Earth’s surface. The enormous complexities of this are explored later.
Setting the stage for the battle
We know that carbon dioxide (CO2) has been accumulating in the atmosphere for several centuries, particularly over the past fifty years; and it is generally considered that the main reason is the burning of fossil fuels. This increase in atmospheric level and its greenhouse effect is widely thought to be a significant factor in the global warming observed over that time. Global warming also results in increased evaporation and atmospheric water vapour; and this is thought by mainstream climatologists to produce a positive feedback cycle. Whereas it is generally agreed that ‘climate sensitivity’ to doubling atmospheric CO2 is about 1⁰C, positive feedbacks in climate models increase this to 3⁰C (1.5-4.5⁰C). While ‘alarmists’ accept this without question, sceptical scientists (e.g. Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer) argue that the models are too sensitive to CO2; that the net feedback is negative due to increased evaporative cooling and cloud cover, and that climate sensitivity is therefore less than 1⁰C. Such sceptical scientists do not deny the greenhouse effect or question whether human activity is warming the planet, but only by how much.
Since global warming became apparent and political in the 1980s with the birth of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), attitudes and positions have become increasingly polarised. The 1992 Rio Earth Summit’s cleverly contrived definition of ‘climate change’ as being ‘anthropogenic change only’ resulted in two opposing groups of deniers: those who deny any prehuman ‘climate change’ and those who deny any manmade climate change. While the former imagine a runaway greenhouse catastrophe, the latter deny any greenhouse warming at all. We thus have extreme alarmists and extreme sceptics.
Slayers of the sky dragon
The authors of Slaying the Sky Dragon are firmly in the latter camp. They don’t deny climate change, only man-made climate change; but they do deny any greenhouse effect or greenhouse gas. Indeed, they claim that all IR-absorbing gases including water vapour have only a cooling effect. They deny any human contribution to global warming; and they refer to those who regard such warming as real but fairly trivial, compared to natural variability, as ‘lukewarmers’ or ‘lukes’. This author happily confesses to being a ‘lukewarmer’ aligned with neither extreme.
Setting out to slay a sky dragon that they don’t believe exists; the Slayers confidently seek to engage the enemy. Presumably speaking for the whole team, Hans Schreuder laments:
The authors would much like to exchange ideas about the scientific basis upon which human-caused climate alarm is based, but sadly no debate – through no fault of the Slaying the Sky Dragon authors – has ever been entered into. Despite many detailed written exchanges, no scientific debate has ever been held between truly scientific skeptics and the obviously unscientific alarmists; only between the alarmists and the lukewarm skeptics, all of whom subscribe without question to the concepts of a ‘greenhouse effect’, ‘greenhouse gases’ and ‘radiative forcing’ (p.209).
Perhaps the Slayers might have more luck entering into such a debate if they refrained from ad hominem attacks and calling would-be opponents ‘obviously unscientific’, ‘academic eggheads’ (p.52). They could also show more willingness to exchange ideas and concede points rather than debating opponents to score points. Schreuder thinks lukewarmers simply have the wrong winning strategy: “’Human-generated greenhouse gases are warming the earth but not as much as alarmists say’ never was a good debating strategy for skeptical academics and it’s probably too late for them now.” (p. 223)
There is a great deal in SSD with which I wholeheartedly agree, much of which I ignore in this critique. On the other hand, I found many arguments that reveal misunderstandings, misrepresentations, errors or half-truths. There are also contradictory statements by different authors and sometimes by the same author. These include fundamental differences on how the atmosphere is heated and how it radiates that heat.
I have learnt a lot about atmospheric physics while critiquing this book, and I am grateful for that. I am also grateful to Professor Will Happer and Vincent Gray for their assistance. I also thank John O’Sullivan and other SSD authors for their helpful feedback (see Appendix), for detecting several errors and for prompting the revision of some sections of this critique.
Arguments presented in Slaying the Sky Dragon
- The atmosphere is warmed primarily by conduction, not by radiation; and so the major atmospheric gases (nitrogen and oxygen) are more likely to warm the trace IR-absorbing gases than visa-versa. The major gases also absorb and emit some IR radiation.
- The IR-absorbing gases simply scatter IR radiation or otherwise pass any absorbed energy on immediately.
- These trace gases absorb more solar radiation than OLR and thus cool Earth’s surface; so they are not greenhouse gases; it is water vapour that makes tropical rainforests cooler than tropical deserts.
- The glass on a greenhouse works only by limiting convection, not by back-radiation.
- There is no such thing as back-radiation (no empirical evidence for it) and the postulated recycling of energy between Earth’s surface and the atmosphere is a non-physical ‘amplification’.
- Atmospheric IR radiation cannot affect Earth’s surface temperature because heat cannot flow from the cooler atmosphere to the warmer surface in violation of the second law of thermodynamics.
- Every planet with an atmosphere has a surface temperature higher than predicted; and the surface temperature of such planets rises in direct proportion to atmospheric pressure.
- The lapse rate (declining temperature with altitude) is determined by gravity and the specific heat of the atmospheric gases, not by their ability to absorb IR radiation.
- The GHE is supposed to increase lapse rates, but Earth’s lapse rate (6.5K/km) is lower than predicted (9.8K/km), so the greenhouse theory is wrong.
- Since emissions occur at the TOA at a mean altitude of 5km (where it is -18⁰C), the lapse rate alone explains the fact that Earth’s effective blackbody temperature is 33⁰C below its surface temperature (15⁰C).
- Based on a surface emissivity of ‘about 0.7’, a GHE is not needed to balance Earth’s energy budget.
- Averaging Earth’s energy budget over day and night in flat earth climate models is fundamentally flawed, and this invalidates all climate models.
- Human emissions of CO2 are not a problem since more than 98% is absorbed within a year.
- Historically, temperature rises precede atmospheric CO2 increases; so global warming produces more CO2, released from warming oceans, never the opposite.
- Increased geo-nuclear activity is warming the oceans from below and causing global warming.
- Global temperatures have been going down rapidly.
- The critical issue is not climate sensitivity (to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels) or how much global warming is due to CO2, because none of it is.
- There is no empirical evidence for a GHE but ample evidence against it, as provided in SSD and at their website: Principia Scientific International.
Read the whole work in PDF (3.4Mb)
This has been discussed at length on Judith Curry’s blog (many hundreds of replies), and I distinctly recall Judith saying that she no longer listens to the Slayers. I also get the very strong impression Roy Spencer still does not agree with them – he wrote this article recently about how to prove that there is a greenhouse effect: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/10/hey-school-teachers-those-greenhouse-effect-experiments-are-junk/ As a skeptic, of course I would love for the greenhouse effect to be disproved, but I don’t feel very optimistic at all. ;^)
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One of the best discussions about alternatives to Greenhouse as an explanation to the current climatic conditions of the Earth is at SOD.
The pros and cons are expressed originally in the context of Venus then a large defined ‘room’; the point or conjecture is that the pressure generated by the enclosed space which is opaque to outside radiation will have a heat profile based on gas and pressure dynamics.
Without referring to the merits, or not, of Greenhouse it does seem that the possible impact of pressure, a known heating parameter, has been ignored in the attribution of climatic conditions on Earth to Greenhouse.
The SOD discussion is fairly technical with Leonard Weinstein a NASA scientist advocating the role of pressure with Arthur Smith, a staple of the AGW stable arguing the opposite, and SOD, by admission, somewhere in the middle.
I can’t say the issue has been resolved.
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A paper which looks at the pressure issue WITHOUT discounting radiative fluxes which AGW relies on was Chilingar et al 2008.
The Abstract notes:
The point here is not a blanket rejection of greenhouse but a relegation of greenhouse to a subordinate position.
It ihas always been a consrn to me that advocates of greenhouse cannot provide a mechanism for FURTHER warming which accounts for the barrier of Beers Law which as Mike Hammer describes, provides for natural limit to greenhouse warming.
The effect is shown graphically.
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The minimisation of greenhouse can be explained in another way involving some of the main players.
On the issue of the greenhouse effect the primary definition comes from Arthur Smith:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.4324
Smith was critiqued by professor Kramm:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0904/0904.2767.pdf
The author of the critique of Gerlich and Tscheuschner’s [G&T] first paper, Josh Halpern, critiques Kramm and G&T here:
http://rabett.blogspot.com.au/2009/07/krammis-eli-has-been-mining-gerhard.html
Halpern asserts that Kramm and G&T have relied for their conclusions on the subsurface temperature not the surface; with the subsurface being much more even than the surface.
This critique by Halpern is similar to a critique of Siddon’s Moon paper:
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Greenhouse_Effect_on_the_Moon.pdf
The critique is here:
http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/06/03/lunar-madness-and-physics-basics/
And can be summarised by this:
(A + B)^4 > A^4 + B^4
Or:
The right way to calculate a planet’s average radiation is to calculate it for each and every location and average the results. The wrong way is to calculate the average temperature and then convert that to a radiation. In the case of the earth’s surface, it’s not such a noticeable problem. In the case of the moon, because of the wide variation in temperature, the incorrect method produces a large error. However Siddons does raise a crucial point which mitigates the Greenhouse theory; that is the heat coming from the regolith;
http://www.biocab.org/Induced_Emission.html
Nahle shows that night-time induced emission by released heat from the regolith prevails over the backradiation which is a product of spontaneous emission. Nahle shows that night-time induced emission by released heat from the regolith prevails over the backradiation which is a product of spontaneous emission. So, in this way the Siddons paper is vindicated and Halpern’s point about G&T and Kramm is answered.
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Cohenite
By regolith, I assume you mean the heat accumulated on the earth’s surface during the day and released by night? As opposed to the heat released via the crust from the earth’s volcanic core on a continuous basis?
If the former, then, statistically, the surface temperature of the ocean must be a major player??? Sorry, THE major player. And if the ocean temperatures range from (say) zero Celsius to 25 Celsius, then the radiative flux across the oceans will vary by a factor of 42%! (Based on Kelvin to the power of four as suggested by Mrrs Stephan and Boltsmann.)
If tropical ocean temperatures went up by 1 Celsius, emissivity of that ocean would increase by 1.3%. If it went up by 2 Celsius, emissivity goes up by 2.7%. If it increases by 4 Celsius, it become 5.5%. At the poles, it’s more extreme – a 4 degree change equals a 6% emissivity increase. (How much are the greenhouse gases supposed to do? I thought we were only discussing 1-2% of solar input.)
Doesn’t that sound like a fairly good basis for a self-stabilising system? Any wonder the world hasn’t slipped into a runaway greenhouse situation for 4,500,000,000 or so years (and counting). Our very existence is proof in itself!
And, finally, I’d be much more concerned if we were talking about global cooling (not warming). The greenies normally go somewhere warm for their junkets – there’s probably a reason for that!
Cheers,
Speedy
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Speedy Nahle says this:
So the regolith does include the ocean.
80
Cohenite, I disagree with your thoughts about SOD. I believe he is a physicist who has had no experience with measurement in and around heat transfer equipment. He has commented on Claes Johnson blog http://claesjohnson.blogspot.com.au/ and his ideas were thoroughly discredited not only by Claes but also by others (particularly engineers) who have more knowledge of heat transfer.
Recently, I commented at Tallbloke’s blog http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/richard-courtney-empirical-assessment-of-the-warming-effect-of-co2/#more-9180 as follows
cementafriend says:
October 21, 2012 at 2:28 am
“I suppose I should not be surprised that there are people, with little qualifications in a subject (eg heat transfer) and little actual experience in measurements, who betray their ignorance by referring to information of doubtful science but it is a sad trait which seems to becoming more frequent with the influence of politics.. One should look at the vast amount of experimental work carried out by Prof. Hoyt Hottel (Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT – http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1998/hottel-0926.html) Hottel developed graphs and equations for the absorption of radiation with respect to path lengths and density (as partial pressure) for water vapor (H2O gas) and CO2 taking into account overlaps. It seems that no so-called climate scientist or physicist has read the work preferring instead their own unphysical thought bubbles.
The path length absorption is clearly logarithmic and calculating from Hottel’s formula over the atmosphere to 8km shows that the absorption of radiant heat by CO2 is insignificant in comparison to water vapor (at least 50 times lower partial pressure and at least 10 lower wavelength spectrum absorptivity). I have seen no proof of the assumed CO2 sensitivity of 1C for doubling of concentration. If the present absorption of radiant energy is insignificant the double of partial pressure results in close to zero increase.”
162
I don’t necessarily agree with SOD; the link I provided was to a debate between SOD, Arthur Smith, both of whom to a varying degree advocated the greenhouse as the causal agent of Earth climate, and Leonard Weinstein, the NASA scientist, who advocated a pressure based regime.
I thought Leonard was fairly persuasive.
50
its good to see that the debate on SOD has moved forward to accept adiabatic pressure is a factor. The next step is to get SOD to address the Slayers refutation of the “back radiation” meme and the foul up in the equation for the “33 degrees” of warming which is now proven to be merely the product of a fatal mixing of incompatible scalar and vector temperature values.
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John,
I’m sorry to do this. I really did read the Dragon Slayers’ work. There is nothing in it that I can see.
But you’ve lied to us.
You’ve lied about an easily checked fact.
Why should we trust you that you haven’t also lied about issues that aren’t so easily fact checked?
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GregS said:
October 21, 2012 at 2:41 pm
To desire for something to be disproved is not the mark of a sceptic. The desire for proof – or at least empirical evidence – is what the sceptic is about. The job of providing that evidence rests with the proposer of the theory. Without such evidence the null hypothesis stands. Or of course alternatively the sceptic gets bullied into praising the Emperor’s new clothes.
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David, UK:
I believed in CAGW in the beginning. I didn’t desire anything – I simply believed what I was told. (I was UNskeptical!) However, I was then presented with evidence to the contrary, and my belief wavered, and with time, as I learnt more, became weaker and weaker, to the extent that I now strongly believe that we don’t have a problem. I am now highly skeptical.
However, if you like, I’m willing to replace the word “skeptic” in my sentence, with “non-believer”. I don’t believe we need to take action to curb emissions. Given my current belief, and given that I want others to share my belief, a falsification of the GH theory would be absolutely fantastic news, because it would make it easier to convince others to share my belief.
Finally, if you truly believe that most skeptics (even ones that you truely respected as skeptics) would NOT be glad to learn that the GH theory had been falsified, I think you are absolutely kidding yourself.
91
(sorry – in my last paragraph – replace “skeptics” with “people who do not believe in CAGW)
10
GregS, I, as David, am also a skeptic, but do not “desire” the GH to be falsified. The GH theory is trying to address how the heat transfer of the atmosphere is influenced with changes of emissivity within the components gases of it.
To my understanding the results and the science is limited so far, the problem is complex, not enough basic research has been done to it and several hypotheses have been raised. The problem is the politicisation of it through the post-modern and the post-normal science applied to it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-normal_science
“It is urgent” “we need to act before we know what really happens”, “it is anyhow the right thing to do” etc…
And post-modern – science seen as being dependent by who is studying, in the terms: “this is big-oil funded research”, “it has no value”, etc
I would say the problem lies also with the education which no longer teaches proper science, clean from politicisation, but the “new proper science”which is politicised science.
Both do not add value to science but use science as a propagandistic tool. The result is alienating young-people from science research, hindering science progress through unnecessary political conflicts and push for political founded science – diverting money from research to political founded research.
I want politics out of science, but pronto.
Your desire to have it invalidated, may come from the feeling that is used by politics. This my 2 cents.
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Lars P:
As a skeptic, have you taken any action to convince others that the risk of CAGW has been exaggerated? (such as protests, writing to government, talking to friends, blogging, etc)
20
GregS
November 2, 2012 at 9:17 pm
As a skeptic, have you taken any action to convince others that the risk of CAGW has been exaggerated? (such as protests, writing to government, talking to friends, blogging, etc)
Well yes Greg.
To my understanding one of the most damning points referring the CAGW theory is the ocean heating. Here its limitation can be easily seen, the data (sea surface temperature) is mostly sattelite data – so in principle good quality. The fact that the oceans are not warming is a confirmation of the fact that greenhouse cannot warm the oceans:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-greenhouse-gases-wont-heat-oceans.html
The oceans have a cool skin, where the very surface is colder then the below. This is a well know phenomenon, but not enough discussed and clarified in the climate blogs.
So the oceans can heat only from sun radiation, greenhouse could eventually heat only the very surface of the oceans. But the very surface is continuously measured by satellites and the sea surface temperature is not rising.
This is why the oceans do not warm.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/05/new-paper-finds-worlds-oceans-have.html
Being 70% of the surface of the Earth, the oceans dictate the climate
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/09/realclimate-admits-doubling-co2-could.html
Doubling of CO2 could raise the surface temperature of the oceans with 0.002°C. If we ever could measure that…
No ocean heating, no frankestorms, no warming, no CAGW. This is what the ARGO buoys show, this is what sea surface temperature shows.
This was one of the major points that convinced me the theory is flawed, but there are many other points that give me confidence that it is exaggerated, and this is why I post and talk about it.
50
Ok. (and so have I)
Now, would it be correct to say that one of the main reasons you have taken that action is because you feel that it is unwarranted to take drastic action to curb CO2 emissions, and you want the governments of the world to stop taking this action? (e.g, the “Carbon Tax” in Australia) If this is true, would it not be natural to be pleased to discover new evidence that would be very convincing, and impossible for the governments to ignore? Also, it would be pleasing to receive more reassurance that the action you had been taking to oppose emissions reductions had been the right action to take.
You gave an example of ocean heating. Another example are the studies that show that climate sensitivity (including feedbacks) is far less than the IPCC have predicted. When I told someone that “the amount of global warming is probably only a sixth of what we have been told” (0.5 vs 3 degrees for a doubling), that person said “well, that’s still SOME warming”. This is why I maintain that it would be COMPLETELY NORMAL for me to be happy with a falsification of the greenhouse theory. I could then go back to that person and say “there will be NO warming WHATSOEVER”. That would surely make them sit up and take notice.
Conversely, if you were to wake up tomorrow and read that, damnit, new evidence shows that we are in fact at great risk, and even the “skeptic” scientists now agree (with a REAL consensus of 97%!) would it not be normal for you to feel bad – not just because you had been wrong, but also because you had in fact been hindering mankind in some small way, by opposing action to curb CO2 emissions?
21
Greg, why would you love the greenhouse effect to be disproved? What is your motivation for wanting this?
333
The better question, John, is why do you hope and pray for validation of GHG theory, so as to confirm that CO2 rise really can and will cause runaway global warming of a catastrophic degree?
Since there is NOTHING anyone can do to prevent a rise of CO2 emissions in the developing world, the validation of your theory means you either hope for a catalogue of climate catastrophes, or the mass deindustrialisation of the world with its consequent economic catastrophe, or mass killing and murder and mayhem on a global scale to thwart the third world becoming industrialized.
So, John, you are right- Greg really is a sick puppy!
240
Validation of GHG theory does not validate CAGW theory!
Back Radiation occurs on a quantum scale where thermodynamic laws do not apply.
Water vapour positive feedback on the other hand is a violation of the second law as it is a violation of Gibbs free energy principles. Positive feedback can only occur due the 0th law (Connecting two system will result in both accelerating to a new equilibrium) or through the internal cannibalisation of other energy sources (total energy in a system must be minimised)
CAGW does not do this, it claims that an increase of one energy type (sensible heat) results in an increase of another energy type (latent heat) which is in violation of energy minimisation in a system.
Greenhouse Gases are responsible for some level of warming however their effectiveness is limited. A fully saturated atmosphere (absorption of 100% of the energy in a gasses absorption spectrum) Will only lead to 50% reduction in the flow of energy from warm to cold.
Also CO2 must emit slightly less energy that what it absorbed in order to satisfy the conservation of momentum (moving photons have momentum). The remaining energy must then be lost through conduction to the surrounding medium or further emissions before that GHG molecule can return to its base state that it can absorb another photon.
72
Exactly; AGW does not understand enthalpy; a case in point; AGW double counts the energy to evaporate as also the extra energy in the atmosphere.
80
Winston, why do you assume that I hope and pray for validation of GHG theory? I would be extremely happy if it turned out that we had nothing to worry about.
211
So….. JB should be extremely happy.
Drop your hypochondria, JB ! There is nothing untoward happening !!
40
Just a wild guess, John. If your newfound skepticism is real, then congratulations and welcome to the ranks of the cured. After a suitable period of deprogramming and rehab, I’m sure you will be back to hard core scientific principles, and supporting observations over religious fervor in no time.
120
John, you get a lot of criticism. I am going to give a you a little bit of praise. You may be all at sea regarding the climate, but you did get the grammar right when you wrote “why would you love the greenhouse effect to be disproved” without the nasty American intrusive “for”.
(This is the intrusive “for” that we hear in “I want for you to think …” and “I would like for you to write …”.)
You can hold your head up about that.
71
It’s a good question John, and see my answer above and the question to you below. Maybe it is your political motivation that puts you in the CAGW camp and does not allow you to analyse the facts as they are, but only as seen through your political correct sunglasses?
30
Spenser refers to a IR thermometer. I am not an expert on IR thermometers, but as far as I understand, a sensor just detects IR radiation from the remote object and then the temperature of the remote object is calculated by means of measuring the changes in the electrical current the radiation causes in the sensor. That’s why you can not do it with a usual thermometer.
Funny that he is talking about measuring “tiny temperature changes within the handheld sensor” and sees no contradiction to his “greenhouse effect” assertions. According to these assertions a small part of the IR radiation from a -18C cold surface causes 33C increase in temperature, this is not tiny at all. But they have no problem with that.
On the issue of warming by “back radiation” there is an experiment by professor Wood from 1909. He took a box covered with glass producing very much back radiation compared to the “greenhouse gases”, and no significant additional warming happened. There must have been something like hundreds/thousands degrees C though, if the “greenhouse gases” hypothesis were correct. So the hypothesis died quickly after that and was dug out 70 years later by modern Frankensteins.
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The necessary assumption about measuring “temperature” in that way is knowledge of the emissivity of the object in the IR bands being detected by the sensor.
Measuring emissivity accurately is non-trivial. One can get within a few percent (good enough for general Engineering purposes) by using controlled environment with a thermometer “attached” to the object and then “calibrating” the IR sensor’s emissivity setting until the indicated temperature matches that measured directly. Then, out in the real world, one often finds that the surface is somewhat different to that in the lab, which of course can make a significant difference to the indicated temperature.
Gases have no surface, so measuring their temperature by IR isn’t practical.
10
Dr. Allen said:
But Slayers do (according to Konrad’s thought experiment) propose a new kind of greenhouse effect caused by N2 and O2. They claim in an atmosphere composed solely of these two gases the surface of the Earth would melt into “liquid magma” because these two gases are unable to radiate (transfer, move, whatever) heat towards space, but they can absorb heat through conduction and so will eventually heat up to the hottest temperature on the planet, which is liquid magma in volcanic craters.
This “Slayer Greenhouse Effect” is many orders of magnitude more powerful than anything ever imagined by Al Gore or James Hansen. Fortunately, the” IR absorbing” gases like CO2 and water vapour are equally powerful cooling agents.
The temperature of molten lava is about 1500c… So a few parts per million increase in the O2 or N2 levels of the atmosphere might well cause warming or cooling by (just guesssing) 10c to 50c? Talk about global warming. It’s a wonder all life on Earth hasn’t already been destroy in such an unstable arrangement.
We can check whether past temperatures correspond to past level of O2 in the atmosphere…
http://www.eolss.net/Sample-Chapters/C01/E4-03-08-02.pdf
Hang on a second! The oxygen levels of the Earth — one of the two Slayer super Greenhouse Gases that could turn the Earth into molten lava — can and have varied by ONE AND HALF TIMES as recently as the Cretaceous and yet the planet didn’t melt or turn into an ice ball?
O2 levels of last couple of billion years:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Oxygenation-atm-2.svg&page=1
30
wes, the role of N2 and O2, by bulk the dominant gases of the atmosphere, in heating the atmosphere is distinct from the removal of heat from the atmosphere to space; there is a good discussion here from about comment 105 onwards.
10
Oxygen and nitrogen let the whole spectrum in pretty much unmolested,and are therefore translucent to IR,so they let the earth freely radiate to space. Sorry,no Molten Earth. It’d be Snowball Earth. Slain a Slayer,I’m afraid.
11
A quick trip to a university chemistry department to talk to the staff would very quickly dispel any notion of a Greenhouse Effect. There is no such thing as a heat absorbing gas. END OF STORY.
The atmosphere is heated and cooled by physical processes – evaporation, condensation, conduction and pressure – not magical gases.
92
Greg,
Sadly, Roy Spencer is no longer a credible expert in this debate. Spencer has the temerity to claim that hand held infrared thermometers (IRT’s) can be aimed at the sky to measure and thus prove “back radiation” heating by CO2 and other “greenhouse gases”, which is a complete joke. My colleagues at Principia Scientific International had their debunk of Spencer’s ignorance confirmed when world leading IR thermometer makers, Mikron advised, IRT’s are set “to evade atmospheric moisture over long path measurements.” This, Mikron say, is necessary to “avoid interference from CO2 and H2O.” Sadly for Roy, such thermometers therefore aren’t even measuring the “greenhouse gases” he claims they are!
See here: http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/infrared-thermometer-manufacturer-debunks-back-radiation-heating/
610
If the IRTs are set to “avoid interference from CO2 and H2O” this demonstrates that they are capable of detecting back radiation/downwelling radiation from those two molecules.
41
Warren,
The issue has never been about whether radiation moves freely about in the atmosphere (it does), the question is whether once it has arrived at the surface does it get more than one go at generating heat (i.e “back radiation” heating). The Slayers (my colleagues at Principia Scientific International) say “no” because (a)no such phenomenon as “back radiation heating” is cited in any thermodynamics textbooks and (b) nor has any such effect been measured empirically.
Poor Wes Allen and Jo Nova are among that dwindling group of skeptics who are also GHE believers left not knowing whether to pin their colors to “back radiation” heating or “delayed cooling” (ie “blanket effect”). This is because each is a contradiction in terms and may separately be shown to not have any empirically proven basis. This is the crux of Slayer science.
711
John,what are the sources of downwelling IR and the processes that generate it?
60
John OSullivan,
The reason why no one is paying much attention to you is because all you are doing is creating a semantic strawman argument to knock down.
You can keep repeating blankets don’t cook pigs and thermos bottles don’t boil water all day if you want.
No one can deny that. All you have done is hang your evidence-free hat on a truism.
This is typical cult recruiting behaviour. Start with a banal platitude that everyone can agree with, then demonise those opposed to your cult as heretics who can’t see that the sky is blue.
Your logic is that since Nova and Spencer don’t believe in the 2nd law of thermodynamics, the Dragons Slayers are ipso facto the one true path forward into an utopian future where the imaginary dragons are slewed and we all live happily ever after…but only if we all join with the forces of righteousness against the sinister warmist Jedi who have seduced even Jo Nova over to the dark side.
Dragons are just another low budget web-based form of pseudo-science millenarianism, only with almost zero cult followers.
The Dragons rhetorical logic is exactly the same as the ubiquitous Warmist strawman characterisation of the skeptical position as:
“Skeptics deny climate change…” Therefore, Warmism must be the one true path to an utopian future.
Of course, we know skeptics don’t deny that the climate evolves.
And, we know that Jo Nova and Roy Spencer don’t deny the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
And finally we recognise bad logic when we see.
142
Yes, this is why we float plastic blankets on swimming pools – to make the water colder, you see.
sarc/off
.
Anybody who supports the “greenhouse gas” theory of planetary warming – to whatever degree – MUST first explain just “how” the “extra heat” gets “transmitted into the oceans” (the current de jour explanation of where it’s hiding), OR explain just where it is.
Without that the whole theory becomes just another rework of the “epicycle science” meant to explain the movement of the planets in an earth-centric solar system. Eloquent BS.
Without a plausible theory for the “missing heat” the explanation accepted in the Slayer theory – that there simply ISN’T ANY – remains the null hypothesis.
214
MV,
How thick is your plastic blanket, what is it made from, what are its thermal properties, what are its reflective properties, and most importantly, what is the thermal gradient within the pool, and how do these change over time?
63
Rereke
My goodness, next you’ll be asking for a published, peer-reviewed paper – just like a cultist.
My pool blanket looks for all the world like it is made from industrial strength bubble wrap.
It lets in the same IR energy from the sun that falls on all bodies of water, warming them, but prevents the loss of heat via evaporation / convection.
Hence the water gets warmer.
It really IS that simple.
182
Hey MV, it also lets in the rather more energetic visible light.
424
memoryvault says “It lets in the same IR energy from the sun that falls on all bodies of water, warming them, . . .”
in another place (#3.1.1.1), mv says: “Radiation, forwards, backwards, . . ., has nothing whatsoever to do with it.”
Do I note a contradiction here?
Anyway, John Brookes says “visible light.” (meaning Shortwave)
John B. might have suggested you slip in under your pool blanket and swim to the bottom and take a color wheel with you. Then record which colors are visible under the water at its maximum depth. You could also buy or borrow an IR sensor (see link to Roy S’s page in GregS’s comment (#1) above, and then use it both above and below your plastic blanket.
A basic explanation of the issues you might have to consider is here:
[water is discussed after leaves (chlorophyll):
http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/earth-sciences/geography-boundary/remote-sensing/fundamentals/1350
General information is here (Solar Spectrum diagram – scroll down):
http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/ideas/Insolation.html
Then I would question how the blanket ‘helps to’ warm the water or whether it just prevents heat loss by reducing evaporation and conduction – which, from all your other comments, is what I gather you really believe.
62
You’ll find that a great deal of heat transfer from bodies of water can be stopped by an impermeable barrier no thicker than one molecule. Water loses heat by evaporation.
Of course liquid water is also a good radiator of heat (emissivity around 90%, depending on roughness, etc), but it’s also a fairly good thermal insulator. Most of the heat transfer within bodies of water is by convection. That’s why stratified enthalpy storage tanks work. They are slender, tall structures which limit the convective flow so that the cold water at depth doesn’t easily mix with the hot water at the top.
Typical pool blankets are designed more towards paractical durability than heat transfer properties. Once you do the former, the latter are usually adequately satisfied.
10
I apologise, MV. I was just interested in how it worked.
In NZ people put covers on pools to keep the leaves (and dogs) out.
But I have never noticed any appreciable warming effect, other than at the surface of the pool, where heat from the cover (created by radiation from the sun) is transferred to the water by conduction.
To warm the whole pool (I reasoned) would need to have some form of mixing, which implies convection, but with all the warmer water at the top of the pool, where would that convection come from, unless an external power source (a pump or agitator) was being used?
61
Throw your pet seal under the pool blanket? 🙂
10
There is no missing heat if you have negative feedback and greenhouse gasses can still cause some level of warming!
Case closed!
When you combine the log curve of warming due to increasing water vapour with exp curve of evaporative cooling from water you get a upside down u-shaped buffering system to the planets climate.
Negative feedback dominates!
The 2nd law of thermodynamics means the effect must always be smaller than the force across the entire energy of the system.
20
GregS –
Spencer never agreed with the Slayers, and probably never will.
As far as his blog comments that you link to go, Spartacusisfree seems to speak for the engineers who live in the real world of heat transfer, and he gives very convincing reasons (to my mind at least) why the greenhouse effect is not possible. I’m sympathetic to that view particularly since that effect hasn’t to date been demonstrated in any plausible laboratory experiment (e.g Nahle).
Anthony Watts has in the past been very nasty about the Dragon Slayers. I’m a big fan of wattsupwiththat but Watts isn’t the last word on anything even though he sometimes gives the impression he thinks he is.
200
Hi LG,
Yes, I’ve noticed WUWT are not very keen on the Slayer theory, but it fits the pattern.
Virtually all of the GHG proponents, whether skeptic or cultist, even the big hitters like Lindzen and Spencer, have lifetimes invested in the theory. They all ultimately describe themselves as “climate scientists”, and mostly derive the bulk of their income and/or prestige from “climate science”. In other words they have a vested interest.
On the other hand, those supporting the Slayer theory tend to be people who come from “hard science” backgrounds – physicists, chemists, geologists and engineers, describe themselves as such (as opposed to “climate scientists”) and derive the bulk of the income and/or prestige outside of the climate science fraternity. They have no vested interest in the subject.
As for me, I’ll stick with simple observation. For as long as my swimming pool stubbornly refuses to freeze over under its plastic blanket, and my Thermos refuses to boil my soup, my money’s on evaporation/convection.
The atmosphere is not a blanket that keeps the earth warm. In the daytime it is an evaporative air conditioner that COOLS the planet. At night the same process continues, with minor assistance from radiation from cooling land-masses, which is SLOWED a little by the atmosphere.
There is no “radiative heating” effect.
405
How can you say:
Then say in the same comment:
In the first quote you seem to get the idea of insulation. (the idea of Thermos bottles adding extra heat is a strawman debasement of the GHG model) In the second quote you reject the idea of insulation in regard to the atmosphere.
So, yeah, let’s stick with simple observation:
The temperature on the surface of the moon in the sunlight is +107c. In the shade it is -150c.
Please explain how your hypothesis that the atmosphere does not act like a blanket to keep the Earth warm explains why such temperature variation exists on the atmosphere-less moon but not on the earth.
126
Perhaps Wes, it would be more constructive for you to explain why the temperature on the surface of the earth in sunlight is not +107C PLUS, since we are apparently cocooned in a “blanket” which has the magical property of generating even more heat than arrives from the sun in the first place.
As to your actual comment, you have ignored the statement I was commenting on. Here, let me repeat it for you.
By putting a blanket over my swimming pool I am effectively blocking the water from the effect of “any IR-absorbing GHG’s in the atmosphere”. Hence, according to the good Dr Weston’s interpretation of the laws of radiation, the temperature of the water should drop, deprived as it is of the warming effect of these GHG’s.
This, of course, is all gobbedly gook. The water in my pool gets warmer under the blanket because I have prevented the process of evaporation/convection. Radiation, forwards, backwards, sideways, upside down, or even from strange, mythical black bodies, has nothing whatsoever to do with it.
383
With a pool cover,you’re also restricting your pool’s ability to cool radiatively in the IR,as well as evaporatively. Downwelling IR isn’t warming your pool much,sunlight is. Either by penetrating the water,or by penetrating and heating the semi-opaque pool cover,then the heated pool cover the radiates IR in all directions while acting as an insulator for the heat reservoir of the water,particularly at night.
30
Anyway, to provide a simple answer to your question – water.
More specifically the oceans, which cover 70% of the earth’s surface, and contain most of the heat energy that arrives from the sun. The top ten feet of the oceans contain as much heat energy as the entire atmosphere.
Unlike land, which loses energy as soon as the sun stops shining on it – as happens on the moon – the oceans store energy and lose it gradually by evaporation.
The moon has no oceans – that’s the difference Wes.
312
Exactamento, MV.
And if the moon had oceans, what else would it have?
93
Memoryvault, you are being far too simplistic. If you think the absence of water on the Moon explains why it can’t store heat and therefore plummets to -150C in the shade, that hardly explains why the Earth doesn’t get to +107C in sunlight.
65
Once again, Wes, you are putting the cart before the horse.
The answer you are looking for, of course, is “atmosphere”.
However, the reverse is true.
The reason the moon has no surface water is because it has no atmosphere, NOT the other way around.
If, for some reason, the earth lost its atmosphere tomorrow the oceans would be gone within days, if not hours.
Conversely, if the earth lost its oceans it could still continue to have atmosphere – albeit very different than what we have at the moment.
.
And it would be very hot in the day, and very cold at night – just like the moon.
Go spend some time in the Sahara.
231
Jaymez
Then what does, Jaymez?
If we accept, as the GHG theory states, that the atmosphere is largely “transparent” to incoming IR radiation, then all that sunlight that reaches the moon also reaches the earth and the surface should be much the same temperature.
The fact is it doesn’t because of the reflective and absorptive properties of water vapour and clouds (water) IN the atmosphere.
180
Which came first: The chicken or the egg?
Answer: That’s the wrong question.
Since when is the fact that water vapour and clouds are a powerful moderating force in the atmosphere not part of the greenhouse metaphor? MV you keep setting up strawmen to knock down.
Lift your game.
410
The fact that they are part of the GHG myth does not make the myth true.
It only supports the observation that the myth has incorporated some truisms.
The thunder god Thor was said to have a hammer.
We have hammers.
Does that make the myths about Thor true?
181
MV it was you who stated
My comment at 3.1.1.2.2 that you were being far too simplistic still stands. It is good that you have clarified to some extent what you said, and now do not state that it is just ‘the oceans’ – you wrote:
So you have moved up from the ocean being the sole difference between the Earth and the Moon to including water vapour in the atmosphere, which is less simplistic than your original statement.
But I’m not meaning to be pedantic, and you probably know, I’m just making the point that you can’t make sweeping simplistic statements and expect others to fill in the dots.
In fact the major difference between the Earth and the Moon is not the 70% of our world covered in Ocean, but gravity! Earth’s gravitational field exerts a pull on all the atoms and molecules in our atmosphere, preventing them from escaping. If the Moon ever had an atmosphere in the distant past it leaked into space a long time ago. So it is gravity which allows the Earth to have an atmosphere which contains water vapour and nitrogen and CO2 and other trace gases. It is gravity which stops the oceans and the atmosphere from simply floating off into space and which provides the Earth with a mechanism to regulate it’s temperature.
There are of course lots of factors which come into play in determining the make up of a planet’s atmosphere including how old it is and at what stage it is in the cooling cycle, the strength of it’s gravitational pull which determines at what speed an atom needs to be going in order to escape the atmosphere and eventually leak into space. Different atoms have different escape speeds which can mean certain planets will be devoid of certain gases altogether.
Of course I am not a believer that CO2 is an evil greenhouse gas which will cause unstoppable global warming. If that were true, despite the extra distance Mars is away from the sun you would think that it’s 95% carbon dioxide, 3% nitrogen, and 1.6% argon atmosphere. Would have warmed it above the surface temperature ranges from -87 to -5 °C given CAGW theory states there will be a continuing positive feedback loop with increasing atmospheric CO2! The Martians could reduce all their CO2 emissions and somehow sink all their atmospheric CO2 and it would still be bloody cold there!
Water vapour/clouds provide both a warming and a cooling mechanism for the Earth. The climate models have only got one side of the ledger taken into account!
104
Wes, to make the average temperature by calculating the average between -150°C and +107°C is a fallacy.
If you want to average these temperatures, you need to average the radiation emissions.
In your example for the Moon we have:
1 – radiation at +107°C (380°K) is 1182 W/m2
2 – radiation at -150°C (123°K) is 12.9 W/m2
The average radiation is 597 W/m2 – from it we can derive the average temperature which could have caused it using Stefan Bolzmann’s law
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/stefan.html#c1
this is the average temperature of +47°C for this Moon average
Averaging temperature is nonsense due to the 4th power in radiation law.
12
And there is the most telling comment you’re ever going to see regarding this whole CAGW affair.
There’s no actual connection anyone can make between CO2 and anything yet whole careers have been built on the theory that the stuff is dangerous. The world debates the whichness-of-what like lives depended on it but cannot put any cloths on the poor old emperor hung out there flapping in the breeze. It’s getting embarrassing.
It’s time to get the point that this isn’t about science but about politics and the power that comes from having the upper hand. I’m personally of the belief that people will vote their own real interest if they know what’s at stake for them. But they have to know how the politicians are spending their money, how it’s being wasted, how they’re being hurt and how much more they’re going to be hurt in the immediate future. They have to know what wealth really is and that governments, no matter what they try, cannot create it — in fact governments usually destroy it. They have to understand that the real creators of wealth are the ones who hire people to do useful jobs and pay reasonably for the work. And they have to know that their freedom is at stake in this war.
They have to watch every move all the time. The only people who stay free are those who put up the necessary fight to stay free.
By all the evidence far too few actually understand those things. And this is our battle. Why the science debate one more time?
210
.
Spot on BB.
The only reason I have brought into the “scientific debate” here, is because I like debating, and let’s face it, our resident trolls don’t offer much of a challenge.
But the largely highly intelligent people who frequent this site are another thing entirely.
I had a ball last night, even if I did get my wrists slapped a few times.
160
I had just a few minutes, decided to look for any responses and there was yours. I want you to know that I wasn’t calling you out for anything. You made, as I said, a very powerful statement and I just took the opportunity to underline it.
80
It’s bothered me for a long time that I’ve been unable to find anything about a bench laboratory experiment to quantify the effect of CO2 – in other words, a synthetic atmosphere with ppm varaitions of CO2 and/or water pumped into the system.
Any extra information you have would be welcome!
60
Bench experiments were conducted and produced the GHG equivalent numbers. These experiments are crap through as they were conducted in a dry atmosphere. In the real world the broad absorbance bands of H2O mean that some of the lesser GHG like methane would have very little effect at all as water vapour already absorbs all the energy.
The actual effect of CO2 is calculated by looking at the emission at the top and bottom of atmosphere and calculating how much less emission there would be at the top with doubled CO2 and calculating the extra area under the curve to determine the increase in forcing.
40
Thanks for your comment Rob – much appreciated.
10
MV –
You pipped me in the reply to GregS and I agree with everything you say.
92
I have no time for the theory that CO2 could have a significant role on capturing heat in a greenhouse effect, as there is just not enough of it (just one molecule in every 2500 or so), so it is physically impossible for it to have any effect. Being part of the general composition of the atmosphere in conducting heat around ast the surface does sound more plausible, but I need to think about it for a while to see where it fits.
I think the change in temperature is mostly related to changes in solar activity, with some support from mechanisms like the PDO and AMO and various other cycles tat are in operation around the planet that are based on changes in oceanic currents.
I long for the day when this stupid obsession with CO2 is finally exposed for the scam it is and all those scientists who have a vested interest in promoting that theory are shown to be the group thinkers that they generally are
342
If you have no time for the plain truth, you must be a very busy man indeed.
234
You cry truth, truth, truth John. But you can’t ever support your position with anything but someone else’s opinion. There’s never any empirical argument from you. You’re a joke!
I say we should have no more time for your worthless comments.
271
Somewhere above, Jo mentioned she hoped everyone would ‘remain polite.’ So, for the sake of being polite, I won’t directly address comments by brooksie. He claims to be fond of the truth, but I’d be banned if I spoke it to him.
190
Hi Otter
Discussion of the “greenhouse” effect is so difficult because it means different things to different people.
Talking apples and pears.
The basic idea is that without any atmosphere the world would be too cold to support life.
ANY gas will hold, for a while, just a portion of the suns energy and the argument about the magic properties of CO2 are a bit irrelevant.
Amazing how much conflict can develop over a poorly defined idea like GHE.
KK 🙂
110
Does the University of Western Australia pay you to be an AGW troll John, or is this a personal mission from god for you?
http://www.facebook.com/john.brookes.39
Between yourself and Lewandowsky, UWA does not have much to recommend it as an institution of higher learning.
240
Surely you meant the Other guy, than God…
50
I love that you think you’ve outed JB with a cunning little google. lol.
18
Oh no Matt! I’m going to have to get a whole new identity and start all over again. What a sill fool I was hiding behind my own name…
212
Actually JB was easy to find – he posts comments on WUWT, and uses his FB link in the comment.
There is no drama here – cosying up to the favoured view of the current Authority is a low risk strategy.
JB has nothing at risk in using his own name.
20
Hey JB what’s the falsification criteria for CAGW?
Would a 16 year pause in Warming fit the bill
Feeling refuted yet?
Still believing in pseudo-science?
Do you have nay idea what the difference is between a pseudo-scientific statement and a scientific statement?
50
Your actually completely wrong!
Increasing CO2 has very little effect because there is already so much of it in the atmosphere that it absorbs most of the energy available to it.
Their may be only 1 in 2500 but there 10^25 molecules or so per m2 of air.
In the centre of the CO2 absorption band it only takes about 50m of atmosphere to absorb half of the energy available.
40
Maybe the truth is part way between “no effect because the concentration is so low”, and “no effect because its already saturated”.
111
(Let me ask you again – in case you missed it) Hey JB what’s the falsification criteria for CAGW?
Would a 16 year pause in Warming fit the bill
Feeling refuted yet?
Still believing in pseudo-science?
Do you have nay idea what the difference is between a pseudo-scientific statement and a scientific statement?
40
I’m going to go with the one you guys suggested yourselves. When you got Phil Jones to admit to no significant warming since 1995, you gave me my start date.
So my criteria for disproving AGW is that there be statistically significant cooling since 1995. There have been many “skeptics” who have recently made comments about the imminent arrival of cooling, so I’ll defer to them if that cooling eventuates.
But I’ll go one better, and say that if there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995 by 2020, I’ll stop infesting blogs like this.
62
JB – Well done.
You have my respect for this – you are willing to play and not just be a spectator.
40
As a layperson, I am unable to mount much of an argument against the Slayers, other than to note their ideas are unscientific in the sense that they never have proposed a falsifiable hypothesis that can be tested as far as I am aware.
As for the idea that all IR-absorbing gases have only a cooling effect, (oxymoron alert!) then why is Mars cooler than the Earth? Although slightly further away from the sun than the Earth, Mars has an atmospheric pressure of only 600 pascals (0.087 psi) compared to Earth’s sea level pressure of 101.3 kilopascals (14.3 psi.) If the Dragons were right, the Earth should be cooler than Mars since the Earth has much more cooling IR-absorbing gases.
Likewise, why is Venus with its massive CO2 atmosphere so much warmer than Earth if IR-absorbing gases have only a cooling effect?
Furthermore, if all oxymoronically cooling IR-absorbing gases had only a cooling effect then why isn’t the Earth a giant snowball in space?
Answer: Because the Greenhouse metaphor is essentially useful in describing what atmospheres do for the surface of planets. (We can argue about the details, such as whether overall water vapour feedback is negative or positive, but not so much the general principle.)
I’m sure the more physics literate among us can mount a more sophisticated slaying of the Dragons, but even a school boy can see the implications of the dragon model fails to explain the atmospheres we have available in our solar system to observe and measure.
And finally, I’d like to add (as I always do when confronted with unnecessary digressions into wild speculation) that questioning the greenhouse gas metaphor is not properly part of the climate debate because both the skeptical and climate change orthodoxy accept the basic physics of the science involved. The AGW and CAGW hypothesis can be defeated on their own merits without the drama of redefining fundamental thermodynamics.
Debating whether the greenhouse effect is real or not is like someone walking in on an argument between two flight engineers on how to build a better jumbo jet airfoil and announcing they have evidence that heavier-than-air flight is impossible. It’s simply not a meaningful statement to the terms of the argument.
Moreover, If I were a warmist propagandist I would be using discussion of the no GHG furphy among a few wild-eyed skeptics as a wonderful opportunity to digress away from the real facts and evidence surrounding the climate debate, which the warmists are so incapable of answering too. I would strawman the whole skeptical community a a gaggle of looney dragosaurs and present a thorough debunking the no-GHG theory as proof for CAGW.
1312
Wes,
There are so many things demonstrably wrong in your comment – demonstrable even by a simple Google search – that it’s hard to know even where to start. Or if, indeed, it is even worth the effort.
So, as far as your comments re different planets, their atmospheres, and resultant temperatures, I suggest you start with just that – a simple Google search.
As for the thrust of your final three paragraphs, if this was the way the search for truth – aka science – was actually conducted, we would all still be learning about epicycles in school.
142
Don’t mistake blog commentary among lay folk as a scientific inquiry. It is really a discourse UPON a scientific debate as opposed to actually conducting scientific experiments and gathering evidence ourselves… Therefore commenting on the political implications of introducing unnecessarily divisive and evidence-free conjectures into the fray is perfectly in order.
May I present you and I as a case study?
Basically, we both agree with most of Jo’s readers on all the relevant empirical evidence surrounding the falsification of the CAGW hypothesis…. The lack of the tropo hotspot, the missing ocean heat, the bad methodology around Mann’s temperature reconstruction, the lack of evidence for high climate sensitivity to water vapour, the fraud exposed by Climategate, the alarming level of confirmation bias in temperature data adjustments, the shocking media bias, the 16-year modern pause in warming… etc. etc. etc… All this skepticism of CAGW is built UPON a foundation of thermodynamics which admits a greenhouse gas effect!
We share a common conceptual model of the climate, more or less. Yet, you’ll be at my throat by the end of this thread.
So why do we need to focus on our weakest link and most controversial argument?
It’s not required to show the greenhouse effect is untenable to falsify CAGW.
Therefore, I fail to see how it is any more than tangentially relevant to the scientific and socio-economic climate debate as it is formulated today.
If we admit off-the-wall ideas with no extraordinary evidence such as:
into serious consideration then where and how do we draw the line?
I’m sure a climate theory based on intelligent design could be postulated as well.
126
Wes,
“It’s not required to show the greenhouse effect is untenable to falsify CAGW.”
Then why do you protest so much in it’s defense?
122
LevelGaze,
See Eilert’s comment at #12 for a better description of the greenhouse effect and its relatively minor problems than I could ever give. The fact is that all skeptical climate arguments are based squarely on the so-called greenhouse model of atmospheric thermodynamics.
85
That’s a powerhouse question, Wes. I think the line is drawn — the theory is falsified. Hence my somewhat heavy handed reply to MV above — let’s get on down the road. There’s better work to do.
90
“Likewise, why is Venus with its massive CO2 atmosphere so much warmer than Earth .
ummmm, Wes.. At the same atmospheric pressures as found in the Earth’s atmosphere, Venus is almost exactly the temperature it should be for its somewhat lesser distance from the sun… despite being mostly CO2..
Also the heat holding capacity of the massive pressures in the Venus atmosphere mean that the day side temp is not that much different than the night side temp.
Mar’s relative lack of atmosphere does not allow for much atmospheric heat content.
Earth’s atmosphere allows it to maintain and distribute energy, all regulated by pressure differences.
211
True, but that occurs at about 50 km above where sea level would be. And at that height the Venusian atmosphere isn’t mostly CO2.
-wiki
Spoken like a someone who grasps the greenhouse metaphor is a useful description of how planets are insulated by their atmospheres.
76
“Due to the similarity in pressure and temperature and the fact that breathable air (21% oxygen, 78% nitrogen)”…
http://www.daviddarling.info/images/Venus_atmosphere.jpg
yeah, real breathable !!!!
50
“how planets are insulated by their atmospheres”
NO. The atmosphere does is nothing like an insulator.
If the ground is cooler than the air, little or no convection,
If the ground is warmer than the air.. convection
It is patently obvious that the atmosphere acts as COOLING mechanism.. not as an insulator or blanket.
150
Andy, please help Truthseeker answer my questions in comment #6.3.1 below.
Thanks in advance.
22
The Atmosphere acts too both cool through evaporation and insulate through GHG at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive but instead act to form a buffering system the moderates extreme and is an obvious example of negative feedback.
At the same time I don’t think Black body equations are useful due to their inability to account for energy storage.
An insulator is anything that reduces the flow of energy from high to low.
Energy transfer occurs in many different ways, convection, conduction, radiative, latent heat transfer, electrical ect.
GHG only act as a partial insulation to radiative transfer.
The greenhouse analogy is apt because a greenhouse lets the heat in (short wave) while reducing heat loss (to convection rather than radiative but same principle)
32
Wes, you ask …
The answer is very simple Wes. Venus is much warmer than Earth because;
1. It is much closer to the Sun, and
2. It has a much denser atmosphere (higher air pressure).
However, if you look at the Earth level air pressures from 1000 millibars to 100 millibars you will find that the ambient temperature of Venus is determined entirely by the distance from the Sun. This is shown by a very simple analysis that you can find here.
The high CO2 concentration makes absolutely no difference. There is no “greenhouse gas” effect, positive or negative.
192
Really?
Then why is the surface of Venus a universal 740 kelvin everywhere you go. Even at the poles?
Why is the surface of Mercury, which has no atmosphere and is much closer to the sun than Venus, only 700 kelvin on the side that faces the sun?
Why is Venus basically at the same temperature (or warmer than) Mercury?
Why is it so bloody cold on the dark side of Mercury at -173 c.
With no atmosphere to speak of, the closest planet to Sun gets colder on its dark side than any of the other inner planets which are much further away from the sun, but have atmospheres!
On the dark side of Venus it is just as warm as on the sunny side.
On the night side of Mars and Earth, temperature are kept from crashing 100 plus degrees by the greenhouse effects of the atmosphere.
59
It’s not just GHG that keep the earth warm but also the storage and release of energy, especially related to water.
42
Wes,
None of your “questions” disprove my point. A lack of an atmosphere is precisely why Mercury has the largest surface temperature variations in the solar system – there is nothing to stop the energy leaving the system or retaining it while it is there.
It is the density of the atmosphere of Venus that causes both the even heat distribution and the retention of heat itself. Atmosphere is a fluid and so retains heat, just like our oceans do. The point is that when you compare like to like, that is fluid atmospheres at the same level of pressure, the ratio of temperature differences between Venus and Earth is precisely explained by the ration of the differences in the distance from the Sun. The composition of the atmosphere has no measurable impact.
130
Yep, it is the density of the Venusian atmosphere that allows it to retain an even temperature, but CO2 also helps, just not as a GHG.
What the large amounts of CO2 in the Venus atmosphere does do is provide a sort of conduit for the transfer of heat from one side of the planet to the other. My understanding is that and the enormous pressures and the absorb and release of radiant energy by CO2 SPEEDS UP the transfer of energy (much more than by mostly convection and conduction like on Earth), thus allowing Venus to maintain a more constant temperature from one side of the planet to the other.
(ps, sorry for typos, tired as, and having sore eye issues)
60
AndyG55, thank you for that comment. I do remember coming across the idea that CO2 and H2O have the effect of distributing temperature, not increasing it. I could not find the source to link to.
50
Truthseeker,
You said:
And
I pointed out that Venus is hotter than Mercury even though Mercury is closer to the sun. Why? Because Mercury has no atmosphere.
So the temperature of Venus is not determined “entirely” by the distance from the sun. Its atmosphere’s “greenhouse effect” also plays a role.
Sigh…maybe you haven’t been reading the comments here. Even the Dragon Slayers believe the composition of the atmosphere is of MAGMA importance. Or maybe you missed the parts about LIQUID MAG-MAA.
I think we have a consensus here. The Warmists think the composition of the atmosphere matters. The skeptics think the composition of the atmosphere matter. And the superduper geo-nuclear global warmers, like Dragons, think the composition of the atmosphere matters.
Where does that leave you on the scale of Warmist to Geo Nuclear Warmist (GNW)?
41
Wes,
Creating your own straw man by misquoting me is not very intelligent. What I actually said was this …
Earlier I said that is was the combination of the atmospheric pressure and the distance from the Sun that makes Venus warmer than Earth, not any “greenhouse” gas, which was the question that you asked about why Venus was warmer than Earth. You bring in spurious and irrelevant points and do not address the arguments I have raised. Try reading Rosco’s comment #39 and look at the document he links to by Alan Siddons. It shows that the atmospheric density and distance from the Sun are the relevant factors for the planetary bodies throughout the solar system.
The argument of the Slayers, not to mention Nikolov and Zeller and others is that atmosphere makes a difference because it is a fluid and it has mass and therefore retains heat. The important point is that the composition of the atmosphere does not change that basic mechanic so the N2 and O2 atmosphere of Earth has the same relative effect as the CO2 atmosphere of Venus. There is no “greenhouse gas” effect because there are no “greenhouse” gasses. Atmosphere makes a difference compared to a near vacuum (Mercury vs Venus), but it really does not matter what the atmosphere is made up of. Please try and keep up.
I have been reading the comments here, not to mention the “Slaying the Sky Dragon” and LIQUID MAG-MAA is not what is being discussed in either location. It is you that is going off on irrelevant tangents and not addressing the issues raised.
Let me also say that the universe does not really care if there is a consensus or not. The universe just is. Anyone who starts from the position that they are wrong has a chance of doing some real science. Anyone who believes that they are right has none.
92
Wes,
at the same pressure levels Venus has similar temps to earth. Sound like another theory that has been floated that ignores GHG’s??
You should also know that the clouds of Venus reflect over 60% of the radiant energy back toward the surface. The CO2 soup has a small effect comparatively even under conditions that should have close to a ZERO radiation window due to pressure expansion of the CO2 absorption bands!! The silly MODELS that James “coal trains of death” Hansen and others proclaim to FIT Venus do NOT. They are a much poorer fit to the observations than the poor GCM’s the IPCC and NASA use here. Oh, and Venus has a rather large negative energy balance. It emits substantially more energy than it absorbs. Even the Hansen types have to admit little insolation reaches the surface, yet, there is a large flux upwards!!
You might want to investigate the Sulfur cycle for the replacement of water vapour from the surface to the top of the clouds.
51
Thanks, Kuhnkat, I’ll do that. My own weak lay understanding is that CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas, so it hardly surprising Hansen’s model for Venusian warming is designed to reflect on his Earthly political agenda.
The problem with the Greenhouse Effect debate is the confusion of political spin with science…. if you are willing to work with our basic understanding of atmospheric physics as it stands today then apparently you can be accused as supporting CAGW theory. I know you know that’s nonsense, because I am an admirer of your commentary and work at CA.
This is not to say that we couldn’t improve our understanding of atmospheric physics. Of course we can and will. But what we know today is more than sufficient to cast the gravest doubts upon the AGW theory.
I know you know that as well. Unfortunately, a vocal minority imagine we have to have Copernican revolution in order to dowse the AGW flame. Sadly, I fear the results are more like the French revolution than Copernican…
60
Wes, One simple clarification please. Who or what are the “Dragons” you want to slay?
12
The “Slayers” are largely correct, the net effect of radiative gasses in Earth’s atmosphere is cooling. Alarmists use flawed physics to claim that Earth’s near surface temperature would be 33 degrees cooler in the absence of “greenhouse gasses”. The simplest way to understand how wrong this is is not to ask what would happen if more radiative gasses are added to the atmosphere but rather to ask what would happen if all radiative gasses were removed from the atmosphere.
Imagine an Earth with no “greenhouse gasses”. No CO2, no water vapour, no clouds no methane and no nitrous oxide. The nitrogen and oxygen remaining would still heat through conductive contact with the Earth’s surface, but would have almost no way of losing this heat. Convection would lead to stratification of the atmosphere, so transfer of heat back to parts of surface cooled by radiation would be limited.
It may appear that the lower tropospheric air temperature would steadily rise to the hottest daytime temperature of the hottest desert under a cloudless sky, but the situation would actually be far worse. The atmosphere would in fact rise to near the temperature of the hottest points on the Earth’s surface. This is a volcanic planet, so the hottest material in conductive contact with the non-radiative atmosphere would be liquid magma.
Without radiative gasses in our atmosphere we would truly see some catastrophic global warming.
Where the “slayers” are incorrect is the issue of “back radiation”. This does exist, but the hundreds of watts attributed to it by the fraudulent Trenberthian energy budget cartoons is fictitious. However down-welling LWIR has a negligible effect on the cooling rate of Earth’s surface which is 71% water. 15 micron radiation cannot penetrate the skin evaporation layer of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool and cannot alter its cooling rate. I have run empirical experiments which confirm this, early versions were discussed here – http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/konrad-empirical-test-of-ocean-cooling-and-back-radiation-theory/
Where the “Slayers” are most on the money is with the idea that the temperature of the atmosphere is set by the pressure at the surface. Again I have checked what is also known as the Nickolov and Zeller hypothesis with empirical experiments. Early versions of which were discussed here – http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/konrad-hartmann-experiment-to-determine-the-effect-of-pressure-on-temperature-in-earths-atmosphere/
The corollary of this hypothesis has long been known to the designers of heat sinks for aviation electronics as can be seen here – http://archive.ericsson.net/service/internet/picov/get?DocNo=28701-EN/LZT146231&Lang=EN&HighestFree=Y
Dr. Allen raises the ERL claim in his critique. To understand why warmists needed this claim you should conduct the following experiment that shows the ability of CO2 to trap and thermalise LWIR is matched by its ability to radiate energy that it has acquired conductively as LWIR.
Take two insulated boxes with a double glazed SW and IR transparent windows in their upper surface. Enclose identical matt black aluminium target plates on the floor. Add identical circulation fans and k-type thermometer probes shielded from incoming and outgoing radiation. Ensure an small 5mm bleed hole in the base of each box so both boxes remain at 1 bar. Fill one box with dry air and one with 100% CO2. Illuminate the target plates in each box with identical SW sources. The temperature rise in each box is identical. Cut the SW sources. Both boxes cool at the same rate. The reason? CO2 can absorb and re radiate LWIR, however it also radiates IR from energy it has acquired conductively. In the constant pressure boxes the warming ability of CO2 is matched by its cooling ability. This is why the ERL claim was was proposed in a storm of wrist endangering hand waving. Image of experiment setup here – http://i49.tinypic.com/rj4cw8.jpg
Can the ERL claim survive? No is the short answer. All that is required is another empirical experiment. A gas column similar to the boxes described in the experiment above is placed on a centrifuge arm, without the bleed hole and with the addition of a cryo cooled matt black upper cap with a small window for incoming SWR. The centrifuge can then create a pressure gradient along the chamber from the SWR illuminated black target plate to the cooled black sky. This device can make the ERL claim vaporise, but there will just be a new claim until warmest funding runs out.
My short answer for those who have read so far is that the Slayers are largely correct. The real “greenhouse” gasses in our atmosphere are the non radiative gasses N2 and O2. Without radiative gasses such as water vapour and CO2 our atmosphere would rise to the temperature of liquid magma.
292
Konrad,
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Got evidence? Outside a couple of insulated boxes with double glazed SW and IR transparent windows,you know, from the real world?
If the real “greenhouse” gases in our atmosphere are the non radiative gases N2 and O2 then how does that change the final outcome? The greenhouse metaphor remains intact in the end. You haven’t presented any evidence to explain why greenhouse gases don’t absorb IR energy. Or why N2 and O2 aren’t transparent to IR radiation and so ARE greenhouse gases. You just say that it is so.
Whatever, the end result is the same…the atmosphere slows and spreads the radiation of solar energy across the surface of the planet disallowing the sort of huge and acute temperature gradients found on atmosphere-less bodies like the moon.
The statement: “Alarmists use flawed physics to claim that Earth’s near surface temperature would be 33 degrees cooler in the absence of “greenhouse gasses”. Is political spin combined with strawman argument. Skeptical science is based upon the very same math. Why shouldn’t we reckon the rest of your jargon-laden exposition also tinted with spin?
The idea that an Earth without radiative gases would be the temperature of liquid magma doesn’t jive with what we know about the Venusian atmosphere, which is dominated by radiative gases. Venus should be much cooler than it is if the slayers were on to something. No?
The idea that “convection would lead to stratification of the atmosphere” is baffling…. By what process does convection lead to stratification?
Thought experiment: Add water and olive oil in equal parts in a pot. Apply heat on a stove top to pot to simulate convection coming from underneath as in volcanism. What happens to stratification long before the “liquid magma” stage. (btw, I love to say the word MAG-ma. ;-))
The idea that volcanism on Earth could lead to liquid Mag Ma temperatures in the lower atmosphere is a huge claim. Got any evidence? I mean extraordinary evidence? Besides, wouldn’t volcanism leading to a super heated atmosphere be a ridiculously super-robust version of the Greenhouse effect that the Dragons argue against?
The idea that the temperature range possible in the atmosphere is set in part by the pressure at the surface is a given, so how can that be the primary insight of the Dragons? And what has that got to do with climate evolution? Are you suggesting changes in atmospheric pressure is the primary forcing agent of climate change? Got evidence for that? Extraordinary evidence?
And then the Dragons have this whopper to defend:
Got evidence? No worries, the Dragons also claim:
Since when? Since the Jurassic? Since 1840? Pure pseudo-scientific gobbly gook. It’s such an imprecise statement it could be assigned any post hoc modifier to fit up with the question asked. I worry when I see such tactics used, stains the whole project with a snake oil vibe.
Until someone can state the Dragon Slayer’s mishmash of contradictory claims into a single simple coherent hypothetical statement that provides us with useful implication that we can test against well understood observational evidence. In plain English. Then the whole project is little better than the pseudo-science of global warming it opposes. But epistemologically and politically it has the potential to be more damaging to skeptical community than CAGW ever could be.
I’ll punt that the Dragon Slayers also believe in the electric universe theory.
913
Wes,
I do not support all of the “slayers” claims. You will note that I use the qualified term “largely correct” in my post. However my response to you is TYPE IS CHEAP. If you wish to challenge me you will need to design and run your own replicable empirical experiments. Empirical evidence talks, BS (blackboard scribbling) walks.
PS. Also an Austin Powers fan 😉
110
Konrad,
Please organise the slayer’s position into a coherent statement that provides us with useful implications (predictions) about how the atmosphere ought to behave, so that it can be tested against observational evidence.
If you can do this, then we will have a scientifically stated proposition for which we can at the very least propose experimental tests.
79
.
Wes, you are making the same mistake with Konrad as you have done with my comments above. You are assuming that a perfectly reasonable confrontation of some of the basic tenets of the GHG theory amount to unswerving support for the Slayers’ opinions in toto.
I cannot comment for Konrad but I for one have never read “Slaying the Sky Dragons”, and I’ve never been to their site. The comments I’ve made above are based on observable physics, not someone’s theory or computer model of them.
In high school in the sixties I learned that climate went in approximately 30 year cycles, and the temperature range of the earth was maintained by the atmosphere which acted as a “blanket” to keep warmth in.
I never questioned the concepts then, and nothing I have learned in the last 45 years has ever given me cause to question the first assumption since. However, about three years ago now I read an article by a meteorologist outlining the principles I have espoused above – that far from being a blanket that “traps” heat, the atmosphere acts as a conveyor of heat via water vapour, from the oceans to the troposphere. In other words it is a big evaporative air conditioner.
I did some research and a whole lot of unexplained pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fell into place. Hence I arrived at where my understanding is now without any input from the Slayers, or anybody else, for that matter. In short, on the presentation of new information in my sixties I changed my mind, and will do again if required, on the basis of new evidence.
One thing I will NOT do is accept some “version” of the facts simply on the basis that it is easier to win the debate, which is what you seem to be promoting. The GHG theory is demonstrably a load of falsifiable crap, and supporting it simply because it might be easier that way to win the hearts and minds of a few impressionable young people is neither scienctific nor honest.
.
And no, we won’t be at each other’s throats on the issue – I’m going to bed soon.
240
Absolutely, true. But it’s the same bloody thing, mate. Don’t you get it?
If the atmosphere is working as a conveyor of heat, it’s also convoluting the transmission of heat from the surface to outer space, spreading the heat around by convection, by weather systems, by ocean currents, by IR radiation…. That’s what’s meant by “trapping” the heat. Think about the moon again. 107c in the direct sun. 10cm to the left -150 in the shade of a bloody pebble. How hard is that to understand? No atmosphere to smear the temperature (heat) gradient around on its way to be radiated back out to space. That’s the bloody greenhouse effect in a nutshell. On the moon heat is radiated in a simple arrow straight line back out to space. On Earth, the path powers a great complex engine we call the biosphere.
Read Eibert’s fine comment at #12. He describes it better than I can.
Likewise, don’t confuse my political critique of the rhetorical efficiencies of various arguments with an evaluation of the science. With friends who are passionately antagonistic to basic thermodynamics simply because warmists also employ the same language, who needs enemies?
If you think the GHG theory, as you call it, is a load of demonstrable crap then don’t ask us to take your word for it like some Realclimate bully.
Show us the money.
710
No Wes, sorry mate.
If the debate was simply about the diffusion aspects and capabilities of the atmosphere then there wouldn’t be a debate. Not from me, at least.
But the GHG “theory” in all its forms, from skeptic to cultist, requires an actual, physical WARMING, not just of the atmosphere in toto (as opposed to diffused warming of parts of it), but also of the oceans.
Such a net heat energy transfer from the atmosphere to the oceans is in direct defiance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and yet it is simply accepted by adherents to the GHG theory without explanation, including you.
Explain how the “missing heat” ends up in the oceans, and I might just become a believer.
Until then forgive me if I lump you in with all the other religious fundamentalists who bang on my door from time to time.
192
BS. That would violate basic physical laws. It’s a strawman argument. No one is claiming your thermos bottle heats the tea inside, rather it delays the cooling down of the tea.
Sigh….Have you never been swimming in a warm pond or a tropical sea and noticed a warm layer of water above a thermocline and below it cool water?
Why is it so difficult to imagine that on a warm sunny day, the water temperature at the surface is raised by sunlight?
Explain how this violates the second law?
What’s so hard about understanding solar energy warming and altering the density of salt water and thus in concert with continental shapes, trade winds, run off and ocean contours driving a vast convection current system that moves heat energy away from the tropics where it is dissipated into the atmosphere in the form of cyclonic clouds and other kinds of weather systems?
What missing heat? Who asked you to become a believer? Strawmen, Memoryvault, you love ’em.
Has not Jo Nova’s many examinations of the missing heat furphy satisfied you that there isn’t any. It’s not required to re-writing our basic understanding of how the atmosphere works to show Trenbeth, et al are in error.
Her is the basic confusion:
You and others here seem to believe that the AGW theory indicates that our understanding of basic atmospheric physics is deeply in error. But most skeptics fine it quiet simple to dispose of the CAGW nonsense by pointing out that even if the calculations for CO2 induced warming are correct, the over all water vapour effect works to as a negative feedback on any kind of warm forcing.
You admit as much yourself here. “the atmosphere acts as a conveyor of heat via water vapour, from the oceans to the troposphere.” I assume this means you (like I) reject the IPCC calculations for a X3 water vapour amplification on warming?
Problem solved. Game over.
The principle of parsimony…. If you don’t need to dismantle our fundamental understanding of how the atmosphere works to dispatch CAGW, then it’s bad form to do so.
Various witticisms apply: Don’t fix what ain’t broke. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
85
Wes,
The moderating effect we see in the atmosphere whereby Earth does not have the extreme day/night hot and cold of our nearest neighbor, the moon, despite the same solar insolation is already accounted for by adiabatic pressure and the latent heat of the oceans (see Ideal Gas laws). There is no need to impose a “GHE” onto already well understood and defined physical properties and processes. Once you understand those basic physical laws, there is no need to factor in any so-called “GHE” which, despite 30 years and $100+ billion in research funding still remains an amorphous, ill-defined and dubious hypothesis. It is a chimera, a “sky dragon” expediently used by govt climatologists to advance a political agenda to demonize carbon dioxide. Why, even “top” climatologists, Lindzen and Spencer can’t agree on the very basics of this “science.” Did you know each of them holds fatally contradictory explanations of the “GHE?” Lindzen says the “effect” works by “top down” heating and Spencer says the opposite! Incredible!
History will judge junk scientists unkindly if they persist in clinging to this fiction. Free your mind of the pointless and unnecessary GHE and you free CO2 from being any kind of factor in climate. As such there is no need to impose stupid “carbon taxes” on anyone.
1510
John,
The Slayers say they want a debate. Yet, they have not turned out here for a debate. Instead they sent you.
You are their PR guy, according to your title. A “legal analyst,” correct?
Your speciality is “anti-corruption.” In science, we presume?
Now, that’s an unusual mix. I never heard of a group of scientists who have a legal analyst on call whose job is…what? To attack the work of other researcher as fraudulent?…it is unusual.
Sure, there is fraud in science. And when you attack others as frauds it is good to have legal representation.
But normally, a working group of researchers puts their entire effort into their own research, which then stands or falls on its own merits. They don’t enlist the aid of legal analyst whose speciality is “anti-corruption.”
What is going on here, John?
You also seem to be the bloke the Slayers send out to do publicity and marketing campaigns.
That’s why you’re here, right? Jo’s audience is your prime market…. Disaffected, conservative, over-50, white, male, angry, frustrated, impotent…is that who you think we are? The kind of people who are eager to convert to a the Slayer cult, because the “Lukes” just don’t provide the adrenaline rush dragon stalking does?
Every comment you’ve made here contains the same mix of talking points lifted from your iPad, which are crafted to reveal very little. In spite of 48 hours of this thread the Slayer’s actual research still remains an amorphous, ill-defined and dubious assault on a Sky Dragon, which you say doesn’t exist.
Did you know, John, that Anderson and Schreuder (two of the Slayers) each holds fatally contradictory explanations of the GHE? Anderson says in the Slayer’s book that all atmospheric gases can absorb and emit IR radiation, (p.321, 323) while Schreuder claims that CO2 can not absorb and radiate IR radiation at all. (p212)*
And this is just the beginning of the Slayer confusion.
In fact, after reading Dr. Allen’s critique of the Slayer’s work, it seems like there are 63 different versions of no-GHE theory among the Slayers. 63 is a critical number, because as a specialist in anti-corruption that’s where John O Sullivan, legal analyst, has earmarked as the threshold of what he calls “Fraud.”
*Dr. Allen’s PDF (page 5)
92
Wes,
“If the real “greenhouse” gases in our atmosphere are the non radiative gases N2 and O2 then how does that change the final outcome? The greenhouse metaphor remains intact in the end. You haven’t presented any evidence to explain why greenhouse gases don’t absorb IR energy. Or why N2 and O2 aren’t transparent to IR radiation and so ARE greenhouse gases. You just say that it is so. ”
This is NOT what Konrad claimed. Please reread his exposition so you understand what he is actually claiming. My opinion is that he is saying that GHG’s are mostly neutral as they absorb incoming radiation giving a cooling effect and are the actual cooling medium for the N2 and O2 which is mostly heated by conduction from the earth. Once heated they convect and would have no means of cooling away from the surface without the GHG’s!!!
60
kuhnkat,
Please read up on adiabatic pressure and the ideal gas laws and understand that they amply explain why Earth does not have the extremes of night/day temps as our nearest neighbor, the moon, despite the same insolation. No “GHE” is needed.
For 30 years believers in the GHE hung their hats on the spurious “33 degrees” of alleged warming that climatologists assert “makes our planet warmer than it would otherwise be.” But that number is not a real, measured value, it is the product of a botched equation from James Hansen in 1981. Hansen took a scalar temp (average of surface weather stations: 288K) and mixed it with a vector temp (the outgoing IR radiation: 255K). He got the “33 degrees” as an “apples and oranges” fatal subtraction of those values which anyone trained in higher math or physics knows is ridiculous. Without the “33 degrees” gambit there are no other “real” numbers to this “sky dragon” fiction.
136
I agree with this. Without the ability for so called greenhouse gasses to radiate heat that they have collected from kinetic transfer the atmosphere would continue to rise to the temperature of the maximum temperature found on the planet. This would be the temperature of exposed magma.
125
CameronH,
Hang on a minute. That’s just sci-fi fantasy stuff. Fact is that greenhouse gases do radiate the energy that they gained.
If the ever popular molecule, H2O didn’t have the unusual property of expanding when it freezes it would sink to the bottom of the ocean and eventually the Earth would have become locked in a permanent glacier forever. Another interesting fantasy, but not a particularly useful line of inquiry.
But what I find shocking is how unconsciously permeable to warmist memes we seem to be.
Rationally we seem to understand that all the greenhouse gases added up amount to less than one percent of the atmosphere and that their ability to delay the radiation of heat into space is limited. On the other hand we seem ironically willing to slip into Dr. Evil liquid magma reveries worthy of Al Gore’s next apocalyptic powerpoint diatribe.
So CO2 doesn’t warm the planet at all, Right???…. but if all 390 CO2 molecules per every million others in the atmosphere somehow magically lost their ability to radiate the energy they absorbed the Earth would become liquid MAGMA?
Holy Cow, Batman, this stuff is Kryptonite!
106
Wes,
you seem to be misunderstanding my argument. I am not asking what would happen if just CO2 were removed from the atmosphere, but all condensing and non-condensing radiative gasses. The only ways that the remaining N2 & O2 could then cool is either by the very very small amount theses gasses can radiate in IR (orders of magnitude below that of CO2 and water vapour), or by being brought into conductive contact with the Earth’s surface that then radiates to space. However as a non-radiative atmosphere slowly heated up to above the average surface temperature of the planet, convective circulation would cease. This scenario would greatly reduce the cooling of N2 and O2 in the atmosphere.
Without “greenhouse” gasses however, the heating of the atmosphere would remain largely the same, as the atmosphere is heated primarily by conductive contact with the Earth’s surface. With no easy way to radiate energy to space it would only take a few years for the lower troposphere to heat to the temperature of the hottest desert. As the points of contact with volcanic temperatures are few, the atmosphere would take far longer to approach these temperatures.
My claims is that the net effect of radiative gasses in the atmosphere is cooling. Our atmosphere is in constant conductive contact with liquid magma at numerous points on the planets surface. If you do not believe that a non radiative atmosphere would rise toward these volcanic temperatures could you please explain how such a non-radiative atmosphere would lose energy acquired from volcanic sources?
75
Unfortunately it is impossible to have an strait N2/O2 atmosphere in the presence of ionising radiation. UVC forms ozone a powerful radiative gas and both are Ionised in the upper atmosphere where they could Form NO. Of course carbon is formed by fusion before N or O and is consequently much more abundant.
The mixing dynamics of such a planet would also be vastly different due to the huge temp and consequently pressure differential. between night and day.
50
OK, Konrad… Walk me through this.
All that is left is O2 and N2? Got it.
And these gases have no ability to transfer heat from the surface of the planet to the top of the atmosphere other than to actually come into contact with the hot soil and then float to the top of the atmosphere? Is that correct?
Then you say that when O2 and N2 heat up by conduction they won’t convect for long, because the surface of the Earth will heat them until they are actually warmer than the surface which is heating them???
Sounds like MV’s thermos bottle boiling his tea.
Never mind… if you handwave the extra heat in from volcanism then we can carry on….
But this is also where the thought experiment breaks down because such a planet could never have gotten past the Hadean and Archean stages which were dominated by volcanism. A crust would never form in the first instance. Liquid Magma forever.
Hang on, no the liquid magma would not last forever… the magma would release all the greenhouse gases into the simple atmosphere, including water vapour would form and then the planet would begin to cool.
So yeah, I concede that based on the terms of your thought experiment it follows that at least one greenhouse gas, water has a net cooling effect.
And that’s all it takes really, isn’t it? Just the one main so-called greenhouse gas? No?
If water vapour forms a negative feedback loop on warming then that’s all that required to explain climate homeostasis we observe today. It’s parsimonious. It’s simple. Neat.
The problem with the Dragon analysis is that it’s clunky… we can far more elegantly reach the conclusion that water vapour must be the most important heat transportation element in the atmosphere by complex system analysis, without adjusting any aspect of our understanding of basic atmospheric physics.
The simple solution is always the best, unless you can show extraordinary evidence why the minor greenhouse gases are required to have a net cooling effect to reinforce the overall negative feedback on warming by water vapour.
Back to you, Konrad.
96
OK, Wes… I’ll walk you through this 😉
“All that is left is O2 and N2? Got it.”
– Correct!
“And these gases have no ability to transfer heat from the surface of the planet to the top of the atmosphere other than to actually come into contact with the hot soil and then float to the top of the atmosphere? Is that correct?”
– Close, but not quite. These gasses are heated almost exclusivity by conductive contact with the earth’s surface. They have almost no way to cool except by being brought into contact with parts of the earth’s surface cooler than them.
“Then you say that when O2 and N2 heat up by conduction they won’t convect for long, because the surface of the Earth will heat them until they are actually warmer than the surface which is heating them???”
– Again close, but not quite. As the temperature of the atmosphere rises convection bringing down gasses cooled by mixing with as yet unheated gas will slow. Convection in compressible gasses in a gravity field only occurs when the gasses above surface heated gasses are at a lower temperature corrected for adiabatic lapse rate. Eventually with almost no ability to radiatively cool the theoretical non-radiatve atmosphere will rise to near the temperature of the hottest surface temperature of the Earth, liquid magma. It would not however exceed that temperature through conductive heating alone.
Our real atmosphere containing radiative gasses is primarily heated by conductive contact with the Earth’s surface and the release of latent heat from condensing water vapour. It is primarily cooled by LWIR emitted to space from radiative gasses mixed in conductive contact with the non-radiative gasses within it. No “greenhouse” gasses and we would be toast.
Interestingly you can check this concept without using radiation or radiative gasses. I suggest you try the following experiment –
You will need –
– two 1m long EPS foam tubes 100mm diameter closed at both ends.
– two foam cooler boxes or “eskis”
– two fish tank water pumps
– fish tank tubing and “Y” connections
– Dual probe thermometer with K type probes
– four water coils. Thin aluminium tubing wrapped in a spiral with both input and output tubes pointed in the same direction and sprayed matt black.
To build the experiment –
– In “tube 1” install one water coil in the base and one at the top with their input and output ends through the foam to the outside of the box
– In “Tube 2” install both water coils inside the base of the tube 75mm apart.
– in both tubes install the thermometer thermocouple 500mm up the side on the interior
– install one fish tank water pump in each cooler box. Use the tubing and Y splitter to organise two output tubes from each box
– One cooler box should be filled with boiling water, the other with ice water
– Connect one of the hot tubes to the water coil in the base of tube 1 and the other to one of the coils in the base of tube 2. Install return lines from the two coils used to the hot water box.
– Do the same for the cold water coils at the top of tube 1 and the base of tube 2 with return lines going to the cold water box
To conduct the experiment –
– ensure the foam tubes have equal starting temperatures and are standing upright
– switch on the water pumps and observe the temperature differential reading on the dual probe thermometer.
Tube 1 is a crude representation of our atmosphere in which air is heated at the surface and displaces air that has cooled by radiation higher up. Tube 2 represents a theoretical non-radiative atmosphere in which air can only heat and cool through conductive contact with the surface.
Now if that’s not “walking you through it” I don’t know what is 😉
66
Wes,
It’s simple to understand that a fraud is being permitted when you see that there are no less than 63 different versions of this “theory” taught at leading universities. So skewed and amorphous is this chameleon that you can make up your own GHE “theory” and claim to be right. Why, even Dick Lindzen and Roy Spencer have their own mutually contradictory pet GHE “theories.” Lindzen claims CO2 warms up the atmosphere “top down” while Spencer claims the opposite!
Even the “33 degrees” of warming that allegedly makes Earth “warmer than it would otherwise be” is a statistical fraud performed by James Hansen in 1981 when he mixed a scalar temp value with a vector temp value (not permitted in math or physics). That Spencer and Lindzen sustain this fraud despite having this error pointed out to them earlier this year makes them complicit in aiding and abetting the “carbon tax” scam. The details are explained here:
http://principia-scientific.org/index.php/latest-news/the-greenhouse-gas-warming-number-of-33-degrees-is-a-fatal-error.html
68
Frauds, by definition, are not permitted, they’re committed.
Implying that Lindzen and Spencer are committing fraud is ungentlemanly conduct.
If your only evidence of fraud is that there are 63 version of the subject available at university level, then in most commonwealth nations you have committed slander, which is, as you say, is not permitted.
Moreover, your hypocrisy is obvious. The dragon slayers can not agree on any single version of anything either.
Thus far, the argument you have made is political rather than scientific. Like the Warmists, you are presenting your political argument shrouded with the unearned appropriation of scientific authority. Unearned, because you have yet to even state your hypothesis clearly, much less point to transparent evidence.
Perhaps your accusations of fraud are an unconscious freudian slip? Surely, it signals terminal weakness, because like the warmists if you had anything to show, you would have shown it by now.
You were invited here because your ideas are the subject of our inquiry. You have tried the patience of this thread by imagining we’re impressed by ad hom attacks on those who would challenge you, while refusing to present your case clearly.
Let’s try one more time:
What we require from you is not a [snipped – Mod] sales pitch, but a rather precise kind of definition of what you are proposing. Give us a hypothesis to work with. In lay English.
A hypothesis is a statement which implicitly or otherwise contains implications about nature which can be empirically tested by making natural observations.
If you can not do this — and by now we suspect you can not — then Dr. Allen’s damning critique of your work stands unchallenged.
64
Dr Weston Allen writes:
“The authors of Slaying the Sky Dragon are firmly in the latter camp. They don’t deny climate change, only man-made climate change; but they do deny any greenhouse effect or greenhouse gas. Indeed, they claim that all IR-absorbing gases including water vapour have only a cooling effect.”
Konrad at #7 above misquotes this as follows:
“The “Slayers” are largely correct, the net effect of radiative gasses in Earth’s atmosphere is cooling.”
There is a difference between having just a cooling effect, and having a ‘net’ cooling effect.
51
“Where the “Slayers” are most on the money is with the idea that the temperature of the atmosphere is set by the pressure at the surface”
I have said many times that this is the case. The pressure gradient within the atmosphere is set by gravity. The actual constituents of the atmosphere are mostly irrelevant, unless they radically change the specific heat of the atmosphere, as H2O does through phase changes and latent heat capacity. Tiny concentration increases in the amount of CO2 DO NOT alter the specific heat, and if anything CO2 actually speeds up the transfer of energy, (by a tiny, tiny amount.. look up specific heat and lapse rates etc)
Convection, caused by the surface heating the adjacent air is the major cooling effect of the atmosphere.
(I actually have an idea that the actually average energy transfer upwards may be always be approximately the same even if HO2 phase changes are involved (or not), but that is for another day)
50
Wes George makes some valid points. One reason for writing this critique is that GHE-denialism can provide an easy target for alarmists keen to paint all sceptics with the same brush.
I look forward to seeing serious comments on the science contained in the body of the critique, which deals with all the Slayer arguments including various planets and their atmospheres, thermos flasks, blankets etc.
107
Wes,
Just as in our private email discussions of our book you again resort to political rather than scientific argumentation. Science is science – forget the “easy target” baloney, just try to get to the truth. I am a fan of your book debunking Flannery but your defense of the GHE is frankly illogical and bereft of true skepticism.
For example, why don’t you comment about the “33 degrees” scam my colleagues and I exposed? We proved that since 1981 James Hansen et al. claim that Earth’s atmosphere is “33 degrees warmer than it would otherwise be?”
But this number was acquired via a botched Hansen calculation; the fatal mixing of a scalar with a vector temperature value, which is not permitted in either math or physics.
If you studied the facts you’d learn that Hansen’s “33 degrees” is obtained by the sleight of hand mixing of a scalar temp value (288K: the ave. of ground weather stations) with a vector temp value (255K: the satellite measure of outgoing IR). Lindzden was duped by it at least since March 1990, and Spencer admits he merely followed Lindzen’s lead. The details are here:
http://principia-scientific.org/index.php/latest-news/the-greenhouse-gas-warming-number-of-33-degrees-is-a-fatal-error.html
So here’s my question to you:
Is it, or is not a fatal calculating error to mix scalars with vectors the Hansen way?
108
Of all the nonsense this slayer crowd come out with, surely this denial is the most egregious?
On following advice from Doug Cotton (yes my first mistake), I read the experimental paper from “Principia Scientific International” on back-radiation, the one where some earnest (but stupid) fellow takes his infra-red thermometer out into the field, points it at the sky, and records the instrument readings during and after sunset.
And of course the instrument does not read absolute zero when aimed upwards, his graphs show this.
He then proceeds to entirely ignore the obvious point about this empirical evidence and tries to mishmash bits of the data together with theory to arrive at his unscientific foregone conclusion that back-radiation is falsified and QUOTE “There are not surfaces emitting radiation in the atmosphere”.
His device measured radiation travelling downwards from the sky. Slaying the sky dragon, my foot!
I can consider the Venus probe evidence as a sign that CO2 has a low GHE, and I can also consider MODTRAN output as a sign that there is zero incremental CO2 GHE after starting from 300ppm concentrations.
But to deny basic high-school level thermodynamics by entirely denying back-radiation is going too far.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
In Ludwig We Trust.
123
Whenever there is an energy imbalance anywhere in the atmosphere, the Ideal Gas Laws mandate that energy attempts to return to the proper balance. That is how the atmosphere works.
If back radiation from CO2 causes any warming (which I doubt) it must immediately be counteracted by an increase in other energy transfers, ie conduction and convection. And if CO2 does actually absorb and release energy at one layer, then there must be less energy to absorb at higher layers.
BUT….. the energy transfer, upwards, must remain the same, regulated entirely by the pressure gradient.
The only substance that can have any effect on this is one that is able to change phases at atmospheric temperatures or large chain molecules that can absorb and hold energy. CO2 is neither of these, and cannot disrupt this energy transfer.
270
nice one
71
Ha Ha Ha
If ever there was an indication that you need to read things a few times before attacking this is it:
“On following advice from Doug Cotton … ”
KK
20
“I can consider the Venus probe evidence as a sign that CO2 has a low GHE, and I can also consider MODTRAN
output as a sign that there is zero incremental CO2 GHE after starting from 300ppm concentrations.”
Sounds good.
But:
“But to deny basic high-school level thermodynamics by entirely denying back-radiation is going too far.”
Depends what you mean by back radiation. Does back Rad traveling over 0.5 mm path count as back rad.
Back rad (if it occurs ) will only reach the next molecule of gas before it contributes to heating of the
gas, then expansion, the convection.
kk
51
Ding ding ding! We have a winner.
Yes it does depend very much on that. Which is why the slayers routinely misconstrue the GHE and routinely redefine and twist the meanings of ordinary words so that they can say they have “proved” or “disproved” some twisted definition instead of the real original.
Please consider using plain english, as I do, ie:
Back Radiation. – noun. Radiation emanating from the atmosphere as seen by a ground-based observer.
Radiation emitted from a body, black or not, is proportional to the 4th power of its Kelvin temperature.
Since the sky is not at absolute zero, it emits radiation. Back radiation is measurable even by people who claim it does not exist. Back-radiation is real because radiation is real. End of story.
That is an entirely different prospect from claiming back radiation warms the surface.
But here again we must go down the rabbit hole of the slayers, who take delight in abusing the ambiguity of English. They will claim they have disproven the GHE because a cold body cannot warm up a warmer body. This is the double deception.
Firstly the GHE does not claim to be violating any thermodynamics laws by having a NET transfer of energy from cold to hot.
Secondly the sentence is false or else blankets would not keep them warm at night. It does not matter that a blanket operates by both radiation and convection, the blanket begins by being colder than their body, and yet it warms them up. Which can’t happen in SlayerWorld. Scary isn’t it.
Anyhow I do not waste time with slayers or their theorisations. I am only interested in evidence. Actually I’m only interested in new evidence, as rehashing all the old arguments is boring. CAGW is boring. The fight against bankster occupation is where all the action really is these days. That was, after all, the entire reason we got a carbon price and not a carbon prohibition.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
In Ludwig We Trust.
134
Oh noes, not the “blanket” analogy again.
No Andrew, the blanket does not “warm you up”. YOU warm the blanket up, and more importantly, YOU warm the air trapped between you and the blanket. YOU, under the blanket, ARE the heat source. If you were to die in the night, your body, the blanket, AND the bed would all be at ambient room temperature by morning.
The blanket cannot “warm” anything.
Just like the atmosphere (the “blanket” in the GHG example) can never “warm” anything.
Since YOU are the heat source, the temperature under the blanket can NEVER be more than your body temperature – in fact, it will always be less, since the blanket is not a perfect insulator. You, the bed, the blanket and the trapped air will ALWAYS lose heat energy to the outside, all the blanket can do is slow down the rate of transfer. The blanket can never “warm” anything.
314
Good summary MV
KK 🙂
61
Very cheap trick, really.
We know who Andrew is and what he stands for…
And we know he understands the blanket doesn’t magickally radiated extra heat in violation of grammar school level common sense!
If the basis of the no-GHG theory is twisting people’s syntax to build strawmen to knock down, what a waste of time and good will!
We are all talking in a vernacular about a subject that can only really be defined precisely in the language of mathematics and physics. Since none of us are capable of that, we are by necessity talking largely in metaphor
MV’s explanation above shows he understands the greenhouse metaphor perfectly. Now all he has to do is show why this metaphor is a bad fit for our atmosphere.
Then, if he would be so kind, perhaps MV could coin a new metaphor for how the atmosphere really works to replace the bad Greenhouse metaphor.
55
MV you are correct that GHG don’t warm anything at the macro level yet they can cause warming through their insulative properties! The Solar radiation with a energy corresponding to 5000K is what warms the planet. Then the planet heats up to it radiative equilibrium. You add a radiative insulator like CO2 and the temp must increase to reach equilibrium. The Thing about CO2 is that it’s not a particularly good insulator. It’s effect is close to Max already and any temp increase reduces its effectiveness.
Back radiation is something that occurs on a quantum scale where thermodynamic laws do not apply and so consequently it cannot by definition be in breach of such laws. The net flow of energy is still from high to low, ie sun to earth to space.
60
MV you are a fool for employing autistic slayer chicanery.
Can’t believe I’m going to have to spell it out to you a second time. For what it’s worth, if it were anyone else I wouldn’t bother.
In plain English, a blanket warms you up. That is the everyday meaning. That is the ENTIRE PURPOSE of a blanket. The SPECIFIC PRECISE meaning of that warming statement is that an identical copy of yourself in a parallel universe in which you did not put on the blanket is losing energy FASTER THAN your blanketed self, and thus your parallel universe skin is feeling colder and before long their entire body temperature will be COOLER THAN your blanketed body temperature.
The meaning of the word “warms” in this case is COMPARATIVE TEMPERATURE. In everyday language we say “The toaster warmed up the bread” and “the blanket warmed up the crash survivor”, and the word “warmed” is correct in both cases because “A warmed B” means “A caused B to be warmer than without A”. People who are not autistic recognise the PHYSICAL difference in meaning between these sentences from the CONTEXT of the word, IN SPITE OF USING THE SAME WORD FOR DIFFERENT HEAT PROCESSES.
End of story.
Now a different story.
A chilly planet put on a greenhouse blanket, but the new atmosphere didn’t warm the planet because MV is autistic.
Am interested in evidence.
Am not interested in arguing semantics of English any further.
51
Rob – JM
A really good, concise outline.
KK 🙂
10
Sorry Andrew, but it does.
From skeptic to cultist, the GHG theory requires a transfer of heat energy FROM the lower temperature, less energetic atmosphere, TO the higher temperature, more energetic oceans. This is not disputed, merely unexplained.
Perhaps you’d like to try.
166
If this is the core of your argument, MemoryVault, it’s game over, mate.
No one has ever claimed that heat moves from cooler to warmer bodies.
Walk down to your nearest beach on a summer’s day.
Measure the temperature of the water.
Measure the air temperature on the sunny beach.
Which is higher?
54
MV the actual transfer of energy happens at the quantum scale through emission and absorption of photons and particles and molecular collisions ect. This transfer occurs when a molecule changes state (vibrational, rotational, chemical bonds, ect) and must correspond to an exact amount of energy. The temp of molecule is irrelevant, all that matters is that the change of state = energy change.
At the quantum scale the laws of thermodynamics do not apply.
On the Macro scale the Net flow of energy is still from warm to cold.
The temp of earth is like the hight of water in a dam
Water flows in to the dam until an equal amount flows out. If you constrict the outflow the hight of the water will increase until the increased pressure re-equilibriates the flow.
20
Wes George
Global average sea surface temperature – 16.1 deg C.
Global average air temperature – 14 to 14.5 deg C depending on whose figures you use.
Yes there is a lot of variation, but it is all in the WRONG direction to support your contention.
For instance:
Polar average sea surface temperatures mid-winter – zero to 2 deg C.
Polar average air temperature mid-winter – around minus 30 deg C.
Yes, there can be unique times and circumstances when the direction can be locally and temporarily reversed. However the NET energy transfer HAS to be FROM the oceans TO the atmosphere.
The observable proof is that we continue to have clouds forming. Clouds are (amongst other things) proof positive of the NET transfer of energy FROM the oceans TO the atmosphere.
Rob JM
Nobody is disputing HOW the net energy flow occurs, only the direction.
81
MV,
Global average SST and air temps do not mean that there is no place on Earth where solar energy isn’t flowing into the oceans. It is only common sense that the net outflow of heat from the oceans has to be matched (over the long term) with net inflows or SSTs would spiral downward into the next glacial period.
That’s why this makes no sense:
and
Really? I take you don’t surf, dude.
Look at the sea surface temps around the Australian continent today:
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/climate/indicator_sst.jsp?c=sst
Almost everywhere around Australia SSTs are lower than the afternoon air temperature.
Of course, anyone who likes to swim knows the ocean is cooler than summer air temperature. Duh.
32
Furthermore, Rob JM brings up a good point that I missed.
Not all the heat going into the ocean comes from IR radiation from a warm atmosphere. On a bright sunny day light energy can penetrate the surface of clear ocean water down some distance. Even if the air is cooler than the water temperature. And it ain’t no violation of the 2nd law because the photons are coming from the sun, not the cooler air.
Sunlight can even melt ice when air temperatures are 0c, because the photons absorbed by the ice supply energy.
Therefore, even if the global average SST is warmer than global average air temperatures this doesn’t necessitate a constant net outflow of energy from the oceans to the atmosphere. In fact, common sense tells us that the balance must flip back and forth to maintain a long term homeostasis.
32
“Of course, anyone who likes to swim knows the ocean is cooler than summer air temperature. Duh.’
Yes, but all that means is that the top surface of the ocean evaporates a bit quicker, there is NO transfer of heat to the ocean unless the radiant energy from the Sun can penetrate to the bottom to heat the underlying seabed,and if you are a surfer, and get dumped, you know how cold it can be a metre or so down.
Any heat near the top surface is, by convection, taken straight to the surface.
Sure there may be some severe mixing in the top couple of metres, but convection, ie the propensity of less dense matter to rise to the top, always rules.
The less dense must always rise to the top…….. hence AGW is doomed. 😉
31
Gosh, Andy that’s a gobsmacking statement. I’ll pretend I didn’t read it. (facepalm moment)
Andy, do you think that I am defending AGW?
That’s a fascinating insight to what is going on here.
21
Quote:
“Back-radiation is real because radiation is real. End of story.
That is an entirely different prospect from claiming back radiation warms the surface.”
Yes Andrew. that’s the summary.
KK 🙂
80
KK,
Guess you didn’t get the memo from Dr Judith Curry. She now admits that “back radiation” is a bogus concept invented by the IPCC. There is no such thing as two way exchange of heat. Such a concept exists nowhere in the laws of physics despite you repeating the urban myth that its “real.”
Its true radiation, itself, can go anywhere it likes but it does not necessarily do thermodynamic work. This is what confuses most believers in the “GHE.” They forget that transport of radiation is not the same as transport of heat.
104
Hi John
As someone said earlier: we are using the vernacular to describe some very complicated interactions.
My comment about there being a “type of back radiation” could be tempered by an earlier post where I try
to point out that any “back radiation” will not get far before it interacts with adjacent gas molecules.
Effectively dismissing the idea that back rad will read the earth and heat it.
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/10/a-discussion-of-the-slaying-the-sky-dragon-science-is-the-greenhouse-effect-a-sky-dragon-myth/#comment-1144859
This is one of the most vexed threads I’ve seen and I think that people are talking at cross purposes because the term “greenhouse Effect” means so many different things to so many different people.
Just trying to show that most people could be a little bit right or a little bit wrong simply because of poor definition of terms.
GH Effect is not a scientific term and so is open to interpretation.
Heat cannot flow against the temperature gradient but where heat is moving towards a target at slightly elevated temperature it will face a lower temperature gradient and heat retention then exists.
All Earths energy would escape to deep space at 1.6 C degrees above absolute zero very rapidly IF the sun did not come up tomorrow.
KK 🙂
10
Hi Jophn
As I pointed to above I felt that the main point to be gained by the idea of “Backradiation is that it involves the concept of temperature gradient.
Outside of that Back rad has no use and is a mischief used by warmers.
KK
10
Every time the dragon slayer’s Legal Analyst, John OSullivan uses the words, “bogus”, “fraud” and “urban myth” he’s violating the first rule of the confident arts, which is to never lead your mark into thinking about exactly what you represent.
Not only are the Dragon Slayers third rate con artists, so is the thug they’ve hired to represent them in public.
Every one of O’Sullivan’s comments are chalk full of Freudian slips.
Note to snake (and dragon) oil manufacturers: When hiring spruikers, you get what you pay for.
44
Andrew – you might be surprised to know that the instruments that “measure radiation travelling downwards from the sky” don’t actually … They detect radiation upwards. If there is no radiation flow at all then the instrument is calibrated to display 390 W/m2 or thereabouts. A small flow upwards gives a lower value..
The instrument is called a Pyrgeometer. The “back-radiation” E is calculated using the following formula :-
E = Uemf/S + ( 5.67*10-8 * Tb^4 )
where
Uemf is the output voltage from the thermopile,
S is the calibration constant of the instrument, and
Tb is the pyrgeometer body temperature, measured by a thermistor, in degrees Kelvin.
Note that for an upward facing pyrgeometer, the thermopile output voltage will in most instances be negative.
31
Every hypothesis needs scientific proof and there is one key observation in climate science which blows its views out of the water. The alarmists claim observation of a significant dip in CO2 GHG IR band emission at TOA proves IR emitted from the surface is absorbed in the atmospheric column: bunkum.
The proof is here: http://notrickszone.com/2012/08/07/epic-warmist-fail-modtran-doubling-co2-will-do-nothing-to-increase-long-wave-radiation-from-sky/
1. above ~200 ppm, CO2 is in self – absorption.
2. by ~10% RH at ambient, water vapour masks any effect of change of [CO2].
So, the observation of CO2 GHG IR band reduction at TOA simply shows the effect of self- absorption of its thermal emission in the upper, dry atmosphere. There can be no CO2-AGW, no positive feedback.
The other main issue, ‘back radiation’ is easy to dismiss. It does not exist except as the artefact of pyrometers which have a shield behind the detector to stop radiation coming from the other direction. The signal is the net vector sum of the Poynting Vectors in the viewing angle. If this is the atmospheric signal and it’s cooler, all that ‘flux’ annihilates destructively at the surface – Poynting’s Theorem. Anybody claiming different is a fool.
170
Firstly CO2 Self absorption is not possible. The absorbed photon is always of a higher energy than the emitted photon. The remaining energy must then be lost by the CO2 molecule by further emission or conduction before it can return to the base state and absorb another photon. This is a consequence of moving photons having momentum. It’s also the reason that increased temp flattens the absorption lines as it inhibits conductive energy loss, reducing the proportion of base state molecules. (The broadening of spectral lines is caused by increased brownian motion of molecules causing increased blue/red shifting of light.)
You are partially correct in regards to the spectral lines being near saturated. While the centre of the spectral line is indeed near saturated (50% absorption after 50m) the edges of the spectral line are not. In particular CO2 molecules which are moving away from the energy source cause red shifting allowing absorption in the edge of the atmospheric window.
A recent study did suggest that the CO2 direct doubling effect may be as little as 0.6deg C mind you.
32
The experimental data prove self absorption. Here are Leckner’s experimental results from the early 1970s, replicating Hottell’s data of the late 1940s: http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/agw-an-alternate-look-part-1-details-c.pdf
So, it is a fact that as with any other absorption process, the unactivated species absorb internally emitted photons. The theory is well established and a standard correction in emission spectroscopies.
I am making other deductions about the IR processes, including that the IPCC idea of direct thermalisation is impossible because of quantum exclusion. However, I am not an expert in this area so I am prepared to accept other views, preferably experimentally proven!
50
If this is true, it seems there is a net flow from photons in the center of the band to photons in the wings. It’s like photons finding the path of least resistance. So photons find their way out of the atmosphere through the wings.
10
turnedoutnice
Can you imagine any way of constructing a radiometer/pyrometer to measure the flux travelling in a particular direction that did not create the destructive interference ghost signal that you seem to be proposing?
Reality is the illusion you cannot escape.
If every way possible of measuring radiation produces a small positive signal when pointed at the sky, wouldn’t that mean by pragmatic science that back radiation was real?
I mean… you do not claim that trees only fall in the forest when you are there to see them.
20
Have a look here
Halfway the page is an image of two pyrgeometers back to back for measuring net radiation.
30
I don’t wish to buy into the more difficult concepts here, but would ask the question- can 0.04% of anything make a discernable difference? If it does, can the differential effect between 0.03% and 0.04% (or whatever) be calculated, or detected in any statistically significant way.
I think the answers to all of the above are no, but if there could ever have been serious discussion of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, I guess the CO2 conversation will continue.
(If I were God, I would sack all the angels who can’t dance on the head of a pin, solving the theological question once and for all, and opening up a whole new semantic field to academia.)
41
Gnome, the answer to all of the above is an emphatic yes! I weigh 92kg. 0.04% of my body weight is 3.68 grams. I take just 10 milligrams of a medication daily without which I would die! I am pretty sure that would be statistically significant to me!
43
J –
Your analogy might hold some traction if CO2 had as demonstrable a physicochemical effect as the whatever it is you take 10mg of. But it doesn’t.
81
Have to agree with you Level;
CO2 is just a gas and if it was replaced by a bit more Nitrogen the effect would be almost the same.
The warmers just picked on CO2 because it is the combustion product from those two evil items: petrol and coal.
KK
111
Of course Eilerts comment below is the best read on CO2.
KK
11
LevelGaze – I was not making an analogy, I was answering a straight forward question:
” can 0.04% of anything make a discernable difference? If it does, can the differential effect between 0.03% and 0.04% (or whatever) be calculated, or detected in any statistically significant way.”
The answer is clearly YES and I could have chosen many more examples. I am definitely a ‘lukewarmer’. I accept that CO2 and other ‘greenhouse’ gases can have a warming effect. But on it’s own, it would be insufficient to cause catastrophic global warming. What’s more, there is insufficient study and modelling done on all feedback mechanisms to know whether the net effect is positive or negative and by how much. And there are so many other known variable which effect climate which are poorly understood but which are not considered in the modelling. To top all that off, I am not convinced that a warmer world, even by the amount which we are being told would be catastrophic, would actually be overall worse for human kind as no research I have read has presented a balanced view which adequately looks at extended growing seasons, more arable land, easier lifestyle, etc etc. So i am certainly not supporting the CAGW camp, but as skeptics/luke- warmers we need to be careful not to present arguments to alarmists which are easily shot down.
32
OK- Good analogy- I was too oversimplified.
Wouldn’t you be a lively old bugger though, if you took 20 milligrams?
10
Jamez, not a fair reply. Gnome was referring to the atmosphere. If you want to make the comparison you’d need to demonstrate that the atmosphere operate on some kind of hormone controlled metabolic process (ie is living). Further, the medication you take probably works with some other bio-chemical process in your body not a thermodynamic process.
50
Gnome it’s actually the opposite case. There is already so much CO2 that adding more has very little effect. The first 30ppm absorbs 50% of the energy available. Each further doubling absorbs 50% of the remaining energy.
0.03% may not seem like much but its actually 0.03% of 10^25 gas molecules per cubic meter!
10
Nitrogen, oxygen and argon that make up more than 99% of Earth’s atmosphere, in fact all gasses in the atmosphere, are primary warmed through conduction from the surface. The gasses above however do not emit infrared radiation, thus cannot cool down (to space) by this mechanism. Considering that heat flows only from hot to cold (2nd Law of Thermodynamics), they also cannot conduct this heat back to the surface, unless they are transported to a place where the surface is cooler than the atmosphere (at the poles) or if the surface cools down more rapidly than the atmosphere (e.g. after a severe thunderstorm), which then emits to space through the atmospheric window or partially through interception by so-called greenhouse gasses (Emittion to space is ultimately the only way for the planet to cool).
The other mechanism would be, to be in contact with a radiative active gas, which then is able to emit this radiation directly to space. These gasses however are only 1% or less of the atmosphere and only water vapor can emit at a broad range (the other gasses only have very narrow ranges, thus contributing very little to the cooling). Water vapor is actually the main cooling agent from the atmosphere directly to space.
Now what would be the consequence if a gas has difficulty to cool, but constant heat is added from the surface, which is periodically warmed from the outside?
The whole atmosphere must necessary warm up (at least to some equilibrium).
This is actually what a garden ‘Greenhouse’ does; it reduces the cooling rate of all the gasses, in a confined space.
That is exactly how the atmospheric greenhouse also works. It has a transparent (at least to some radiation) lid, like the garden variety one, which is space (an excellent insulator – the atmosphere is not the blanket, space is) and a surface, which is warmed from the outside by shortwave solar radiation. Its heat is also thermostatically controlled, mainly through variation of water vapor (actually all the phases of water and possible other mechanism).
The real greenhouse gasses are thus the non radiatively active gasses above and to a lesser extent gasses which have small emittion ranges. Water vapor is the main anti-greenhouse gas. In this description the whole atmosphere and not only a few trace gasses, participate in creating the greenhouse, thus creating a far more overall stable system.
Since CO2 can also be considered a greenhouse gas in this context, it is thus possible for Venus to warm up in the same manner. In the case of Venus it has a very much higher atmospheric mass, which can hold more heat, thus the equilibrium temperature would be higher. Also due to its closer location to the sun more heat is entering.
The magnitude of the warming in the greenhouse thus depends on the amount and intensity of radiation entering the system, the efficiency this radiation (after transformation into a different frequency) exiting it and the amount of heat the atmosphere can hold onto, which depends on its mass.
The radiative Greenhouse Theory, described in text books, thus actually has the mechanism wrong.
That theory does not address the fact that the whole (at least most) of the atmosphere, together with the surface, actually warm up. It only confines itself, in actuality; to the surface temperature (it really compares the black body surface temperature to the atmospheric surface temperature at 1.5m to 2m above the surface – which is comparing apples to oranges).
The ‘Greenhouse’ does exist, whether you calculate it by the simplistic method of averaging incoming radiation over a disc (which yields a value of 33 degrees) or the more realistic calculation integrating this radiation over the whole surface of the planet (which yields a far greater value in the range of 100 and more degrees).
What is possible is that the re-radiation, of intercepted radiation by radiative active gasses, towards the surface my inhibit some of the radiation from the surface and can contribute to the warming effect, but I suspect it will be very small, since only a few trace gasses can participate.
94
33K is wrong because there’s ~24 K lapse rate warming.
12
I’m guessing the correct amount is 33k-24Klapse rate + convective cooling offset +/- storage components ect
I think Ole had a crack at it on climate4you somewhere.
01
Does it insulate or air condition? Does it do both; does it do neither?
I may be missing something but it appears obvious that the Earth’s atmosphere does, in fact, both keep us from getting too hot when the sun is shining and from getting too cold when the sun isn’t shining.
How can you escape this conclusion with the example of the moon sitting right next door with no atmosphere and surface temperatures we have measured by instruments actually on that surface? I don’t think you can.
When I applied measures to my house designed to do the same thing; keep me warmer when I would otherwise lose heat too fast and cooler when I would otherwise gain heat too fast; everyone, including all of you will call it insulation.
It appears to me that all the mechanisms of the insulating effect are in some doubt. The very existence of so many opinions tells me we don’t know. But insulating is what our atmosphere does for us. It must somehow prevent excessive heat gain when the sun is shining and prevent excessive heat loss when it’s not. The net effect is insulation.
And AGW is still falsified by complete failure of too many predictions to count, not to mention a ton of evidence contradicting it. Then there’s all the fraud…
We need to get on to fighting the fight we should be fighting. All of this is as interesting to me as it is to you. But the exact mechanism by which this or that happens isn’t getting the political problem solved.
Last word: If you think I’m wrong I’ll pay attention but no guarantees that I’ll agree with you.
120
Well.. It doesn’t do a very good job of stopping solar radiation from entering, and it does a pretty good job of letting heat out too, in a controlled fashion.
I don’t know what you call it, certainly NOT an insulator.
I think I will call it a……. atmospheric regulator.
41
As I said, maybe I’m missing something. But I’d rather see an argument about the mechanism involved and how it works than debate terminology. 🙂
I think it’s a little too obvious that without an atmosphere Earth surface temperatures would vary over a much wider range than they do, both above and below what we see with an atmosphere.
10
On the other hand, by using descriptors such as ” insulator” and “blanket” when these words are so manifestly incorrect, doesn’t help the debate.
20
Metaphors for physical phenomena by definition are imprecise and have limits. That’s why physics is done in the language of mathematics, not English.
However for the purposes of a lay discussion we have to speak English. It is not fair dinkum when you and MemoryVault abuse vernacular syntax to accuse others of believing blankets warm bodies in violation of the 2nd law, when you know that’s not what they mean.
I’m all for trying to be as precise as possible in our vernacular descriptions of the GHE, and correcting others vague language use when we see it, but you can not falsify the GHE by slaying weak vernacular strawmen.
By now I suspect that’s all you really have.
Well, that, combined with an irrational, probably politically-based bile against any common scientific ground the skeptics share with the warmists.
I have to say, that after this thread, I no longer regard AndyG55 and MemoryVault as truly skeptical, curious minds that are willing to roam where ever the evidence takes them, but as true believers on a crusade, just like our Dragon Slayer and Warmist friends.
22
The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. I’m not sure how long it has had water and an atmosphere but both the water and the atmosphere are still there and the global temperature etc is remarkably stable and have been for a very long time.
To me that suggests that there are no runaway positive feedback mechanisms. We get an ice age every now and again and my money says that an ice age happening is much, much more likely than the oceans all boiling away.
160
‘•Increased geo-nuclear activity is warming the oceans from below and causing global warming.’
I very much doubt that this effect is significant. There is no evidence that the half lives of the relevant isotopes are changing. On a scale of billions of years, the radioactive flux is decreasing because all unstable isotopes burn up. My take would be that nuclear reactions would be a near-constant source of heat whose first main effect on the geography of today would be a trivial warming of the base of the oceans as they mix. By analogy, your bed is warmer when the electric blanket is on. It does not continue to warm, because an equilibrium is reached. There is a very old and probably correct argument that isotope decay heats the whole globe by a very small and essentially constant amount on million year time scales.
40
You know its a small amount, because on a cold night, the ground is cold, not warm.
015
No John,
On a cold night the ground is damp, from condensation, and therefore feels cold. You can get pure drinking water from the air in the desert if you build something to capture it.
80
No the ground is cold at night because it rapidly loose energy via radiation. The heat from the air is then transferred to the ground until the relative humidity reaches 100% and liquid water starts condensing. This releases massive amounts of stored latent heat which prevents further rapid cooling.
It is why frost occur in dry conditions and the tropics are so warm at night!
20
John,
I think you probably
knowguess it’s a small amount because the effects of solar warming are so obviously the dominating factor. Right? And you also have to guess because you have no real hope of measuring it anyway.The problem is simple; you have no benchmark against which to measure. That’s also a problem with global warming theory generally. In a nutshell, how do you know how different the temperature would be without the supposed warming?
There is no way to know at present. But if you can give a definitive and convincing answer to that question I think you’ll make a very big name for yourself. It’s the science question of the century.
/No sarcasm either…we all could benefit from a solid answer.
40
Roy, its up to others to do the science. With AGW, there will never be any real proof – because its an uncontrolled experiment – we don’t have another world identical in all respects except for a lower CO2 level. So without proof we need to go with the weight of evidence and our best understanding. Three things make me lean towards believing that AGW is real. Firstly the basic science is very simple. Secondly, the world continues to warm. Thirdly, their are so many arguments against AGW that are totally rubbish.
As I’ve said before, that is not enough to convince me that we will be (say) 2C warmer by the end of the century, but it is enough to convince me that we should act before its too late.
02
John Brookes said:”Roy, its up to others to do the science. With AGW, there will never be any real proof – because its an uncontrolled experiment – we don’t have another world identical in all respects except for a lower CO2 level.”
===============================================
Come on, you do not need “another world” to physically prove the ability of the actual CO2 concentration (1 molecule CO2 from 2700 air molecules) to cause like 7-9 degrees Celsius warming by means of back radiation.
You can even use another substance or material producing much more back radiation than CO2 does, no problem with that. What about glass? Glass is very opaque to IR radiation.
How about that: make 2 identical well isolated boxes and cover one with a glass pane and the other with, let’s say, a rock salt pane (rock salt is very transparent to IR). Put them in the Sun and compare the temperatures.
Wait a minute, it has been done already! By professor Wood in 1909. And guess what: no significant difference in temperature was found!
That’s a relief. Apparently the back radiation does not work at all or the effect is extremely weak. The 19th century warmism died immediately, by the way. Now we have the warmism Zombie walking around scaring people.
30
What we absolutely know for sure is that the climate models upon which the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) claims are based, do not include so many of the known negative feedback variables. This is by the IPCC’s own admission that they are poorly understood and not able to be properly calculated.
Yet those models are relied upon to make what amount to wild, unproven assumptions about positive feedbacks to come up with the scary temperature projections to force draconian ‘climate change’ policy action on the world’s population – or at least those countries silly enough to go along with it!
To my mind it would be far more effective to hold scientists and politicians to account for predictions they have made to date, and statements they have made which we can prove to be wrong, false and unsupportable by evidence, rather than by countering their unsubstantiated theoretical climate positions, with equally unprovable scientific positions.
Most of the science is well above my pay grade, but while everyone is arguing about what is happening in the atmosphere talking about radiated energy from the sun, I still don’t believe climate science has adequately addressed how the climate, and specifically global temperature is impacted by what is happening between the Earth’s surface and it’s core.
The inner core of the Earth is solid and around 2,440 km across (1,220km radius). That’s about 70% the size of the Moon and it is very hot – estimated up to 5,700 Kelvin/C the same as the surface of the sun. The outer core is molten liquid and is approximately 2260 km thick and also very hot, up to 4,300C. The mantle makes up a depth of almost 2,900 km and it’s temperature ranges from a relatively cool 1,000C to 3,700C and then we have a crust which is roughly 30 km thick on average.
Scientists know that the core is slowly cooling (about 100C per Billion years),and as it does it shrinks a little bit. This causes earth-quakes and fractures in the mantle and the crust. Scientists also know about the movement of continental plates and the energy this can create. We also know that the enormous pressure created by the molten core forces its way to the surface of the planet through weak points in the mantle and the crust. Many such points are on land, but far more are sub sea.
While it is estimated there are at least 30,000 sub-sea volcanoes or sea-mounts, very few have been studied and there are thought to be millions of volcanic fissures, smoke chimneys and the like. All of these are not only releasing greenhouse and other gases into the environment, but they are heating the oceans to some extent and potentially having an impact on ocean circulation and currents which we know has an impact on climate patterns.
Who knows how much of this natural activity, if any, is to blame for the rise in atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases (even if just by reducing the ocean’s ability to act as a sink), or rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures?
The point is the Earth has a solid inner core only around 5,000 km from the Earth’s surface at about the same temperature as the surface of the Sun, and not much smaller than the Moon. We have a molten outer core of even greater volume less than 3,000 km from the surface, not much cooler than the Sun, regularly spewing magma and GHG’s through the Earth’s crust in unpredicted ways and in unknown volumes. None of this attracts even cursory attention by most of the world’s climate scientists who are fixated on human green house gas emissions being the problem and who find confirmation bias everywhere they care to look.
I’m not saying that what’s happening beneath the Earth’s surface explains all climate variability, far from it. It is but one of the many variable which are not very well understood and which are not addressed in the climate models upon which the IPCC and our Governments have based important, far reaching, socio-economic policy decisions on.
Not only have Climate Scientists failed to consider all potential ‘suspects’ in solving this case, they haven’t even established whether a ‘crime’ has been committed.
In a rational world this matter would never have even gotten to court unless it had been properly established that current climate patterns were beyond normal variability and that there was sufficient evidence to ensure a conviction beyond reasonable doubt. That is the point we should be attacking, not going off on a tangent with a different theory which has little supporting evidence.
It is not up to the defence to find and convict the guilty party, we are only required to show that the prosecution have failed in their task to prove anthropogenic GHG’s are guilty!
190
I’m sorry, it’s not often I lose my cool, so much so that I haven’t read any comments yet. If others have mentioned this already – my apologies.
This statement is complete garbage:
“Without any IR-absorbing GHGs in the atmosphere, all radiative energy losses balancing solar input would occur at Earth’s surface.”
Any gas, I say again ANY gas in contact with the surface will absorb energy via conduction. This will effect the the rate energy crosses the solid/gas interface. This in turn will effect rate of infrared radiation leaving the surface.
No IR-absorbing GHGs needed. Just a gaseous atmosphere and the so called balance of solar input against surface radiation is lost. QED.
234
.
Thank you Richard. Sanity prevails.
On that note I’m going to bed.
141
“I say again ANY gas in contact with the surface will absorb energy via conduction.’
This continued disowning of conduction and convection by the climate hypochondriacs truly astounds me. Its as if they have NEVER experienced the real world.
Solar energy -> warm ground -> conduction to atmosphere -> convection cooling.
What is so ….ing hard to understand !!!!
40
The good family practice doctor, and arm-chair physics layman, Weston, provided this ‘critique’ to the Slayers this summer and we had months of exchanges that went beyond his comprehension level. “Slaying the Sky Dragon” was a point-in-time reference from an unmet group of international science writters, who all questioned the most basic premise of a faux debate. Carbon Climate Forcing has always been about FORCED Carbon Commodity trading, as such, this false construct is a faux science figleaf [credit default insurance] for this Wall Street created energy based derivitive. And the related ‘green energy’ and ‘peak oil’ scams are companion lies. Bio-fuels and photovoltaics NEVER produce the energy required for production.
As for the Thermodynamics of GHE, consider that 28 tons of human released CO2 is rapidly converted to less than 3 cubic miles of Carbon based soils, seashells or reefs. The Earth is 259 trillion cubic miles of mostly molten rock with average temperature in excess of 2500F. The oceans are 310 million cubic miles of water at average 4F. The concept of THERMAL MASS would indicate NO abalility for this tiny mass to effect in any way the temperature of the larger masses.
Earth’s mantle IS WARMED from below by variable nuclear fission from the 700,000 cubic miles of Uranium and 1.2 million cubic miles of Thorium which is subject to variable solar and cosmic ray particle impacts and protected by a variable magnetosphere. This sets the base level for glacial/interglacial as well as the Nino/Nina climate states. You can read more on all of this at FauxScienceSlayer.com website. You can read more on the now wider Slayer science at PrincipiaScientific.org. I find it odd that we accept a seasonal variation of the GUESS for albedo as between 0.28 and 0.33 which causes a significant difference in the surface insolation, yet in the same modeling equation, the GHE nuts can find a single parameter variation of 0.000001, which is also less than the seasonal variation, as a determing factor. The engineering principle of SIGNIFICANT DIGITS would demand that this insignificant, TRAILING indicator not be included. CO2 has a sepcific heat of 0.8 compared to normal air with assigned value of 1.0, meaning it warms and COOLS faster than air. CO2 is a linear molecule with limited vibrational modes and cannot ‘store’ energy for more than a billionth of a second. This absorption is then accompanied by an emission of lower energy, longer wave length photo that is outside the CO2 IR capture band and has NO ABAILITY to warm the Earth surface that is still radiating at the full spectrum OLR range.
Since the Aussies now lead the world in Carbon FEES, which you may not mention, you might review “Fractional Resereve Banking Begat Faux Reality” and understand that this is not a Physics problem. This is an out of control banking problem. Find ans share Truth, it is your duty as an Earthling.
192
Would you mind providing some data here so we know where this comes from? It’s not that I want to be difficult or contrary but I’ve never seen that assertion before.
Evidence speaks loudest. So what evidence is there for the existence of all this fission?
By the way, I agree with your closing statement. 🙂
20
Fairly well accepted that Earth has 4 PPM of Uranium and 7.8 PPM of Thorium….converting 259 trillion cubic miles and reducing for density gives the ~2 million cubic miles of fissionable material mentioned above. BTW….the Slayers are in agreement that the Laws of Thermodynamics and radiation theory mean that CO2 cannot warm the planet that warms this thin ‘blanket’. Other positions at my website are my personal research and opinions. Visit the “Geo-Nuclear” tab at FauxScienceSlayer.com for my private analysis of this climate variable, as well as the ‘elemental’ by-products of this massive, variable fission process. My site also has corrections to the Faux History, Green Energy, Peak Oil, Cosmology orthodoxy, as well as some satire articles. The PC/Mac before you is the worlds greatest library, with the worlds greatest librarian willing to assist in your education. Life is a journey of conscious….which you must raise on a daily basis. Never accept orthodoxy.
71
Absolute and directly to the point. Thankyou!
And their power-base extends from the manipulative use of usury. Remove usury & the manipulation of money i.e. stopping its use as a traded commodity and a more level playing field will eventually emerge.
De-centralisation is the key! Not the opposite which is what we see in place today!
Until the hegemony that the UN facilitates through this manipulation is ended Science will continue to suffer.
However, I’m pleased to see the GHE being scrutinised and gaining exposure, hopefully to continued!
10
Since the sun is a radiative source of energy and this what heats Earth, the sky dragon argument fails at point 1.
—————————————-
[can you clarify your point lurker? – Mod]
23
Surely, Lurker, you realize the question is not whether the sun warms the earth, but whether the earth warms the sun. Actually, I like you right where you are. If you want to believe cold, thin air, with small comparative thermal mass, heats water with a large thermal mass, then I want you to stick with it. Cling to it. Wear it. I like competing with people like you in the job market.
50
The earth does potentially warm the sun on a quantum scale, It’s just that most of the energy flow is towards us. The GHG do not warm the oceans, they merely reduce the rate at which the oceans warm up interstellar space!
Try placing a 100w heater in a thermos and compare the temp gain to the same sized pot!
21
“they merely reduce the rate at which the oceans warm up interstellar space!”
This is where I’m not sure we are correct. H2O is the only GHG that can have any effect on heat transfer (CO2 cannot, because convection would immediately conteract any tiny CO2 warming), but I have a sneaking suspicion that the actually energy transfer from the surface to the upper atmosphere is basically a constant, on average, once H2O latent heat and phase changes over the whole journey are taken into account.
10
Rob, can we devise an experiment that has some relation to the sun and the earth? Turn on your 100W heater for 8 hours, then turn it off for 16 hours. Repeat this process forever. Now, Rob, how does the insulation increase the average temperature of the fluid by 10%? You can play with the heating duty cycle and make sure there is residual energy in the fluid so the heating cycle does not start at zero when the heat is turned back on. Fine. How can 400PPM of atmospheric CO2 contribute to this residual? If you need a lot of energy,then you need a large thermal capacity. If you need a long thermal time constant, then you need a large thermal mass. There are methods: but how can you increase the average temperature using only a cold, rarefied gas as a tool?
10
I will give it a try.
The Earth/atmosphere/ocean system is heated nearly in totality by the radiant energy of the sun. the internal earth sources of warmth are trivial.
To the extent that radiation allows the atmosphere to cool, the near vacuum at he top of the atmosphere acts like a damn good insulator. Convective processes move air up and down where they can radiate more easily or less so. Think of lapse rates- why was it -70 for that crazy Parachutist last week? The atmosphere acts like a miles-thick insulator with very small heat content. It is unlike a human insulator in that it is miles thick, dynamic and variable in density and content of H2O and other trace components.
None of this makes AGW any less failed. The idea we are facing a climate crisis is disproven by the simple absence of the predicted crisis.
I would also suggest that since whole areas of applied science, like anti-aircraft missles and infrared detectors are based on the equations that the sky dragons reject, they are the ones with the problems.
Does that help?
20
how exciting:
21 Oct: WUWT: Update and confirmation of ‘Global warming stopped 16 years ago’ aka ‘the pause’
This time Dr. Judith Curry weighs in. In an email to me earlier this week she revealed that she has been quite busy with this rebuttal (to warmists) and assisting the Mail with this update to the story that appeared last week. Bottom line, the Met Office rebutal was more in agreement than not and Dr. Curry suggests ‘Take a lesson from other scientists who acknowledge the “pause”.’…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/21/update-and-confirmation-of-global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago/
final Q&A from the new David Rose/Daily Mail article:
Q Surely we can leave it to our elected representatives to research all the arguments thoroughly and then act accordingly with our taxes?
A Tim Yeo is the chairman of the Commons Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, which advises the Government on energy policy. Lord Deben is chairman of the Government Climate Change Committee, which also gives direct advice on emissions targets.
Both Mr Yeo and Lord Deben have significant personal stakes in the ‘renewable’ energy industry, which benefits to the tune of billions of pounds a year from wind subsidies.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2220722/Global-warming-The-Mail-Sunday-answers-world-warming-not.html
many thanx to jo, anthony, the Bishop, Big Mac, david rose at the daily mail and others who have helped to rescue the scientific method from a dangerous shift back to scientific dogma.
70
That was such a crap story. Go look at Potholer54’s debunk of it on youtube.
————————————————
John, perhaps you could tell us what science Potholer54 used to debunk the Met Offices data rather than expect readers to search Youtube just in case there is something worthwhile there? – Mod
124
How can you debunk data even the Met office has accepted? There has been no statistically significant warming since 1997 against all models and predictions of climate alarmists.
180
Mod,
John is provably too lazy to care. It’s a waste of time to rattle his cage.
BB
90
Me too lazy! How about you go looking? Its not hard. Potholer is a good start. Then there is Tamino, and Skeptical Science (and before you go dissing Skeptical Science, can I point out that would be an ad hominem attack, playing the man rather than judging their post on this misleading and deceptive newspaper article on its own merits).
But I’m sure you don’t actually give any credence to that crappy article. I’m sure you are just arguing for the fun of it.
04
It’s the quality of the message that people are dissing, not the messenger.
11
(Let me ask you again – in case you missed it) Hey JB what’s the falsification criteria for CAGW?
Would a 16 year pause in Warming fit the bill
Feeling refuted yet?
Still believing in pseudo-science?
Do you have nay idea what the difference is between a pseudo-scientific statement and a scientific statement?
So what is the reason for the UK Met Office to side with the skeptics on the “Pause”
Are you in denial?
00
To those who can only see this GHE science fiction by analogy….consider that the government has two vested interest positions in this faux debate. First is the Darth “Big” Warmist position which demands Carbon taxes, Carbon controls and massive government expansion. The Luke “Little” Warmist position supports the ‘Carbon problem’ but allows massive government ‘geo-engineering’ to solve the non-existant problem. The non-government funded, Obie “No Warm” Kanobi position is that there is NO CARBON CLIMATE FORCING.
To the Darths and Lukes we Slayers say….if we are forced to debate the number of fairies that can dance on the head of a pin….we will first prove that THERE ARE NO FAIRES….no Carbon fairies, no back-radiation fairies, no green energy fairies and no dead dino-fuel fairies. We will force a full spectrum analysis of Earth science and invite all to read “Becoming A TOTAL Earth ScienceSkeptic”.
163
Slayers are good. Because at least with them you know that your enemies are [snip]
422
On this, John Brookes and I agree. Through the worst argument packaging ever, the “Slayers” have managed to take “train wreck” up to an art form.
1315
Anthony on this issue, you are climbing out your own train wreck of using the IPCC and Wikipedia as sources to support your argument.
113
I visit WUWT multiple times per day, read most articles and most comments. I admire most of Anthony’s work, however, to my knowledge he’s never seen a copy of Slaying the Sky Dragon, which we would provide. We did provide a copy to Judith Curry in Nov 2010 and two months later she complained that she ‘wanted to give the book a negative review, but did not understand it’. Visit the SSD website “Authors Bio” tab to find out why. A PhD in Climatology does not require the undergrad training in Thermodynamics required of every engineering student. The SSD authors include a PhD Climatologist, a PhD Physical Chemist, PhD Applied Mathematician and PhD Physicist. The Slayers understand Thermodynamics. Climatology is an errant branch of science that was grafted and grant fed with no proper inter-disciplinary oversight. While the Slayers might lack the Madison Ave polish of the Warmists and Lukes, the science presented is correct….even if the audience ‘does not understand it’, or is only convinced by ‘packaging’.
“CLASSICAL THERMODYNAMICS IS THE ONLY PHYSICAL THEORY OF UNIVERSAL CONTENT WHICH I AM CONVINCED WILL NEVER BE OVERTHROWN”…Einstein…
165
Anthony Watts is increasingly being exposed as one of the crowd who has invested both his work and reputation in the GHE. People can judge for themselves whether he is one of the gatekeepers opposed to open debate. All I know is that Watts has banned me from WUWT and won’t allow any articles on his blog explaining our science. Fair enough. But Watts does permit a free fall of gratuitous attacks and name calling against us as proven by his comments here and elsewhere. But at least Watts does have the good grace to admit that our science is probably beyond him.
I just wish I could meet him in a TV debate.
89
Wow, John. What a bastard. What a noob!
After all that Anthony has done for the skeptical community for years and then some cheap third-rate legal analyst thug in a pin stripe suit representing Dragon Slayers pops in to rubbish the bloke?
Where were you in 2005? Not here. Not on the front lines of the climate debate.
If the slayers you represent as their enforcer had anything of substance to offer…. Anything worth listening to, you wouldn’t need to bash the pillars of our community, you could simply state your case, present your evidence for everyone to examine and if you were correct we would hail you as heroes and welcome you as fellow skeptics.
Your mob is not skeptical, not curious, not honest… but the mirror-image of Warmism. A cult that has come here to harvest souls.
You ain’t got nothing to show, but snake oil and bile.
Go slay yourself.
45
Wes, yes Anthony Watts has probably done more than any one person to advance the debate against the dogma of demonising carbon dioxide, but he too falls into the same trap of deciding what is “right” and “wrong” on this issue and choosing to shut off one side of this particular debate at WUWT. The childish and uncalled for treatment of Nikolov and Zeller by Anthony and his main henchman in Willis Eschenbach brought this prejudice to sharp focus for me.
Now I look at WUWT every day and often use the many good and informative posts that it has to advance my knowledge in this area, but that still does not alter the fact that their behaviour on the “greenhouse gas” issue is just as dogmatic and inflexible as any alarmist is on the whole “CO2 is evil” meme.
71
OK, Truthseeker,
Show us the evidence. Provide us the links.
Didn’t think so.
That’s the problem. If there was good evidence that the foundations of the GHE were flawed beyond repair and we needed a revolution, the evidence would be out there. It’s not.
If there was strong No-GHE evidence then the Dragon Slayers would have sent a scientist here instead of their lawyer.
If there was strong No-GHE evidence then the Dragon Slayers would be scientific heroes in the skeptical community hailed by everyone as the next big thing.
Instead, what we have is lone legal analyst with a moonbat theory, zero scientific evidence but lots of spray for anyone who says they do not buy into the Dragon sales pitch.
And that’s all that the Dragon’s have….A third rate sales pitch. Game Over.
*
23
Just because the Dragon Slayers are wrong doesn’t mean that today’s GHE is perfect, far from it. Or that something revolutionary someday won’t be discovered.
We know aspects of the GHE, such as the amplification on warming by water vapour are set wrong. But adjusting the values for warming of various GHG downward isn’t the same as dumping the fundamental physical mechanism of the GHE at the atomic level. Likewise, the blackbody oversimplification seems to be left over from the day of the sliderule. But these are matters of incremental improvements, not revolution. At this time.
The confusion arises because Anthony and everyone else agree that improvements are needed. We all agree that the Warmists have abused the GHE both scientifically and politically. But that is not justification for extremists to call for totally rubbishing our entire knowledge base and starting all over. That is also a abuse of the GHE to suit an agenda.
Even more confusing is when wannabe uber-skeptics show up with reheated criticisms of the GHE as if ideas such as the IPCC flat Earth models are weak is breaking news. or that human emissions of CO2 are more than 98% is absorbed within a year. Or that the lapse rate values need adjusting.
So what? Those patches can be accommodation by the existing GHE physics. Fine. But the Dragon Slayers are selling problems that can be fixed as a reason to rubbish the whole concept of GHE. That’s inappropriate and stinks of an unspoken agenda.
So what would the Dragon’s replace the GHE model with? …
Riiiiiight. Houston we got a problem.
Not one no-GHE uber-skeptic in the last 4 days of this thread has a single skeptical thing to say about the Dragon’s geo-nuclear global warming theory (GNW.) Why is that? Because the anti-GHE crowd share the same cognitive methodology with the Warmists…that of the righteous True Believer on a crusade.
43
The Scientific Method–the formation and testing of hypothesis — is not about what “the truth” is. Or what is “right” or “wrong.” There is no universal truth in science. The truth is always evolving as new information is processed by the method of science.
Science is about descriptions that works, that survive testing and that are usefully producing results at this moment in time.
No physical theory of anything is the “Truth.” All theory is provisional, subject to confirmation every time a new observation is made. Subject to modification or replacement WHEN IT CEASES TO OFFER A USEFUL DESCRIPTION OF NATURE.
The GHE is no exception to the rules of science.
But some thorny issues — like evolution versus intelligent design — are so divisive that they can not be settled by debate. Meanwhile, evolutionary theory is still producing interesting results, even with all its flaws. And evolutionary theory has its flaws! John O Sullivan would be shocked to hear that there are 63 different versions of it. Must be fraud 😉
Anthony long ago shut down commentary on Chem Trails, because it was getting nowhere, just rehashing the same old fallacies over and over and over again.
If Anthony Watts has cut off discussion of fringe No-GHE rants it is not because he’s not a curious person with an open mind to new developments in atmospheric physics, but because it has been thoroughly covered for the moment and until some new evidence emerges one way or another this debate is uselessly divisive and utterly confusing to anyone who doesn’t have days to wade through the evidence. I’m sure he’ll be more than pleased to revisit the topic as breaking evidence emerges which might alter the scientific landscape.
Meanwhile, the current GHE, warts and all, is still producing unexpected results…sadly for the warmists. Until a more useful description of atmospheric physics comes along, we would do well to expend our energy and good will upon other topics which need attending.
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Wes,
If you want evidence of Anthony Watt’s prejudice on this issue, you can try this for evidence. Also look at the comments made in various discussions about “greenhouse gas” theory on WUWT. Anthony Watts refused to publish the Nikolov and Zeller paper, and put the sidebar link to Tallbloke’s Talkshop in the “Transcendent Rant and way out there theory” category for some months over this issue. He has also refused to even have a discussion of the “Slayer” theory on his website.
If you want evidence of the irrelevance of the composition of the atmosphere, just go to this link from my first comment which you still have not addressed in any of your ramblings.
The “Slayers” are not an organisation, just a group of individuals who are prepared to accept and evaluate new ideas, unlike you. They did not “send” anyone. John O’Sullivan chose to comment here. I choose to commment here. You choose to comment here. Did anyone “send” you?
By the way, Joe Postma has also chosen to comment here, or doesn’t he count as a scientist?
Your inability to examine any evidence, regardless of how easy it is to access, is just so indicative of a closed mind. A closed mind is it’s own punishment. I and others can only try and shine a light. It is up to you to open your eyes.
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John OSullivan is the Dragon’s Slayers “Legal Analyst, anti-corruption specialist.” That’s how he’s listed in the Dragon’s book.
Nevermind why in the world a loose gaggle of science researchers have an anti-corrpution specialist with them.
I asked. No answer.
Excuse me for assuming the reason O’Sullivan is in the book is to attack anyone who disagrees with the Dragonists as in bed with the Warmists, no matter how skeptical they are.
Surprise, surprise… John OSullivan has spent his comments here attacking leading skeptics as idiots and frauds. That is some way to outline a rational evidence-based case for the Dragonista’s case.
Apparently, the Dragonists imagine their hypotheses can be logically defended by the non sequitur slandering others as corrupt, so they brought in a legal analyst specialising in anti-corruption.
The dragonists and the warmists are culturally the same kind of anti-enlightenment phenomena…both seek to corrupt science by introducing novel, non-rational techniques to the methodology of hard science.
Both the Dragonists and the Warmists seek to demonise their scientific opponents as heretical to mainstream science. The Warmist seek to demonise skeptics as outside the holy “consensus,” which is the only definition of truth that matters for collectivists. The Dragonists are trying to demonise everyone as heretics of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
While the Warmists believe in truth by collective. The Dragons believe in truth by a kind of Nietzschean super-hero band of brothers who possess the secrets of nature that the weak can not behold. Both are frauds, both have millenarian objectives.
Socio-politically, the difference between Warmism and Dragonism is the same as between socialism and fascism. They are more closely related than they appear to be on the surface.
The end result of both the Warmist and Dragon cults is the same: pseudo-scientific millenarian nonsense.
The agenda behind each cult is the appropriation of power that they have not earned. In this the Warmists have been successful.
Prejudice based upon evidence is good in science.
There is a vast difference between skepticism, which is based largely upon native curiosity combined with rational inquiry and simply considering all ideas as having equal weight.
For instance, is this Dragon Slayer core principle worthy our limited time and resources to ponder:
I notice no Dragons here have offered to explain that.
14
Wes, you asked for evidence, which I provided, and then went on an ad-homien rant against the “Dragonist” generally and John specifically without offering any evidence of your own.
The prejudice of Anthony Watts on this issue is not based on any evidence as Willis’s laughable critique was absolutley demolished by Nikolov and Zeller here.
There have been reproducable and replicable experiments by Prof. Nasif Nahle and others which completely disprove any “greenhouse gas” warming effect and there is nothing offerred that proves it exists in any of its many forms.
One of us is actually looking a scientific evidence and the other is displaying their closed mind prejudice for all to see.
Keep commenting. The more you rant, the more obvious your own unsupported prejudice becomes.
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Hi All,
I just heard of this post today but apparently it has been up for 3 weeks. No worries though! 🙂
Yes, I for one was engaged in a lengthy debate on Judith Curry’s blog at one point discussing one of my papers on the subject, but Judith and I had a falling out because I essentially told her I thought she was an idiot. My bad…apologies (to her I suppose).
Some of you may be tracking what we are up to, and I have good news: I am short weeks away from releasing a new paper which is going to knock your socks off. Stay tuned. A lot of the question and debate above is addressed.
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If I may paraphrase a little known anti-corruption specialist:
25
The greenhouse effect “theory” and AGW both start with P/4. The power of sunlight recieved at the top of earth’s atmosphere is divided by four.
Hold a torch in one hand and a football in the other. Now, try to illuminate all of the football / globe evenly at one quarter of the torches power of emission.
You can not, it is physically impossible.
Both “theories” are thus falsified, niether has a starting point in reality.
Argueing / discussing / debating / cherry picking / inventing your own physics, and everything else is just a waste of everyone’s time and effort.
Both GH and AGW are politically correct, and convenient pseudo-science. Why??? UN Agenda 21.
All quite simple really. Now, can we get back to real climate science PLEASE. Let us look at the ACTUAL THERMODYNAMICS OF REALITY.
Lord Monckton with his missing fingerprint of AGW inadvertently proved that earth’s climate system is dominated within by a negative feedback system. His plot shows as the climate warms, then a big cooling spot develops over the tropics….That negative feedback within the system can only be water vapour, latent heat losses and transport within the climate system due to water vapourisation, and condensation, etc, etc, etc.
ANY explanation of earth’s climate system based upon, or starting with P/4 is false, a torch and a football prove that.
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Sadly John Brookes typifies that element that prefers name-calling over civilized debate. He calls my colleagues and me “dunderheads.” Ok, so let’s do simple analysis even a dunderhead can fathom. Take, for instance, the claimed “33 degrees” of so-called greenhouse gas warming cited as “fact” proving the “theory.”
Contrary to popular myth this “33 degrees” is not observed, empirical fact at all. My colleagues have proven that it is the product of a botched equation by NASA’s Dr. James E. Hansen from the 1980’s. See here:
http://principia-scientific.org/index.php/latest-news/the-greenhouse-gas-warming-number-of-33-degrees-is-a-fatal-error.html
Dr. Pierre Latour earlier this year showed that Hansen’s “33 degrees” is the result of a fatal mixing of a scalar temperature value with a vector temperature value (not permitted in either math or physics). That no one questioned this till we ‘Slayers’ did suggests it is perhaps among the most successful elements of the GHE fraud. Pointedly, it duped two top skeptic climatologists, Dick Lindzen and Roy Spencer, among other leading skeptics, who never questioned its validity when challenged and who opted instead to play “follow my leader.”
It appears Lindzen first swallowed the bogus “33 degrees” number at least since March 1990, as proven by his paper ‘Some Coolness Concerning Global Warming’ AMS, Vol 71.
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/cooglobwrm.pdf
In September 2010 on his blog Spencer admitted he merely followed Lindzen’s lead. But Spencer went further and actually asserted (crassly) that Hansen’s “33 degrees” number offers a “real-world observed “radiative-convective equilibrium.” See here:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/09/why-33-deg-c-for-the-earths-greenhouse-effect-is-misleading/
But since March 2012 both Spencer and Lindzen are shown, despite our challenges, opting to obstinately avoid addressing the issue. Despite our urging they won’t apply due diligence to verify the providence of the number. But if they had looked more closely at the “33 degrees” they would see that the first value Hansen used to obtain it is a 3-D measure (a vector) of the infrared radiation emitted by Earth back into outer space (255K). Hansen then put that alongside a 2-D measure (288K), which is an average of surface weather stations (a scalar). That’s how Hansen “got” his 33 degrees.
But anyone trained in higher math or physics knows this is not a permissible procedure as it’s the equivalent of adding apples to oranges. Earlier this year Latour and others on our team had a good-natured, but vigorous email discussion with Lindzen and Spencer, among others. Despite our insistence neither would address the matter. In fact, despite engaging with us on other issues they acted obstinately as if we weren’t raising the “33 degrees” problem even though we referred them to our articles on it. Nonetheless, Spencer thereafter blogged an attack piece against me. Is this the real measure of a “leading skeptic scientist?” Not only that, it seems Fred Singer was then recruited and he, too, joined the name-calling fraternity labeling the Slayers (now 50+ independent scientists, engineers, analysts at Principia Scientific International) as “deniers.”
As such we are regrettably forced to conclude that leading skeptic climatologists are disinclined to own up to their gaffe probably because they have decades invested in this junk science – quite simply it’s too shaming for them. Indeed, if Spencer, Lindzen and Singer were true skeptics they would meet us in open debate and resolve this “33 degrees” issue once and for all.
But because the better part of a year has elapsed and they won’t man up, I’ve now emailed Jo to ask she show some leadership on this in Australia. I await her reply and hope she will host an open debate on our readily proved/disproved contention. Be assured, if the “33 degrees” number is proven bogus there is nothing left of substance (ie. as measured in our atmosphere) to sustain this collapsing “theory.”
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Hi John, and thanks for dropping by.
Perhaps as a starting point Jo might let you (or some other of your group), write an article in response to the one above, and addressing some of the issues brought up in the comments section.
Just remember the KISS principle: most of us here are not scientists.
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Hi MV.
I totally agree with your KISS approach on this (“keep it simple,stupid”). For a simple and straight forward proof that the “GHE” is the product of junk science I heartily recommend you look at the “33 degrees” number touted by Hansen, Spencer, Lindzen, Monckton Mann etc. as “proof” our planet is “33 degrees warmer than it would otherwise be.” Last month Jo kindly ran the superb Jinan Cao paper with his take on it.
But my colleagues have found a much simple debunk of that number proving it is purely the artifact of a botched equation by James Hansen. It arose in 1981 when Hansen and a clique of researchers took a scalar temperature value (288K: an average of ground weather station temps, and a 2D product) and combined it with a vector temp value (255K: the satellite measure of outgoing IR, a 3D product).
But anyone with higher math or physics training understands that it is fatal error to mix scalars with vectors this way. Dr Latour put this to both Spencer and Lindzen earlier this year during a private email debate. But neither would comment on it despite arguing other points. So, it’s simply a case of demanding that “top” GHE believers like Spencer and Lindzen explain why they believe in the “33 degrees” junk number. Over the weekend I emailed Jo Nova to ask she run a post in this simple and straightforward issue but she is yet to reply.
Read more her:
http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/10/07/the-greenhouse-gas-warming-number-of-33-degrees-is-a-fatal-error/
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I can identify with John’s work:
This looks akin to what happened at the Australian Bureau of Statistics once when a research team decided to automate and market small area population projections, an “area” being as small as an individual collection district (CD) of about 200 dwellings.
They needed a way to estimate net migration for the area so they combined census data available at the CD level with survey data available only at State level and subject to a considerable standard error (ie mixing apples and oranges). The latter data was an attempt to measure the rate of people leaving the area by age and sex categories.
Of course it is nonsense to use such survey data for areas smaller than state level but that didn’t prevent the ABS taking thousands of dollars from unsuspecting customers until a team I was part of put a stop to it.
00
johnosullivan 10/22 10:20pm: “Last month Jo kindly ran the superb Jinan Cao paper with his take on it.”
Jinan Cao points out the often “missing or assumed to be 1” emissivity factor “eta” or ε.
Jinan lists for Eqn. 2: “The symbol ε is emissivity of the earth surface.”
I skimmed thru that whole thread and did not find any discussion changing ε to emissivity of Earth’s atmosphere which is the real interest. Varying the emissivity of earth surface by adding CO2 to Earth’s atm. makes little sense to me. It is more instructive to just set earth surface emissivity to 1 and vary planet Earth’s atm. emissivity ε.
In this case, Jinan’s Eqn. 2 takes on the form: Teq ^4 = S/(c*(1- ε /2))
where “ε” of earth surface =1 and the “ε” shown here is Earth’s atm. emissivity which is the variable of interest. (ref. “Fundamentals of Atmospheric Radiation” by Bohren/Clothiaux p.33)
The interesting result is that for Earth So = 1369 W/m^2, albedo = 0.30, c=SB constant, there are 2 unknowns Teq and e.
If set e=0 for a theoretical atmosphere with zero emissivity, find near surface air Teq = 255K.
If reset e=0.8 for the real atmosphere, find Earth’s real near surface air T=288K.
33K green house effect! Can do this also for the other planets of known albedo and So. Very cool.
NB: From same ref., compute planet net solar irradiance S from total solar radiant energy So: S = So*(1-albedo)/4
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John
Scalar vs Vector temperatures.Now that is a nice contortion.
The 255K temperature isn’t the temperature of the sun’s radiation. That is a totally meaningless concept. The 255K value is the temperature that a black body would need tobe at in order to produce an amount of radiation equal to what is received here at the Earth’s distance fromthe sun. Since the intensity of the Sun’s radiation at the Earth’s distance from the Sun is X watts/M^2, what temperature would a body at the Earth’s distance from the Sun, with the Earth’s Albedo, need to be at in order to reradiate X watts/M^2 back out to space in order for that body to maintain thermal equilibrium. Nothing whatsoever to do with the ‘temperature of the radiation’. Its about the temperature of the solif body that generates that radiation.
“…But much of that is from the likes of Arrhenius, Fourier and Tyndall…” as the origin of our understanding of the GH Effect.
Actually that is totally incorrect John. Although those people did some very early work, our understanding of the GH effect was developed during the 1950’s and 60’s. Begining with the development of the Eqn of Radiative Transfer (read Ramanathan on this) then beginning with Gilbert Plass in 1956 (‘The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change’, Tellus, 1956) then through the 60’s with research by many people. But most importantly by masses of theoretical and observational science carried out by the Pentagonduring the 60’s and beyond. So if the GH effect isn’t real, you need to take that up with the Pentagon.A god starting point would be the Commandant of the US Air Force Laboratory at Kirtland AFB. They inherited the earlier research that had been carried out by the (then) US Air Force Geo-Physics Laboratory at Hanscomb AFB
42
Do you have a different answer for black body theory and estimated real temp as i would like to know.
I’ve always been convinced that the GHG portion was over estimated as black body equations do not incorporated the various energy storage mechanism that earth employs in its atmospheric buffering.
10
Rob,
I believe the Jinan Cao paper than Jo published here last month is a good starting point to understanding how the SB equation was wrongly applied by GHE “theorists.”
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John
Some timeago in aconversation with someone called Berthold Klein at The Conversation website we had a discussion about a comment you had made. He said he would seek a clarification fromthe STSD ‘team’ but I never got a reply. Perhaps you could answer my question now.
It was in reference to a quote you had made regarding the SB eqn and the Moon, something along the lines of ‘Stefan-Boltsmann never intended his eqn to be applied to a rotating body’. I asked Berthold for a reference to Herr Stefan-Boltsmann’s papers in which I could read up on what he actually said. I always prefer primary sources if possible.
So John,can you supply me with a citation the Herr Stefan-Boltsmann’s papers, the one that does, or presumably doesn’t cover rotating bodies.
Thanks in advance John
01
I don’t think there is a reference in which we can find either S or B saying this. Rather, the point was that the equation was never developed with such a thing in mind. The equation is used to calculate an output vector flux emitted from a source of uniform temperature. This is how and what it was derived for. Whereas calculating a temperature of something that has a non-uniform incident flux (as opposed to uniform output), and is also rotating, is not a clear application of the equation. This isn’t a trivial distinction. If the incident flux were known to be uniform, then independent of rotation, you could calculate a temperature if the albedo & emissivity were known. But the Earth does not have a uniform incident flux, and so we’re in dubious territory as far as the equation is concerned.
Then again, if the output flux were known to be uniform, then without having to refer to the incident flux, a corresponding effective blackbody temperature could be calculated. For Earth, the output flux is roughly uniform at around 240 W/m^2, and so the effective blackbody temperature, if the emissivity is 1.0, is -18C. We can not measure a kinetic temperature directly from space, but only via radiation. So, via the output radiation, the temperature of the Earth IS -18C, assuming emissivity = 1.0. If the emissivity were different, this would raise the temperature of the effective blackbody. But how -18C corresponds kinetically with the system depends on many factors, which I discuss in the new paper, and which I did discuss partly in here
http://principia-scientific.org/publications/The_Model_Atmosphere.pdf
and which Lionell Griffith described here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/10/a-discussion-of-the-slaying-the-sky-dragon-science-is-the-greenhouse-effect-a-sky-dragon-myth/#comment-1148328
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Joseph
I’ll reply to myself since there doesn’t appear to be a reply option on your post
Thank you for the response although I had hoped John would reply.
However, as you point out by the expression “… S & B saying…”, the Stefan Boltzmann eqn was developed by two people, Joseph Stefan and Ludwig Boltzmann. Boltzmann of course was one of the giants of 19th century theoretical physics. The two of them derived the eqn quite independently. Stefan, though less well known was actually the first to derive the eqn from a purely empirical basis. Boltzmann added the theoretical underpinnings some years later. Although both men worked at the same University in Austria for a period I am not aware that they ever collaborated or published together.
My reason for asking John specifically was based on the following. In apost some time ago at http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/realityzone/UFNNASAgatefakescience.html by John, he included this statement:
“…But the problem is Stefan-Boltzmann never intended for HIS numbers to be applied to a three-dimensional rotating planet…” (my emphasis)
John seemingly doesn’t know that the SB Eqn was produced by 2 people independently; he seems to think it was one and the same person. Yet he is a spokesman, almost the figurehead of the STSD ‘Team’.
Joseph. If the STSD folks want to have any credibility, people like you might need to take John aside and just check what else he doesn’t understand. Otherwise his tendency towards foot-in-mouth disease could be (even more of) an embarrassment to you.
As to the application of SB to a rotating body. It can still be used. What matters is recognising that SB describes the amount of energy radiated by a surface at a particular temperature with a particular emmissivity per unit area of that surface (lets leave out the need to add calculations of solid angles here since the surface is always looking at 180 degrees of space) If we take a simplifying approximation that emissivity is a constant over themoons entire surface then we need to to measure the variation of surface temperature over the sphere as it rotates. Then apply SB to to small patches of the surface to calculate EM emissions for each patch. Then integrate this over the entire surface and thus sum the total emissions. Then compare this quantity of emissions with what a body at a uniform temperature would need to be at to produce the same level of EM emissions.
Here are the results from a simple calculation.
Assuming that the Moon has some sort of average temperature, and that the temperature cycle over a lunar day were +/- 100K. What would the actual average surface temperature need to be such that the total emissions over a lunar day were the eqivalent of what a body at a constant temperature (isothremal) would radiate at this distance from the Sun with an albedo equal to that of the Earth.
Crunch the numbers and we get that a rotating body with a +/- 100K temperature variation over its day would actually need to be have an average temperature of 227K in order to radiate like an isothermal body at 255K.
But that’s a big temperature range over the day. The moon might see that but not the Earth. And that is the whole point of the analogy between a GH gas free Earth and not. What would the Earth be like, not what would the Moon be doing.
So I crunch exactly the same numbers, but this time the daily temperature cycle is +/- 20K, not 100K.
And instead of the Earth needing to be at 227K in order to radiate like an isothermal object at 255K now the numbers are:
In order to radiate at the equivalent of an isothermal object at 255K, a rotating Earth with a +/- range of 20K would actually need to have an average surface temperature of 253.8K. A tiny bit cooler, but not much. So much for the idea that SB eqn being applied to a rotating body changes everything.
Seemingly the basic calculation of this escaped John – pity he isn’t here to answer for himself.
Really Joseph, You do need to teach John some basic math. Foot-in-mouth again
24
Sorry John, but its hard to take you seriously when real climate scientists on both sides of AGW don’t share your beliefs. Maybe your group are right, and are being persecuted for your unconventional thinking. But you rather more resemble Einstein cranks. And Einstein cranks are always certain that they are right, convinced that their opponents have made some extremely elementary mistake. This elementary mistake is usually described in arcane language, so that instead of dealing with mathematics, you are lost in a mess of verbiage.
I wish I had the time and talent to redo Hansen’s simple GHG vs non GHG model of the earth’s temperature – just the maths.
24
[…] Nova’s blog is running a welcome critique of ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon’ the book that first propelled discussion of the GHE center-stage. Already the comments are lively. […]
20
A related discussion can be found at http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=1683 where missing physics in the AGW hypothesis are discussed.
30
John Brookes:
I would love the greenhouse effect to be disproved because it would simplify the debate. Of course, it would have to be disproved very convincingly, to the extent that our governments would have to accept the disproof and inform the public.
However, I agree with the person who said earlier that there is already a lot of evidence against *C*AGW (my emphasis) though. (take this for what it’s worth though, from a layman, albeit with an engineering background)
P.S I hadn’t read Dr Allen’s paper when I wrote my first reply. THANKYOU Dr Allen for your comprehensive discussion.
40
All of the “choosing of sides” and digging into impenetrable trenches reminds me teetotalers versus unrepentant alcoholics. At one extreme, we have people who believe ANY alcohol is bad for you and it’s evil even to partake of the liquid. On the other side, we have people who partake and partake and partake, but do not see this as a problem. I know people who call themselves “drunks” and say they have no problem with drinking , others who call all alcohol vile and will not allow it in their house. Somewhere between “alcohol is great” and “alcohol is evil” lies what alcohol really is. However, the two extremes will probably never even listen to the middle. And so it is with climate change.
10
Sheri,
There are three sides to the GHE debate: alarmists, luke warmists and the Slayers (now Principia Scientific International) – two of the three are wrong. You make an argument for always standing in the middle of the road – but what happens when the traffic runs you down?
1212
It was not my intent to make an argument for standing in the middle of the road. My point was there is a middle ground that the extremes often will not consider. With alcohol, moderation would be the middle. I chose a human behavior example, which may not be the best choice for finding the scientific truth, but I believe it shows how ideas often get polarized.
I in no way believe in standing in the middle of the road, unless the middle is the correct answer. If the middle is the correct answer,and the traffic runs me down, so be it. It’s a risk when following a correct path, irregardless of whether you are on the left, the right or the middle. With climate change, the middle may be the least populated place.
20
Sheri,
How do you “know” standing in the middle is the correct path? I say knowledge is power. Study the arguments and demand that the opposing participants openly debate the issue. That’s how I avoid dithering in “no man’s land.”
56
You are a breath of fresh air for sure, John. I hope you stick around.
00
Actually John, standing in the middle of the road – i.e. half way across – is much safer than standing a quarter of the way across, in the middle of a lane.
61
Methinks JB may have been hit by the short bus, many a time. !!!
00
really? Ive seen a lot of road kill precisely in the middle of rural roads.
16
Dr. Sullivan, is it possible to formulate your ideas into a scientific proposition that makes predictions and has implications that can be compared to what we observe in nature?
And…
Can this hypothesis be stated in less than, say, a thousand words in lay English?
If this could be done, then we could avoid debating what might be strawmen.
For instance, the post above claims that a central point of your argument is that global warming is caused by geo-nuclear activity which warms the oceans from below. The implications of this hypothesis seem quite easy to show as a less than useful explanation for what we observe in nature.
I’m skeptical that the geo-nuclear warming hypothesis (GNW?) really represents the work of serious investigators. Surely, you have been misrepresented by Dr. Allen’s post here?
30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3huJaa0nBqo
00
Wes,
The above post is not how I would characterize the Slaying the Sky Dragon book and it is confusing and unhelpful in that the author declined to take on board refinements and clarifications in our science in the two years since the first edition was published.
I would say that the task of a skeptic of any hypothesis is first to point out the flaws, not to provide alternative theories. But my colleagues do say that what is mistaken for the GHE is merely other phenomena better explained by adiabatic pressure and the ideal gas laws. Indeed, the phase changes of water are crucial to that.
For the simplest debunk of the GHE I would recommend you examine our refutation of the claim that the GHE “makes our planet 33 degrees warmer than it would otherwise be.”
That “33 degrees” number came from James Hansen in the 1980s and is the product of a botched equation that anyone can verify even without a science education. Hansen took a scalar temp value and mixed it with a vector temp value to contrive this bogus number. For a simple explanation read more here:
http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/10/07/the-greenhouse-gas-warming-number-of-33-degrees-is-a-fatal-error/
38
Sheri,
Who says that you have to “choose sides”?
Suggesting that people choose sides, implies that they must make a decision based on incomplete evidence, and then only consider evidence that supports “their side” of the debate, and argue counter to the “other” side.
Much better to reject all sides, and all factions, and steer your own path, looking at each piece of evidence as you discover it, understand it, and add that understanding to your knowledge.
If other people want, or need, to “form sides” and congregate with others of a like mind, then that is their loss. Jonathan Swift describes it beautifully in Gullivers Travels, and the war over which end of a boiled egg to break.
41
I am not saying you have to choose a side, only that people very often do. Personally, I do read as many sides of things as possible before deciding. Should new evidence arrive, I evaluate and if necessary, change my viewpoint. (At some point, I may feel I have sufficient evidence to chose the best possible answer at the moment. Should my life be affected by my choice, as in the case of my opposition to wind turbines, I then act upon that choice. Some things do require “choosing a side” or my studying and learning is just an academic exercise.) If tomorrow a compelling argument arrives that makes wind energy not objectionable, I will cease to object.) My observation is that a great number of people find research not to their liking. I had a friend who decided things based on who said them. When I objected that it did not matter who said it, she asked “Then how do you know who to believe?” She really did not understand how to form an independent position. All her beliefs were based on who said what. She is not alone. The challenge is to get these people to think and research and then be willing to stand up against their “authorities” if the authority is wrong. It’s no small task but a necessary one that we plug away at on a regular basis.
40
Sheri,
Well put.
We both agree. We might be in danger of forming our own group, if we are not careful 🙂
20
Eventually we all have to decide what we believe. The problem comes not from having a side but from having a closed mind along with it. I know what I believe and why I believe it but I still pay attention to anyone who can argue a different position intelligently and without attacking anyone else. I didn’t get where I am in a day or even a year. But you do finally have to get somewhere. Just remember that it may be a stop along the way, not the end of the journey.
00
Drunks; is that what you are trying to say?
00
If you’re a big believer in a self-regulating Big Momma Gaia, who knows of course what she’s doing, there are a number of quite embarrassing questions she has to answer. If CO2 is so evil, why has she decided to evolve so many creatures who exhale it?
I suppose the biggie, is that if Carbon is actually the Great Satan, why are we and every other lifeform on the Earth carbon-based? She really should be going for something else, like silicone. A few elective tit jobs using silicone don’t quite make the grade.
It’s a matter of faith, I suppose …
Pointman
131
Perhaps Carbon is only a surrogate for Original Sin. It has certainly generated enough evangelical fervour over the past couple of decades.
“Repent all ye sinners, for the end of the world is nigh upon us”.
I half expect to see that, on a peer reviewed sandwich board, in the high street. But there again, that message has already been done to death by Al Gore. No finesse; that man.
60
The great irony is that if you are a big believer in a self-regulating Big Momma Gaia then you should understand that naturally occurring long-lived complex systems are dominated by interlaced negative feedback loops which keep the system stable even when perturbed by outside forcing such as the addition of CO2 by volcanism or other sources.
It’s a common – if not almost universal – misunderstanding of Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis that it provides support the CAGW meme.
In fact, the Gaia metaphor, completely demolishes the idea of natural fragility or the idea that nature was in a God-given perfect state before our industrial age “fall from grace.” The Gaia Hypothesis redefines humanity and all that we do as an integral part of nature, rather than some alien force outside and against nature.
The daft Greens have appropriate the Gaia Hypothesis and elevated it to an eco-religion because in the vernacular the Gaia metaphor comes off as New Age schlock. But there is nothing schlocky about complex systems analysis and the principles of evolution.
An implication of the Gaia Hypothesis is that the most important conveyor of heat — water vapour — MUST be in a negative feedback relationship with warm forcing. This inconvenient truth is ignored by the Greens for obvious reasons. As a community we failed to live up to our own skeptical values, when we trusted the Greens to explain to us what Lovelock’s inquiries actually revealed, without reading for ourselves!
That’s false skepticism. That’s just incurious political-motivated contrarianism posing as scientific skepticism.
This seems to be what’s going on in this divisive GHG debate. Rather than read the literature for themselves, certain skeptical elements have adopted the Warmist characterisation of what the implication of the GHG model for the atmosphere are. Liquid magma, indeed. We should be ashamed. 😉
As Jo’s blog has demonstrated time and time again, a close look at the current GHG model — even with all it flaws — shows that CAGW never had a leg to stand on from the very beginning of the debate.
52
The trouble, as I see it John, is that there is is disparate range of scientific stances and insight even amongst the slayers. Some have much more credibility than others in the way they pursue their arguments. Doug Cotton, for instance, seems to have a proclivity for logical disjunctures, i.e. he gets to a certain point in the argument and then leaps to a conclusion that does not follow.
Most skeptics are clearly willing to consider alternative hypotheses that better explain the Earth’s climate better than the AGW ‘consensus’. In my own case I would place myself on the skeptical end of lukewarmism, i.e. I accept that CO2 absorbs and re-emits LWIR, but am not convinced that that has much (if any) net effect on global temperatures, particularly given that water vapour is the predominant greenhouse gas.
Simply put, you slayers need to get your own house in order. If you can make a solid scientific case for your position, and have credible people explain it, people will listen to you. If you can’t do that you will remain on the margins with very few people listening.
31
The above was meant to be a reply to John O’Sullivan at 27.1.
00
Chris,
Bless you for coming out to make your position clearer. As skeptics of the GHE all that due diligence requires of us is that we show the flaws in the hypothesis. We have found them to be numerous but some of our explanations are probably too arcane for many. Like you I’m not a trained scientist but I do grasp logic from first principles. In this regard I respectfully ask you to first examine the claim that the GHE “keeps our planet 33 degrees warmer than it would otherwise be.”
My colleagues have looked at the provenance of that assertion and found it to be built on a bogus calculation from the ’80’s by James Hansen. Hansen took a 2D scalar temp value of the average of ground temps (288K) he then improperly mixed it with a 3D vector temp value of outgoing IR radiation (255K). From that he adduced his “33 degrees” of warming. Lindzen and Spencer then swallowed the number unquestioningly. But I’m sure you, like me, can verify to your own satisfaction that it is not permissible in math or physics to mix a scalar with a vector this way.
We can leave discussion about other arcane red herrings such as “back radiation” and the heat “trapping” properties of CO2 till later.
48
The provenance of that assertion can be easily tested John. Anybody can do the following experiment.
When next at your local servo, head to the party ice freezer and have a look inside. The temperature of that ice freezer is about -18DegC.
Buy a bag and take it home. (about $4)
Dump the ice inside an esky.
Grab a CO2 fire extinguisher and squirt a good amount into the esky.
Cover the lid.
Watch as that -18DegC ice radiates up to warm the CO2 which in turn re-radiates down to warm the ice all the way up to 15DegC.
Let us know how long that takes.
That, in a nut-shell, is the GHE theory.
Anyone who accepts the assertion that a surface cold enough to keep ice can radiate enough energy to warm an unconstrained gas above it, which in turn will radiate HALF OF THIS ENERGY back down to warm the icy surface up to a balmy 15DegC is either stupid or corrupt or both.
31
BH,
Please take 5 mins of your time to actually read the link I provided and address the point I made. What the fakery over the “33 degrees” GHE number proves is that despite 30 years and $100+ billion in funding Hansen and his cronies chose a botched equation fatally mixing a vector with a scalar to hang their GHE hats on (not an experiment).
If your “experiment” had any validity I’m sure it would be appearing routinely in each and every IPCC report and His Holiness, Al Gore would have chosen to use it, rather than his own faked lab experiment in his 24 hour TV “Warmathon”. Absence from the peer-reviewed literature betrays the true merit of such validation “experiments.”
28
John,
I think that Baa Humbug was actually agreeing with you, despite the tone.
11
I quoted your words and commented on them John. It seems you’re rushing through comments not reading them properly.
I’m sure you’re a busy man, but if I’ve taken the time to read and understand your comments, and taken further time to respond to them, then I expect the same courtesy from you.
Lets give it one more try shall we?
If my experiment appeared in A IPCC report, then there would be no further IPCC reports. The crux of the GHE hypothesis is that the Earths surface would be 255k if not for GH gasses such as CO2.
The radiation from this 255k surface travels up, is intercepted by GHG molecules, is then re-radiated back down to warm the original 255k surface by 33k to 288k.
My experiment provides the 255k surface in the form of party ice (cheaply purchased at any local servo) and the squirt of CO2 from a fire extinguisher makes sure there is lots of GH gas in the esky for radiation to be absorbed and re-radiated back.
According to the GHE theory, the ice in the esky should melt, and the esky chamber should reach a minimum of 288k in due time.
I contend that radiation from a source at 255k ‘reflected’ back onto the source will never ever raise the temperature of that source to 288k. My simple yet effective experiment will prove it. Try it.
01
Sorry this is out there a bit.
The Bolter’s column today should be a good one. But for those who can’t/won’t pay to read online he has one of the best video summaries of AGW OZ alarmism that you could find to watch in just a few minutes.
Bob Carter at the end is fair but accurate in just a minute or so. Please watch if you have the time. But not JB, Silly Nag etc. because this has no delusional fantasy to attract your interest.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_why_jones_is_humiliated_but_flannery_spared/
BTW that ad with Blancette etc was probably the most dreadful piece of delusional nonsense ever presented to an Aussie audience.
IOW we reduce our whopping 1.1% of co2 emissions by 5% by 2020 and we’ve fixed CAGW, YIPPPEEEE.
40
Oooh! I’m so glad I don’t have to listen to Bob Carter…
02
I found the critque by Dr D Weston Allen very disappointing.
A): He splits the world into some alarmists who are not catastrophic believers, some skeptics who believe in GHG theory just not in CAGW; and lots of people at extreme CAGW alarmists and GHG denying skeptics. Oh yeah, all of the SSD authors are described as these extreme GHG denying skeptics. And supposedly Doc Allen is decrying ad-hominems… Speak with forked tongue is an old saying around here…
B:) he lists a number of the arguments presented by the “Slaying the Sky Dragon” authors (SSD), and he even attributes specific arguments to each author.
C:) Doctor Allen then nitpicks wording and concepts as if they are the scientific argument. e.g. when CO2 (and other gases) absorbs/scatters/ignores IR spectrum.
_____a:) Doctor Allen ascribes absorption/scattering to the SSD authors but maintains the molecules are ‘stretched’ asymmetrically/symmetrically by the IR spectrum. This point is where he leaps into the black body emissions.
Now I am confused. Just how do molecules absorb radiation and what happens after it is absorbed? In the world of physics while the SSD author’s are stating the effect very simply, (I assume for non-physicists), it is this simplification that Doctor Allen is attacking and then using himself as he jumps over any correction he implies he is describing. Within a few paragraphs he has twisted his CO2 and H2O molecular discussion into how this IR absorbtion warms the earth.
In simplistic terms; this dog don’t hunt!
If you’re going to start at the molecular level, finish it first before making a leap to black body radiation. Just implying the SSD author is incorrect and then not definitively explaining the error but following the personal implication that, “they’re wrong, I’m right”, is not science.
Doctor Allen does suggest that the SSD author’s should have discussed/debated this publicly first. Interestingly, the web site he linked as the SSD authors website suggests exactly that. Under what the, (Principia Scientific International (PSI)), SSD authors describe as ‘PROM’ whereby one can ‘join’ and discuss/debate articles. For a Doctor that is so good at implying he’s rebutted a scientific argument with obscure links to simple molecule pictures one would think he’d have researched the SSD authors better. Want to debate/rebut? Join! Get you say in on all papers.
Back to where Doctor Allen describes the SSD authors as stating CO2, H2O, and other gases absorb or scatter IR radiation, I find a paper online at the SSD authors site “REFUTATION OF THE “GREENHOUSE EFFECT” THEORY ON A THERMODYNAMIC AND HYDROSTATIC BASIS” by Alberto Miatello; “http://principia-scientific.org/publications/PSI_Miatello_Refutation_GHE.pdf”
Instead of simplistic statements and molecule descriptions one gets right into the fundamentals.
“3. The fundamental equation of calorimetry as an essential basis for calculation of atmospheric heat
transfer. The fundamental equation of calorimetry is: Q = m × Cp × ΔT”
What I am curious about is why Doctor Allen goes to such efforts to ‘spin’ his simplistics as a GHG rebuttal to the majority of skeptics desire for the fundamentals to be addressed, described, tested under controls, and formally announced.
I’m a skeptic, not a believer. I believe gases absorb/emit/vibrate/whatever… I have real difficulty just ‘accepting’ that man’s slight contribution to several molecules per ten thousand gas molecules is causing significant, let alone catastrophic, GHG warming. I have a nasty suspicion, that without the logarithmic knowledge of CO2 effects, man is not sophisticated enough to actually measure man’s contribution. Still, another confirmation climate process.
42
Monthly Weather Review….June 1901….page 268….”Knut Angstrom on Atmospheric Absorption”….proves that Arrhenius LIED.
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/029/mwr-029-06-0268a.pdf
But the current CAGW enthusiasts will continue the century old false narrative.
20
tckev,
Not only did Arrhenius lie but the revisionist who foisted the bogus GHE on us also don’t want you to know that John Tyndall, one of the God Fathers of the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis, in his speeches specifically referred to deserts, like Giles, Australia, as being places where there is no “greenhouse effect”. Referring to deserts he said, “There is no vapor overhead to check the calorific drain.” When mother nature dumps a large quantity of water vapor into a desert where there is no greenhouse effect and the temperature goes down and not up, how can one still assert that water vapor is a “greenhouse gas” that causes global warming?
67
Quote: “”Skeptics” are described as if they are one small block of fringe extremists, but not only is half the population skeptical in some sense, in this debate I am not on either extreme, but a centrist, smack in the middle. On the one hand, alarmists are convinced the climate is headed for a catastrophe, and on the other some people are convinced there is no greenhouse effect at all. …people on both ends of the spectrum. …– Jo”
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I am sorry to disappoint you (again), but you are not in the middle and there are not just 2 “ends of the spectrum”.
On the issue of existence of the “greenhouse effect” there is no middle, there are only 2 possibilities and nothing between them.
I’ll give an example first. If some people are convinced that 2×2 is not 5 at all, this is not an extreme. On the other side people who are convinced that 2×2=4 are not extremists either.
On the issue of the “greenhouse effect” as presented by the IPCC, it either exists or not, you can not be in the middle there. Now, you are entitled to your opinion, but if you are convinced that CO2 “warms the planet” without having seen a physical experimental proof for that, then you in fact do not have a scientific opinion on the issue. You just have on opinion, that’s OK, but not a scientific one.
102
Greg,
So it is black or white? On or off? You are a believer or a heretic? What, no room for the apostate?
But the use of the word “spectrum” implies a gradual progression from one end to the other.
Using an arithmetic example is also interesting. But it only works if you limit your view to integer arithmetic. If you try it with real numbers, you reach a point where your approximation of four becomes closer to an approximation of five. That is a middle ground that can be debated, based on the next significant digit, no?
We do not debate the issue of the “greenhouse effect” as presented by the IPCC, since that summary has long ago been debunked, as demonstrably containing fraudulent information.
Most regulars on this blog accept that the world has warmed over the 20th Century (less so in the 21st). Most accept that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising. The debate is over the cause and effect, and which way round that may be, and whether there is even a direct and demonstrable cause and effect at all, or both are reacting to some third external factor.
It is this uncertainty that is at the centre of the debate, and while there is uncertainty, there will be a point where people remain undecided and unconvinced of arguments at either end of the spectrum.
32
Rereke Whakaaro said: “Most regulars on this blog accept that the world has warmed over the 20th Century (less so in the 21st). Most accept that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising. The debate is over the cause and effect,”
=================================================
I have very serious doubts that any significant part of those who “accept” have ever read a paper where the warming is calculated and found the calculations correct. The same goes for physical proof of the “CO2 warming effect” that to my knowledge has highly probable been presented by no one.
Please consider that you might be talking about fictions.
60
What approximation Rereke?
2 is 2 (to any precision)
4 is 4 (to any precision)
5 is 5 (to any precision)
The proposition was clearly stated and its parameters given as integers. So to your question I think yes, the answer is NO as you wrote it. Otherwise you must admit that true and false have shades of gray between them and facts, well…are not so factual. Why do you want to go there? “Greenhouse” is either real and can be measured and observed or it’s not real.
So far no evidence is convincing that it’s real and a lot of evidence is convincing that it’s not. True or false, yes or no.
11
“2 is 2 (to any precision)
4 is 4 (to any precision)
5 is 5 (to any precision)”
You don’t work much with computers, do you ! 😉
00
whoops, didn’t read the “integer” word below. sorry !!
00
I think putting “to any precision” threw me off.
You say that, then claim it is defined as integer, so you now only have a single defined precision, so the phase above is now a contradiction in terms.
00
Naah. Most of the sensible debate is about just what climate sensitivity is. Even Lord Monckton recognises this. So there are a lot of positions, based on what you think climate sensitivity is. 0.7C? 1.2C? 2C? 2.5C? 3C?
I’m thinking 2C. I used to go to quiz nights a bit, and noticed that when I wan’t sure I know the answer, I was usually wrong. So 2C is probably wrong.
11
wes george wrote:
“Sadly, I fear the results are more like the French revolution than Copernican…”
You know that really is a much better analogy for many reasons.
43
And yet the last time I checked the surface was not zero degrees Kelvin. A balance eventuates. That balance is partly determein by how much heat is trapped by greenhouse gases.
Jo, did you bold this line because you agree with it?
03
Quote: “I’m sure it will generate a long passionate defence and debate, just as previous posts on this topic have. (eg: “Why greenhouse gas warming doesn’t break the second law of thermodynamics” and “So what is the Second Darn Law?”). … – Jo”
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Jo, I have just looked up there and please do not take it personally, but you have made 2 fundamental and often occurring logical errors. Of course it is not just you, a lot of people do that. Just a short comment.
First, if a hypothesis does not break any law it still does not mean at all that this hypothesis is correct. A simple example: “there is life on Mars”. It does not break any law, but you still need to prove that there is life on Mars.
Hence if there is no scientific physical experimental proof for “CO2 warming”, then it is not a scientific fact. So simple is that. Not contradicting the 2nd Law saves the hypothesis from immediate death, but the hypothesis is not a scientific fact, because unproven.
Second, let me quote a short passage of yours: “Imagine three blocks of metal side by side. They are 11°C, 10°C, and 9°C. Think about what happens to the photons coming off the atoms in the middle of the medium temperature block between the other two. If heat never flows from cooler blocks to warmer blocks, all those photons have to go “right“, and not ever go “left”, because they “know” that way is towards a cooler block? (How would they?!) The photons go both ways (actually every way, in 3D). There are more coming from the 11°C block to the 10°C block, sure, but the the 10°C block is sending ‘em back to the 11°C block too. So heat is flowing from cold to hot.”
The error here is in your using the word “heat” referring to photons. Now, radiation can cause heat, but it is not heat. You have “solved” the problem by just inserting the word “heat” without anyone having proven that photons flowing from the colder plate can influence the temperature of the warmer plate. That is exactly the point, to prove that it is possible. From the logical point of view, it is not much different from proving “there is life on Mars” by saying “Marsians live there”.
The assertion that IR radiation from a colder body to the warmer body reduces cooling of the warmer body needs to be proven physically. I talked with many warmists on various blogs and no one was able to prove it. No one was able to present a single scientific experiment proving that assertion. This is a very strong indication, that the whole thing is a pure fiction.
123
I question your choice of blogs.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/09/why-greenhouse-gases-heat-the-ocean
The rate of heat transfer is dependent upon the temperature difference between the two bodies.
If the colder object is warmed, then this reduces the flow of heat from the hotter body. If the Atmosphere is warmed, it reduces the flow of heat from the Ocean.
Physics 101.
24
Yes, James, everyone knows that (to simplify that) a warm object would be cooled more by a colder object than by a less colder object by conduction.
And your point is…? We are talking about radiation, remember?
60
Actually we’re talking about heat transfer; some people wish to confine it to radiation only.
But even if you wish to focus on radiation only, the same applies.
A hotter body still recieves radiation from a colder body. The Radiation rate = k•T^4. For example if there are two bodies, 10 & 20 degrees, each would radiate until an equilibrium of 15 degrees is reached.
Now repeat but this time start the colder body off at 12 degrees. It will radiate more than a 10 degree body would and that radiation is being absorbed by the hotter body, thus reduction the cooling rate of that hotter body.
21
James said: “Actually we’re talking about heat transfer; some people wish to confine it to radiation only. But even if you wish to focus on radiation only, the same applies. A hotter body still recieves radiation from a colder body.”
============================================
James, let me use your answers to my postings as an example. You received my points and you absorbed the words, but the effect is not there: you won’t get it. You see, the absorption is there, but not the effect I expected.
This is similar with this “a colder boy reduces cooling of a warmer body by means of IR radiation” narrative. The radiation is there, but it’s alleged influence on temperature is not proven physically.
You are in fact telling me the same well known narrative, thank you, but, you know, it is not proven to be a scientific fact. This is the point.
51
Our planet is warmed by radiation. Do you reject that?
18
“Our planet is warmed by radiation. Do you reject that?”
Our planet is cooled mainly by conduction and convection.. do you reject that?
31
“A simple example: “there is life on Mars”. It does not break any law, but you still need to prove that there is life on Mars”
The question remains unanswered…… as does the question of AGW, there is no proof, and with AGW it does break basic laws of physics.
41
@AndyG55, I’m still waiting for my question to be answered.
I’d like Greg House, or yourself to explain how a “body” knows from where the radiation came from in order to know whether to accept it or not.
10
“If the colder object is warmed, then this reduces the flow of heat from the hotter body. If the Atmosphere is warmed, it reduces the flow of heat from the Ocean.”
This is Newton’s Law of Cooling which states “The rate of heat loss of a body is proportional to the difference in temperatures between the body and its surroundings.” It is the law of physics that defines heat flow between to bodies of matter in physical contact, i.e., the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface/ocean. This is the equation:
T2 = T0 + (T1 – T0) * e(-k * Δt)
where:
T2: Final Temperature
T1: Initial Temperature
T0: Constant Temperature of the surroundings
Δt: Time difference of T2 and T1
k: Constant to be found
(Finding k–the constant–requires further calculations none of which have anything to do with IR radiation, net, total or otherwise.)
The “greenhouse effect” hypothesis attempts to define the heat flow between the Earth’s surface/ocean and the atmosphere using the Stefan-Boltzmann Radiation Law and accompanying formulae, which requires something that is absent. The radiating surfaces of the two bodies of matter need to be separated from one another, ideally by a vacuum. The bottom “surface” of the atmosphere, if you will, is in direct contact with the surface/ocean which makes Newton’s Law of Cooling the operative law.
Is it not axiomatic in science that if you cannot get the right answer if you use the wrong formula. You wouldn’t, for example, attempt to figure out the volume of a sphere by using the formula that calculates how fast it would fall 10 feet in a vacuum.
That then leaves us with the question of whether or not one can heat air with IR radiation. If so than this would affect the rate of heat transfer from the ground to the atmosphere via Newton’s Law of Cooling.
Rather than speculating on this question let’s take a look at what both scientific experimentation and what millions of hours of residential IR heating has shown. First we will look at the work of John Tyndall, a 19th century physicist, who did some extensive laboratory testing on the ability of various gases to block the transmission of Infrared radiation, which he called “calorific rays.” He tested gases at concentrations of 80,000 ppm, which for carbon dioxide is about 200 times the current atmospheric concentration. Even at that high level Tyndall concluded, “Carbonic acid gas is one of the feeblest of absorbers of the radiant heat emitted by solid sources. It is, for example, extremely transparent to the rays emitted by the heated copper plate already referred to.” He also noted that at atmospheric concentrations carbon dioxide had no affect on the temperature of the air regardless of how much IR radiation was passed through it. He said, “Through air . . . the waves of ether pass without absorption, and these gases are not sensibly changed in temperature by the most powerful calorific rays.”
In spite of these observations Svante August Arrhenius (1859 – 1927) thirty years later speculated that carbon dioxide actually increases the temperature of the ground (not via Newton’s Law of Cooling but rather through the Stefan-Boltzmann Radiation Law.) To test Arrhenius’ hypothesis in 1900 a Swedish physicist Knut Ångström (1857 – 1910) performed an experiment and published his findings in a paper entitled “On The Importance Of Water Vapor And Carbon Dioxide In The Absorption Of The Atmosphere.”
Ångström’s experiment was to fill a tube with the amount of carbon dioxide that would be present in a column of air reaching to the top of the atmosphere (TOA) and then running infrared radiation through it. He first doubled and then halved that amount and repeated the test, which demonstrated virtually no temperature change between these differing amounts of carbon dioxide.
These experimental observations have since been confirmed through millions of hours of the commercial application of infrared heating. Here is what a few retailers of infrared heaters assert:
“Infrared energy travels at the speed of light without heating the air it passes through, the amount of infrared radiation absorbed by carbon dioxide, water vapor and other particles in the air typically is negligible.”
“Infrared heating technology by definition does not heat up the air, instead it targets the objects leaving the Oxygen and humidity intact.”
“These infrared rays pass through the air in the room and start heating any object they hit. These rays, however, do not heat the air of the room or area, making it more comfortable for you.”
So, we have is both experimental data and real world commercial application data that demonstrate that IR radiation does not heat air. Why? Because it has been known since the 19th century that gases that absorb IR radiation also emit IR radiation. John Tyndall also said, “By this mode of experiment it was proved that the self-same molecular arrangement which renders a gas a powerful absorber, renders it in the same degree a powerful radiator—that the atom or molecule which is competent to intercept the calorific waves is in the same degree, competent to generate them. Thus, while the atoms of elementary gases proved themselves unable to emit any sensible amount of radiant heat, the molecules of compound gases were shown to be capable of powerfully disturbing the surrounding ether.”
So, increasing the concentration of IR emissive gases in the atmosphere increases the emissivity of the atmosphere. The Stefan-Boltzmann Radiation Law does define the atmosphere’s thermal relationship to outer space and part of that formula is the inclusion of an emissivity number. It has long been known that a higher emissivity number allows matter to emit the same amount of IR radiation at a lower temperature. The “greenhouse effect” hypothesis for some reason suggests that increasing the emissivity of the atmosphere by adding GHGs to it will have the opposite affect and require the atmosphere to become warmer in order to emit the same amount of IR radiation out into space.
Can you not understand why some people might be skeptical of a scientific hypothesis that 1) uses the wrong law of physics to define the thermal relationship that exists between the atmosphere and the earth’s surface/ocean and 2) then reverses the Stefan-Boltzmann Radiation Law in its definition of the atmosphere’s thermal relationship to outer space?
Carl
220
Interesting post, thnx Carl.
Lets put numbers to this as follows.
Applying the SB law, we get Qe = 4pr^2 ε σT^4 where Q is the outgoing flux, 4pr^2 is the area of the surface (a constant) ε is emissivity and σ is the SB constant.
From that one can see that for a given outgoing flux Q, if the emissivity is increased, temperature has to decrease. A truly illogical concept. But then, this is climate science.
20
Pardon my stupidity, BH, but wouldn’t that also imply that if temperature (T) increases, and emissivity increases also, that therefore outgoing flux (Q) must increase proportionately, hence the atmosphere must cool to compensate for the increased outgoing IR flux, ie a negative homeostatic temperature regulating mechanism?
20
Hi Winston
Considering the incoming flux (solar) is (supposedly) constant, then the only way to increase temperature is to increase emissivity by increasing the proportion of GHGs.
But look at the equation. If emissivity and temperature increase, then outgoing flux MUST also increase.
But according to the GHE hypothesis, the outgoing flux DOES NOT increase, it just leaves from a higher altitude. Daft.
One doesn’t need to be a scientist or have years of experience in the field to understand this. We just need to understand that for the equation to work, the left side MUST equal the right side.
The fraudsters know that the left side can’t change without the incoming solar flux increasing (you can’t have increased outgoing without increased incoming lest you have a perpetual motion machine). But they contend that solar flux is constant, so the only way to make their equation work is to assume emissivity is 1 and the outgoing flux doesn’t change but because it’s from a higher altitude, the lapse rate means the surface will be warmer. In other words, given the same level of energy (incoming flux) they produce more heat at the surface due solely to the lapse rate.
However when others claim the Earths temperature is due to atmospheric pressure and not the composition of the atmosphere, they get howled down as fools and deniers by both sides. TRULY BIZZARR
30
Thanks BH,
That’s what I was saying above- on the one hand they want to invoke SB equation when it suits their 33K temperature difference argument, but then they don’t want to play by the rules of the equation (from my lay perspective) and follow the more inconvenient points that such an equation raises. Thanks for taking the time to explain that for me, much appreciated.
Cheers
10
No. Consider the opposing view. Anybody who disagrees with you is forced to prove the negative, that there is not life – any life – on Mars. And once some astronaut has landed on Mars, does that prove your hypothesis? You have have presented us with an example that is a logical fallacy.
Let me formulate your example another way. “Life is not possible on Mars”. This statement will stand totally on its own, and does not require proof, but is capable of being utterly refuted as soon as the first native bacterium is discovered.
31
Rereke Whakaaro said: “You have have presented us with an example that is a logical fallacy.”
============================================
Look, I have presented an example of a logical fallacy to illustrate a logical fallacy committed by an opponent. That is what examples are good for.
62
Thank you Greg! The whole case in a nutshell.
10
That is a great argument Greg, apart from the teensy weensy problem of it being absolute unadulterated rubbish.
Can you think of an experiment that could be done to test your assertion that photons from a cooler body can’t slow rate at which heat leaves a warmer one? I can. But I’ll leave it as an exercise for you.
11
I did not make that assertion. This is what I in fact said:
“The assertion that IR radiation from a colder body to the warmer body reduces cooling of the warmer body needs to be proven physically. I talked with many warmists on various blogs and no one was able to prove it. No one was able to present a single scientific experiment proving that assertion. This is a very strong indication, that the whole thing is a pure fiction.”
See the difference? It is them who made the assertion and failed to present a real physical proof.
10
John,
You can always do it better, understand it better, whatever it better. But then you flake out. So I’m calling your bluff. Describe your experiment or forever be the faker that nearly everyone here believes you to be.
Here’s your chance. Put up or shut up!
00
This is an old controversy. I am surprised that Slayers or their supporters didn’t mention Loschmidt’s gravitational thermal effect.
See http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/the-loschmidt-gravito-thermal-effect-old-controversy-new-relevance/
It would, as the subaltern said of the role of cavalry in modern (1920’s) warfare, add a touch of class to what is otherwise a vulgar brawl.
00
There is empirical evidence that there is no “greenhouse effect” and it is supplied by NASA.
The final nail in the coffin of the greenhouse effect theory is an observationby Alan Siddons on some very interesting planetary facts supplied by NASA.
Every planet in the solar system that has a significant atmosphere has a temperature at 1 Bar – sea level Earth – that significantly exceeds the temperature calculated by the Stefan-Boltzmann equations.
Jupiter, for example has NO “greenhouse gases in its atmosphere and receive ~50.5 W/sq metre with an albedo of ~0.343 and NASA give the “Blackbody” temperature as 110 K.
Using the traditional calculations used in climate science I get the same result !
How is it then that with an atmosphere which is almost entirely Hydrogen and Helium with almost no GHGs and no planetary surface the temperature at 1 Bar on Jupiter is 165 K – 50 % – yes fifty percent – higher than the temperature climate scientists calculate ????
All the rest of the planets display similar behaviour while only 2 have any GHGs.
This surely consigns the “backradiative greenhouse gas theory” to the dustbin of failed theories !
Alan Siddons has an interesting read on these at
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Rethinking_the_greenhouse_effect.pdf
He further notes in other observations about Earth’s atmosphere, correctly, that everything that has a temperature above absolute zero radiates with the peak of its emission determined by its temperature – this is science based on Planck’s emission curves and the work of Wein.
So the atmosphere is full of radiation and the vast majority of this radiation is from Nitrogen, Oxygen and Argon – to deny this is simply stupid ! Yet all of this radiation is not seen as contributing to warming – only the small amount from so-called GHGs does. What nonsense !
How can the atmosphere at a density of ~1.3 kg /cubic metre possibly supply any significant energy to the soils, at ~2200 kg/cubic metre or water at ~1000 kg/cubic metre – especially when the atmosphere is usually significantly cooler than the surface and water has such a high specific heat ?
By ignoring conduction/convection the proponents of the backradiative Greenhouse theory have duplicated energy !
The physical properties of materials determined by experiment include all mechanisms of heat or energy transfer – to deny this is simply stupid !
Did they somehow get the material in question to agree to not radiate for the duration of the experimental test ??
Finally – it has never been demonstrated that effectively insulating a hot material causes its temperature to increase without adding extra energy – NEVER !
Finally why do they base all calculations on a fictitious average of 342 (minus albedo) W/sq metre insolation when we know this is not what occurs in reality ?
The Moon clearly demonstrates the solar radiation is powerful to heat surfaces to over 120 degrees Centigrade and the fact it does not achieve this on Earth is testament to the fact the oceans and atmosphere cool the Earth’s surfaces during the day – not add heat !
I do not see how anyone can argue against this – it is measured fact again supplied by NASA.
The Moon’s 29 Earth day is not the reason it gets so hot – the maximum temperature is determined solely by the heating power of the Solar Radiation and it is fairly rapid if experiments on Earth are a guide – while it does explain the very cold temperatures as without any Solar Radiation for 29 Rarth days the dark side radiates significant proportions of the stored heat.
I simply cannot understand how these facts do not completely demolish the bacjradiative greenhouse effect theory.
173
Ok, so why does the desert floor cool so rapidly after the sun goes down?
Why do we wrap hypothermia patients in foil blankets? even though the foil may be below zero.
I think you might also find that the dominant gases of our atmosphere such as nitrogen and oxygen do not behave like a blackbody i.e. they don’t radiate according to their temperature like solids do.
23
“Why do we wrap hypothermia patients in foil blankets? even though the foil may be below zero.”
The blanket slows all forms of heat transfer: radiative (reflective), conductive (the material inside) and convective (air-tightness).
If you don’t close them around the neck/head, and thus allow convective air flow, they are nowhere near as effective.
41
ps, thus the natural body heat, which would normally be lost to the atmosphere, is allowed to accumulate inside the blanket, rather than escape.
41
“Ok, so why does the desert floor cool so rapidly after the sun goes down?”
Perhaps for the same reason that a styrofoam block cools faster than a brick–heat capacity. It has been demonstrated that wet soil both warms slower during the day and cools slower at night because the heat capacity of water is much higher than that of dry soil. Humid climates are humid because there is water in the ground to evaporate into water vapor and that ground moisture increases the heat capacity of the soil.
Humid climates also have more liquid water in the sky, i.e., clouds. One can take an IR thermometer and point it first at the ground, then at a low level cloud and then at open sky and a typical temperature spread will be:
Ground = 10 C
Clouds = -10 C
Open sky = -30 C
The presence of cloud cover cuts the temperature differential that exists between the ground and the atmosphere by half and according to Newton’s Law of Cooling this slows the rate at which the ground transfers heat to the atmosphere. Since this decrease in temperature differential suppresses the vigor of upward convection currents you could call this a quasi-greenhouse effect if you like since greenhouses work by suppressing convection.
In both of these cases though–increased heat capacity of the soil and a quasi-greenhouse effect–it is water in liquid form not water vapor that is inhibiting the rate of nighttime cooling in the desert.
Just out of curiosity I kept a nine day running total of nighttime temperatures every 30 minutes during a particular dry, cloud free period of the year. We hadn’t had rain for a while so the ground was fairly dry. I divided the nighttime temperature into “humid” days and “arid” days and compared the nighttime cooling rates to see if a change in humidity alone has an affect on the rate at which the ground cools at night. For what it is worth the rate of nighttime cooling was identical regardless of the fact the the humidity on the “humid” nights was double that present on the “arid” nights.
Carl
70
The atmosphere of Jupiter contains about 0.2% methane
Read more: Planetary Atmospheres – The Giant Planets – Surface, Gases, Terrestrial, and Jupiter – JRank Articles http://science.jrank.org/pages/5257/Planetary-Atmospheres-giant-planets.html#ixzz2A8UPnmmp
So your “NO” turns out to be actually “quite a lot”. And of course at this point we don’t need to read any more…
10
One thing you don’t see very often is global annual average temperatures for the whole planet. I’ve linked it below, and it shows us some interesting things.
The hottest places on Earth are in a belt well north of the equator across North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, but there are no equivalent hot places in Africa south of the equator.
The hottest places in the southern hemisphere are in Northern Australia. The climate here is subtropical. Dry winters, wet summers.
Land area at a particular latitude clearly has a large influence on where the hottest places are. OTOH the hottest places in both the northern and southern hemispheres are between the true deserts (Sahara, Great Sandy Desert) and the humid tropics, in the seasonal monsoon zone, where winters are dry and summers wet.
These areas are characterized by increasing summer humidity, but relatively low cloud cover (unlike the Tropics).
My main conclusion is that water vapour has a strong warming greenhouse effect and clouds (cumulus) a strong albedo cooling effect.
Which makes this statement false,
It’s clouds that make the tropics cooler.
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~j2n/Ed5_Fig10_3.bmp
61
Some interesting articles regarding “water vapour”………
Quadrant Online – Climate Modelling Nonsense – CARBON DIOXIDE VAPOUR TRICK
http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2009/10/climate-modelling-nonsense
Water vapour caused one-third of global warming in 1990s, study reveals
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/29/water-vapour-climate-change?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
32
Ah Brad
Should I bother?
Brad says:
“My main conclusion is that water vapour has a strong warming greenhouse effect and clouds (cumulus) a strong albedo cooling effect.”
Yes Brad, water grabs hold of some of the Incident and Ground Origin IR and shares it with local gas molecules, uncle Hydrogen and cousin Oxygen for example.
This hot air loses energy much more slowly through convection than the alternative mechanism, radiation, would cause heat/energy loss if there was no atmosphere.
Water has a strong COOLING effect on the Earth and also results in energy retention, for a while, in the atmosphere leading to a warmer place for us to live.
Now to review:
Every “Climate Scientist’s” presentation I have seen tells lies by omission.
For example we are told that “Carbon Dioxide will blah, blah, blah ….. and if CO2 doubles then … blah, blah,
blah ”.
They will Never separate out the Human effect of CO2 from the Total CO2 effect.
They will never acknowledge the presence of water vapour in the air because as a Green House Gas it wipes the
floor with CO2.
I feel it important to give examples of how the CO2 we produce really influences the climate and will use a
very concrete example of a real measured period from our recent past.
With apologies to Rudyard Kipling.
IF
Active Carbon Dioxide Distribution is:
a. 98% of Earths ( active ) CO2 is dissolved in the oceans.
b. 2% of Earths ( active ) CO2 is in the atmosphere.
c. 97% of atmospheric CO2 is of Natural Origin.
d. 3% of atmospheric CO2 is Human attributable.
And
e. Atmospheric H2O is about 95% of the total greenhouse effect.
It would seem then that if we want to control CO2 levels we need to control three items:
1. The oceans and 2. Water vapour 3. Natural CO2 emissions.
Logically the Atmospheric CO2 and Ocean origin CO2 interaction needs serious study and Human CO2 emissions
are rendered insignificant by the shear weight of the Water GHG effect.
So the Total GHG effect is
1. Water about 95%
2. Total CO2 about 4% of GHG effect
3. Human proportion of CO2 is 3% of the above 4% or 0.12 % of all CO2 effect.
IF
If world atmospheric temperature rose by 0.6 C degrees over the last 150 years from 1860 (maybe).
And if Greenhouse gases are the only cause of this rise (very debateable).
And if human origin CO2 is to be taken into account.
THEN.
Our part of the world’s green house gas effect is 0.0009 C degrees of the temperature rise of 0.6 C degrees.
(calculated as a max).
The rest is nature.
Likewise we are responsible for 0.0045 mm of the annual 3mm ocean increase.
Over 100 years we would cause 0.45 mm sea rise.
Holy Crap Batman.
We’ve been had by the IPCC, WWF and many politicians.
The “revelation” above is simply confirmation of the real science.
When you quantify the “Green House” ( if I can use that term) effects:
• we have a major winner in Water
• followed by Natural produced CO2
• and way behind both in magnitude, Human Related CO2 struggling to make any visible impression on the system.
So CCS and Carbon Abatement, Carbon Footprint, Responsible Energy and other catchphrases of the Church of AGW
may now be consigned to the sin bin where they belong.
KK 🙂 🙂
111
Must apologise for this rehash of my earlier MFJ post, but just had to give Brad something to read that didn’t drain too much energy.
KK
01
This BOGUS “greenhouse effect” THEORY has already been totally discredited !
FALSIFICATION OF THE ATMOSPHERIC CO2 GREENHOUSE EFFECTS WITHIN THE FRAME OF PHYSICS……….
http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb/23/2303/S021797920904984X.html
72
So to put it simply if we had an atmosphere made up of entirely Nitrogen, Oxygen and Argon and we added Carbon Dioxide to it would could see which of the three sides are mostly likely correct in their arguments right?
Slayers – expect potential for some cooling
Lukewarmist – expect potential for some warming
Warmists – expect the world to end.
61
Hi Shortie
What about the other option?
No Change?
KK
21
.
My money’s with you KK (assuming we still have water vapour).
Even if there was some change, in whatever direction, it would be so small as to be indistinguishable from background noise, and therefore undetectable as a unique component, with the instruments we have today.
51
Yep, I tend to agree.
The specific heat of CO2 is marginally smaller than that of air, so the lapse rate would increase by a tiny amount,
but still transport the same amount of energy away from the surface.
10
KK and MV, a no change could fit in the ‘potential for change’ either way and may require another catalyst i.e. water vapour to test. If that was the case you would have water vapour in the system already and measure the change to the system by increasing the concentration of CO2 while also trying to avoid increasing the preasure, from what little I know of the previous tests the pressure was changed as CO2 was pumped into the tests under higher pressure.
10
Hi Shortie
Was imagining the atmosphere where pressure always attains equilibrium , even if only locally.
Obviously if CO2 goes up then some other gas or gases are displaced.
KK
00
For experiemental purposes we are only looking at how CO2 itself acts so we would keep the ratio of gases the same to relative each other before the addition(in this case it would be Oxygen, Nitrogen, Argon and Water Vapour) but the % of total would be offset by the CO2 component.
Relative temperatures after the start of the test might cause problems with pressure though thus increasing any trend, unlike in the open environment where the atmosphere itself does not have a glass lid holding gases in place. I always found it strange that small sealed environmental tests from the late 19th century were gospel to climate scientists and then they increase the results of these tests by a factor of at least 3 due to water vapour without any evidence to do so.
It may have sounded like I have contradicted myself but I would only be looking for the direction after application of CO2, does it help cool, remain neutral, or increase the temperature of the system (or melt the system down under warmist propaganda methods).
20
Good question Shortie, and it’s been over 40 years since my earlier degree so I’ll leave the exact comments to others.
When I was a kid heading for the beach I can remember walking on the light grey kerb to avoid the hotter black tar footpath.
My feet would not take more than a few seconds on the tar.
I strongly suspect that cold air dropping to the tar would be heated when in close proximity and rise up to disperse its IR at the toa.
I don’t think, anecdotaly, that the exact proportion of atm CO2 would make much difference to the final temp, but somebody must know?
KK
00
How much sooner could some of this CAGW fraud been exposed if Steve McIntyre had been given access to data when he asked for it many years ago?
http://climateaudit.org/2012/10/20/a-belated-si-for-darrigo-et-al-2006/#more-17087
Incredibly he was threatened with expulsion as a IPPC reviewer just because he wanted to TEST the accuracy of the data.
What a total con and fraud and what an embarrassment to science.
120
Wes George is on fire!!! Top work.
One little comment though is that I think it is not inconsistent for an individual to both:
i) consider that AGW is demonstrably untrue within the confines of the debate between conventional warmists and skeptics; and
ii) consider that the conventional science is completely wrong.
“I think your version of the science is completely baseless, but even if it were sound your conclusions are fundemantelly flawed.”
Other than that though – love your work today.
210
Never in the course of human existence have so many argued to the point of becoming, politically, the equivalent of so few.
I think if I were a warmist I’d be dancing with joy……
62
Hi Mark,
Who’s arguing – we’re debating, and having a jolly good time of it if I may say so myself.
And well we might. What else are we going to do?
.
CAGW “science” was debunked long ago.
Its promoters have been shown up as lying, deceitful snake-oil salesmen.
And yet nothing has changed.
No point going on flogging a dead horse.
Politically the only option anybody around here will entertain is “vote the current mob out and vote the other mob in” (again), proving conclusively that one sure sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and and over and expecting a different result.
So not much point in discussing the possible political solutions to the situation, either.
.
The truth is, nothing much is going to change until people start to suffer, and that time is approaching soon enough.
Within three years – by the end of 2015 – most Australians will be learning to live with permanent rolling blackouts and brown-outs, because there’s just not going to be enough baseload power to go around.
This is going to coincide with a rapid descent into the coldest period in this country’s history, since colonisation. People will die in their homes.
This will coincide with our slide into economic oblivion as the world plunges into a recession worse than the Great Depression. People no longer with homes will die on park benches.
All this will happen against a backdrop of a major regional war in the mid-east, rapidly heading towards, if not already developed into WWIII. We will have conscription again by then and young Australians will die on foreign shores to protect the profits of international bankers (again).
.
Now young Mark, what would you have us do?
Rage against the machine and shake our ineffectual fists at a future now set in stone and too horrible to even contemplate, while we come to grips with the insanity of it all and our powerlessness to prevent it?
Or have a pleasant little debate about the properties, or otherwise, of plant food?
61
“The truth is, nothing much is going to change until people start to suffer, and that time is approaching soon enough.”
And fortunately, it is the Green/ALP areas of Canberra and Tassie which will most likely suffer first, then Vic and SA 🙂
Gotta luv KARMA !!!!!
50
“Politically the only option anybody around here will entertain is “vote the current mob out and vote the other mob in””
What other option is there? I have emailed the Libs many time pleading then to drop their moronic RET and DAP, put money into decent solid power supply, encourage industry instead of caning it. etc.
Actually, I got a reply from local member last week.
“I have noted your concerns, thanks so much for your feedback. I will pass your request and concerns on.”
Will this get through to the small brains of those at the top.. who knows !!
I would really like ALL sensible people on this forum to go to http://haveyoursay.nsw.gov.au/topic/question-number-1-goes-here
Say what you think about the NSW government rewnewable policies.
Me , I just want our politicians to GIVE US A CHOICE..
As I said on the link. If I want a RET or a Green CO2 plan.. I’ll vote ALP or Green. But I DON’T.. so FFS give me someone I can vote for !!!
GIVE ME A CHOICE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE!
50
You could try getting up out of your pleading supplicant position on your knees and actually try doing something proactive for yourself.
Emails to politicians are generally a waste of time unless they have the weight of numbers that only an outside-funded organisation like GetUp can provide. And even they are rapidly losing their effect. An email costs nothing to send and only about two minutes to produce, and that is about the value politicians assign them.
A posted letter is another matter. A posted that must be signed for, even more so. A registered posted letter that must be signed, and accounted for, carries the weight of probably a thousand emails, if not more.
.
Write a letter to your member expressing your utter dissatisfaction with both his and his party’s policies, and their total disdain for your concerns, as evidenced by previous email replies you have received. Attach copies of the emails.
Tell him that, based on current performance, you see no point in voting for him or his party at the next election, and your vote would be better off either directed to an Independent, or spoiled.
Tell him further that you intend spending a few hours every weekend, from now until the next election, knocking on doors, talking to people, exhorting them to do the same thing.
Keep the letter to one page – plus email attachments, keep it polite, print it out with the attachments, put it an A4 envelope (not folded) and send it off registered post requiring a signature. Cost you about ten dollars.
Come the weekend, print out some copies of your letter, and start door-knocking. Exhort people to do the same thing. Forget the issues, stick with the theme that the politician no longer represents the electorate. You and your neighbours are effectively disenfranchised and you are pissed off about it. Stick with that.
.
Here is the truth. Your letter, even by itself, will give some concern. You actually went to some time and effort and expense to make your views known, unlike an email. But ultimately it will change nothing.
However, if you can get even just a hundred people in your electorate to do the some thing, you will elevate the issue to something to be brought up at the next Party meeting. One thousand such letters from a single electorate would make it a State Conference issue, and the same thing repeated in just five or six electorates around Australia would bring about a major change in the attitudes of our politicians hoping to re-elected, or elected.
.
But of course, this is all fantasy. You are not going to bother, and neither are your neighbours. It is so much easier to scream:
and then sit back and wait for somebody else to do it for you.
.
71
Extremism is commonly thought to lie upon a linear spectrum from far left to far right. But this is not so. The political extremes are more closely related to each other than they are the Aussie battlers stuck in the middle trying to raise a family in the ‘burbs.
The political spectrum is more accurately plotted in a circle, like a clock. Imagine that One o’clock is the extreme right. 6 o’clock is the vast middle of the road mob and 11 o’clock is the extreme left.
Case in point: What is the difference between Memoryvault and your whacko moonbat Greenie. Very little other than they would kill each in a cage fight.
For instance the moonbat Greenie is an alarmist… he believes many of us are going to die due to global warming.
Here what Memoryvault believes:
Warmists believe we’re going to die of heat, MV believes we’ll die of cold. There is no evidence to support either position. Both are example of exactly the same variety of ridiculous, paranoid alarmism. In fact, studies have shown that extremists from one end the extreme are more likely to convert extremists from the seemingly opposite point of view than from the vast middle ground. That’s because the psychology that drives certain people to extremism is the same regardless of the radical POV they adopt. Communists are more likely to convert to fascism then to join the middle class and get a real job. Extremists of all kinds are about the illicit appropriation of power from others. The rest of us on the scale from about 3 o’clock to 9 o’clock are about respecting the individual civil liberties of our neighbours and living a life of personal responsibility as best we can.
And surprise, surprise, both the whacko Greenies and MemoryVault are deeply disenchanted with the democratic process because democracy is about compromise, moderation and rule of law rather than bloody revolutionary change toward an utopian ideal.
Spoken like a true Green nutjob disgusted with the slow pace democratic rule is making towards “Saving the Planet.”
Of course the only option available if we ditch constitutional democracy is coercive authoritarianism of some variety. Which would be the one sure sign of insanity since that’s been tried many more times than democracy and the results are pretty similar. Lots of murdered “enemies of the state” buried in mass graves.
Maybe this is why Memoryvault isn’t eager to talk about the alternatives to a constitutional democracy:
Exactly. The Greens don’t like to talk about their final solutions either.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8StG4fFWHqg
84
“There is no evidence to support either position. ”
But there is evidence that our electricity supply system is on a knife edge because of bad planning dues to the green agenda.
Tassie many not suffer too badly because they are lucky enough to have the west coast rainfall and the storage for decent hydro power.
SA could be in for major issues, they rely too much on alternative power, base load is going to become a major issue.
If they do shut down the brown coal power stations, Victoria could also suffer major elctrical power issues as well.
I just wish it was Canberra , especially government house that lost power first.. then they might get sensible !!!! yeah right, that’s going to happen !!
But surely, with the Sun having a snooze, wouldn’t the precautionary principle so touted by the climate hypochondriacs tell us to boost our cheap coal fired power systems… like ultra-green Germany is doing !!
Doesn’t it appear odd to people that EU crooks in Brussels allows Germany to go back to coal, but not England……… just saying… draw your own conclusion.
42
Wes,
Whatever similarities you try to draw between MVs assertions and CAGW extremism, a comparison I feel is highly unfair, the fact remains that unlike the alarmists we oppose, the coming global depression is an unavoidable economic fact, not an unproven theorem based on suppositions and dodgy computer modeling. Neither is the saber rattling over Syria and Iran, nor the constant possibility of the Korean peninsula erupting a figment of MVs imagination, but rather a clear indication of intent. Japan debt at crisis, pending Greek and or Spanish default, nor the slow economic death of the US are all well and truly established realities, while an energy crisis looming because of massive investment in tilting at windmills and worshipping the Aten sun god as a piece de resistance makes war in a global context necessary for the elitists to concentrate wealth, consolidate power and eradicate the middle class bourgeoisie who have been given just enough rope to hang themselves financially.
So, don’t shoot the messenger, because MV has a much more accurate take on reality than you give him credit for, and certainly better than any ecozealot I know of. I may not agree with all MV has to say, but certainly he is speaking with a sharp analytical mind about an evolving geopolitical situation which is highly likely to resemble at the very least his broad outline.
82
In the end the debate is over as Al Gore says though certainly not for the reason he thinks it is. The whole greenhouse of cards has already collapsed and we all know it.
The need now is for a fight against the political, cultural and business aspects of this problem, not the science.
I’ve made this a crusade if you haven’t noticed. If we can’t get busy on the real job the cause will be lost. I rest my case (for now).
30
.
Where on the clock are you Wes?
And where do you locate this load of garbage on the clock?
01
Dave–Wes
Debating a poorly defined concept like Greenhouse Effect could end up with so many positive forcings
that there could be a nuclear type explosion here.
Perhaps you are both right.
The atmosphere can absorb energy from the sun directly and from the heated Earth surface.
If so called GH gases can take in energy better than nitrogen for example then it is only a short term thing.
Transfer of accumulated GHG energy to N2 and O2 will be almost instantaneous and all gases will be at
peace together, at an elevated temperature where convection starts.
So perhaps GHGs do take energy out of thin air but they don’t store it.
It may also be true that pressure considerations determine gas temperature in concert with energy up take from IR and that the actual makeup of the atmosphere is bye and large irrelevant.
This would make the concentration of CO2 irrelevant and so confirm that there is no such thing as the Greenhouse Effect.
Peace.
KK
20
KK says…”It may also be true that pressure considerations determine gas temperature in concert with energy up take from IR and that the actual makeup of the atmosphere is bye and large irrelevant”
Unless a constituent gas can radically change the ‘specific heat’ of the air, then yes, the actual make up is close to irrelevant.
Only H2O, with its 3 phase possibilities at atmospheric temperatures, is available in large enough quantities to do this. The phase differences help transfer heat away from the Earth’s surface more efficiently.
No other common atmospheric gas has this ability.
30
Very perceptive Wes. But no clear path forward? The cause is lost unless you reach those who don’t visit blogs like this one. There’s a clear need for concerted action. Who is (or maybe it’s will be) doing that?
10
Agreed MV,
It is inevitable that the longer the scam remains unchallenged in the mainstream, and those who dare question are marginalized, ostracized and ridiculed by the lazy, the apathetic, the deluded or the malevolent, the more likely the scenario you paint will be brought to bear. And for that we have people like John B and Matt B and James and Maxine ans Sillyhorse to thank. I would hope they will not come to live with the deep regret that their collective stupidity has facilitated the deaths of so many for such a flimsily justified meme.
So I hope that the coming hyperinflationary depression will give pause to those siccophantic imbeciles in the media, the political miscreants masquerading as human beings, and the scientific streetwalkers to consider the role they have played in facilitating such a calamity. I doubt such self-analysis is within their ken.
50
I’ve long believed the same thing mv. Personally, I’m not supporting the coalition just in order to oust Gillard. I demand nothing less than a total repudiation of anything related to this scam.
No amount of scientific discourse will change anything. As long as the established pollies don’t sense public anger, neither side will budge.
On a lighter note, ya gotta laugh at Christine Milne. She’s sad that the Green vote dropped sharply in ever-so-lefty ACT. Boo hoo!
30
People need to let their local Liberal politicans know that they are angry.. I do. several emails a week.
(pointless emailing ALP, they are all red-witch whipped cowards, all you will get back is a form letter of what was decided as “the message” 3 months ago)
Get on the Liberal party email list, and whenever they send out an advertising blurb, write back telling them exactly what you think of the RET, DAP, and other parts of the green non-environmental agenda. Let the Libs know exactly what you think of destroying the landscape and countryside with monstously expensive, ugly inefficient wind turnbines.
I think there MAY be some Libs who can actually think for themselves… perhaps.???
Tell them, that if they want your vote, rather than informal, they should drop all that crap from their policies.
Let your feelings be known !!
31
I try as well Andy…
… but I am scared the devil will turn out like the devil I know??
… Bloody hell, I need too become PM !!
01
This thread reminds me of an old bush tale, I’ll update for the auspicious occasion of the saddest thread ever on Jo’s blog.
*
*
AGW is like a race horse that has broken its leg in three places and will never stand again.
The vet has been called in to put the horse down as humanely as possible.
Then from under a rock pops out Dragon Slayer attired in bright medieval costume and wielding a dull, timeworn ax he borrowed from a phrenologist.
WHACK, WHACK, WHACK, WHACK!
Goes the Dragon Slayer with his rusty ax.
“Good on ya,” say MemoryVault, “that pathetic beast is out of his misery now!”
And that would be so, accept that Dragon Slayer’s whacking ax rained down upon the veterinarian just as he was about to administer the lethal dose to the crippled horse.
‘Tis true, the AGW horse will never stand again, but nothing we have done here today has hastened an end to the misery.
83
Wes, instead of torturing an absurd analogy, why not weigh in on this statement that appears early in your treatise:
Since glass on a greenhouse also absorbs and re-radiates infrared (IR) radiation, this atmospheric phenomenon became known as the ‘greenhouse effect’ (GHE), and the trace gases are referred to as ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG).
Do you agree with this statement, or not?
40
Wrong Wes, Kenny.
You’re looking for Dr. Weston Allen.
Nevertheless, I’d be happy to comment on your out of context quote: Read the very next line.
00
Oh, sorry, Wes. That was a dumb error.
I remain confused…the next sentence seems to be attributed to the Sky Dragon Slayers. I’ll ask you, Wes George, do you agree with the SDD folks on that point, i.e. that greenhouses work by restricting convection or do they work by the glass blocking exiting IR?
20
I’ve long tried to come up with a conceptual model of what happens when a heated surface radiates to space.
Looking at all the arguments here I’d like to propose an experiment(for now a thought experiment but this is quite doable):
lets take a sphere of thin copper treated so it is black on the inside (emissivity and absorptivity =1.0)say 30 cm diameter. Immerse in a bath of liquid helium (we could use liquid nitrogen if we’re cheapskates).
Evacuate the sphere.
I presume we all agree the temperature of the copper will be that of the LHe or LN2 at equilibrium?
Now take a small sphere of copper say 1cm diameter similarly treated and suspend it in the middle of the larger copper sphere with a couple of very thin wires carrying a current sufficient to warm the small sphere to 288 degree Kelvin.
Now hold that current (constant input power) and surround the inner sphere with a thin shell of copper say 2cm diameter treated so emissivity and absorptivity = 1.0.
This is equivalent to a perfect “greenhouse gas”.
Q1 What is the equilibrium temperature of the 2cm diameter shell?
Q2 For constant power input the same as previously without the 2cm shell, what is the equilibrium temperature of the inner 1cm sphere?
Step up, boys and girls. If we can’t agree on this then there’s no point talking about gases, convection, conduction etc. This is a pure radiation case.
00
Having read your #60, I feel compelled to put at least one comment here, since you certainly deserve a response.
My theoretical physics is not up to the task, I am afraid, but like you, I think it is worth some discussion – I might even learn something.
10
OK, I’ll bite (although this is almost certainly a waste of time):
First, I assume that you are trying to create a perfect heat sink with the larger (30cm) sphere at liquid Helium temperature? So, let’s just stipulate that NO heat is returned to the inner spheres by radiation from without — just as if they were alone in infinite space. This removes the tedious necessity of calculating the effect of the very cold, very large sphere which I assume you are trying to minimize. Let’s just make it exactly zero.
Also, I assume you are trying (by the black paint) to make the copper spheres as close to ideal blackbodies as possible — so let’s just stipulate that they are perfect blackbodies.
Given that, we can calculate the energy radiated by the 1 cm sphere (when alone) by using the Stefan-Boltzmann law:
P = d A T^4, where A is the surface area of the sphere, T is the temperature in degrees Kelvin, and d is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, 5.6*10^(-8) Watts/(Meters^2 Degrees^4)
The radius of the sphere is 0.005 meters and its area is 4*pi*0.005^2 square meters and hence the power radiated (and, therefore the power needed to be supplied) is (5.6*10^(-8) * 0.0001pi * 288^4) = 0.121 w, or 121 milliWatts.
Now, keeping the input power constant at 121 mW, we add the 2cm shell (also a perfect blackbody) to the experiment and let everything reach equilibrium. Now the 2 cm diameter shell will be at a temperature where it radiates the entire 121 mW into empty space (a requirement of equilibrium — energy out must equal energy in). Since its surface area is 4 times as large, we find the equilibrium temperature by equating the power loss and solving the equation: 4A*T^4 = A*288^4 ==> T = 288/sqrt(2) = 203.6 K.
At this temperature, the outer shell is now radiating away the 121mW into our infinite sink.
Since the inner surface of the outer shell is also radiating 121mW back at the inner sphere, the equilibrium temperature of the inner sphere must rise until it is radiating away 242mw, so that its net energy loss remains at value of the electrical heating input of 121mW. We can calculate this new temperature (where the radiation is doubled) by solving the equation:
T^4 = 2*(288^4), or T = 288 * 2^-4 = 342.5K
This is what standard thermodynamics and the theory of blackbodies predicts. If you don’t believe it, do the experiment.
21
I might just note that this experiment does not duplicate the Earth’s greenhouse effect. The Earth has a significantly lower emissivity than an ideal blackbody, and greenhouse gases (being absorptive only at specific narrow wavelength bands) can’t be validly modeled as blackbodies or graybodies at all.
20
Also, there would be a slight correction to the second calculation — I was assuming that all the energy radiated by the inner surface of the 2cm shell would be intercepted by the outer surface of the 1 cm shell. However, some of the radiation at large angles will miss the inner sphere and be re-absorbed by the inner surface of the outer shell. We could label this the “capture cross-section” of the inner sphere, and could determine this geometrically. Suppose we find that the inner shell only captures 80% of the emissions from the outer shell — then it’s temperature would only have to rise enough to radiate 1.8*121mW instead of 2*121mW.
I’ll leave this as an exercise for anyone with enough time to waste.
10
Another correction:
The last equation should read:
T^4 = 2*(288^4), or T = 288 * 2^(1/4) = 342.5K
(The answer was right, however.)
11
jo –
might be worth looking at how any of this relates to CAGW-related grants:
22 Oct: Brisbane Times: Bianca Hall: Research cuts anger universities
The mid-year budget contains deep cuts to research, with the government to freeze Sustainable Research Excellence grants at their current levels, decreasing payments to universities by $79 million in 2012-13, or $499 million over four years.
SRE grants support the indirect costs of research, such as for administration, equipment and staff, not covered by other grants. Freezing them at 2012 levels, universities said, was short-sighted and would lead to research jobs being lost.
The Group of Eight, which represents Australia’s elite research institutions, reacted savagely to the cuts, saying the government had reneged on its promise to raise funding for the indirect costs of research…
Universities Australia chief executive Belinda Robinson said: “The irony is that we are in this budget pickle at least partly as a result of Australia’s economy being over-reliant on the resources sector.
“By reducing research funding we are cutting the very area that provides us with the greatest hope of underpinning long-term industrial diversification and economic transformation.”
In August the government froze $1.7 billion in research funding.
***Today it “unfroze” almost $880 million in Australian Research Council “Discovery and Linkage” grants, and $154 million for Cooperative Research Centres…
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/political-news/research-cuts-anger-universities-20121022-280zv.html
22 Oct: The Conversation: Sunanda Creagh: Mid-year budget slashes $499m from research support
The MYEFO said the government would be “slowing the rate of funding increases for Sustainable Research Excellence by maintaining funding at the 2012 level for the 2013 calendar year, then increasing funding over the three years to a maximum amount of $300 million in 2016. This will decrease payments by $79 million in 2012‑13 ($499 million over four years)…
The Sustainable Research Excellence (SRE) program helps pay for costs associated with doing research, such as water, electricity, property costs and other infrastructure…
The Chair of the Group of Eight universities and Vice-Chancellor, The University of New South Wales, Professor Fred Hilmer, said the cuts will lead to job losses.
“Clearly, we are bitterly disappointed that the brunt of the savings are going to come from research,” he said.
“This is the area that has had tremendous improvement in the last few years and is absolutely critical for the standing of our universities both as destinations for international students and peers for other great institutions in the world with whom we seek to do research.”
In a statement released by the Group of Eight, Prof. Hilmer said the cuts would “involve a loss of some 1,450 job opportunities.”
“Given that universities had already included the SRE funding in the budgets, the cuts can be expected to result in research staff being laid off,” he said…
Professor Daine Alcorn, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and Innovation at RMIT, said the cuts were “devastating”.
“This is what provides support for the overheads – the electricity, the water, the space you live on – for all of these programs. Cutting $499 million over the next four years is really taking back a promise the government gave to actually fund this kind of research in an appropriate way. It will have a devastating effect.”
The University of Melbourne’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor Jim McCluskey, said cuts to the SRE program threatened also administrative staff, ethics panels, imaging facilities and specialist libraries…
***ARC pause lifted but cuts elsewhere
The current round of Australian Research Council linkage grants had been closed due to a government-imposed funding freeze but opened today.
The Australian Academy of Science said in a statement it welcomed the Government’s commitment to maintain funding for science research through the Australian Research Council and Cooperative Research Centres.
“This is an investment in Australia’s long term prosperity and security,” said Academy President Professor Suzanne Cory…
http://theconversation.edu.au/mid-year-budget-slashes-499m-from-research-support-10248
00
Weston Allen has made a challenging critique of the ‘slayers’.
However he downplays all other energy storage capacities of the Earth leaving the greenhouse effect as the sole cause for Earth surface temperature being higher than the Stephan Boltzmann equation predicts.
The Earth system receives a daily supply of energy from the Sun.
Yet the energy circulating within the system is much higher than the daily supply.
Is this all the result of the greenhouse effect?
Take another example from physics.
Just as the kinetic/potential energy of a child on a swing is much greater than the ‘make up’ energy in the push given by the parent.
The interplay storage between potential and kinetic is much larger than the friction losses on the swing.
All that is required is that a small fraction of the Earths daily solar input is retained for more than one day.
This small effect gradually builds up till equilibrium as we know it is reached.
Other storage mechanisms in the Earth system
Evaporation/condensation of the Oceans water.
Photosynthesis
Photochemical reactions
Equator to polar heat transfer
The thermal inertia of the Earth surface.
60
The earth’s GHE is complex and designed to control the temperature excursion from the mean within a close range.
The only time it failed was at the Permian Extinction when the very dense atmosphere made the absolute temperature too high for the enzymes in living organisms to operate, sop the Equator was a hot, dead zone.
Climate science hasn’t a clue because it fails to understand radiation is a minor part of the heat transfer.
50
This is a very good point, Bryan.
The concept and calculation of the “33C greenhouse warming” simply ignores any storage capability of the Earth and the atmosphere and instead attributes the stored energy to an unproven “back radiation” effect (“greenhouse effect”). Well knowing that this “back radiation” effect was debunked by professor Wood in 1909.
81
Yes, friend, Greg. Ah, Prof Wood in 1909. Such a misunderstood genius. I celebrated the great man’s centenary by boiling water with my thermos and cooking pigs in a blanket.
Obviously, most of the Earth’s heat is stored in MAG MAA. Liquid MAGMA generated by geo-nuclear processes which heat the ocean floors and this is what causes global warming. OBVIOUSLY! AND IF ANYONE DISAGREES WITH THAT THEN THEY ARE WARMIST FRAUDSTERS. Aided by the powerful greenhouse gases N2 and O2 the earth’s core keeps the planet from freezing over due to wicked cooling effect of the IR radiative gases such as CO2 and Methane.
I hope you will be coming the this evening’s mediation in the dragon chapel, friend. Tonight’s special thought is Why Is Judith Curry A Spawn of Satan?
32
One main idea is that GHGs radiate heat back to Earth and so make it warmer than would occur naturally. Is that a sensible idea?
Molecules radiate heat in ALL directions. For, say, CO2 molecules it is easier to do an approximation and think of them as cubes with a sixth of the heat radiated from each side : one sixth of the heat is radiated upwards to space, one sixth downwards to the Earth and two thirds sideways. The heat radiated sideways is more likely to be reabsorbed and reradiated. To be generous let us say that eventually half of the heat escapes in to space and the half is returned to the Earth.
However air molecules are not little balloons gently floating around – they are travelling at hundreds of miles an hour colliding with other molecules – air pressure is just the effect of all these molecules colliding. When they collide they transmit and receive energy. More energetic molecules will transfer more energy than they receive and so lose heat. So CO2 molecules can lose the heat in collisions before it can be reradiated.
Assuming the heat IS reradiated then remember that two thirds will be transmitted sideways and so more likely to be reabosrbed by other molecules and again possibly lose this heat by collisions.
The net result is that less than half of the heat will actually be returned to the Earth – a proportion will go to heating up the surrounding air molecules. I am sure someone can calculate the exact amount.
What happens to the heat returned to the Earth? It is immediately reradiated! The surface of the Earth is trying to go to absolute zero, minus 273C, but is almost 300C hotter than this. It is radiating heat like mad!
So. In summary – heat is radiated, some is absorbed by GHG molecules and less than half of that heat is returned to Earth, it is immediately reradiated and only some of that is absorbed and less than half of that is returned, etc. Hopefully you realise that this goes to zero quite quickly!
The only warming by GHG molecules is of surrounding air molecules by collision.
31
It has been estimated that the time between collision of molecules in air at surface pressure in one thousandth of the time for CO2 to radiate; i.e. before an energised CO2 can radiate (in any direction) it will be hit 1000 times by other molecules, causing energy transfer between them.
This is the way the radiative scheme envisions the air being warmed by IR from the earth’s surface; i.e. the sun warms the ground, which emits infra red radiation, which is absorbed by greenhouse gas molecules. The excited molecules transfer the energy to non greenhouses gas molecules (oxygen, nitrogen, argon* etc.) so they are warmer. So as fast as the ground radiates IR the air is warmed. The rate of radiation upwards is slowed considerably, thus giving a ‘warm air blanket’ around the Earth.
One problem with that theory is that the maximum air temperature is usually measured 3-4 hours after midday, when the solar input reached its maximum. Secondly, if the CO2 molecules transfer heat by collision, they will also gain heat the same way, but they don’t have time to radiate. Equally, they won’t be in a position to be energised by back radiation from above.
Of course, you might prefer to think of the air molecules being heated by conduction, convection and by water evaporation.
It has the side benefit of explaining the existence of clouds, updrafts etc.
* Argon is around 9,300 ppm (or 0.93%) in air.
11
Ohhh look here. Ben cubby has found some science journal article from 2010 showing Antarctic is shrinking, apparently..
Who’s seeding doubt now Ben?
10
One problem with climate science is that so much of it is propaganda, you can not accept any statement at face value. Also it is an area where many ‘professionals’ are amateurs and many ‘amateurs’ are professional.
Consider this statement from the preface : ‘The more GHGs in the atmosphere the higher this average radiative layer; and since the temperature below it increases by about 6.5^(0)C/km (the lapse rate), the higher this layer the higher the temperature at Earth’s surface.’
If it is rewritten as ‘The higher the temperature at the Earth’s surface the higher this layer’ then it makes perfect sense. The warm surface warms the air, warmer air is lighter and rises higher.
I do not think the Green Dragon statement ‘The atmosphere is warmed primarily by conduction, not by radiation’ is contentious. Air warmed by the Earth must transmit it’s heat to cooler air or be forced to rise. If it fails to lose its heat it will rise to the radiative layer where it will eventually cool and fall back to earth. Warm air rises until it cools.
This puts the spotlight on the phrase ‘The more GHGs in the atmosphere the higher this average radiative layer’. It seems an awfully difficult thing to prove. Has it ever been proved? Is there any science behind it? Or is it just one of those assertions accepted as fact because it fits the requirements.
For example : the claim that additional CO2 creates forcing through water vapour of about three times the warming of the CO2 alone. This figure was simply made up and has not been shown to be true. It is one of the most nonsensical claims – after all heat is heat! The heat from the water vapour should create more water vapour which creates more heat, etc, etc!
This is what makes me exclude water vapour as a GHG : it would create a positive loop and the atmosphere would be more like a sauna! I would regard water vapour as the most critical component of the atmosphere. It cools hot places and warms cool places. In a warmer world it increases cloud cover, increasing Earth’s albedo and so promotes cooling. It is a moderator – a negative feedback.
40
yesterday I noticed a TV report about an experiment for CO2 effects on plants. Out in the open Australian forest there were several 9 story high platforms. Each were emitting CO2. ‘Scientists’ are hoisted up by cranes to examine the effects on leaves, etc. What a waste. I wonder what they will say if they detect the trees do better with more CO2? Also, it should be obvious that any windy conditions would dissipate the CO2 making the experiment null and void.
31
I’d expect the average CO2 concentration to be higher near the outlets, and for the plants to grow faster there. But I could be wrong…
11
You be right about that.
Gosh, Johnny, after this thread your familiar inanities seem refreshingly sane. The noobs are creeping me out. If I ever get to Perth, mate, I’ll shout you a dinner and we can laugh and cry in our beer about the night the Sky Geek cult came to town looking for souls to eat.
MAGMA! …liquid, of course.
10
Gore Profits handsomely from green investments………
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/despite-industry-wide-woes-al-gore-has-made-a-killing-in-green-energy/
Despite the well-known failures and struggles of the renewable energy sector, former Vice President Al Gore has managed to profit handsomely from multiple “green” energy investments, according to a lengthy and surprisingly revealing Washington Post article.
And when we say he has done well, we mean he has done really, really well. Take, for instance, the fact that since getting into the business in 2000, Gore’s personal wealth has grown by approximately $98 million:
01
Dear warmists and especially their victims,
I’d like to address the well known “blanket narrative” designed to “prove” the “greenhouse effect”.
So, a blanket when applied properly separates the warm body from the air outside the blanket. Does this mean that the blanket keeps you warm (please, think twice)? … … No, it does not. It depends. It keeps you +37C warm indeed, if, to put it in a simple way, the air outside the blanket is cold, let’s say, -60C. Then the blanket prevents the colder air from cooling you. If, however, the air outside the blanket is hot, like, let’s say, +60C, the blanket keeps you a sort of the same +37C “cold” by, right, preventing the hot outside air from warming you.
Now, coming back to the warmists’ blanket analogy and considering just the second possibility (what warmists never do, they like only the first one), we can “conclude” that the radiation from the blanket cools or keeps us colder, than we otherwise would be. We have just discovered a “cooling radiation”, please, nominate me for the Nobel Prize.
The hocus-pocus, dear warmists’ victims, is that warmists let you commit a logical fallacy. They can not prove that the IR radiation from a colder blanket warms or just reduces cooling of a warmer body. They simply refer to this unproven assertion as a proof for another unproven assertion: about the IR radiation from the colder atmosphere warming or just reducing cooling of a warmer Earth surface. It is not much different from proving 5×5=27 by referring to 2×2=5.
Please, be strong, do not let them fool you.
64
Look at me Greg.
I have three words to say to you:
Liquid MAG MAAAAAA
12
There is a great opportunity to make some serious money here!
Back radiation is calculated at about 324 watts per square meter – at all times of the day.
Surely someone can design a back-radiation collector to use this radiation as an energy source.
A 100 square meter collector could supply about 30kW of power continuosly (Realistically 10kW at 33% efficiency).
Much more useful than solar panels.
Another idea is a small collector to power or recharge a smart phone..
The IP for these will be worth mega-squillions me thinks.
Who will be the first to invest in this technology?
42
Unfortunately, MM, this is where the 2nd law of thermodynamics actually does matter. The efficiency of heat engines relies on the temperature difference between the hot and cold bits (and you have to have them, or the heat won’t flow). The maximum theoretical efficiency of such a heat engine would be tiny.
11
This is probably going to get me into trouble … but what the heck!
Good propagandists will create an alternative, but highly plausible, “reality”, much as an author of fiction does.
This “reality” will be close enough to the common wisdom, to be believable, but sufficiently different to require acceptance and action on the part of the audience. Notice, I did not say, “close enough to the truth”. The common wisdom is rarely congruent with “the truth”.
The propagandists then describe this alternative “reality” with a series of messages and sound-bites, that are easy to convey and are memorable, and above all else are consistent with each other.
When done properly, the results can be dramatic, if unpredictable: creating national pride, boosting the economies, taking countries to war, or causing genocide.
The climate science meme, in my opinion, is such an alternative “reality”. It is sponsored by the UN, through the UN Environmental Programme, with the collaboration of the World Meteorological Organisation. It was originally designed to be “global” in nature, in order to unite nations in facing a common foe – Global Warming – and to break down the natural and historic divisions between nations.
In this context, it is worth noting that one of the key purposes of the UN is to prevent, or at least contain, war, and that is, or was, the underlying motivation.
Creating an alternative reality is relatively easy within the political arena, and the social sciences, in fact politicians and activists find it hard to not create surrogate realities in order to better understand the issues they face. But it is considerably more difficult to do so within a scientific discipline because scientific rigour demands consistency, and repeatable observations and experiments, and the principle of falsifiability.
An alternative scientific reality must be created by the scientists, because it needs their stamp of authenticity. But it must also have intrinsic consistency, and consistency with other fields of science. This creates a dilemma for the scientists involved, because they are charged with delivering a plausible solution within the political timeframe, but must do so whilst appearing to retain their professional integrity,
The solution was to create a new field of science that draws on other fields, but also establishes its own language, and adapts other terms to its own purposes, and even uses standard English words in very different contexts. Thus we now see statements that look reasonable at first reading, but become more difficult to understand once you try to “decode” the real meaning. The more “decoding” you do, the less sense they seem to make.
Much of the debate on this site is over the meaning and intent of the climate science output, and the political interaction with it. And, I purposefully use the term “political interaction”, rather than “political reaction”, because I believe the former to be closer to the truth. Political Science, and Climate Science are now, to all intents and purposes, mutually supportive, at least in those countries supporting the “Western traditions”.
80
Don’t overlook the other ‘purpose’ of the UN, i.e. bureaucratic expansion. Judging by the last 30 years that would seem to be their greatest achievement.
40
All great undertakings to save the world require an appreciative audience.
10
My #57 is in response to “anticlimatic” #51
00
I like your comment on propaganda, Rereke…
Obviously, there is a lot climate change propaganda. But propaganda is really the icing on the cake. It’s just the purposive element in the Warmist faith. Surprisingly little of the climate change movement is consciously purposive, in my opinion.
The reason why everyone knows about climate change isn’t because of the propaganda, but because the underlying popular culture trends are so ripe for green millenarianism, so much so, that when the contemporary mind is exposed to the AGW myth in a vacuum of competing memes, it naturally sticks. All the propagandists in the media had to do was maintain the vacuum of competing memes.
It is the “zeitgeist” of our times that makes the CAGW myth so attractive. (A zeitgeist is defined as “the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.”)
The idea of AGW only began to become conceivable for the vast majority of people after those first pictures of the Earth from the moon taken by the Apollo astronauts became part of the popular culture of a young generation.
If our post-modern zeitgeist wasn’t all about globalisation, urbanisation, secularism, technology, consumerism, and the WWW as a planetary neural net that each of us is plugged into so that we can be virtually anywhere at anytime, then the idea of the planet/humanity complex as a single living system would not have occurred. Without that it would be impossible to imagine humans manipulating the climate.
And if it is impossible to imagine humans controlling the climate – as it was in the 1970’s – then it is impossible for something like the CAGW cult to take root in our institutions.
No amount of propaganda can shift the huge momentum that is behind the trajectory of an entire civilisation. Propaganda can merely augment potentials that are already manifest in the society. For instance, Goering’s propaganda didn’t cause the Germans to do anything they weren’t already on about. Madison Avenue advertising wasn’t the cause of the rise of consumerism in America.
As you point out good propaganda creates its own alternative reality, which is based on the real world, but subtly photoshopped, not enough that the inattentive eye would notice, but enough to emphasis selected themes, memes and POVs. It slips onto the mind’s eye rose-tinted glasses.
The best source of propaganda in Australia is the ABC, because they are the statist institution most consciously aware of their role in sculpting reality for millions of Australians. Every word, every image on the ABC, even in non-current event content is propaganda. Look for if you watch tonight. Read between the lines. Notice what they don’t say is as important as what they do. Notice that ideas are often alluded to obliquely, as if placing some thought out there for later use. Look for “the narrative,” that unified world view which is larger than sum of all it is parts. The ABC hopes to subsume you in the narrative, to make you part of ABCthink.
But a narrative only works when you are unaware of it. Kind of like “suspension of disbelief” while watching a film or theatre production. If you start thinking about the mechanics of acting or how the special effects were done, you lose the immersion in the art’s gestalt.
On the unthreaded thread I complained about the biased reporting of the US elections on the ABC and MattB responded by posting ABC propaganda as evidence of ABC’s impartiality… That’s what good propaganda does. It shapes the discourse invisibly.
But my point is that propaganda can only shift the momentum of a nation by tiny degrees. It can’t turn the whole cultural around. That’s why the Greens and Labor coalition aren’t going to be the government forever. Not even the propaganda masters at the ABC can shift Gillard’s trajectory into oblivion.
50
Thanks Wes,
I Grok this comment…
Well done.
Cheers ExWarmist
20
“On the unthreaded thread I complained about the biased reporting of the US elections on the ABC and MattB responded by posting ABC propaganda as evidence of ABC’s impartiality…”
what a crock Wes. You said if you read ABC and SBS you’d not know it was a close US election. I posted bits of a news article from that very same day on ABC news website saying exactly that it was a very close election.
The only propaganda here is your blatant misrepresentation! Somehow in your world what I posted validates your position??? Reality is I posted direct evidence that your position was baseless.
13
RW says…
This is a next to impossible task and one of the key flaws in the CAGW Propaganda project. This particular aspect is a “bridge too far”, and could only be completed if the whole of the scientific community was co-opted and corrupted.
Something which hasn’t happened – to many are aware of the scientific process and are able to recognise the devolution of science that the current CAGW movement represents.
10
22 Oct: Forbes: Todd Woody: The Big Solar Sell-Off: Siemens Puts Solel On The Block
German industrial giant Siemens on Monday said it has put its solar assets up for sale, including Solel, the Israel solar thermal power plant builder it acquired just three years ago for $418 million…
With the bankruptcy of German rival Solar Millennium and other companies, the number of solar thermal power plant builders continues to dwindle, leaving just a handful of developers, including California’s BrightSource Energy and SolarReserve, Spain’s Abengoa and France’s Areva…
http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddwoody/2012/10/22/the-big-solar-sell-off-siemens-puts-solel-on-the-block/
22 Oct: AP: Germany’s Siemens to give up solar energy business
Several German solar manufacturers, including Q-Cells SE and Solar Millennium AG, have filed for insolvency over the past year. Another German company in the solar market, SMA AG, announced last week that it will slash up to 1,000 jobs — about a fifth of its global workforce — amid falling revenues and a possible annual loss in 2013 due to the growing price pressures…
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i_knzo65TKuU1NKysswahlRYM1BQ?docId=6b129965c16840e6a09f5a91a5b3f9b2
00
CERs ease below a euro as sellers dump credits
LONDON, Oct 22 (Reuters Point Carbon) – U.N. carbon credits for delivery this year fell below 1 euro in afternoon trade on Monday after ICE Futures Europe data showed sellers had likely dumped ERUs late last week ahead of an expected EU ban next year.
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2030671
U.N. panel says ERU supply doubled this year
LONDON, Oct 22 (Reuters Point Carbon) – As the EU mulls banning firms from using JI credits to meet targets in its carbon market, a U.N. panel on Monday said issuance of ERUs has more than doubled in the past year, highlighting the huge increase in supply at a time of shrinking demand
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2030798?&ref=searchlist
10
No takers for my challenge at October 22, 2012 at 8:20 pm
I guess we’re happy to continue with hand waving drivel, then?
00
You didn’t say that the homework was compulsory! 😉
Not a lot of time to think about it properly. Easy answers are often wrong because they have too many assumptions.
If you’re imagining the smaller sphere to be a CO2 molecule, you’d be wrong. The small sphere has a real surface; CO2 doesn’t have a significant surface. So the total emissive power of gases is negligible. Gases can only lose or gain significant heat by contact with other molecules; be they collisions with gas molecules or surfaces.
11
Thanks for the reply Bernard. It isn’t compulsory and no, the small sphere isn’t a CO2 molecule. The physical setup is just as I said and this could in fact be built.
If we can’t agree on what happens here I doubt we’ll ever have a good conceptual model of what happens in more complex cases like the atmosphere.
The inner 1cm sphere is a planet, the 30cm sphere represents the rest of the universe in radiative properties and the 2cm shell is the “atmosphere of very effective “greenhouse gases”. Because the whole thing is evacuated there is no convection or conduction to complicate matters, just radiation. It is the radiation (back radiation) that the CAGW crowd always talk about and other people claim that radiation can’t do any work or doesn’t exist (the Dragon Slayers)
This is the single shell model. Please nobody tell me it doesn’t represent reality. I know that but it might help clarify thinking about the problem.
10
Ok – I’ll have a go.
Q1 What is the equilibrium temperature of the 2cm diameter shell?
I will assume the supply of liquid helium is large, that is, it acts as a heat reservoir
The 2cm “greenhouse” shell has 4 times the surface area of the inner sphere. Therefore at radiative equilibrium it will have a temperature T2 = T1/4^0.25 = 203.6 K. How did I go?
Q2 For constant power input the same as previously without the 2cm shell, what is the equilibrium temperature of the inner 1cm sphere?
The 2cm GH shell makes no difference! You will not have to change the input current.
Now – have a go at my question. Can we collect the energy from “back-radiation” (324 W/m2) and use it as an energy source (eg to recharge a smart-phone) ??
10
Thanks, morris minor. That is the same result I get.
So we’ve put a perfect “greenhouse gas” around our experimental planet and made not the slightest difference to its temperature.
Maybe the Slayers have a point.
The answer to your question: I don’t think so. If we could we could focus this infra red and have “solar” energy at night.
If we all agree on this then we can investigate more complex cases, step by step.
10
John O’Sullivan refers us to http://principia-scientific.org/index.php/latest-news/the-greenhouse-gas-warming-number-of-33-degrees-is-a-fatal-error.html for a definitive refutation of the 33⁰C greenhouse effect:
“Firstly, Hansen’s team took a measure of average temperatures at the ground (a scalar) and, secondly, they chose a temperature for infrared radiation as it passes out of the top of the atmosphere, (a vector). Both these two numbers are reasonable in themselves. However, in both mathematics and physics vectors and scalars each describe quantities and each is very distinct from the other being differently obtained and proving separate values. A scalar operates in one dimension, a vector in three dimensions.
Now this is where the ‘joke’ comes into play and we need to remember the old saying: “You can’t mix apples with oranges.” Hansen’s team took the 288°K scalar number (the ‘apple’) with a one-dimensional basis and put it alongside the 255°K vector number (the ‘orange’), the product of a flow field in three dimensions. “So what?” you may say. Well, remember what was stated at the top of this article? Hansen had *forgotten* that “you can’t cross a scalar with a vector.” Again, please remember this is an axiomatic principle from Physics 101: “vector and scalar quantities cannot be added together.”
If John has actually looked at his link to Physics 101, he hasn’t learnt much from it. A ‘scalar’ is simply a numerical number or dimension (e.g. speed) without any specified direction whereas a ‘vector’ gives that number a direction (usually represented by an arrow), which can be in either two dimensions (NSEW in one plane) or three dimensions (in two planes).
While the global mean temperature 288K (John apparently doesn’t know that you don’t use ⁰ when talking in Kelvin) is indeed scalar, it does not have his ‘one-dimensional basis’ (i.e. measured over a straight line) but at least a two-dimensional basis (assuming a flat Earth) and a three-dimensional basis over a round Earth. Now the radiation-derived figure of 255K is also a scalar, giving no direction (increase or decrease – up or down arrows). It might be derived from a third-dimensional vertical flux, but that does not make it a vector. So his scalar-vector dichotomy is mathematical nonsense; and the real ‘bogus’ is on John and his 50+ so-called experts.
O’Sullivan continues:
“You may readily discern the difference between these phenomena yourself if you were stood on a cold, clear winter’s day on a snow capped mountain. On the one hand you may evince a thermometer close by showing a reading of the dry air at -10°C (263°K); naturally you’d shiver with the cold. But place yourself in the radiation of the sunlit sky at 50°C (323°K) and instantly you feel warm despite both temperatures existing within close proximity and time.”
This is typical of the woolly Slayer ‘science’ that confuses temperature with electromagnetic (EM) radiation. Sunlight has no temperature and the sunlit sky is certainly not at 50⁰C. If it were, the Slayer argument that a cooler atmosphere cannot warm Earth’s surface would fall over laughing! Sunlight (EM energy) can elevate the temperature when absorbed by a surface such as your skin, and so you might feel warm in the sunlight even when the surrounding air is cold, but that is not because the sunlight itself is ‘warm’. Slayers generally confuse radiation with heat and talk about it ‘flowing’ from warmer to cooler as though EM energy being radiated is synonymous with heat being conducted. This woolly thinking is the basis for much of their confusion and rejection of the GHE.
Our learned friend then attacks Spencer and Lindzen:
“Professor Spencer on his blog addresses the “33 degrees” number and admits he first “became aware of its significance” from reading Professor Richard Lindzen’s 1990 paper, ‘Some Coolness Regarding Global Warming.’ So persuaded is Spencer of it’s validity that he goes on to claim the Hansen junk number offers a “ real-world observed “radiative-convective equilibrium” case.” Thus, both Lindzen and Spencer are completely fooled by Hansen.”
Where he discusses the 33⁰C greenhouse effect in this paper, Lindzen actually references John Houghton’s 1977 text, The Physics of Atmospheres, and not James Hansen. So what? If you don’t like Houghton either, guilt by any association will do! Science is not based on who said what first or who you regard as an ‘expert’, but on evidence, reason and logic.
The evidence is that Earth radiates EM energy as if it had a blackbody temperature of 255K; and evidence tells us that the near-surface temperature averages around 288K; and the tropospheric lapse rate is around 6.5K/km; so logic tells us that Earth radiates to space at an average altitude of about 5km where the temperature is 33K below that at the surface. Moreover, this is supported by Claes Johnson in O’Sullivan’s Slaying the Sky Dragon on page 266.
This would be impossible if there were no IR-absorbing/emitting gases in the atmosphere, in which case all radiative losses from absorbed insolation would have to occur at Earth’s surface (Richard and some other commentators have failed to comprehend this). The fact that it occurs at altitude permits the surface to be 288K instead of 255K. That is, the greenhouse effect is dependent on trace gases emitting IR at high altitudes and low temperatures, and the tropospheric lapse rate.
The greenhouse warming theory is based on the concept that the more IR-absorbing/emitting gases in the atmosphere, the higher the mean altitude of emission and hence the warmer the surface, provided the lapse rate remained the same. This is where the atmospheric dynamics and science becomes very complex, well beyond the grasp of most of us and still contentious among the experts. Like quantum mechanics, anyone who claims to understand the complexities of it probably doesn’t. Those who are the most dogmatic usually don’t know how much they don’t know.
88
Funny thing is that sunlight carries heat based on the frequencies involved.
Take an LED light of equal luminosity to the sunlight and shine it on yourself in shadow and tell me how warm you feel.
Each wavelength corresponds to a temperature. Those wavelengths which are cooler than all of the molecules of the Earth’s surface do not warm the surface.
When the Earth Radiates out long wave radiation at a certain temperature it does not have a high enough temperature to be returned at a temperature high enough to increase the Earth’s temperature.
You could always insulate your home the following way if you think CO2 is such a great way to insulate, build some CO2 chambers filled with 100% co2 at atmospheric pressure with a mirror finish pointing inward. I think CO2 is pretty cheap, lots of power generation plants would be happy to give you all you want.
40
Jim Peden devised an oven based on the GHG theory.
31
Wes,
You touched on the clue at the end of your comment when you said, “Like quantum mechanics, anyone who claims to understand the complexities of it probably doesn’t. Those who are the most dogmatic usually don’t know how much they don’t know.”
As such,I couldn’t phrase a reply to you better than Lionell Griffiths has done on my blog:
Apparently the honorable gentlemen who insist the only debate in town is “how much” fail to understand the difference between a scalar and a vector. Both represent a measure of physical quantities but a scalar has magnitude scaled by its unit of measure and a vector has direction AND magnitude scaled by unit of measure. A simple arithmetic operation (add, subtract, multiply, and divide) can only operation on commensurate values. For physical quantities, this means scalars scaled by the SAME units, or vectors of the SAME direction and who’s magnitude is scaled by the SAME units. While the operations can be performed on the numbers alone, the result is meaningless and uninterpretable.
Radiation, by its inherent nature, is a vector. If it doesn’t have directionality it does not exist. A thermodynamically measured temperature does not have direction. It is a point intensity only. This should be enough to dissuade them from performing simple arithmetic operations on a thermodynamically measured temperature (a scalar measured by a thermometer) and a computed equivalent temperature from the spectra of radiation.
However, the vector quality of radiation is evaded because the numbers produced by computed equivalent temperature of a spectra have the units of “degrees” just as does the thermodynamically measured point temperature. It is as if they are assuming that two things called by the same name are the same and evade the context that produced the two very different kinds of “degrees”. It is rather like thinking that a Sun Dog and a Hunting Dog are the same kind of things and both should be fed Dog Kibble for supper because they are both called “Dogs”. Apples and oranges? No. It is more like mashed potatoes and broken glass – a mixture that is very difficult to digest and should not be used as food.
http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/industry-radiation-experts-call-it-greenhouse-gas-theory-debunked/
311
What a superb summary by Lionell. Good to hear from him again. I realized I do actually touch on this issue deeply in my paper too when I talk about the difference between effective radiative temperature and specific kinetic temperature at a single location. I just didn’t put it into terms of vectors and scalars, and that still seemed a little unclear to me up to now, but with Lionell’s summary I got it.
511
Wes,
I’ve just noticed another huge gaffe in your reply to me which will upset Jo, where you state:
“The greenhouse warming theory is based on the concept that the more IR-absorbing/emitting gases in the atmosphere, the higher the mean altitude of emission and hence the warmer the surface”
But that’s not what the GHE is. The GHE is backradiation heating caused by GHG’s. And, as far as raising the surface of the mean altitude of emission, Jo Nova has her “Handbook” which explains quite clearly how the hot spot is missing! Are you sure you really want to continue debating this so publicly?
512
John
Lots of confusion in your comments here. The hotspot isn’t about radiation out to space. That radiation occurs much higher in the mid to upper stratosphere whereas the hot-spot is aboutthe upper stratosphere. It is the very cold temperaturesupin the stratosphere that acts as the limit on radiation out to space. As can be clearly seen whenever we look at the Earth’s Oiutgoing Long-Wave radiation spectrum asobserved by satellite. And back-radiation doesn’t heat the surface. That is a simplistic view. The temperature of the surface is determined by the balance of all the heat sources arriving at andleaving the surface. Incoming short wave solar and back-radiation vs outgoing IR radiation, evapotranspiration and convection. It is the magnitude of this pool of energy that deternines the surface temperature.What determines the size of this pool is how much heat is ableto escape to space fromtheupper atmosphere.
The effect of extra GH cases, CO2 particularly, is to increase the altitude at which the atmosphere becomes thin enough for that IR radiation to escape. If the altitude at which the air is thin enough increases, then more of the radiation occurs in the colder Stratosphere, reducing how much can escape.
12
Glenn,
Even if we were to concede the “back radiation” issue to you, you still can’t evince any heat from it so what actual measurable evidence do you offer this debate?
09
Glenn,
Also, why don’t you raise the “hot spot” issue with Jo as I merely refer to her “skeptics handbook” on this. You’re barking at the wrong dog.
19
johnosullivan 10/22 7:41pm: “Hansen took a scalar temp (average of surface weather stations: 288K) and mixed it with a vector temp (the outgoing IR radiation: 255K).”
The Physics 101 reference you link at 10/22 7:51pm demonstrates temperatures are scalar numbers. The Hansen 1981 paper you ref. shows scalar equation 2 solved for Te = 255K which is a scalar temperature number from scalar data. The Tavg. of weather stations 288K is scalar.
The scalar math demonstrated in these links shows in subtracting scalar 288K – scalar 255K = scalar 33K Hansen is NOT mixing scalar apple numbers and vector orange numbers.
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~davidc/ATMS211/articles_optional/Hansen81_CO2_Impact.pdf
82
I think there is confusion between scalar and intensive variables. Temperature is an intensive variable and hence we state 3C + 3C = 3C. It does not mean 3C + 3C = 6C.
Extensive variables length, area and volume.
Extensive variables are used to factor extensive variables to produce countable quantities. A special case occurs when the extensive variable (some physical object) is comprised of identical objects – say spheres of specific diameter.
Points and planes cannot have physical properties because they are not physical objects.
The error made using scalar and vector values seems to be a misunderstanding of the difference between intensive and extensive variables.
Intensive variables are used to factor or weight extensive variables. Extensive variables are countable physical objects.
40
.
Get away with you!
Next you’ll be claiming that it takes twice as long to boil a kettle with two litres of water in it as it does to boil the kettle with one litre of water.
Everybody knows ALL the water boils at 100 deg C so obviously both kettles will boil at the same time regardless of the volume of water.
02
MW,
I thought you boiled your water by putting it the thermos.
MAGMA!
21
.
No, unfortunately only GHG magicians such as yourself – you know, those lucky enough to own spontaneously self-warming blankets – can do that.
Which reminds me – how are sales of the oven going?
31
Louis,
You explain it well. I hope Wes, Jo and others take this on board and brush up on their higher math and physics.
19
Louis Hissink – “…confusion between scalar and intensive variables.”
The confusion discussed is between scalar and vector. The difference between intensive and extensive variable properties is important too. For instance as you write length (a scalar) is extensive property and let me choose velocity (a vector) as an intensive property.
It is not ok to simply difference the velocity of two train systems on the same linear track to find a delta (have to know the vector direction too). It is ok to difference the length of the two train systems to find a delta. Differencing velocity and length of the two trains makes no sense. Here using dissimilar units points out the “difference” (apples and oranges). Same with mass (extensive), you add it going from two to one system but with density (intensive) or temperature you cannot.
In the case of the green house effect being two systems with temp. at LTE, it is ok to difference these two systems scalar temperatures to find a delta between them. But is not ok to simply add or subtract the two systems temperature into one system as you point out. System control volumes are useful to keep system variable properties and boundaries sorted out.
In physics this all has to be thought through correctly and in my experience it has tripped up folks at times as you point out.
61
This thread started out with a definition of the “greenhouse effect” that contained the following statement: “Without any IR-absorbing GHGs in the atmosphere, all radiative energy losses balancing solar input would occur at Earth’s surface.” If I may I would like to comment on this assertion.
This common belief is based upon a misinterpretation of the work of John Tyndall’s famous radiation experiment in the late 19th century. Simply put “one” does not equal “zero”. You see, the absorptivity scale that John Tyndall developed to quantize the IR absorbing/emitting ability of various gases was a “relative” scale. He graded the ability of various gases to absorb IR radiation relative to air, which he set at “one”. In somewhat archaic language he said in his ”Rede” Lecture, delivered in the Senate House, Before the University of Cambridge, England May 16, 1865:
“The numbers in the table express the relative amounts of wave motion absorbed by the respective gases, the quantity intercepted by atmospheric air being taken as unity.”
So, from his table we see these examples:
Air = 1
Carbonic oxide (CO2) = 750.
Ammonia = 5460
According to this table John Tyndall’s apparatus demonstrated that carbon dioxide was 750 times more “absorptive” than air. This does not mean that air absorbs “zero” IR emission; if it did then 0 x 750 = 0
Even though carbon dioxide was 750 times more absorptive than air he still considered it a “feeble” absorber of IR radiation. He said in that same lecture, “Carbonic acid gas is one of the feeblest of absorbers of the radiant heat emitted by solid sources. It is, for example, extremely transparent to the rays emitted by the heated copper plate already referred to.” That is because other gases where much more absorptive than carbon dioxide such as Ammonia, which is 5460 times more absorptive of air.
Why is this relevant? Because it is falsely believed that “non-greenhouse” gases such as oxygen, nitrogen and argon do not absorb or emit any IR radiation what so ever. This is not what John Tyndall’s “apparatus” demonstrated. This is particularly relevant when one considers that there is 2500 times more “non-greenhouse” gas in the atmosphere than there is carbon dioxide. To do a true comparison between the absorptivity of carbon dioxide vs. the rest of the air one has to consider its concentration by dividing 2500 by 750. This reveals the fact that regular air absorbs three times more IR radiation than does carbon dioxide. It also emits into space three times more IR radiation than does carbon dioxide. Considering that the upper atmosphere is nearly void of water vapor we could estimate that some 180 W/m2 of the ~240 W/m2 of outgoing long-wave radiation at the TOA comes from these “non-greenhouse” atmospheric gases. Another thing to consider is that John Tyndall’s apparatus was only three feet long. Who can say how much IR radiation a 20 km column of nitrogen, oxygen and argon actually both absorb and emit?
This isn’t, by the way, out of line with basic radiation laws which state that “all” matter above absolute zero emits electromagnetic radiation. In fact, this foundational paradigm upon which the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis is based–“non-greenhouse” gases neither absorb nor emit IR radiation–is itself a square violation of a fundamental law of radiation physics; I believe its called Planck’s Law.
Carl
81
Thanks Carl. That’s quite a revelation to me, as significant a shift in understanding as when I first learned that water vapour was far more important than CO2 as a GHG. The prospect of an atmosphere composed entirely of N2, O2 and Ar reaching MAGMA temperatures, was defeinitely supect, and this post says why. It also goes a long way towards explain why the “missing heat” was on its way to Pluto before the question was ever asked.
10
This has appeared on WUWT: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/22/more-turmoil-at-the-american-physical-society-over-global-warming-issue/#comment-1119050
‘The APS like many other scientific societies has succumbed to the mass hypnosis of ‘back radiation’, needed to purport that the Earth emits IR as if it were an isolated black body in a vacuum, a claim no properly educated professional scientist or engineer accepts as valid.
Yet many academics do believe it. It comes from a failure in experimental physics originating in meteorology, now back-filling mainstream science. Recent graduates fail to question how an instrument measures a scientific parameter because unlike me for example, they have never made one from components and basic physical principles.
‘Back radiation’ doesn’t exist except as the artefact of pyrometry, of which pyrgeometers used in their 1000s in climate science are a subset. The most basis axiom in radiation physics is Poynting’s Theorem [1884]; net radiative energy flux is the vector sum of all the Poynting Vectors arriving at a point in space.
A pyrometer measures temperature by having a shield such that it only intercepts radiation from a specific viewing angle. In the case of the atmosphere at lower temperature than the adjacent Earth’s surface, all that notional energy flux is annihilated at the Earth’s surface.
You prove this by a simple thought experiment. place two pyrgeometers back to back in zero atmospheric temperature gradient: the net signal is zero. Take one away and the signal jumps to a measure of temperature convolved with emissivity, yet there is zero net energy flux.
The result of this failure plus an equally bad failure at TOA is to claim ~5 times higher IR absorption than reality, a perpetual motion machine. It’s offset by imaginary cloud albedo in the hind-casting process. The positive feedback, exaggerated ocean evaporation in ‘sunlit zones’, doesn’t exist. No such climate model can predict climate.
To overcome this monumental mistake in mainstream science attitudes and associated hatred, accusing unbelievers of heresy, ‘deniers’, I propose a solution similar to the ‘Peace and Reconciliation’ process in post Apartheid South Africa.
Starting with APS executives, senior people must stand up in public and admit they were wrong and apologise for misleading others. This reconciliation will ricochet through science. The teaching of fake physics in climate and meteorology will come under intense scrutiny. Once you correct the physics, true CO2-AGW is vanishingly small [it self-absorbs by ~200 ppmV] and this potentially devastating religious cult whose aim is to destroy Western economies will die.’
32
turnedoutnice
I guess from your comments that you do not believe in the existence of photons.
It would make your posts a lot more understandable if you were up front about this odd conclusion.
You must realise that more than 99.99% of physicists believe in their reality and this has nothing to do with climate science.
11
Max Planck, who supervised the man who taught me thermodynamics, invented the photon for a specific reason. It later solved the ‘UV Catastrophe’ issue. However, Planck was never happy with the idea, nor am I.
I have discussed the issue of ‘back radiation’ with good experimental physicists who talk of the ‘photon gas’ bouncing off filled sites thus explaining ‘Prevost Exchange’. But they weren’t happy about it and one guy preferred to use a bolometer instead of a pyrgeometer.
So, having started with ‘Prevost Exchange’ and realising few recent graduates understand it, I searched for a more fundamental explanation. This is Poynting’s theorem, the first axiom from Maxwell’s Equations.
It explains everything. There can be no ‘back radiation’. It does not exist. Think of photons if you must but understand there is wave-particle duality and in the end, Maxwell’s Equations win.
And ultimately, the back to back pyrgeometer thought experiment proves what I am saying with 100% precision: back radiation is a form of mass hysteria for pseudo-scientists and the pseudo-educated plebs the elite are trying to con. Stop them conning you.
32
You are going to love what I’ve written in the conclusion of my paper 😉
69
turnedoutnice
So you don’t accept the orthodox view of physics as regards photons as I thought.
It appears this leads you to then question IPCC science.
The fact that you have no support from any current physics textbook for your odd ideas you take in your stride.
IPCC science can be effectively challenged by staying within the framework of physics.
It is not needed to ditch the photon and quantum mechanics and the last 100years of scientific progress of ideas.
Most educated people will dismiss your climate conclusions if you couple them to ‘it all went wrong with the photon and quantum mechanics’.
12
There is no orthodox view of physics as regards photons. They exist as a convenient thought process to join up the Quantum World with its fixed packets and the Continuous World of wave propagation of EM energy.
Now please tell me how photons can justify adding ‘back radiation’, the DOWN Poynting Vector to the net IR UP from the Earth’s surface to make its Poynting Vector, only a small proportion of which can do thermodynamic work?
There is no additional information.
21
See my little proposed experiment above.
00
turned out nice,
Well said! FWIW when I first came into the debate some years ago I identified for myself, after in depth discussion with Tim Ball and experts from the ‘hard’ sciences, that climatology is a closed shop of researchers ostensibly from the earth sciences who have little or no formal training in higher thermodynamics. Indeed, we found that even a “top” climatologist, Dr Judith Curry, who published a book on elementary thermo over 10 years ago, had it panned by real thermo experts. The howlers she and the likes of Spencer, Lindzen and Monckton repeat are utterly galling to engineers with PhD;s in thermodynamics. But this is what we battle.
One of the most obvious and egregious foul ups was from 1981 when James Hansen promoted the junk calculation that the GHE “makes our planet 33 degrees warmer than it would otherwise be.” Not till my colleagues from industry (where lives depend on scrupulous thermo calculations) looked at it did we discover than the “33 degrees” number is concocted from a fatal mixing of incompatible scalar and vector temperature values.
So for 30 years climate scientists have been contemplating their navels. As Tim Ball says, we need to go back to the 70’s and press the re-set button on climatology and dump more than 90% of the “peer reviewed” literature in the trash can.
59
Firstly, I can understand your dislike of labeling people with invectives. We (Slayers) generally don’t control each other, and, John wasn’t “hired” by us to do anything. He does what he does. We all let each other do whatever we want. We all just came to like the independence and promotion of free-thought among free-thinking individuals that this group offered. We accept new ideas first, and then we critique them, rather than rejecting new ideas first and then also critiquing them. See the difference? We promote free thought and independent science, and are looking for what could be wrong with climatism because so much of it IS fraudulent. There’s so much sophistry, shifting of goal posts…etc etc etc you know all that. All the rules of argument and science that climatism breaks must have a source. How can climatism even be considered science when it doesn’t distinguish correlation from causation, for example? What we all generally agree on though, is that the reason why climatism is based on so much sophistry is because it is based on sophistry from the get go. There literally is no evidence for the GHE. You may not understand that yet, but you will next week. If you haven’t read my papers yet, you can read them here:
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Understanding_the_Atmosphere_Effect.pdf
http://principia-scientific.org/publications/The_Model_Atmosphere.pdf
http://principia-scientific.org/publications/Copernicus_Meets_the_Greenhouse_Effect.pdf
If you have read them and you didn’t like them or you had problems with them, then that’s fine, but please wait until next week for the next one which should be much more satisfying. You can even not bother reading those above and just wait for the one next week.
John has gotten tired with the “big names” of climate science because they’re the old guard and they won’t change their mind or consider other ways of looking at things. Some people also make big money with the institutions based on “the question is how much warming, not that warming isn’t caused by humans” gambit…not naming names but it is obvious who stands to benefit from continuing the AGW charade. But basically, if AGW was utterly destroyed by destroying the GHE (showing it to be actually fraudulent), many of the people who make money and fame off the AGW debate, especially even the skeptics, stand to lose. So this is why Slayers get so much hostility from both sides. As Joe Olson said, this isn’t a two-sided debate, i.e., alarmism vs. non-alarmism but still believing in AGW, it is a three sided debate with the Slayers taking the position that there is no GHE at all (because there is no evidence for it, and the arguments for it are always sophistic in nature), and thus, no AGW from CO2 at all. We’ve all given each other insults from every sides, every one of these people can be quite snidely and nasty when they’re pushed. Look at Alan Watts showing up to be snidely…whats up with that? Like seriously, piss off. See how that works? Chris Monckton’s post was very nice though and we agree with him, although, our organization isn’t really about consensus and having us all agree. We’re critics. It is the advocates of the GHE and AGW who have to be consistent, not us. There’ll be lots of ways to criticize a paradigm which is wrong, and having a variety of ways to criticize the GHE and AGW is a strength, not a weakness on the critics part.
But I agree, how about we stop all the snideliness, and start afresh.
Now, if you want a piece of work that will explain much (but not all) of what we’ve been doing, first, look at Carl Brehmer’s posts here which have been good. Also though, next week we’ll be releasing a new paper, which should do it for you. You have to read it though, okay? We realized we need to make more concise summary statements…maybe you can produce some for everyone after you read the paper? That would be helpful and appreciated. We found we have about ten summary statements based on the new paper so far.
What we did find surprising in this post and its comments is how much support there actually is out there for questioning the GHE. It isn’t nearly as hostile as it used to be. You must understand how hostile our central premise has been received, and so, this is why we come across as very defensive. I agree that it is something we should work on, and I will discuss it with John and a few other “senior” members today. Some of them, though, are honestly beyond repair in regards to being friendly because of the vast and sheer amounts of hostility they have received over the years of working on this problem. Many of us have decided to stay away from blogs altogether anymore because of the hostility and futility in the exercise.
But these people have a very good intuition or “gut instinct” and they have stuck with it because they knew they must be on to something. I’ve found that people who are “book smart” typically have very poor physical and scientific intuition. While there are some few people who have extremely good, even “genius level”, physical and scientific intuition, but are very poor at book smarts and doing math. It is the people who have very good physical intuition who typically make up the Slayers, but some of us do also have much academic training and long and respectable careers in science, math, aerospace, engineering, geology, etc.
There’s a literal tonne of excellent questions in this thread and I wish I could answer some of them. But, I think much of it will be answered in the paper due next week, so I have stayed out of this. Most of have stayed out for that reason perhaps.
Anyway, I understand your frustration, and I feel it too. We don’t really do consensus but we will try to put together some statements for next week. We’re a loose group of scientists and engineers who only know each other through the internet. VERY few of us have actually ever met in person. Myself personally have met none in person.
Regards to all.
109
There is a GHE. Presuming the 23 W/m^2 net UP IR in the 20089 energy budget is a genuine result, some of it is from absorption GHG. However, the rest is from another effect and there is probably an offset from one to the other as night goes to day and vice versa.
11
No, there is no GHE. What you believe is the GHE is actually the work of H2O performed as latent heat. Simply by relying on the numbers adduced from adiabatic pressure and the ideal gas laws we have shown you don’t need to factor in any GHE to still come up with Earth’s actual energy budget.
311
Ha ha Joseph, I now suspect that you and John O’Sullivan have mistaken me for someone else. One thing that Lord Monckton and I have in common is our given name of Christopher and a surname beginning with M. Another thing we share is a high degree of literacy and I would hope a nice turn of phrase at times. Monckton seems to me to be a good and sincere person who has been unjustly mocked and maligned in certain quarters. I would be happy to shake his hand if I were ever to meet him.
Those who are familiar with my regular posts on Bishop Hill understand that I am an Australian professional with an intolerance for untruth and injustice, of which the CAGW scam is an especially egregious manifestation. We are indeed all in this together in our desire to combat this injustice, but I would ask of you slayers to ‘keep it real’ and not let your enthusiasm to tear down the bastion of the GHE run away with you.
There seems to be a touch of the wild-eyed radical about some slayer pronouncements, although there is of course no intrinsic problem with challenging scientific orthodoxy in a credible way, with the emphasis on credible. I tend to agree with most of what Wes George has said in this thread; the whiff of extremism needs to be avoided in this debate.
I am also not to be confused with ChrisM, who I gather is a retired electrical engineer from New Zealand.
I wish you success with your new paper, which I suspect will not be the watershed you hope for. I will be happy to be proven wrong, though.
20
Ah yes, well, I took the cue from someone else 😉 I quite like Chris Monckton myself.
Thanks for the perspective. But, you know the saying: if you fail, try try again!
56
Update: my new paper will be delayed, expect about 3-4 weeks for revision. Will keep you updated.
Cheers!
57
There seems to be a great deal of confusion about ‘backradiation’
Any object above zero Kelvin will radiate, so gases in the atmosphere will radiate, particularly H2O and CO2 (the IR active gases).
So whats the problem?
I think the problem arises from a general misunderstanding of the definition of the word ‘heat’.
How often have we heard some of the slayers say
” ..a hot object cannot accept radiative energy from a colder object.”
This understandable but mistaken idea seems to have hung up the group as if it was an act of fundamental faith.”
Some of the ‘slayers’ and a lot of IPCC science advocates share the same confusion but come to opposite conclusions.
For both groups think that radiation is the same as heat.
So for the warmists this means a colder object can heat a warmer one.
But some of the slayers remember Clausius saying that this is impossible by his famous second law.
So radiative energy from the colder cannot be absorbed by the warmer in their opinion.
Of course when Clausius refers to heat, it is the energy fraction capable of doing thermodynamic work.
So for a purely radiative exchange heat is the net radiative flux and is always from a higher to a lower temperature.
To sum up for a purely radiative exchange between a higher and a lower temperature object.
Radiation exchange is a two way process.
Energy exchange is a two way process.
Heat is a one way process always from a higher to a lower temperature.
30
It does not matter who said what and what was meant. What does matter is whether it is scientifically proven.
You can even call it “exchange”, but what needs to be proven is whether the IR from a colder body reduces cooling of a warmer body.
Second, even if it is possible, then the next question would be “how much?” Maybe it is totally negligible, like 0.00000000001%?
And the most important issue of our times is that no warmist has been able to prove experimentally their “greenhouse gases warming effect”. On the other hand we know about the experiment by professor Wood from 1909.
Which means we probably have to do with a fiction there.
21
Greg House
You too, I suspect do not believe in the reality of photons.
How is such an odd and nonsensical approach supposed to advance the cause of a rational basis for climate science?
There is no debate in physics about the existence of photons.
Every physics textbook and physics department unanimously agree on their existence.
To ask climate sceptics to follow you down this dead end is a complete waste of time.
There is plenty wrong with IPCC science but to move outside the framework of orthodox physics to advance your point of view is bonkers.
30
Yep, just like every book on optics accepts the existence of rays. Of course, rays are understood to be useful mathematical artifacts which exist in numerious useful derivations and mathematical methods of optical design and analysis. Generally (but not always) people don’t confuse them with physical artifacts which can be measured.
It is an experimentally verified fact that the electromagnetic field can only be created and absorbed in discrete chunks of energy, usually referred to as ‘quanta’. The quanta of the EM field are named “photons”. Mathematically, the usual way to treat EM quanta is to ‘quantize’ Maxwell’s Equations by use of the Fourier Transform. (There isn’t any real physical reason for this — it’s just convenient and easy.) This results, however, in mathematically identifying EM quanta with plane waves (what the Fourier Transform decomposes 3D functions into). Plane waves have no spatial or temporal limits — they are everywhere and everywhen. Whatever else you may think a ‘photon’ is, I’ll bet you don’t imagine something that fills the universe.
A lot of the weirdness in Quantum Mechanics arises from using mathematical objects that aren’t spatially limited (plane waves) to describe real things that are (matter). Presumably, it should be possible to re-do QM using a more modern transform that uses spatially limited elements, such as the various Wavelet Transforms, but practically no one wants to try to re-create 80 years of theory to see if you get something more intuitive.
(Although, exactly this was my first thesis proposal — the professors I pitched it to reacted the way I would have expected had I set a bucket of toxic waste on their desks.)
The problem with assuming that photons are actual objects, however, is that we have no theory of them: We can’t describe how they are created, how they propagate, or how they are destroyed. Actual numerical calculations of those things are done using Maxwell’s Equations and waves. After calculating the interaction between EM waves and matter, you slip in the fact that such interactions are quantized at the end.
Trying to imagine that photons are actual “particles of light” that travel from here to there leads to all kinds of paradoxial situations, such as described by the famous “two-slit” paradox, and has led many famous physics to repeat the now disproven claim that light can only display either wave properties or partical properties at one time, but never both together.
Simply refusing to elevate ‘photons’ to physical reality (as real particles) and going with the empirical data which shows simply that EM fields propagate as continuous waves, but interact with matter in discrete units of energy nicely explains all of the observed phenomena without creating paradoxes.
It doesn’t, however, lend itself to an intuitive picture. The data, however, seems to be telling us to give our intuition a rest for a while and just go with what is observed. Perhaps we will develop better intuition in time.
80
The idea that there is radiative exchange comes from August Prevost in 1791. He has probably done more damage to this bit of physics than anyone else.
This is because it gets people like me imagining there are four rate equations which by statistical thermodynamics dynamically control emissivity and absorptivity at each radiating body in equilibrium to control the net radiative flux!
It’s far simpler to think that net flux is set by the vector sum of the Poynting vectors at any point in space. This then begs the question: ‘What does a pyrometer measure when it points at the Earth’s surface where some of the Poynting vector comes from the surface and some from the warm atmosphere next to it with most of the heat transfer by convection?
There is no practical way of measuring the radiation exchange at the surface.
11
PS Two more rate equations give the coupled convection.
10
Bryan,
I don’t know any of my colleagues who say “energy as heat.” Quite the contrary, that’s a simplistic and erroneous view and we insist that energy is NOT heat per se. Why do you and so many others distort what we say?
38
clarification and typo correction: should read “none of my colleagues say “energy IS heat.”
17
johnosullivan says
“I don’t know any of my colleagues who say “energy is heat.” Quite the contrary, that’s a simplistic and erroneous view and we insist that energy is NOT heat per se. Why do you and so many others distort what we say?”
I think you are referring to an earlier post where I say……
I think the problem arises from a general misunderstanding of the definition of the word ‘heat’.
How often have we heard some of the slayers say
” ..a hot object cannot accept radiative energy from a colder object.”
This understandable but mistaken idea seems to have hung up the group as if it was an act of fundamental faith.”
Some of the ‘slayers’ and a lot of IPCC science advocates share the same confusion but come to opposite conclusions.
For both groups think that radiation is the same as heat.
So for the warmists this means a colder object can heat a warmer one.
But some of the slayers remember Clausius saying that this is impossible by his famous second law.
So radiative energy from the colder cannot be absorbed by the warmer in their opinion.
Of course when Clausius refers to heat, it is the energy fraction capable of doing thermodynamic work.
So for a purely radiative exchange heat is the net radiative flux and is always from a higher to a lower temperature.
………..
I think this is a fair assessment of what SOME of the slayers say but perhaps you could set the record straight.
“a hot object cannot accept radiative energy from a colder object.”
You would like to replace with;
“a hot object CAN accept radiative energy from a colder object.”
Thank goodness you have joined the ranks of the rational.
Perhaps you could also set the record straight by giving your own definition of the word ‘heat’ as used in thermodynamics
21
Bryan,
Thanks for asking. On the issue of “heat” I can confirm that the Slayers would say radiation per se is not the same as heat. Such that any object above 0K that receives radiation is not necessarily receiving heat e.g. we say a colder object cannot warm a warmer object even though it is touched by radiation that may be reflected scattered or aborbed. This is simply our reaffirming of the Clausius Statement: that this is impossible as per his famous second law. We say that because GHE believers say so we say, we prove. But GHE advocates have yet to demonstrate their “back radiation” heating i.e. radiation that gets two goes at discharging its heat energy.
In short, we say radiative energy from the colder emitter cannot be absorbed by the warmer such that a change in temp can be measured (as in the form of heat). Of course when Clausius refers to heat, it is the energy fraction capable of doing thermodynamic work.So for a purely radiative exchange heat is the net radiative flux and is always from a higher to a lower temperature. Such that like “radiation from a body at temperature T1 cannot be absorbed by a body at temperature T2” (where T1 < T2).It’s all in the book Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory
We also strongly recommend Joseph Postma’s papers at principia-scientific.org that are free to read online as they clarify all this in great mathematical detail.
19
johnosullivan says
“Such that like “radiation from a body at temperature T1 cannot be absorbed by a body at temperature T2″ (where T1 < T2)."
If you had followed the previous posts you would realise that this statement is nonsense and is not what Joseph Postma is saying.
Its clear that you have never read a thermodynamics book in your life.
It comes as a great surprise that you are so dogmatic about things that you have a very shallow understanding of.
Why dont you stick to law where you have some expertise and leave the science to those like Joseph Postma and Carl Brehmer.
I dont think the scientists associated with the slayers need a front man, they can explain their ideas for themselves.
31
Bryan said: “Greg House
You too, I suspect do not believe in the reality of photons.”
============================================
Bryan, nothing can be further from the truth. I like protons. Look, my cat’s name is Proton, my dog’s name is Proton. My wife’s name is not Proton (yet), but I am working on it.
The problem some protons friends experience is that they think, maybe because the noun “proton” is countable, that they can make proton calculations just like with apples and potatoes. You know, you give me 2 apples, I give you 3 apples…
Unfortunately for warmists, they need to prove first that such counting really match the physical reality and they failed to do that.
30
Sorry for misspelling “photon”.
20
It was way funnier that way…it helped make the point if you understood what happened there…
21
turnedoutnice
“In the case of the atmosphere at lower temperature than the adjacent Earth’s surface, all that notional energy flux is annihilated at the Earth’s surface.”
How does that gel with the first law of thermodynamics?
22
Engineers are taught to solve radiative exchange problems by calculating the notional energy emitted by the two bodies in radiative equilibrium from the Stefan-Boltzmann equations, taking into account the view factor, then subtracting the smaller from the larger to calculate the net flux. Thus the lower flux is completely annihilated.
The problem with the ‘back radiation’ concept is that it does not exist unless you shield the back of the detector from radiation coming the other way. this is because the only real EM waves are the vector sum of the two opposing notional fluxes.
When Trenberth adds ‘back radiation’ to the net UP IR he simply recreates the UP Poynting vector, most of which can do no thermodynamic work.
30
Now that you have clarified your negative view on photons I can understand what you mean when you say;
‘there is no such thing as backradiation’
Using Maxwell’s equations leading to the resultant Poynting vector gives a valid solution to most heat transfer problems based on classical physics approach.
The Rayleigh-Jeans radiation formula was the culmination of the classical approach.
However it was found to be wrong when dealing with wavelengths < 3000nm.
Plancks radiation formula matches reality and replaces Rayleigh Jeans for all wavelengths.
Hence the photon and quantum mechanics.
All this was sorted out almost 100 years ago.
I think you will have to agree that any recent(last 50 years) university physics textbook follows the Prevost, Planck, photon, quantum mechanical narative.
So from a mainstream physics viewpoint backradiation in the form of photons exists and this is not even controversial.
What is controversial is the large value that some enthusiastic IPCC supporters would have us believe.
40
Bryan,
Can you cite for us ANY standard thermo text book that refers to “back radiation” seeing that you claim it to be “mainstream physics.”
Thanks in advance.
310
Greg House
“what needs to be proven is whether the IR from a colder body reduces cooling of a warmer body.”
You can prove this for yourself in less than two minutes with nothing more than something larger than your hand out of your freezer. Put it about a hand’s breadth from a wall (about 20⁰C) and then hold your hand midway between them with your palm facing the wall. Within a minute the back of your hand will feel colder than your palm. Now turn your hand over so that the palm faces the frozen object. Very soon your palm will feel colder than the back of your hand. The simple reason is that the wall, even though it is colder than your hand, reduces the radiative loss from your skin more than does the even colder frozen object. If you don’t believe me, go try it now.
54
I absolutely and unconditionally believe your observation, but not your explanation. Just 2 words: CONDUCTION and CONVECTION. You have forgotten those 2 factors.
I suggest you slightly change your wonderful experiment. Increase the distance between the wall and the frozen chicken, make it 3 meter and put your hand in the middle. Please, report the result to the climate community on this thread.
43
Wes,
Why do you need to conjure up these mickey mouse “experiments” when surely you could pluck out something far more credible from one of those “Physics 101” textbooks you asked me to refer to ; )
311
Carl Brehmer
“According to this table John Tyndall’s apparatus demonstrated that carbon dioxide was 750 times more “absorptive” than air. This does not mean that air absorbs “zero” . . . Why is this relevant? Because it is falsely believed that “non-greenhouse” gases such as oxygen, nitrogen and argon do not absorb or emit any IR radiation what so ever. This is not what John Tyndall’s “apparatus” demonstrated. This is particularly relevant when one considers that there is 2500 times more “non-greenhouse” gas in the atmosphere than there is carbon dioxide. To do a true comparison between the absorptivity of carbon dioxide vs. the rest of the air one has to consider its concentration by dividing 2500 by 750. This reveals the fact that regular air absorbs three times more IR radiation than does carbon dioxide.”
How much water vapour did Tyndall’s ‘air’ chamber contain? Have you allowed for that?
What IR-wavelengths did he use? Have you factored that in?
How accurate were his measurements? What error-correction have you factored in?
Are there more recent and reliable studies of the IR-absorptivity of pure N2 and O2? Do they confirm your interpretation of Tyndall?
42
Are they rhetorical questions Wes? Carl’s point seems highly significant, and if they are in error I would like to know.
12
“How much water vapour did Tyndall’s ‘air’ chamber contain? Have you allowed for that? What IR-wavelengths did he use? Have you factored that in? How accurate were his measurements? What error-correction have you factored in? Are there more recent and reliable studies of the IR-absorptivity of pure N2 and O2? Do they confirm your interpretation of Tyndall?”
These are very pertinent questions since the work of all scientists needs to be carefully vetted lest we be led astray. Let me answer them as best that I can. This statement found in Tyndall’s “Rede” lecture in 1865 answers three of the questions.
“And now let us suppose the glass tube, through which pass the waves from the heated plate of copper, to be exhausted by an air-pump, the two sources of heat acting at the same time on the two opposite faces of the pile. Perfectly equal quantities of heat being imparted to the two faces, the needle points to zero.”
1) “How much water vapour did Tyndall’s ‘air’ chamber contain?”
None, since he pumped the air out of the 3’ x 3” glass tube prior to flooding the tube with various gases.
2) What IR-wavelengths did he use?
Those that were emitted from the surface of a copper plate.
3) How accurate were his measurements?
“After passing through the tube, the radiant heat falls upon the anterior face of a thermo-electric pile, where it is instantly applied to the generation of an electric current. This current conducted round a magnetic needle deflects it, and the magnitude of the deflection is a measure of the heat falling upon the pile.”
The thermo-electric pile was invented by Oersted and Fourier ~1823 and worked by detecting current flow, which increased or decreased relative to the temperature differential between the flat sides of the plate. After the IR radiation passed through the glass tube it struck one side of the thermo-electric pile. He has a second heat source radiating the opposite side of the plate and adjusted it until there was no current flowing out of the instrument. He then flooded the glass tube with various gases. If the gas in the test tube absorbed some of the IR radiation passing through the tube this dropped the temperature on that side of the thermo-electric pile relative to the amount of IR radiation absorbed; this resulted in the generation of a current that was passed through a meter.
4) “Are there more recent and reliable studies of the IR-absorptivity of pure N2 and O2? Do they confirm your interpretation of Tyndall?”
As far as I know his specific “analog” test of the relative absorptivity/emissivity of various gases compared to the absorptivity/emissivity of air has never been repeated. All recent studies of the absorptivity/emissivity of various gases strive (usually using some sort of mathematical formula or computer program) to assign various gases an “emissivity” or “absorptivity” number from 0-1. This compares their absorptivity/emissivity with that of a hypothetical “blackbody” rather than with the absorptivity/emissivity air. As such his experimental observation that CO2 is 750 times more absorptive/emissive as air has not been falsified experimentally.
***********************************************
This brings us to another assertion made by the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis that is present in the introduction to your article that started this thread–the question of the emissivity of the atmosphere: “While IR is radiated to space from the surface and atmosphere, the average loss occurs where the temperature is actually -18⁰C at an altitude of around 5km. The more GHGs in the atmosphere the higher this average radiative layer; and since the temperature below it increases by about 6.5⁰C/km (the lapse rate), the higher this layer the higher the temperature at Earth’s surface.” This assumes that the emissivity of the atmosphere is 1.0 (ε=1.0)
Out of the many explanations of the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis that are out there this one is actually fairly common and it is based around what has been called the atmosphere’s “effective radiating temperature.”
Let’s look at what an “effective radiating temperature” is. Let’s say that you have a block of cement that has an emissivity of 0.5 (ε=0.5) and its temperature is 15 °C. When you run these numbers through a blackbody calculator you find out that this block of cement is emitting ~200 W/m2 of IR radiation. You then run the 200 W/m2 back through the spectral calculator to see what the temperature of the block of cement would be if it were a blackbody radiator with an ε=1.0 and you discover that the “effective radiating temperature” of the block of cement is -30 °C. (-30 °C is what the temperature of a blackbody would be if it were radiating 200W/m2 of IR radiation.) You then notice that the actual temperature of the cement block is 45 °C warmer than its “effective radiating temperature” and declare that the cement block is experiencing a 45 °C “greenhouse effect” because its actual temperature of the block is 45 °C warmer than would be if it were a perfect blackbody radiator.
This is essentially what your definition of the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis does with the atmosphere. Let’s start by separating out the amount of IR radiation that reaches the TOA via the atmospheric window. Trenberth (2008) says that this is ~40 W/m2 of IR radiation and since the total TOA emission has been measured to be 240W/m2 on average then the atmosphere is emitting the other 200 W/m2 of IR radiation seen at the TOA. Since the emissivity of the atmosphere is actually only 0.5* and not 1.0 it has to be 15 °C in order to emit that much IR radiation and near the earth’s surface where the air is both the warmest and where its emissivity is the greatest it is, indeed, 15 °C.
(*Note: This emissivity number of 0.5 as used here is the mean composite emissivity resulting from the entire contents of the atmosphere, i.e., nitrogen, oxygen, argon, GHGs, particulates, water vapor, clouds, etc. (See references below) CO2 has an emissivity of <0.2 and water vapor has an emissivity of ~0.35. These are the two predominant IR emitters in the atmosphere and they overlap.)
Now let’s look at what happens when one treats that atmosphere like a perfect blackbody radiator (ε=1.0) rather than what it actually is: a semitransparent, gaseous, selective emitter (ε=0.5). When you run the atmosphere with an ε=0.5 at a temperature of 15 °C through a blackbody calculator you find out that the atmosphere should be emitting ~200 W/m2 of IR radiation, which it is. You then run the 200 W/m2 that is found at the TOA (which comes from the atmosphere and not the ground) back through the spectral calculator to see what the temperature of the atmosphere would be if it were a blackbody radiator and you discover that the “effective radiating temperature” of the atmosphere is -30 °C, because -30 °C is what the temperature of a blackbody would be if it were radiating 200W/m2 of IR radiation. You then notice that the actual temperature of the atmosphere near the surface is 45 °C warmer than its “effective radiating temperature” and declare that the atmosphere is experiencing a 45 °C “greenhouse effect.”
Rather than conceding that the atmosphere is not a perfect blackbody radiator you then assume that this 200 W/m2 or IR radiation is coming from a “radiating layer” of the atmosphere that is at a temperature of -30 °C. Since the standard lapse rate is 6.5 °C/km you run the numbers and assert that GHGs in the atmosphere do not allow IR radiation to “escape” into space until they reach an altitude of ~7km. (My numbers are different from yours which say that the atmosphere is emitting IR radiation from 5km at a temperature of -18 °C because I subtracted the 40 W/m2 that leaves through the atmospheric window prior to doing the calculation.)
So, which scenario makes more sense? Surface level air temperatures are forced higher because the emissivity of the atmosphere is so low (ε=0.5) ( This requires that the atmosphere be 45 °C warmer than a "black body" would be in order to emit the requisite 200 W/m2) or surface level air temperatures are forced higher because GHGs are causing the atmosphere, which has an ε=1.0, to emit 200W/m2 from a progressively higher and higher altitude?
Why is this important? Under scenario #1 GHGs increase the emissivity of the air and allow it to emit the 200 W/m2 of OLR at a lower temperature. Under scenario #2 GHGs cause the 200W/m2 of OLR to be emitted from a progressively higher altitude, which forces ground level temperatures to increase to compensate.
Scenario #1, which doesn’t break any of the known laws of physics, has GHGs causing cooling.
Scenario #2, which breaks both the Stefan-Boltzmann law (by assigning an errant emissivity number to the atmosphere) and Kirchhoff’s law (which states that increasing the emissivity of matter will result in it emitting the same amount of IR radiation at a lower temperature) has GHGs causing warming.
You will have to decide for yourself.
Carl
_________________________________
References which put the atmosphere's emissivity at about 0.5:
“Minimum instantaneous values of [atmospheric emissivity] during winter can be as low as 0.4, while in summer they rarely drop under 0.6.” Herrero1, J et. al., Parameterization of atmospheric long-wave emissivity in a mountainous site for all sky conditions, Hydrology Earth System Science Discussions (HESS), 9, 3789–3811, 2012
“Clouds, however, which cover about half of the earth’s surface, have an average emissivity of about 0.5”
T.R. Shippert, S.A. Clough, P.D. Brown, W.L. Smith, R.O. Knuteson, and S.A. Ackerman. “Spectral Cloud Emissivities from LBLRTM/AERI QME”. Proceedings of the Eighth Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Science Team Meeting March 1998 Tucson, Arizona.
50
Greg
The time interval (you can feel the difference within seconds)is too quick for conduction in air to occur. Provided your frozen object is larger than your hand, convection would be the same on either side of your hand, and minimal in the timeframe. Unless you breed extraordinary chickens, your 3m distance means that it would represent less than 1% of the radiation reaching your hand. A better modification would be to put an IR-transparent film between your hand and the two objects.
32
Wes, I assume you are referring to my #72.1 comment.
Thank you so much! Of course, to hell with conduction and convection! Look, what just happened: your ideas inspired me and I made the ultimate discovery. I discovered cold radiation, that means radiation inducing cold! OK, John Tyndall was the first who did that 150 years ago, but mine is real.
Fully in accordance with your brilliant experiment I took the frozen chicken again and then I held my hand just 3 cm under it. Immediately my hand felt cold. Well, according to your scientific knowledge it was neither conduction nor convection, then there is only 1 remaining possibility: cold radiation! If you do not believe me, go try it now and then report the result to the community.
46
.
Much as I admire your tenacity Greg, some people will just never get it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQGgaI-BcI4
23
The other possibility (which doesn’t require bad science fiction) is that the cold chicken radiates less heat to your hand than the warm ceiling would, when the chicken isn’t there. Your hand radiates at the same rate (assuming constant temperature), but loses heat faster since it isn’t absorbing as much radiation from the chicken as it would from the ceiling. This is why you can make a room comfortable simply by heating the floor and insulating the ceiling (so it heats up to near the floor temperature) — even if the air temperature in the room is chilly. It is also why you feel colder standing next to a cold window instead of a warm wall, even though both are below body temperature.
Spare me the Slayer hypothesis — I already know: The radiation from the ceiling (or chicken) cancels a like amount of radiation from your hand — presumably because the universe dare not violate a 150 year old statement of the 2nd Law (derived from observation of steam engines and uniquely re-interpreted by the Slayers). This hypothesis has the same effect as the standard view that heat flows both ways and the net result is simply the algebraic sum of the flows.
Since it always gets the same answer as standard thermodynamics (else it would be possible to test), the Slayer hypothesis also derives a greenhouse effect. This is a pointless exercise, unless you attempt to put your hypothesis to a crucial test by finding some repeatable phenomenom which the Slayer hypothesis explains and standard thermodynamics doesn’t. In a previous thread, I suggested several possibilities, but no Slayers were interested in a mere physical test.
71
BobC said: “The other possibility (which doesn’t require bad science fiction) is that the cold chicken radiates less heat to your hand than the warm ceiling would, when the chicken isn’t there.”
==============================================
Thank you, Bob, your point is logical, so I improved the frozen food experiment with the help of an assistant who was, however, really really not very happy about her required contribution to the climate science.
Luckily enough I have a few pizzas as well in my freezer, so they served as a shield between the ceiling and my hand, and then I moved the chicken between my hand and the pizza shield. Guess what: the same result! Maybe you just do not like my cold radiation discovery, Bob.
I would like to encourage scientists, students, teachers, laymen, little children and climate scientists to perform the same experiment and see for themselves. If you do not have the necessary equipment at home – no problem, do not hesitate to bother your neighbours, ask them for the frozen things, it is about science!
It would be pity, however, if it eventually turned out to be just the boring conduction and convection.
55
We all realize that cold air sinks, right? A hand beneath a frozen dinner will feel cold air…cold air which naturally sinks underneath the dinner. You’ll likely feel cold air from 3cm even if you’re beside and maybe even above the frozen dinner.
In any case this is a stupid experiment. Making the chicken talk to the hand? We have real-world measurement data of the actual insolation, temperatures, and the actual mathematics which describes it all, as you will see in a few weeks with the paper.
In the mean time, I suppose we can keep doing Jedi tricks and making the chicken talk to the hand! Good grief.
612
Why don’t you attempt a rational experimental design then, instead of just saying inane things? Perhaps you think the entire radiant floor industry is based on mistaken physics? Maybe they’re just waiting for your wisdom and wit to convince them to pack it all in.
You could, for example, do equivalent experiments with a vacuum dewar — that should take care of the conduction and convection issue.
71
Bob,
you claim there is a “standard view that heat flows both ways” or, in other words, back radiation heating is real. Perhaps you could cite for us ANY reference from a standard thermo text book to back that fantastic claim. We know Dr Judith Curry couldnt find one that’s why she admitted to Claes Johnson she was wrong on the matter.
Many thanks
29
The Wikipedia page on “Black bodies” is a good summary of the standard treatment. Quoting from the definition of an idealized blackbody:
This is functionally equivalent to the statements you will find in any thermodynamics text. Perhaps this is where I got the “fantastic” idea that blackbodies absorb all incident radiation regardless of its source — be it from a warmer or cooler blackbody, laser, light bulb, etc.
A little further on, we find the standard theory of blackbody emission:
Notice it does not say that the radiation is radiated in all directions except in the direction of another warmer blackbody — perhaps that is where I got that “fantastic” idea that the energy from a cold blackbody is actually emitted in the direction of a warm blackbody and the warm blackbody actually absorbs it (since the radiation from the colder blackbody is part of “all incident radiation” on the warmer blackbody).
A little further down on the Wiki page we get the explicit statement of Planck’s Law (spectrum of a blackbody) and the Stefan–Boltzmann law (total energy emission of a blackbody and which is derived from Planck’s Law by integrating over all space). Notice that these laws (which surely represent “standard” thermodynamical theory) have no input parameters that would modify the calculated emission based on direction, or incident radiation from other blackbodies or any thing else.
*******************
Hopefully, this explains where I get my “fantastic” ideas about standard thermodynamics — now perhaps you can explain where you get yours.
54
Correction:
The Stefan-Boltzmann law is derived from Planck’s Law by integrating over all wavelengths.
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BobC,
When I challenge you to come up with proof of your fantastical GHE “back radiation” heating claims you chose as your best reference Wikipedia (not a good start!) and then you merely try to contort that reference until is says what you want it to by giving us this pearler, “This is functionally equivalent to the statements you will find in any thermodynamics text.”
Sorry Bob but when someone tries to get me to accept on their personal authority that a concept is “functionally equivalent” I usually have to stifle a laugh. Surely if your GHE “back radiation” heating is a verifiable physical phenomenom found in standard textbooks you wouldnt need your personal interpretation of a Wiki link in which you can at best only assert is “functionally equivalent” to the point you’re struggling to make.
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JohnO:
Really pathetic ‘argument’. If you think that the Wikipedia page on Black-bodies is seriously different than what you find in thermodynamics textbooks, read one or two.
It is not my task in life to tutor you.
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Still haven’t ‘responded’ to my request that you document your claims, I see.
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Gregg,
If Wes Allen was the thermo expert he’d like us all to believe he’d be able to cite chapter and verse from a standard thermo textbook to make his case for such a crazy phenomenon. That he doesn’t and resorts to mickey mouse kitchen experiments shows the level of his understanding.
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Joseph Postma: “We all realize that cold air sinks, right? A hand beneath a frozen dinner will feel cold air…In any case this is a stupid experiment.”
===========================================
Maybe I agree with you, but keep in mind that it was actually a parody of Wes Allen’s interpretation of his experiment. You should have started there.
My experiment and interpretation was designed to illustrate how it is possible to come to wrong conclusions by ignoring certain factors.
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Oh I got that, friend! I have zero issue with your approach…could have left it in your professional hands though I see! 😉
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Ahem:
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Understanding_the_Atmosphere_Effect.pdf
http://principia-scientific.org/publications/The_Model_Atmosphere.pdf
http://principia-scientific.org/publications/Copernicus_Meets_the_Greenhouse_Effect.pdf
And as I said earlier, if you don’t like those, just give us a couple of weeks for the next paper. Best regards.
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Joseph,
Thank you for the quick reply and the links.
I apologise if some of my comments in this thread have been over the top. O’Sullivan’s approach comes off as a use car sales pitch because of the way he attacks others who have studied the Dragon’s ideas and rejected them. It’s also deeply hypocritical and dishonest to accuse Spencer and others of fraud because no one agrees on a single version of the GHE. No one agrees on anything in science perfectly, do they? And they aren’t all frauds.
Further more it is difficult to take seriously a legal analyst in a pin stripe suit as the dragon’s publicity man.
What the hell is that all about?
That’s why I am so suspicious. Because of the ungentlemanly conduct and cult-like attitude of the dragons reminds everyone of scientology or even the Warmists. I am skeptical and suspicious that some other hidden agenda is at play here.
With that off my chest, I try to keep an open mind, although you boys are starting with a couple of strikes against you.
So, thank you again, for the links. I’ll study them the best I can, with my very limited understanding of the subject.
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No Wes George, your comments haven’t been “OVER” anything. They have been LOWER than anything I have ever read on this site, lower even than the gutter; down in the sewer. I speak as the person on the receiving end of many of those comments. And I’m not even of the Slayer fraternity, simply one who is prepared to entertain the alternative idea that the atmosphere cools the planet like an air conditioner, rather than warms it like a blanket.
For even entertaining this heresy I have been branded by you as a communist, a fascist, a nutjob, an extremist, paranoid, a moonbat, a green nutjob, an unbeliever in constitutional democracy who is instead in search of a “final solution”, a cheap trickster, and finally, one who revels in the murder of innocents.
And after all that you have the unmitigated gall to claim:
Dare I put it to you, Wes George, that you wouldn’t know what an “open mind” was even if it ran over you in a parking lot. You have spent two days attacking, belittling, insulting and degrading anybody and everybody who dared to disagree with “your version” of the skeptic “consensus”.
In this you have betrayed the fact that there is no difference between you and the cultists in how “heretics” should be treated, and what their ultimate fate should be. Your ONLY point of contention with those wannabe mass-murderers is what constitutes the “consensus” and therefore what defines heresy.
I deliberately did not reply when you were making your unfair, untrue, rather disgusting comments about me, to avoid dragging the entire thread down into a personal tussle between us, forcing people to take sides.
Now that the conversation has largely moved on I’m taking this opportunity more or less privately to let you know a state of animosity now exists between us.
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MemoryVault,
Oh, come on, MV. No hard feelings, mate. I didn’t ad hom you. I showed that your ideas, as expressed, were just awful and related to Green alarmism, authoritarianism and sick fantasies of final solutions…. Just wanted to make you think a little.
Quit sneaking around hiding “to avoid dragging the entire thread down into a personal tussle.” We don’t even know each other. All I got is your comments to go on. I’m sure you’re a perfectly nice guy, I’ll shout you a drink next time I’m in Tourmaline, or where ever the heck you live.
Here’s my actual comment, MemoryVault. I stand by it. If you don’t like it, quit supplying me with ridiculous quotes to skewer you with. It’s that simple.
— — — —-
Extremism is commonly thought to lie upon a linear spectrum from far left to far right. But this is not so. The political extremes are more closely related to each other than they are the Aussie battlers stuck in the middle trying to raise a family in the ‘burbs.
The political spectrum is more accurately plotted in a circle, like a clock. Imagine that One o’clock is the extreme right. 6 o’clock is the vast middle of the road mob and 11 o’clock is the extreme left.
Case in point: What is the difference between Memoryvault and your whacko moonbat Greenie. Very little other than they would kill each in a cage fight.
For instance the moonbat Greenie is an alarmist… he believes many of us are going to die due to global warming.
Here what Memoryvault believes:
Warmists believe we’re going to die of heat, MV believes we’ll die of cold. There is no evidence to support either position. Both are examples of exactly the same variety of ridiculous, paranoid alarmism. In fact, studies have shown that extremists from one end the extreme are more likely to convert extremists from the seemingly opposite point of view than from the vast middle ground.
That’s because the psychology that drives certain people to extremism is the same regardless of the radical POV they adopt. Communists are more likely to convert to fascism then to join the middle class and get a real job. Extremists of all kinds are about the illicit appropriation of power from others. The rest of us on the scale from about 3 o’clock to 9 o’clock are about respecting the individual civil liberties of our neighbours and living a life of personal responsibility as best we can.
And surprise, surprise, both the whacko Greenies and MemoryVault are deeply disenchanted with the democratic process because democracy is about compromise, moderation and rule of law rather than bloody revolutionary change toward an utopian ideal.
Spoken like a true Green nutjob disgusted with the slow pace democratic rule is making towards “Saving the Planet.”
Of course the only option available if we ditch constitutional democracy is coercive authoritarianism of some variety. Which would be the one sure sign of insanity since that’s been tried many more times than democracy and the results are pretty similar. Lots of murdered “enemies of the state” buried in mass graves.
Maybe this is why Memoryvault isn’t eager to talk about the alternatives to a constitutional democracy:
Exactly. The Greens don’t like to talk about their final solutions either.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8StG4fFWHqg
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Thanks Wes G., this is pleasant and valuable advise. Cheers.
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Wes,
Yes, that’s it attack the man not the message. Are you sure you’re not Michael Mann in disguise? I’ll let others make their own mind up as to why you should be appointed judge and jury on who is entitled to express a view on any scientific matter. In effect, you’re rationale is that of just another gatekeeper.
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Whoops, more Freudian slips from Johno.
I wouldn’t bring up the topic of serial exaggerators if I were you.
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Joe Olson is postulating something else to look at. We know that cosmic rays are variable and have an effect on weather, and also that solar activity is variable. This could have an effect on fission rates inside the core, let alone affect solar activity as well. As far as being THE explanation for global warming, no, there’s not enough evidence, but we do know that geologic activity can vary and that it could have extra-solar factors in it. That’s what that’s about. Science should be about exploring and testing new ideas, not just rejecting everything we hear. See the difference there? Listen to new ideas, think about them, consider the existing leading evidence which there always is some, and consider.
Science is NOT about being snideful or angry at alternative ideas, or about a cult of models or knowledge paradigms (although it does turn out that way among the amateurs, ideologues, and old guards).
I can assure you we have no unspoken agenda, aside from doing independent and open minded science. But I am interested: what do you theorize our unspoken agenda would be? You not ever heard of carbon taxes? I guess that’s an open agenda though…not an unspoken one!
Flat-earth models are wrong too…btw. 🙂
A better model is based on calculus and other physical properties, as you will see in a few weeks.
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We will be much obliged to do just that. If you acknowledge the possibility that a refutation of the GHE can occur, then you must acknowledge that someone will be working on it. Nice to meet you too.
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