Bill Kininmonth knows a lot about climate science, he is a meteorologist and he was the head of Australia’s National Climate Centre from 1986 to 1998. He is also a well known global warming skeptic and is particularly critical of the idea that the principles for sustaining the greenhouse effect are well understood. While this may seem like a ridiculous proposition, indeed the greenhouse effect is the underpinning science for the hypothesis of dangerous global warming, in a recent letter to the Federation of Australian Scientists and Technologists (FASTS) he explains how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are neither consistent in their explanation for the greenhouse effect nor provide a mechanism that accords with the global average earth energy budget.
Mr Kininmonth’s letter to FASTS follows their issuing of a media release on climate change including comment that:
“The scientific evidence is compelling that global policy objectives must remain squarely focused on returning greenhouse gas concentrations to near pre-industrial levels through the reduction of emissions.”
The media release was accompanied by a statement that included comment:
“The physical principles of the greenhouse effect are well-understood. Without greenhouse gases, clouds or aerosols, the surface of the Earth would have a mean temperature of about 18oC below zero. While the natural atmospheric composition varies over time, the observed warming in the late 20th century can be attributed with a very high degree of confidence to additional human emissions of greenhouse gases.
The statement was developed and published without input from rank and file member of FASTS and indeed not everyone agrees that the scientific evidence is compelling. Mr Kininmonth explains why in the following open letter:
Bradley Smith
Executive Director
Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies
Dear Bradley,
In the “Statement on Climate Change” issued by FASTS on 4 September is included the sentence, ‘The physical principles of the greenhouse effect are well-understood.’
I would be grateful if you would provide a summary of the physical principles of the greenhouse effect. In making this request I do not doubt the existence of the greenhouse effect, only that the scientific principles for sustaining the greenhouse effect are well understood.
The IPCC, in its most recent (2007) report has the statement (Frequently Asked Question 1.1):
“The reason that the Earth’s surface is this warm (14oC) is the presence of greenhouse gases, which act as a partial blanket for the longwave radiation coming from the surface. This blanketing is known as the natural greenhouse effect.”
There are two problems with this statement. Firstly, a blanket acts as an inhibitor of conduction and not radiation; oxygen and nitrogen are equally as good insulators as water vapour and carbon dioxide and adding greenhouse gases does not materially affect the conducting properties of the atmosphere. Secondly, net upward longwave radiation increases with altitude (according to the IPCC global average data, from 66 Wm-2 at the surface to
235 Wm-2 at the top of the atmosphere); the increase is due to the greenhouse gases and can hardly be described as inhibiting (ie, blanketing) radiation loss to space!
In an attempt to clarify the situation, the IPCC has an additional explanation (Frequently Asked Question 1.3):
“Much of this thermal radiation emitted by the land and ocean is absorbed by the atmosphere, including clouds, and reradiated back to Earth. This is called the greenhouse effect.”
As the IPCC’s global average data clearly show, there is more longwave radiation emitted from the Earth’s surface than is emitted by the atmosphere back to the surface. The net effect of longwave radiation is to cool the Earth’s surface, not to warm it.
The above two explanations from the IPCC are quite different and neither accord with the data presented on the global average Earth energy budget. As you will appreciate, the greenhouse effect is the underpinning science for the hypothesis of dangerous global warming from increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide caused by human activities. If we cannot get the underpinning science as a clear and logical construct then the edifice is no more than a house of cards! Also, if it is not possible to explain how the Earth’s greenhouse effect is sustained then how can we be confident that the computer models used to project global warming are adequately representing the greenhouse effect?
As FASTS claims that the physical principles of the greenhouse effect are well understood I presume FASTS has a different explanation than what IPCC has presented. I would be grateful for a summary of the FASTS principles of the greenhouse effect.
Yours sincerely,
William Kininmonth
Kew, Victoria
As long as institutions and organisations like FASTS demand that governments impose new taxes and regulations on the basis that the science is settled, they must be prepared to publicly engage in discussion on the same. Indeed I look forward to posting the response from FASTS to Mr Kininmonth’s open letter.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
” Indeed I look forward to posting the response from FASTS to Mr Kininmonth’s open letter. ”
… As do I in reading it. I’d say more than a few Physicists and the like would be as well.
“The media release was accompanied by a statement that included comment:”
the link doesn’t work Jennifer.
Here it is:
http://www.fasts.org/images/fasts-policy/statement-climate%20change.pdf
“There are two problems with this statement. Firstly, a blanket acts as an inhibitor of conduction and not radiation;”
It’s an analogy, to make the idea easier for the majority of people who are not scientists comprehensible. To say that they are wrong because the Greenhouse effect does not literally work like a blanket is ridiculous.
It just happens to be a very bad analogy that is *wrong* as Bill points out. Of course it gives people the idea that adding to greenhouse gases is like putting another or thicker blanket on a bed and so the temperature will rise. That may of course be the aim of this false and misleading analogy
Bill of all people should know that science progresses through peer review.
Perhaps he might submit his ideas to peer review (I note Bill seems to have never written a science paper on climate change), rather than pretending analogies form the basis for climate science.
I would appreciate any real physicists out there looking at this paper and telling me what is wrong with it, if anything:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161v3
The authors, two German theoretical physicists, are claiming that the greenhouse analogy is wrong, as are the theories underlying AGW theory.
As an essential layperson with some training in physics, it seems to me something is severely wrong with the thermodynamic principles involved in the AGW theory. The theory talks about heat radiation from the surface and heat radiation from the atmosphere, as if there is some other theory in place that allows heat to flow from colder areas to warmer areas. As the authors point out, AGW theorists are confusing heat transfer with general energy transfer, and that the laws of thermodynamics apply only to the former.
Why should CO2, or water vapour for that fact, radiate heat from a cooler atmosphere to a warmer surface? A more plausible theory is that heat from the surface is transported by winds laterally and that heat in water vapour rises naturally, cools and forms precipitation.
According to the paper above, there is no need for a greenhouse analogy. The heat from the surface is held in by the insulation of the atmosphere. Even if such an analogy is used, however, the authors point out that a real greenhouse effect, in a greenhouse, or a car on a hot day, is not due to trapped IR radiation but to a lack of circulation. That’s why rolling down the windows on a car, or opening the doors, cools the interior dramatically.
Nett?
http://rabett.blogspot.com/
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 02, 2008
Instructions for the hard of learning
Janama, I’ve just fixed the links. sorry. i’m still learning how to use wordpress
Luke…from your blog reference:
“if 200 of the 400 W/m2 radiated into the atmosphere in the IR are returned to the earth from the colder atmosphere, there is a balance between energy absorbed at the surface, Sun + Atm Return =200 +200 and surface radiation = 400 W/m2”.
explain how heat flows from a colder atmosphere to a warmer surface without an external mechanosm to enable it.
On one hand they are talking about heat flow then suddenly they are talking about a net energy balance. That’s mathematical crap and the basis of model theory.
Read the article I supplied, not some mathematician theorizing about thermodynamics.
“nor provide a mechanism that accords with the global average earth energy budget. ….”
Thats the key here. Heat budgets.
“Comment from david
Time September 8, 2008 at 8:56 am
Bill of all people should know that science progresses through peer review.”
No david. Thats rubbish. That is anti-historical and anti-reason crap. Where did you get such a stupid notion as this.
Science progresses only if better ideas are able to displace less worthy ideas.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with the anti-scientific notion of peer review.
Where is this idiocy coming from?
Lets define what the fraud side of the argument means by “peer review.”
If they meant that a researcher brings in different people to audit his reasoning than that would be something worthy. So that Coase, for example, had organized some bigshots, including Milton Friedman, on some famous night that we can put a date to……. to go through a specific idea of Coases’ and see if the reasoning was valid.
That was where the real “peer review” was acheived and it has NOTHING TO DO WITH PUBLICATION BY LEFTIST EDITORS. It has nothing to do with stolen money financing of research projects and the subsequent publication of the results.
This is superstition. This is like being sanctified by some religious authority. Its pre-Athenian Voodoo that we are talking here when we are talking about the leftist attitude towards peer review.
When the fraud side of the argument refers to peer review they don’t mean putting ideas through a griller. They don’t mean subjecting the fraud to a desperately needed conceptual audit as is done on this blog.
They don’t even mean peer review as such. They mean publication in a journal that hard leftists are happy with.
That this version of “peer review” could be held to be a scientific concept is pure dark ages superstition.
If the greenhouse effect worked in the way and with the magnitude presented the “heat-hole” of the Atherton tablelands would have been plugged up substantially in the last few decades. And this is something all the locals would have noticed.
Let me explain further. As has been noted by Alan, cohenite, Louis and others, it is air pressure that is the key here. It is air pressure that has the effect that has somehow been allocated to greenhouse gasses in our understanding. The greenhouse gas theory is the changeling. And air pressure is the real deal. On Earth as it is on Venus.
So far we have the idea that thermal energy cannot flow from a cooler to a warmer body. So that the backradiation caused by clouds, aerosols, water vapour and other greenhouse gasses cannot warm the hotter surface………. but in the first instance, speaking logically, if we didn’t know better we would say that the extra non-water-vapour greenhouse gasses MAY be able to reduce the rate of cooling to some extent.
Backradiation cannot warm the warmer body. But may be able to reduce the rate of cooling of that body thus affecting the heat budget. So what if this was true or was a matter of non-negligible magnitude?
The evidence suggests that EXTRA CO2 has no non-negligible effect…..
But if the greenhouse effect was as strong as advertised what would we expect that effect to be?
We would expect it to plug up the difference that we know air pressure now does. We would expect it to reduce the rate of cooling at sundown. AND THIS HAS NOT HAPPENED.
In the tablelands it can get very hot in the early afternoon. But I was told that one would tend to use a dooner the year round. Entirely contrary to even September down closer to see level.
It was the same up in Thailand at Chiang Mai. The place was not lacking for back-radiation if the smoky air was anything to go by. Seldom could you see the outline of the sun prior to 10.00am because of the smoke and the mist.
So if there was ubiquitous smoke and mist why was it that the early mornings were always cool, even in the summer, while down at sea level the temperature would only drop into the 20’s and would go no lower?
What we have ascribed to (EXTRA) non-water-vapour greenhouse gasses is actually the effect that is a function of air pressure. As Alan Siddons, cohenite, Louis and people who actually know what they are talking about have explained.
Its probably no coincidence that I haven’t found anyone who has years of experience in the tablelands area that buys into this global warming bullshit. Instinctively it would not compute with their experience.
Maybe I should ask around a little bit more. But so far they think its all crap.
If backradiation really made all that much difference than the extra smoke and CO2 that has accumulated in Chiang Mai over the decades would have plugged up that difference between where they are and on the lower-altitude land. And some of the difference between Atherton and Cairns would have been plugged up in a noticeable way and this has not happened.
Peer review was established by the Royal Society in 1665. It has a long history that has served us well.
Why won’t sceptics publish?
Why won’t sceptics publish?
They could be far more interested in making a blooming fuss about the science than having a go at finding out about some of the practical stuff for themselves.
“Peer review was established by the Royal Society in 1665. It has a long history that has served us well.”
Peer review has NOTHING to do with science. This is just supersticious idiocy so get over it. Clearly you are epistemologically deficient. Plug up those holes.
Socialism never works. But sometimes it can take awhile to fail. The Royal Society is crap. As their endorsement of this blatant science fraud proves. An institution of centuries of good standing will not stand up uncorrupted to mere decades of socialist poison.
What is going on here? Some totemic primitivism to do with brand names?
If you don’t have it david, you aren’t going to be able to fake it. Always you give away your essentially primitivist and superstitious attitude towards the scientific method.
REAL peer review ought to come prior to publication. And publication can neither add or subtract from the reasoning involved.
“It just happens to be a very bad analogy that is *wrong* as Bill points out.”
Of course it’s wrong. If you look up in the sky, there isn’t a big, thick woolly thing up there! Even I know that. What idiots.
“Peer review has NOTHING to do with science.”
I guess that’s 400 years of so of science down the drain, then.
“As long as institutions and organisations like FASTS demand that governments impose new taxes and regulations on the basis that the science is settled, they must be prepared to publicly engage in discussion on the same. Indeed I look forward to posting the response from FASTS to Mr Kininmonth’s open letter. ”
I am speechless. You expect someone to give a serious reply to nonsense? Of course an anology is going to be different to a brief attempt at an explanation of the somewhat complex science that is behind greenhouse gases. The FAQ is also inadequate as an explanation, if you want to be more precise. However, the more precise you get on exactly what is happening and why, the more complex the explanation is going to be, to the point that most people are not going to understand it anyway.
“I guess that’s 400 years of so of science down the drain, then…”
No thats not right. Since the last 400 years of science had nothing to do with “peer review” as you represent it.
For example some, if not all, of the best breakthroughs came from intelligent people interacting. Nothing to do with “peers” as such. Peerage is irrelevant. Its intelligent people applying human reason. But the publication which resulted neither enhanced nor detracted from the reasoning involved.
You see your crowd says “peer review” and you mean one thing. Whereas others may be gypped into thinking you mean the conceptual audit and interaction of smart people.
Scientists ought to seek out the conceptual audit of smart people for their ideas. But the last thing you idiots want is a conceptual audit of the watts-per-square-metre greenhouse model. I haven’t been able to shame you guys into this more legitimate form of “peer review”. I went over to the beloved Professor Brooks’ blog and he sidestepped this more legitimate part of the scientific process entirely.
So once again. Peer review has NOTHING to do with science. But conceptual auditing, that is to say collaborative human reason has everything to do with science. You are substituting one for the other in your typically mindless way.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
“Of course an anology is going to be different to a brief attempt at an explanation of the somewhat complex science that is behind greenhouse gases.”
I’m just gobsmacked, speechless and dumbfounded at your stupidity. Obviously there are good, bad and hoplelessly rotten analogies. And the greenhouse analogy has everyone completely mislead. Its a bad analogy that doesn’t even apply to greenhouses.
Gordon – well old mate – you’ll be off to publish in Nature having discovered Jack’s Beanstalk. All these dudes with pyrgeometers must be dreaming then. Even those guys doing energy budgets in Darwin. http://www.arm.gov/instruments/instrument.php?id=skyrad In fact these instruments don’t even work !! What a hoax. Mysterious energy sources that vanish.
Do you know why there are earthquakes Gordon?
David – why don’t sceptics publish. Because pseudo-science gets
killed off in peer review (except for E&E).
We’ve been over this before Luke you moron. What do pyrgeometers measure PRECISELY!!!!
They only measure what the measure and they don’t measure anything else. They don’t discriminate between various causes of whatever it is they are measuring.
So since you are a dishonest idiot we are just going to go over this again.
You tell me in your own words PRECISELY what it is they are measuring. Then we will see the dishonesty of what it is you are inferring.
Birdy – you said climate is easy so why are you asking stupid questions. Just STFU.
About peer review, by an expert:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs58.html
quote from article: “Peer review, on which lay people place great weight, varies from being an important control, where the editors and the referees are competent and responsible, to being a complete farce, where they are not. As a rule, not surprisingly, the process operates somewhere in the middle, being more than a joke but less than the nearly flawless system of Olympian scrutiny that outsiders imagine it to be”.
Peer review, on which lay people place great weight, varies from being an important control, where the editors and the referees are competent and responsible, to being a complete farce, where they are not. As a rule, not surprisingly, the process operates somewhere in the middle, being more than a joke but less than the nearly flawless system of Olympian scrutiny that outsiders imagine it to be.
Interesting quote Gordon, but I don’t think your concluding summary contributes much.
Ladies and Gentlemen, when are you going to stop this endless nonsense about heat flowing from cold to hot. The NET energy flow is from hot to cold as per thermodynamic laws however when considering IR radiation you are talking about a SPECTRUM of energy whose peak and mean value is equivalent to the temperature of the emitting surface. Just check out the Stefan Boltzman energy distribution curve. All IR radiation of any frequency can be absorbed by a body irrespective of its “temperature” i.e. mean value of its emitted IR, However the higher the temperature the more energy it emits thus in an exchange the higher temperature body wins. So a cooler body can not increase the temperature of a warmer body directly but it can impede the net radiation flux leaving the warm body. If the warm body is being heated by a much hotter body the incoming IR has a more difficult time escaping via reradiation so the temperature of the warm body must go up to force the radiation out. I guess a good example of this is at night time when there is no incoming, on a clear night the earth cools down quite quickly because the back radiation from CO2 and water vapour is relatively small. On a cloudy night the cooling rate is much slower because the outgoing IR is intercepted by the water aerosols and a reasonable proportion of it ( less than 50%) is radiated back to earth thus slowing the IR loss rate. I agree that drawing an analogy to a blanket is misleading. As I have said many times already there are two very distinctly different mechanisms with regard to outgoing IR, greenhouse gas capture of the outgoing radiation is very frequency specific and in fact CO2 is only effected by 8% of the outgoing radiation and cannot absorb any more than that. Aerosols absorb the full spectrum which is the reason the great majority of the so called “greenhouse gas” effect has nothing to do with actual greenhouse gasses.
Sceptics are not allowed to publish in the main journals – they get rejection slips because their papers are politically incorrect.
Before PC scientific papers were refereed to ensure they were factual, did not make infelicitious statements etc. Peer review is a modern development in which group think determines what gets published. It’s the means by which to ensure no one rocks the funding boat.
What would Bill Kininmonth know about it? We should be relying on other more knowledgeable people. We need journalists, politicians, economists and paleontologists to put their views. Then we should just believe whatever they say without question.
Louis – or that you’re not any good is the MUCH easier explanation.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, when are you going to stop this endless nonsense about heat flowing from cold to hot.”
As I asked before, does that mean that you can’t see anything that’s colder than you are?
I can’t see what the problem is…. Bill Kininmonth has simply asked FASTS for their fully worked mathematical explanation of the greenhouse effect which is so well known to science.
Surely it cannot be that hard to produce. Surely it must reside in a draw, or somewhere just ready for this kink of request.
…..Or is there some problem with it we don’t know about and they can’t resolve?
Luke…re your IR meter…here’s a quote from the paper I posted earlier:
“In any case, a larger portion of the incoming sunlight lies in the infrared range than in the visible range. In most papers discussing the supposed greenhouse effect this important fact is completely ignored”.
You don’t suppose your meter is measuring incident IR from the Sun, do you?
…. How did that “kink” get in there…. kind.. is what it was supposed to be 🙂
FDB said…”Interesting quote Gordon, but I don’t think your concluding summary contributes much”.
It is a bit redundant, isn’t it?
Ah well Gordon… Repetition is the art of pedagoguery… ‘eh? LOL
“So a cooler body can not increase the temperature of a warmer body directly but it can impede the net radiation flux leaving the warm body.”
Barry Moore,
I do believe that is the simplest, clearest, description I have read of the possible capacity of ACO2 to affect earth’s climate.
Whether it actually does, of course, is yet to be proved even though the principles are “well understood”.
That would be the night time back radiation from the Sun would it Gordon 🙂
It’s good to see this blog has lifted it’s status after being re-started.
Jennifer, you really should ask Graeme to stop posting here. Normally the discussion is resonably sensible but when he appears it goes haywire. Your new blog will suffer the same fate as the last if you permit him to post here.
“Gordon – well old mate – you’ll be off to publish in Nature having discovered Jack’s Beanstalk. All these dudes with pyrgeometers must be dreaming then.”
We’ve been over it before Luke. And we are just going to have to go over it again and again and again until you retract or make good on what I consider to be the dishonest inference you are making you lying filth.
Lets go again:
1. What do pyrgeometers measure PRECISELY!!!!
Now I’m saying they only measure what they measure and they don’t measure anything else. They don’t discriminate between various causes of whatever it is they are measuring.
So since you are a dishonest idiot we are just going to go over this again.
You tell me in your own words PRECISELY what it is they are measuring. Then we will see the dishonesty of what it is you are inferring.
CLIMATE SCIENCE IS EASY. Just because you cannot answer a simple question you damn vermin…… doesn’t mean that climate science isn’t dead easy.
Is there anyone not now convinced of the total fraud that is alarmism? Can you not see it in pretty much every post these spineless insects make?
Its not a small fraud. Its not a case of good arguments on both sides. Its just a frantic effort by leftists to keep these lies in the air.
Well Graeme…. Though it may be of a crystal quality to you. It is nonetheless, quite apparent to be less so in others.
Therefore it may be necessary to tone down the… er, rhetoric…? in order to achieve an atmosphere that is conducive for education….
Would you not agree?
A little less vociferously on you part, would be nice. 😉
Some readers may find useful my series of articles on this link:
http://co2sceptics.com/news.php?tag=stephen+wilde
especially ‘Greenhouse Confusion Resolved’
though I’m sure some will take issue on various points.
It will be interesting to see how FASTS responds to Mr Kininmonth….. What he receives and what it says upon being analyzed by those learned enough to uncover it’s truths, deceptions or mistakes.
“They could be far more interested in making a blooming fuss about the science than having a go at finding out about some of the practical stuff for themselves.”
http://met.hu/doc/idojaras/vol111001_01.pdf
I think they do contrary to your remark gavin sometimes they have more difficulty getting it published.
http://hps.elte.hu/zagoni/Proofs_of_the_Miskolczi_theory.htm
“It will be interesting to see how FASTS responds to Mr Kininmonth….. What he receives and what it says upon being analyzed by those learned enough to uncover it’s truths, deceptions or mistakes.”
I don’t know what response he would expect to his discovery that their analogy is not a comprehensive model of how a GHG works, other than laughter.
He is not questioning the physical properties of CO2, but rather it’s interactions …………. Or am I wrong SJT?
Gordon; you linked to the Gerlich and Tscheuschner paper which critiques the greenhouse theory; this paper has been specifically responded to in this Arthur Smith paper;
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0802/0802.4324v1.pdf
Smith more recently has had a run in with Monckton which was well covered at lucia’s. The problem with Smith’s thesis is that it;
1Averages albedo; AGW depends on uniformity of temperature, CO2 mixing and albedo; as the Essex, McKitrick and Andresen paper on average temperature and the Pielke paper on regional differences in Stefan-Boltzman have shown regional differences in indices completely defeat inferences made about the global effects of obstensible radiation imbalances which AGW depend on.
2Smith, as does AGW generally, ignores atmospheric pressure. It is astounding that a basic tenent of physics, that a gas will heat when under pressure, is ignored when computing the cause of the 33K global temperature surplus from a non-reflecting and non-atmospheric absorbing planet. The atmospheric lapse rate is pressure/temperature consistent but is not considered as a cause of the 33K temperature surplus.
3Smith also does not consider reciprocating conductive heat transfer at the point of contact between the surface and the atmosphere.
“Its just a frantic effort by leftists to keep these lies in the air”.
I get so sick of this leftist/rightist bullshit – I’m very left on some issues and very right on others by standard definitions.
They really are old school terms and have no relevance today.
NT – I hope Jennifer ignores your condescending statements regarding who should post here – for mine I’d prefer YOU posted your bitter bullshit somewhere else – you’ve added nothing IMO.
Luke,
That’s right, we are abject failures in writing pseudoscience – no wonder we continue to get rejected by the journals.
This peer review line is a complete furphy. How can someone assess the peer review process of a group of self-interested people who have conspired to pull the wool over the eyes of the greater community? This effort to create a worldwide authority on climate science is unprecedented because it is unnecessary- it is the modern trojan horse for left-wing global politics.
Ask yourselves this, how can the rantings of climate scientists by widely published? Meanwhile the considered and readily understood contributions of Graeme Bird, who obviously has no qualifications, are limited to an online blog? Something is wrong here- and don’t go blaming Mr Bird for this situation.
The best book in history- ie the bible, is not ‘peer’ reviewed! What an intellectual fantasy.
Jan; in your Miscolczi link the Atmospheric clear-sky Kirchhoff Law diagram would resolve luke’s preoccupation with Philipona’s downward LW concept, would it not?
“He is not questioning the physical properties of CO2, but rather it’s interactions …………. Or am I wrong SJT?”
His statement says.
“There are two problems with this statement. Firstly, a blanket acts as an inhibitor of conduction and not radiation; oxygen and nitrogen are equally as good insulators as water vapour and carbon dioxide and adding greenhouse gases does not materially affect the conducting properties of the atmosphere. ”
He is attacking their analogy as a statement of literal fact. If I told him to ‘hop to it’, I expect I’d seeing him bouncing off on one foot.
“It is astounding that a basic tenent of physics, that a gas will heat when under pressure, is ignored when computing the cause of the 33K global temperature surplus from a non-reflecting and non-atmospheric absorbing planet.”
That would be why it doesn’t get cold at night?
I think you’re right, Bird. This peer review that people like the Mass Extinctions professor throws around is basically a leftist gyp.
Imagine, say if the professor of Absolutely Massive Extinctions (and Climate change) had to have his junk science reviewed by someone like Milton Friedman. He would have been laughed out the door. The entire thing is a scandal.
The professor of Absolutely Massive Extinctions(and Climate change) is more a far left political activist than a scientist.
Lukey and the rest of the mentally stilted brigade just help it along and allow the Prof. Of Absolutely Massive Extinctions (and Climate Change) earn a living of the taxpayer back.
Maybe because you haven’t defined them at an intellectual level Janama…. But we will go O/T…. After all we are simply interested in how FASTS will respond to Mr Kininmonths letter.
Also, could you not find a better word than the expletives you used….. Not fer me ta be th’ noun Police… or a security force for embattled verbs… But you know… Sorta lift ya game eh? 😉
Renzo
There are snake oil critters selling the idea that we are going to experience massive extinctions. This junk gets peer reviewed? How the hell do we all get on that gravy train? Write crap get it ” peer reviewed by a like minded snake oil salesmen and then demand a raise.
It is for this very reason that Climate Audit has demanded we treat all this peer review crap like an audit. All these snake oilers ought to publish their data on public websites at the very least and allow the public to scrutinize every single bit of data.
Most of the snake oilers won’t allow that though. Funny hey?
SJT…. “He is attacking their analogy as a statement of literal fact. If I told him to ‘hop to it’, I expect I’d seeing him bouncing off on one foot.”
Would seem to be Mr Kininmonths point….. It is necessary to be exact in what is discussed…. There is no point using analogies. They are unnecessary and confusing. Stick to exact descriptions.
So therefore present that description and do away with the analogy… Yes?
“Would seem to be Mr Kininmonths point….. It is necessary to be exact in what is discussed…. There is no point using analogies. They are unnecessary and confusing. Stick to exact descriptions.”
He is referring to a descriptive media release, for general public consumption. If they were to release the specific science, it would be too large for a press release, and incomprehensible to the general public.
Bill Kininmonth is on a winner with FASTS, not because of the legitimate concerns about the radiative/thermal basis of the greenhouse concept, but for the following factual reasons; gavin please take note; look at these 2 temperature graphs of the 20thC;
http://i32.tinypic.com/2s01m5y.jpg
That is the HadCrut record.
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/smooth.jpg
That is the GISS record.
Both show over the 20thC an increase in temperature of about .7C. Let’s ignore that insolation and PDO equivalents can account for that, and assume it’s all due to AGW. Now, look at lucia’s ENSO free temperature graph for 2001 onwards;
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/ipcc-falsifies-gavin.gif
Lucia shows a decrease in temperature, averaged between all the sources, of about .04C; with natural climatic factors removed, the movement in temperature must be due to anthropogenic causes; so, therefore, up to 2008 temperature has ‘increased’ about 0.65C due to AGW.
Now, IPCC allocates a forcing of 3.7wm^2 to a doubling of CO2, and a temperature response of 3-4.5C. Since 1900 CO2 has gone from 280ppm to about 390; in round figures this is an increase of 40%; on the basis of the IPCC forcing estimates, which are based on their greenhouse model, temperature should have gone up 1.3-2C; there is a shortfall of about .65-1.35C. Further, since there is another 60% increase in CO2 due to verify IPCC predictions, how much does temperature have to go up to be consistent with those predictions? First, we add the shortfall to the 3-4.5 IPCC range to produce a catch-up figure of 3.65-5.85. But we only have 60% of the doubling of CO2 to use as a forcing now, since 40% has been used; so we divide the adjusted range by 100% and multiply by the remaining 60% to produce a figure of 6.1-9.75C. This is the range of temperature increase which has to occur over the next 60% increase of CO2 for the IPCC forcing formula to be verified. But for this to happen that would mean that forcing figure was drastically underestimated; just as it has been drastically overestimated for the first 40% increase in CO2.
SJT; that is dumb comment, no offence; the greenhouse has only ever been associated with the 33K surplus over the black-body; insolation is responsible for the other 255K; so if temps fall at night, don’t you think the decrease in insolation might have something to do with it?
cohenite” “an; in your Miscolczi link the Atmospheric clear-sky Kirchhoff Law diagram would resolve luke’s preoccupation with Philipona’s downward LW concept, would it not?”
It aught to but I doubt it will for Luke.
SJT….. ” it would be too large for a press release, and incomprehensible to the general public.”
I can’t imagine why it should be.
Things can be described accurately but without length or complexity and without resorting to ill-defined analogy’s.
However it will be interesting to see how FASTS respond to Mr Kininmonth.
Well i can think of a method which enables CO2 to warm the surface, Its called pressure. When air heats up it expands and applies a force in all directions. Through pv=nrt you must then increase the temperature at the surface due to compression of the gas in the entire air coloum. simple. Of course it also means that since hardly any long-wave is escaping from earth in the CO2 bandwidth then any additions of CO2 will have very little effect.
Condensing water molecules may create a downward radiation forcing because the latent heat released is equivalent to 500K of temp, which will be distributed amongst the atoms in the complex and could enable the emission of a high energy photon.
Shame the author hadn’t heard of space blankets though, oops!
“No David. Thats rubbish. That is anti-historical and anti-reason crap. Where did you get such a stupid notion as this.”
Look, its a bird, its a plane … no unfortunately it is a Bird and as usual it is poohing as it flys. When is someone going to moderate this guy out of existence? His comments are never supported by reasoned argument, they are abusive, ill-mannered and just plain infantile. Then he has the gall to complain when others give him a serve. The guy’s just piss and wind and may well be pissed as far as we know. Bring it on Birdman, I’ve got all day to waste your time. You’re an unscientific, uneducated, loudmouthed, foulmouthed grub who could do with a shower.
cohenite…thanks for ref to paper by Smith. It’s amazing that he has cherry picked a small part of the G & T paper and ignored all the good parts. He addresses hardly anything they are saying about climate scientists using extremely poor generalizations of physics, and incorrectly at that.
As you correctly point out about heating of gases under pressure, the AGW theory cherry picks thermodynamic theory and applies it in their own myopic interest. G & T list contravention after contravention of physics basics.
J. Hansford said “Ah well Gordon… Repetition is the art of pedagoguery…”
You can say that again. 🙂
Patrick B; I think Graeme is good value; if you want true vitriol and nastiness, go to Deltoid; if you want weird go to eli; I mean, I think he is a smart man, but who speaks in the third person and calls his readers “little bunnies” outside of Prince Charles?
Barry Moore said…”The NET energy flow is from hot to cold as per thermodynamic laws however when considering IR radiation you are talking about a SPECTRUM of energy whose peak and mean value is equivalent to the temperature of the emitting surface”.
Barry…it unfortunately seems that theory has been adapted in climate science that apply to gases at much higher temperatures. According to the authors of the paper I quoted earlier, back-warming doesn’t apply because the temperatures are too low and the radiator is not a blackbody radiator.
However, if you are talking about CO2 specifically, it does absorb and transmit in narrow IR bands, and I can understand a bit of what you are saying. However, the authors point the reader to a book by Clausius and he interprets the second Law of Thermodynamics to mean that a colder body cannot transfer more heat to a warmer body than what the warmer body delivers to it.
The AGW theory seems to be implying that CO2 can transfer sufficient energy to the land and ocean to warm them beyond the heat they deliver to the CO2. Think about it. The theory seems to say that CO2 heats the land and oceans so they will produce more water vapour, and that the increased water vapour will warm the atmosphere more. But how do you warm the land and ocean higher than the temperature they heated the CO2 with in the first place? That’s what seems to contravene the 2nd Law.
“That’s what seems to contravene the 2nd Law.”
The only thing wrong with that Gordon is the word ‘seems’.
“The AGW theory seems to be implying that CO2 can transfer sufficient energy to the land and ocean to warm them beyond the heat they deliver to the CO2.”
No, it doesn’t.
“The theory seems to say that CO2 heats the land and oceans so they will produce more water vapour, and that the increased water vapour will warm the atmosphere more. But how do you warm the land and ocean higher than the temperature they heated the CO2 with in the first place? That’s what seems to contravene the 2nd Law.”
What you are talking about now are positive feedbacks effects. The CO2 is not a part of the feedback, but it kick starts it. When I kick start a motorbike and ride to Sydney, the bike isn’t running all that way on the energy from my kick, but it couldn’t have got there if I hadn’t kicked it over.
Sirs:
To be fair I point out that I am a climate realist for the reasons that I state at
http://www.tech-know.eu/uploads/AGW_hypothesis_disproved.pdf
But I write to correct some mistaken ideas concerning scientific “peer review” that are presented above.
Scientific peer review is a method used by journal Editors to ensure that papers they have been asked to publish contain no blatant scientific flaws according to the judgements of scientists the Editor requests to review it. The value of this is to the Editor because it helps the Editor to avoid publishing obvious errors.
Such review does not provide authenticity to a publication and does not indicate accuracy of the contents of a publication. The value of the contents of the publication is demonstrated by failure of other scientific findings to refute the contents of the publication.
But such peer review has a serious problem. Those most capable of reviewing a submitted paper have their own views and interests, so they may be unreceptive to opposing views. Historically this has induced severe problems. For example, when eugenics was the prevailing paradigm the peer review process then made it almost impossible to publish a refutation of eugenics in any ‘respected’ journal. Now eugenics has been rejected by the ‘mainstream’ it is almost impossible to publish findings that seem to support eugenics in any ‘respected’ journal.
The Editor of Nature recognised this problem when an unknown patent’s clerk submitted for publication two papers on what later came to be known as ‘General Relativity’ and ‘Special Relativity’. So, the Editor did not send Einstein’s papers for peer review because he knew they would be rejected by peer review. Instead, he published those papers whose contents have been validated by subsequent scientific findings.
Today AGW-sceptic papers are refused publication in most major science journals because the “AGW Mafia” act as gate-keepers during the peer review process. Indeed, even Wikipedia has such a gate-keeper. And few journal Editors have the courage to publish non-mainstream views on AGW so those views can be demolished or supported by other scientific findings (Sonja Boehmer-Christinasen, Editor of E&E, is the notable exception to this cowardice).
The history of science is replete with examples of excellent science that was not peer reviewed prior to publication. For example, the Wright brothers seminal paper on aeronautics was published without peer review in a journal on bee-keeping because the ‘gate-keepers’ of atmospheric physics presented its publication in more worthy journals. But the worth of their work is demonstrated by air travel and not by its failure to pass through peer review.
Richard S Courtney
Gordon:
I am struggling with your idea that CO2 directly heats the Earth. Incoming IR should be treated the same as you would sun light and outgoing IR much the same.
The idea of back radiation seems to have problems also.
While reading this thread I started thinking about the old stereo speaker phase test. Can any one recall a complete noise cancellation?
The whole audio frequency range almost completely disappears under certain circumstances.
Jen, Congratulations on the new blog. While you were off line I went down and had a look at the evil Deltoid blog that we hear about here. Hmmm. Talk about slumming it. I felt as out of place as a G8 summit down there amidst all that youthful ignorance. (Never think these Christ beard pacifist types are harmless. They will scratch and spit if you let them get up close, and you don’t know where they’ve been.)
So returning to your blog was like walking into a more age appropriate bar. But you’ve upgraded the pine tables and Naugahyde chairs. It’s all stainless steel and glass now. Terrific.
Sirs:
I apologise for a silly typing error in my above post.
I wrote;
“The history of science is replete with examples of excellent science that was not peer reviewed prior to publication. For example, the Wright brothers seminal paper on aeronautics was published without peer review in a journal on bee-keeping because the ‘gate-keepers’ of atmospheric physics presented its publication in more worthy journals. But the worth of their work is demonstrated by air travel and not by its failure to pass through peer review.”
Of course, I intended to write:
“The history of science is replete with examples of excellent science that was not peer reviewed prior to publication. For example, the Wright brothers seminal paper on aeronautics was published without peer review in a journal on bee-keeping because the ‘gate-keepers’ of atmospheric physics prevented its publication in more worthy journals. But the worth of their work is demonstrated by air travel and not by its failure to pass through peer review.”
I am sorry if this error caused any confusion.
Richard S Courtney
“Today AGW-sceptic papers are refused publication in most major science journals because the “AGW Mafia” act as gate-keepers during the peer review process. Indeed, even Wikipedia has such a gate-keeper.”
Sigh … oh so very tired …
SJT; again, no offence, but another dumb comment. Just because the CO2 molecule and H2O molecule are both available doesn’t mean the energy pool expands; just as a CO2 molecule may broaden its spectrum sensitivity doesn’t mean it can absorb more IR, it just takes the same quantity over a slightly wider band range, so to will the energy pool remain the same with so-called +ve feedbacks; all that changes is the apportionment; this is actually seen with the increase in CO2 being matched by a decline in RH as the Minschwaner paper shows;
http://mls.jpl.nasa.gov/library?minschwaner_2004.pdf
So to with your bike analogy; you may only have one kick, but at the end of the journey the tank will be empty.
Bernard J (over at Brook): you disappoint me with your comments on Ian Enting. Anybody who like Enting twice claims that Sir David King and James Lovelock predicted that by 2100 the human race would be reduced to a “few breeding pairs in the Arctic”, implying that these pairs would by then be dolphins, can hardly be taken seriously on anything. I heard Enting at ANU recently, and he (inadvertently of course) rivalled Basil Fawlty for a laugh a minute with more of the same. How many pages of maths were there in his book, scarcely one despite his title. Maths has nothing to do with the Science of climate change, not least becasue of the inability of that Science to come up with any measurements that do not vary retrospectively from day to day, like James Belsen’s at GISS, or the same Belsen’s assertions of the average “airborne fraction” of anthro. CO2 emissions from 1958 to present, according to Belsen down from 60% in 2004 to 57% in 2008, but in fact not more than 45% since 1958 (see Marland et al CDIAC). With scientific “measurement” like Belsen’s, who needs science anyway?
Patrick B:
I understand your comment to be a display of complete agreement with my posting because you can find no fault in it.
Is my understanding correct?
Richard S Courtney
The Peer review system is at its best at Barry Brook’s bravenewclimate blog.
Speaking of peer review.
Our ‘climate expert’ Bill Kininmonth seems to have no publication record at all! Apart from one or two pieces of grey literature on convection around 1970, and of course the latter day stock-in-trade of climate skeptics- the endless opinion pieces.
But then, google scholar is probably part of the global alarmist conspiracy- and of course editors were banning Bill from journals long ago- and for the last 3o years apparently- recognising correctly that he would become a climate skeptic.
Or else- maybe he was ideologically opposed to the peer review process back then too, and all these years apparently- recognizing it as a future source of leftist dread.
More plausibly though he has just never had anything meaningful to contribute to science, but likes a bit of limelight in his dotage. And hey, if you can be climate guru to the skeptics- that must fill the trousers out a bit?
Oh but I forgot- you guys are the ones who stand for close scrutiny…
All the sceptiks attacking Mr Kininmonth’s criticism of the analogy because of course CO2 isn’t ‘literally’ a blanket, are missing the point.
Scientific analogoes are very useful, but must be applied with some accuracy in order to convey in simple terms a process that is occuring.
What Mr Kininmonth is saying, is: CO2 does NOT behave like a blanket (metaphorically speaking) so, given that FASTS are so convinced by CO2’s greenhouse effects, could they explain exactly what the processes are (i.e. maybe give a more accurate analogy).
This is not trivia as many seem to think. Our use of analogy demonstrates to a large degree our understanding of a process, and if an understanding cannot be demonstrated, then how can we trust that they know what they are talking about?
And yes, I am a sceptik, and will continue to be so until I see suitable proof of an increased greenhouse effect caused by man’s emmissions.
Sorry, I meant to start by saying ‘All the AGWists’, not ‘all the skeptics’. Apologies for the typo.
“So to with your bike analogy; you may only have one kick, but at the end of the journey the tank will be empty.”
Not at all, in this case we have the sun to provide what is for us an endless supply of energy, it’s just a matter of how much of that energy we capture.
Richard S Courtney:
“The history of science is replete with examples of excellent science that was not peer reviewed prior to publication.”
Replete huh? Really? You will have to back up a wild statement like that with some of the extensive examples you allude to.
Did the Wright brothers challenge some principle of physics? It was an engineering paper- the physical theory for flight was already in existence.
Your examples should include of course, those non-peer reviewed papers that specifically challenged a large bulk of peer reviewed material- and should preferably be in the field of physics, and should include those examples where the bright theorist/rebel had no publication record to speak of, just to align with the current skeptics. But as you say, history is replete with such examples, so you’ll have no trouble.
“Capture”; come on SJT; with our butterfly nets perhaps?
““Capture”; come on SJT; with our butterfly nets perhaps?”
Butterfly nets, I like it. Wave one around, all the air get’s through, but it still requires force to move it through the air because of the drag it creates. You could be on to something here.
When you have something very hot or very cold in a vacuum (no conduction or convection) and pour in a fixed amount of energy, it will reach a fixed temperature at the point where the energy coming in is balanced by the radiative energy leaking out of the system. If you place a shield (a thin piece of metal) around your system, part of the energy that is radiated is absorbed by the shield and re-radiated. Part is returned to the system. The net effect is that the temperature of the system is now higher than without the shield. google – furnace radiation shield –
The same principle holds when you have something cooled down to liquid helium temperature. You need radiation shields so the temperature is low enough that the helium does not turn to gas. In this case simply google – cryostat radiation shield –
The radiation shields are at intermediate temperatures between the system and the lab. Now, pls explain to Eli how this violates the second law of thermodynamics by making the system hotter/colder.
Yes, the runnaway furnace; as a thought experiment (which it must remain since the atmosphere of the Earth is not synonymous with a furnace shield) would it matter whether Alan Siddons light bulb was in the enclosure instead of the furnace; and further, would it matter whether Stewart’s Law or Kirchhoff’s Law applies?
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0805/0805.1625.pdf
Don’t know which way the furnace runs c, but for a fixed input and an outside it maintains a finite temperature, only the temperature is higher if you have a heat shield.
Irena Ischenko:
In response to my pointing out that “The history of science is replete with examples of excellent science that was not peer reviewed prior to publication”, you demand more examples and say to me:
“Your examples should include of course, those non-peer reviewed papers that specifically challenged a large bulk of peer reviewed material- and should preferably be in the field of physics, and should include those examples where the bright theorist/rebel had no publication record to speak of, just to align with the current skeptics. But as you say, history is replete with such examples, so you’ll have no trouble.”
Correct, I had no trouble. I cited Einsteinian mechanics disputing details of Newtonian mechanics that was – and had been for centuries – supported by “a large bulk of peer reviewed material” and was the core of “the field of physics”. Furthermore, that case is a clear example of a “bright theorist/rebel” who “had no publication record to speak of”.
Your failure to read what I wrote suggests that you may have some difficulty reading, so searching the very many less substantial examples may prove difficult for you. But they exist in all branches of science. For example, Google for phlogiston.
And it is very unreasonable to reject the Wright brothers as an example because they were “engineers” and not “scientists”. Milutan Milankovitch was a Serbian civil engineer who discerned the apparent relationship of glacial and interglacial states to the Earth’s axial tilt, precession and obliquity. Furthermore, he also had no publication record. But, of course, he was publishing on climatology so your demand for examples to be about “physics” excludes him.
Information is assessed on its own merits in any real science: it is not assessed on the basis of who said/wrote it or where they said/wrote it. It is an attack on the scientific method to claim that only information from certain sources should be considered.
The silly claim that only peer reviewed information should be accepted returns us to before the enlightenment. And the claim that the previous publications of a source of information prove or disprove the worth of the information is plain daft.
I said there is often a body of scientific opinion that supports publication of papers that support its own views and act as gate-keepers to inhibit publication of opposing views. I cited eugenics as one subject that had suffered from this. I then pointed out that it is now true in climatology. Many others have found the same, for example, the Wegman Report conducted a social network analysis which revealed that the small community of paleoclimate researchers appear to review each other’s work, and reuse many of the same data sets, which calls into question the independence of peer review and temperature reconstructions: that report specifically stated that:
“It is clear that many of the proxies are re-used in most of the papers. It is not surprising that
the papers would obtain similar results and so cannot really claim to be independent verifications.””
I conclusion I point out that it is possible to provide cogent pro-AGW comments that are accurate (e.g. see the contribution of Eli Rabbett above). They do not consists of simple assertions that something must be wrong merely because it does not fit what you would like to be true.
Richard S Courtney
Eli: “When you have something very hot or very cold in a vacuum (no conduction or convection) and pour in a fixed amount of energy, it will reach a fixed temperature at the point where the energy coming in is balanced by the radiative energy leaking out of the system. If you place a shield (a thin piece of metal) around your system, part of the energy that is radiated is absorbed by the shield and re-radiated. Part is returned to the system. The net effect is that the temperature of the system is now higher than without the shield.”
Or, more accurately, the shield effectively reduces the rate of nett energy loss and, while the rate of nett energy gain exceeds the rate of nett energy loss, the temperature must increase. That much we agree on.
However, the Earth’s surface loses heat not only by radiation but also by conduction – to a certain extent to the underlying rock, water etc (which we’ll ignore for the purpose of this discussion) and to the air in contact with the surface.
But, as air is a very poor conductor of heat, if it weren’t for greenhouse gases then there would be a large temperature gradient across a very thin layer of air (a few mm deep) as the surface warmed up at daybreak. Of course, this gradient would set up a thin convection layer so the lower atmosphere would very gradually warm up as the day wore on.
But the presence of greenhouse gases, principally water vapour, allows the atmosphere above this thin layer to be warmed up by conduction from the greenhouse gas molecules. This creates a much thicker and more energetic convection layer, which serves to increase the rate of heat loss by conduction from the surface.
We know that adding greenhouse gases decreases the rate of energy loss from the surface by radiation.
The question is, is this effect greater or smaller than the increase in the rate of energy loss from the surface by conduction?
Re; “the runnaway furnace; as a thought experiment”
Eli comes in with a fundamental issue “If you place a shield (a thin piece of metal) around your system, part of the energy that is radiated is absorbed by the shield and re-radiated”
In my speaker example above I posed the transmission / reflection question another way with standing (pressure) waves in air. After working with practical devices I don’t bother with lossy concepts ie the nulled sound heating up the speakers or the reflector getting hot. The best example of that is a Vulcan Conray 3D electric radiator that everybody in Melbourne had to have in order to eat up those bundles of cheap brown coal power during winter.
But being a practical man I also used to follow vapourizing radiation around induction coils on a regular basis. Sure that thing got very hot and could destroy the RF driver stage when its shape wasn’t exactly tuned to the job of turning ores to gas. Energy can flow the wrong way with devastating force.
Mrs cohenite should wonder about artificial inteligence v the tired old brain too.
We can be what we want to be in terms of understanding the mysteries of the natural world and that’s will power. Tweaking transducers at the extreem end of physics is all about our creativity and hand skills not our mathematical proweress. Our brains develop according to their use too. I started my plumbing around a pilot plant where the core reactor was in spontaneous combustion of liquid organic process waste. In this case extreem pressure created the heat that became the power.
In another lab later on I could watch scattered brain cells in tissue culture grow and reach out via a web that likewise grew as cells searched for their own kind in the medium, that’s how we knew they were alive and doing well. A life on it’s own is not so interesting. Lets all think about that for a mo
plugging into bits of science is not that helpfull. one has to be carried on a wave of understanding to get the big picture
“We know that adding greenhouse gases decreases the rate of energy loss from the surface by radiation.
The question is, is this effect greater or smaller than the increase in the rate of energy loss from the surface by conduction?”
A sensible question. With all the weird that is said around here, someone asks something that is based on a logical train of thought. The oceans do absorb a lot of the heat, which is why the Southern Hemisphere is warming slower than the Northern Hemisphere. Both are, however, warming. The earth doesn’t absorb that much heat, it is an excellent insulator.
The question is, is this effect greater or smaller than the increase in the rate of energy loss from the surface by conduction?”
Given our sea temp is quite stable day or night perhaps we could ask those living in the Carabean
In exploring the boundaries of our knowledge in physics we need to establish a reference or two but each to their own hey.
I see a discontinuity as a reflector, somebody else sees the same thing as a conductor. When I need to know about radiation down at the beach I think UV and how it burns your armpits and inner thighs. But why do we feel warm?
When I transferred from a raodster to a racer in my youth I quickly learned to compare cycle tyre pressures by “pinging” with the nail on my middle finger the tyre of the wheel raised up of the ground. Hardly scientific but all the pros did it for their own comfort and efficiency regardles. Such a calibrated finger won’t pass here though.
The question, SJT and Peter, is not correct; both conduction and radiation transfer heat from the surface to the immediate atmosphere; the issue for AGW is whether that heat is retained via layer opaqueness in the slow vertical lag that the semi-infinite model demands; Chilingar has addressed this issue;
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15567030701568727
The paper notes on p5.
“The convective component of heat transfer dominates in the troposphere. When infrared radiation is absorbed by greenhouse gases, the radiation energy is transformed into the oscillations of gas molecules, i.e., in heating of the exposed volume of gaseous mixture. Then the further heat transfer can occur either due to diffusion or by convective transfer of expanded volumes of gas. Inasmuch as the specific heats of air are very small (about 5.3.10-5cal/cm.s.C), the rates of heat transfer by diffusion do not exceed several cm/s, whereas the rates of heat transfer by convection in the troposphere can reach many metres per second.”
Several things should be noted from this;
1.The carriage of the CO2/IR rich surface air to the atmospheric top allows much greater outward IR flux to occur at that level than at the surface.
2.The upward convective transfer is consistent with the vertical decrease in pressure of the atmosphere, which therefore, both contributes to the surface temperature and facilitates the upward transport of the limited radiative (and conductive) heating effects at the surface. Chilingar in fact note this effect when they observe a slight decline in atmospheric pressure at the surface due to a Henry’s Law caused increase in oceanic uptake of CO2 and O2, which in turn results in a miniscule cooling effect because of the resulting decline in atmospheric pressure.
3. Both eli and Tamino have objected to the Chilingar paper on the basis of it being inconsistent with the wet lapse rate; but Chilingar does deal with the heating effect of water vapour on p2-3; the difference is that Chilingar regards this effect as being a -ve feedback via increased albedo.
as I said; where there is a will there is a way, especially when working in the oil and gas industry hey
Mr Courtney
You can carry on with your Wright Bros example and add in Frank Whittles jet engine etc etc.There are no end of examples of where giant strides have been made witout the highly dubious peer review process being involved.
The reluctance of the science types and the publishers, to even consider improving the system, eg to make more open and transparent, tells its own story.
Who from the boys club is going to review a paper favourably, if his own isnt cited, and treated with respect.
Richard S Courtney:
Your examples are complete and utter rubbish.
Einstein published hundreds and hundreds of scientific papers- to claim that he had no publication record to speak of, is either an attempt to mislead on your behalf, or else you just like a good story.
Prior to his seminal paper on special relativity- he had already published in the field of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. He then followed up with a series of papers in special relativity- sounds like Einstein did not fear the peer review process to me, neither was he frozen out of it by conspiratorial editors. Further- special relativity did not, as you try to suggest, disprove a large bulk of peer reviewed literature. It was an extension of classical (Newtonian) dynamics to objects that approach the speed of light- for which classical mechanics needed a correction. In the classical universe- no correction was or is required- and Galileo and Newton hold. This was an extension to into a new realm of concepts that was literally brought to light by new observations at the start of the 20th century.
To compare this situation to current climate science is absolutely hilarious, consider yourself a good comedian if nothing else. Nothing has ever been published in hard or soft literature to challenge the fundamentals of dynamics, thermodynamics and quantum physics (absorption and re-emission) that underpins climate science- show me such literature if it exists. Furthermore, not a single publication has successfully challenged the application of these principles to perform a probabilistic risk assessment of increased CO2 in the troposphere.
The suggestion by you and others on this blog is that brilliant scientists are being blocked from publishing credible alternate theories, and that such material cannot find its own way into academic circles. This is essentially a conspiracy theory- which, lets face it, is all you have got. It is also so out of touch with any form of reality- and specifically any working knowledge of government, universities and research institutions you should practically be committed. Government, universities and research institutions are not capable of maintaining such a conspiracy at the level of a state or province- let alone globally.
Hence, your comparison of the deranged bloggers- who have no qualifications, no publications and generally no institution- with Einstein is really, really clutching at straws. As is the extremely tired, desperate and transparent attempts by people here to deflect and explain away the fact that the climate skeptics have NO publications in any respected and peer reviewed journal.
Finally- you should check the definition of the word ‘replete’- and then probably check your usage- you have only come up with two and a half extremely half-arsed examples from the last 200 years of peer reviewed science. This ‘history is replete’ is simply specious crap that gets heads nodding among your fellow conspiracy theorists.
And the Wright brothers paper was an engineering paper- I will repeat it again since you have trouble understanding the scientific process- the theory underpinning flight was well established and not challenged by the Wright brothers.
You clearly have not the slightest idea what you are talking about. So come on- front up some proper examples- history is replete with them- and this time make certain you have got it right at least.
Malcolm Hill:
Reality is what it is. Reality is not whatever you, I or anybody else would like it to be.
You attempt to dispute the true nature of peer review but destroy your own position when you ask:
“Who from the boys club is going to review a paper favourably, if his own isnt cited, and treated with respect.”
The answer is, of course, very few.
And that is why enlightened journal Editors will occasionally let through unorthodox papers by not submitting them to peer review prior to publication but – instead – allowing scientific peers to assess the works after publication (I cited Einstein’s relativity papers as clear examples of this). But this happens very rarely.
More common is the experience of Lavoisier (chemistry), Mendel (biology), Wegener (plate tectonics), etc., etc, etc.. They could not get their works published for years, and when they did succeed in obtaining publication their works were not accepted by “the boys club” until after they had died decades later.
Indeed, Darwin knew his work on evolutionary theory would not be accepted by scientific reviewers so he did not offer his paper “On the Origin of Species” for publication until another worker had reached a similar conclusion: that was decades after he had written his paper (that is still a good read, today).
Science does not accept that peer review is evidence of truth. It never has. Science uses peer review to avoid blatant error but – as the history of science demonstrates – reviewers can regard disagreement with their views as being “error”. As you say it is necessary to flatter the “boys club” to get them to approve of something, and few of them are willing to accept a paper that refutes much that they have invested their careers to investigating and promoting.
Religions accept peer review as clear evidence of truth. For example, the Bible contains the Christian publications that were accepted by peer review at the Conclave in Nicinae, and several Gospels are almost forgotten because they did not pass that peer review.
The promotion of peer review by disciples of AGW as being evidence of truth is but one of several ways in which promotion of AGW has become a religion and not science.
Richard S Courtney
“Both show over the 20thC an increase in temperature of about .7C. Let’s ignore that insolation and PDO equivalents can account for that, and assume it’s all due to AGW. Now, look at lucia’s ENSO free temperature graph for 2001 onwards;”
So, lets look at a short period of time, that, when you look at the graph for the previous century, is too short to make any meaningful judgement, and I seriously doubt she was able to remove any periodic changes or background noise for such a short time period. As has already been demonstrated, aerosols and other factors are important as well. She seems to have fun creating meaningless graphs, I think she could find better things to do with her time.
“More common is the experience of Lavoisier (chemistry), Mendel (biology), Wegener (plate tectonics), etc., etc, etc.. They could not get their works published for years, and when they did succeed in obtaining publication their works were not accepted by “the boys club” until after they had died decades later.”
The only flaw in your argument is that for years, people did not accept that CO2 would be a significant influence on climate, it was the scientists who persisted with the research into such an unlikely area of science who were eventually proven right. They were the ones who went against the mainstream science. You have it completely the wrong way around.
Rabbet:
Do us all a favor and stop talking about economics as you know nothing about the subject and make a complete hash of things when you do.
Your recent comments about how we best arrange our affairs in the best possible way is a crock of crap.
Read a couple of beginners books on the subject and please stay away from Krugman.
Richard S Courtney:
Yet again you resort to twisting history to support your own themes.
“Indeed, Darwin knew his work on evolutionary theory would not be accepted by scientific reviewers ”
Pffff…
Fear of ‘scientific’ reviewers?
The challenge for scientists prior to the nineteenth century was conflict with religious beliefs, not scientific ones. That is, prescriptive religious beliefs that had no basis in fact versus ‘natural philosophy’ that was observation based. The danger to Darwin was being convicted of blasphemy by priests. His work continued in secret- with the help of scientific colleagues.
Now- by some twisted logic- the climate change skeptics, who have yet to publish anything that challenges the scientific summaries of the IPCC (which not many of you have read cover-to-cover) have recast themselves as Darwin and Einstein! And to boot, they have recast the climate scientists- who have published their observation and theoretical based work extensively and continue to do so- as the religious hierarchy.
What a complete and utter sham. How do you guys sleep at night?
On Wegener- his early theories were based on largely circumstantial evidence, which was met with typical scientific skepticism (before you guys perverted the term)- until the body of evidence mounted over a thirty year period. This was all carried out through normal publication channels. If you have evidence of a conspiracy by journal editors against Wegener- lets have it. Along with those detailed ‘history is replete’ examples I have been waiting for.
Peer review as evidence of truth Richard S Courtney? No. Evidence that you are not distorting the truth is the purpose of peer review publication. You should not paraphrase what other people stand for.
And finally, you are embarrassing yourselves by suggesting that the important work of the skeptics (well supposed important work, no one has seen it yet) is being blocked by powerful editors of peer reviewed journals. You can only maintain this fantasy amongst those not familiar with the peer review process. This hypothesis relies on the assumption that every single physical scientists of note- around the world, is complicit to the most amazingly water-tight conspiracy theory the world has yet known.
But of course- you have to watch out for those big bad journal editors- even the most persistent and motivated scientist is paralysed before them.
You guys have tried nothing- and you are all out of ideas. Go back to blogging on the moon landing and the collapse of tower seven already.
Thats right SJT- the climate scientists are the ones who are proposing something that is counter to the current social-economic hegemony. They have been the ones who have had to put up with gallons of vitriol from politicians and economists- and the ones who have stuck their necks on the line.
They are also the ones with evidence and theory and publications. The anti-AGW crowd has one thing only- hope. Hope that all that CO2 will magically do nothing to the climate. Hope that everything will be OK -without the need to hedge against high risk.
Scientists deal with evidence- priests deal with hope. Quit portraying yourselves as scientific martyrs already.
“You can carry on with your Wright Bros example and add in Frank Whittles jet engine etc etc.There are no end of examples of where giant strides have been made witout the highly dubious peer review process being involved.”
Engineering, not science. There are science examples, but as you don’t seem to know the difference I won’t bother.
Richard Courtney
A recent example of an editor publishing a paper rejected by peer reviews occurred in the New Concepts in Global Tectonics Newsletter recently, and as explicitly stated in the the editorial.
However we should regard comments by the anonymice here, SJT & FDB, as thirdhand reactions rather than reasoned deliberation of primary facts.
gavin said…”Gordon: I am struggling with your idea that CO2 directly heats the Earth. Incoming IR should be treated the same as you would sun light and outgoing IR much the same”.
You’re struggling??…welcome aboard, mate.
I was paraphrasing what I understand to be the AGW position on CO2 warming. Since SJT replied, pointing out that CO2 was a kick start to positive feedback, but not a feedback itself, I’ll reply to him here as well.
A positive feedback to me is a process that enhances an effect. In this case, we’re talking about warming in the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth. As I understand the theory, water vapour absorbs IR from the surface, which is heated by the Sun. The water vapour ‘somehow’ helps to keep the atmosphere at a warmer temperature by transporting heat and re-radiating it to the surface.
With CO2 in the atmosphere, it supposedly absorbs IR and re-radiates it to the surface. The claim of the AGW theory is that it warms the surface (including oceans, lakes and presumably ground water) enough to evapourate more water vapour, and since water vapour is a significant warmer, the warming is enhanced. That’s your positive feedback: more CO2 – more water vapour – more warming.
The problem I’m having with that process is the notion that the CO2 can somehow warm the surface more than it was initially before the surface warmed the CO2. That contravenes the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
About the Sun. According to the paper I quoted by Gerlich and Tscheuschner at:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161v3
there is an appreciable IR content in the incoming radiant energy of the Sun that is being ignored. In Figure 5 on page 22, there is a spectrum of the Sun’s radiation and eyeballing it alone shows a significant IR portion. That incoming IR has to warm the atmosphere as well according to the authors but it is never mentioned in AGW greenhouse examples.
In fact, the authors go into an in-depth analysis of the freebody diagrams used by the AGW crowd. The authors claim the drawings, with vector-like arrows representing quantities of heat, are overly-simplified and vague. If you think about it, even from a layman’s POV, those arrows are meaningless. They suggest points in the atmosphere between which processes are occuring.
In real life, the atmosphere is a continuous body of gas that is in direct contact with the Earth. Not only that, it has a pressure/density gradient that reduces with elevation. The authors seem to be saying that the AGW theories are treating the atmosphere as a thin shell, hence their inferences don’t apply.
With regard to your statement above that incoming IR should be treated the same as sunlight and outgoing IR, that seems to confuse the notion of heat flow.
I’m trying to regard the problem of one body, the atmosphere, being in direct contact with another body, the surface. It doesn’t matter if the IR is in discrete bands, we’re interested in the heat flow that causes the warming. As the authors are quick to point, out, there are very complex problems in such an analogy, but that doesn’t seem to bother the climate scientists who advocate the AGW theory. There is no blanket and there is no greenhouse boundary. In fact, the mathematics involved to simulate that environment in a computer is not even available, nor is the computing power.
Nevertheless, with regard to your point, you have to be really careful with your incoming and outgoing IR. Rahmstorf, over at RC, claims the warming from the surface being re-radiated should add to the incoming heat from the Sun. He says: “the second law is not violated by the greenhouse effect, of course, since, during the radiative exchange, in both directions the net energy flows from the warmth to the cold.”
The authors claim “Rahmstorf’s reference to the second law of thermodynamics is plainly wrong. The second law is a statement about heat, not about energy. Furthermore the author introduces an obscure notion of “net energy flow”. The relevant quantity is the “net heat flow”, which, of course, is the sum of the upward and the downward heat flow within a fixed system, here the atmospheric system. It is inadmissible to apply the second law for the upward and downward heat separately redefining the thermodynamic system on the fly”.
Energy is an amount of heat over a time period. I’m thinking the time thing may be the issue. It seems an assumption has been made that heat is somehow stored, like electrical charge in a capacitor, and delivered at a later time, whereas the heat engine as a system doesn’t seem to operate that way.
I’m not pretending to fully understand the ramifications of what they are saying, but if you look at what Rahmstorf is implying, he’s getting something for nothing. I think the mistake that’s being made is trying to look at the atmospheric system as discrete components. The Sun establishes the heat on the surface, the surface warms the CO2, and the CO2 is infered to warm the surface more than the surface was initially. But it was the surface that warmed the CO2 and the 2nd Law says a cooler body cannot warm a warmer body more than the heat given to it by the warm body. Rahmstorf seems to be adding the heat from the CO2 vectorally rather than taking it as an already established internal part of a heat system.
While I’m writing this, I’m plagued by another notion…well…not exactly plagued. All the surface temperatures are measured in boxes located anywhere from 5′ to 15′ above the surface…in the atmosphere!! As if that’s not bad enough, how exactly do you do that over an ocean, then extrapolate all those measurements to a mean global temperature?
Not so, claim the authors.
SJT; again you miss the point; the IPCC forcing figure for the 20thC was well behind the 8-ball; lucia’s graph from 2001 (in response to a Schmidt effort where he found removing the ENSO effect produced an upward anhtropogenic trend) shows that forcing error is being compounded, ascerbated, into the 21stC; actually, lucia’s effort follows from the 20thC error and is, therefore, not subject to the usual “too short” a period argument that you have lapsed into. The issue is, the temperature trend is nowhere what IPCC forcing says it should be; since AGW is predicated on that forcing figure, the theory is in disarray.
SJT: ‘The only flaw in your argument is that for years, people did not accept that CO2 would be a significant influence on climate, it was the scientists who persisted with the research into such an unlikely area of science who were eventually proven right.’ How were they proven right?
Richard your link to “Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis disproved” points out many of the issues covered at length on this blog over the last few years. I am in general agreement with these. We have not however been able to convince the likes of SJT, NT, Luke, Bernard et al.
I notice at the bottom of your “hypothesis” that you were an IPCC reviewer, how was your sceptiscm viewed by your “peers” and how have they responded to you since?
I ask because it seems to me it takes a very brave individual to stick their head up against this new religion. Has it impacted on your career do you think and your standing in your professional world?
I am vocal about it within higher school education, and i cop a lot of abuse …fortunately the kids are mostly capable of thinking for themselves and the majority do indeed also seem to be sceptical. ( much as gavin will find that hard to believe).
Gordon-
“The problem I’m having with that process is the notion that the CO2 can somehow warm the surface more than it was initially before the surface warmed the CO2. That contravenes the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.”
Not so- its simple black-body physics.
The effective temperature of the Earth remains the same- regardless of the composition of the atmosphere.
The effective temperature is the blackbody temperature of the earth at the top of the atmosphere. The only way this changes is if you change albedo or insolation parameters.
The reason the surface warms up with increasing CO2 is the same reason the surface is currently warmer than the top of the atmosphere, effective temperature. Its called the greenhouse effect.
There has to be some heating- somewhere in the atmospheric column- to account for the energy that is absorbed and re-emitted by radiative gases within the column.
Where does this warming occur? Well, apart from being led by the current vertical temperature profile, this is not necessarily intuitive. You need a radiative model to numerically solve this- ie at which level the maximum warming occurs. And the radiative models are not speculative- they are well backed up by theory, observations and experiment.
How do we know all this? Because there is an amazing body of work that supports it in the published literature.
And what does the radiative code suggest the vertical profile should look like with increasing CO2?- warming at the surface and cooling aloft (with the effective temperature the same of course)- exactly whats observed.
Hell- if you are even asking these questions you have not even read the first IPCC assessment. I won’t bother you guys with science from now on- it clearly spoils the party.
Stephen Wilde said…”Some readers may find useful my series of articles on this link:
http://co2sceptics.com/news.php?tag=stephen+wilde
Thanks Stephen…interesting article…I’ll check out the rest later. It seems these days it doesn’t matter how much sense you make, the criterion has become peer-review and consensus.
“It seems these days it doesn’t matter how much sense you make, the criterion has become peer-review and consensus.”
That’s right! And that’s quite proper. Since when was “making sense” a measurable or agreed-upon criterion for anything? If you can demonstrate something is true (or the most likely among many explanations) it matters not a jot whether some guy on a blog thinks it “makes sense”.
Conversely if you can’t make a proper scientific argument to demonstrate something, the sense it makes matters just as little to real scientists.
Gordon
Stephen Wilde’s articles are interesting – his hot water bottle effect is even more so as it implies that the thermal state of the atmosphere actually depends on the oceans.
Having downwelling IR warm the oceans is not much different to you or I standing in front of a fire, getting warm and toasty, and then with this elevated personal temperature having the ability to then warm the thing that warmed us in the first plac.
I don’t think the global warmers have thought this hypothesis through – the anonymice here have certainly not shown any evidence that they understand the physics at all.
Quite Right Toby!
Richard- who indeed are your peers, what is your qualification and in what capacity were you an ‘IPCC Reviewer’?
That would be enlightening.
FDB
You do not understand science at all.
A scientific fact is established by compulsion of experiment, not debate let, alone reasonable argument.
Demonstrating something to be true is not how it’s done – it has to be falsified by experiment, and AGW has been comprehensively falsified by observation and measurement.
In addition to demonstrating something to be true by technical or statistics is nothing but a shorthand way of debating a point. Mathematics is simpply thoughts expressed in symbols rather than convoluted sentences made of words.
Again this the method establishing truth by reasoned argument and pure Socratic dialectics.
But it isn’t science because science demands an experiment de done to test it.
Richard S Courtney:
Your examples are complete and utter rubbish.
Einstein published hundreds and hundreds of scientific papers- to claim that he had no publication record to speak of, is either an attempt to mislead on your behalf, or else you just like a good story.
Prior to his seminal paper on special relativity- he had already published in the field of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. He then followed up with a series of papers in special relativity- sounds like Einstein did not fear the peer review process to me, neither was he frozen out of it by conspiratorial editors. Further- special relativity did not, as you try to suggest, disprove a large bulk of peer reviewed literature. It was an extension of classical (Newtonian) dynamics to objects that approach the speed of light- for which classical mechanics needed a correction. In the classical universe- no correction was or is required- and Galileo and Newton hold. This was an extension to into a new realm of concepts that was literally brought to light by new observations at the start of the 20th century.
To compare this situation to current climate science is absolutely hilarious, consider yourself a good comedian if nothing else. Nothing has ever been published in hard or soft literature to challenge the fundamentals of dynamics, thermodynamics and quantum physics (absorption and re-emission) that underpins climate science- show me such literature if it exists. Furthermore, not a single publication has successfully challenged the application of these principles to perform a probabilistic risk assessment of increased CO2 in the troposphere.
The suggestion by you and others on this blog is that brilliant scientists are being blocked from publishing credible alternate theories, and that such material cannot find its own way into academic circles. This is essentially a conspiracy theory- which, lets face it, is all you have got. It is also so out of touch with any form of reality- and specifically any working knowledge of government, universities and research institutions you should practically be committed. Government, universities and research institutions are not capable of maintaining such a conspiracy at the level of a state or province- let alone globally.
Hence, your comparison of the deranged bloggers- who have no qualifications, no publications and generally no institution- with Einstein is really, really clutching at straws. As is the extremely tired, desperate and transparent attempts by people here to deflect and explain away the fact that the climate skeptics have NO publications in any respected and peer reviewed journal.
Finally- you should check the definition of the word ‘replete’- and then probably check your usage- you have only come up with two and a half extremely half-arsed examples from the last 200 years of peer reviewed science. This ‘history is replete’ is simply specious crap that gets heads nodding among your fellow conspiracy theorists.
And the Wright brothers paper was an engineering paper- I will repeat it again since you have trouble understanding the scientific process- the theory underpinning flight was well established and not challenged by the Wright brothers.
You clearly have not the slightest idea what you are talking about. So come on- front up some proper examples- history is replete with them- and this time make certain you have got it right at least.
Question…..
What process is evaporating water from the surface of the ocean… Sunlight (radiant energy) or ambient temperature (backradiation)
If all CO2 was removed from the atmosphere, would evaporation of water cease?
If not.
Would water vapor atmospheric content adjust to substitute the role of the missing 0.380% CO2, thus maintaining the current equilibrium, or would it be changed to a new equilibrium?
Would Water vapor remain in the atmosphere after dark?
It seems to me that if you are going to study one GHG… it would be wise to study the most abundant.
That should have been 0.380ppb CO2. Sorry.
Sorry for the double post- double tasking ATM.
So Irena, what do you think of Richard’s “hypothesis” link?
Irena,
A couple of comments:
1. Skeptics certainly aren’t as well published as the warmaholics but they are published. There has been some published work out of the Danish Space Institute on cosmic ray theory and there is a team around Roy Spencer (University of Alabama) who publish in the mainstream journals.
Spencer’s work suggests other parts of the climate system are compensating for the potential effects of warming ffrom more greenhouse gases.
2. You have suggested in a comment in this thread that there is an extensive literature on the greenhouse effect. Could you provide some citations to work in peer reviewed journals …seminal papers would be great?
‘As is the extremely tired, desperate and transparent attempts by people here to deflect and explain away the fact that the climate skeptics have NO publications in any respected and peer reviewed journal.
‘ See here http://friendsofscience.org/assets/files/documents/Madhav%20bibliography%20SHORT%20VERSION%20Feb%206-07.pdf for about 70 references up to Jan 2007 just to get started. Is “respected” an instance of getting your retaliation in first?
“SJT; again you miss the point; the IPCC forcing figure for the 20thC was well behind the 8-ball; lucia’s graph from 2001 (in response to a Schmidt effort where he found removing the ENSO effect produced an upward anhtropogenic trend) shows that forcing error is being compounded, ascerbated, into the 21stC; actually, lucia’s effort follows from the 20thC error and is, therefore, not subject to the usual “too short” a period argument that you have lapsed into. The issue is, the temperature trend is nowhere what IPCC forcing says it should be; since AGW is predicated on that forcing figure, the theory is in disarray.”
What a weird way of doing statistics, you can’t compare one century to the next, if the next hasn’t even finished the first decade. WHat nonsense.
Toby- not much.
What am I supposed to say?
I mean, its hardly ‘new’ is it?
It is simply the well worn and familiar cherry picking of data and selective interpretation of disparate facts to produce a story. The same story that you guys have been putting up for at least 15 years.
Thats plenty of time to have put all this together into a series of wonderful papers that carefully address each of the chapters outlined in four successive IPCC reports- which outline the mainstream science.
And thats the point fellas- the onus is now on everyone (you and us) to refute and critically evaluate the current science, following the scientific process.
As a refutation of the mainstream- this is a pretty piss-poor effort. I’m certain you need more than some specious dot-points to refute a rather large body of work.
In addition- the IPCC summaries are probabilistic rather then deterministic, rather like the scientific summary that concludes smoking causes cancer. Now, I can find individuals that have smoked their whole lives and are healthy. I can probably find whole populations like that if I look hard enough. But I haven’t done a thing to alter the RISK ASSESSMENT of continuing to smoke- which would require an awful lot more work on my behalf- understandably.
So where is the hard science that shows that CO2 is harmless as a radiative gas- and says that we should be free to pump it into the atmosphere?
Again- you guys have done no work- zip- zero- nothing- toward this end. All you have done is show that for a glacial cycle the temperature change leads the CO2 increase (which does not throw any light on causality)- and thats it. Sorry, throw in some unphysical arguments that kick around the blogosphere.
Like I said- you have simply crossed your fingers and are probably hoping the Lord will save us or some crap like that- rather then doing anything worthwhile.
But of course- there has been a water-tight global conspiracy preventing such publications for the last 30 years hasn’t there?
Again- why do you guys bother with the science? Your whole proposition clearly rests upon a global conspiracy theory. So why don’t you guys spend your time fleshing that out a bit more convincingly as well- its all a little amorphous and unconvincing as it is.
” It seems to me that if you are going to study one GHG… it would be wise to study the most abundant.”
It seems to me very strange that anyone would think they don’t. Of course water vapour is studied, that’s why they are telling us it’s going to be part of a feedback mechanism. That’s why it’s mentioned in the IPCC reports.
Lazlo-
I have actually read most of the papers in that list that appear in peer reviewed journals.
Have you?
I doubt it. Because if you had you would be aware that most of the peer reviewed publications- for example Moberg et al (2005)- do not actually refute the mainstream science. Nice trick though- its easy to fool those not familiar with the literature.
Many of them are by lead authors that actively defend the mainstream science. Such as John Church- the sea-level expert.
Many of them attempt to resolve the role of various natural forcings on internal modes of climate variability- and on specific climate events- they have nothing to do with planetary scale forcing by CO2- and again, do not refute the mainstream.
The only ones that flat-out do attempt to do that are the ones published in ‘erm, ‘Energy and Environment- and maybe ‘Natural Hazards’, and yes- reputable is preemptive in that case- LOL!
So- what you should do, is do some work. Go away and read the articles and then summarise them for the audience here.
Try this one for starters:
“A study of NAO variability and its possible non-linear influences on European surface
temperatures” D Pozo-Vazquez et al Climate Dynamics, Vol. 17 (2001) p. 701-715
We’ll be waiting.
Finally- the conclusions presented at the end of that PDF are complete garbage- and highlight the inherent dishonesty of the approach that all of you take.
For instance.
2. Solar variability and changes in large-scale atmospheric flow patterns in recent years have
also contributed to some of the recent warming of the earth’s surface.
This statement DOES NOT refute that CO2 has been the major driver of warming over the last 60 years. In fact, its what the IPCC have already said! Wow!
Jennifer-
You’re not serious are you?
Thankfully climate scientists have made one of the most well organised efforts in history- to documenting the published literature. They are the scientific reviews of the IPCC- 1,2,3 and 4.
I’m not asking you to agree with the reviews- just make use of the reference lists! That will allow you to work out which seminal papers you are after- I can’t guess.
But thats why the reports were made- to disseminate the science to non-experts. There is not much we can do if you take the position that its all part of some global conspiracy- thats your bag.
If it is specifically the radiative effect of greenhouse gases and the development of radiative code to handle the atmosphere- thats in there as well. They are all online.
Irena. I was simply and solely responding to the ‘climate skeptics have NO publications’ mantra. It is a demonstrably untrue statement.
Hi Irene, You indicated earlier in the thread that there are lots of papers published in peer review journals on the subject. I am particularly after papers that deal with the issue of causation (not correlation) in a real world context. I am not interested in the IPCC reports.
Lazlo-
Climate skeptics have no publications. There are many papers that attempt to further clarify uncertainties that effect the climate sensitivity to CO2. These papers are part of the mainstream. The uncertainties have been extensively published. If you don’t believe this, then why are the IPCC conclusions probabilistic?
There are no papers that show results that directly contravene the scientific papers that show CO2 is a radiatively active gas that absorbs outgoing LW radiation. There are no papers that show that CO2 does not warm the surface. There are no papers that present results that contravene the detection and attribution studies using climate models. Finally there are no papers that present the uncertainties in such a way as to downscale the significant risk of dramatic climate change that is posed by doubling and tripling atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
Jennifer- Its a shame you are not interested in the IPCC reports- since they represent a review of all the science.
But in my message I wasn’t asking you to accept their review.
This is how it works- you open up one of the IPCC reports- you track the section you want and make a note of the relevant references. Then you look them up and read them. They are seminal papers. I can’t give you a list of what you want, because only you know what your line of reasoning is.
I can have a go for you.
Start with particle physics. Some literature behind it I believe. Extremely sound place to start. Spectral absorption and re-emission. Spectral broadening is a quantum effect that is relevant to saturation in the atmosphere- check that. And you may as well check out isotopic analysis, it will help you later.
Then move to composition of the atmosphere. Also extremely sound place. Lots of literature again. Check atmospheric window.
Back to particle physics- I’ll point you to S. Twomey. You get his papers and use the reference list to spread from there. Backscattering, radiative profiles. Old school science.
Stephen Boltzmann is going to come in handy right about now. Blackbodies. Temperatures and radiation.
Now, at the end of this- you know enough to already work out that CO2 is a powerful radiative gas, within the context of the Earth’s atmosphere. If you were clever and organised, you would formulate policy based on this bit alone.
This is the literature of causation.
The studies of correlation- particularly the numerical modeling- simply reinforce the potential danger to the atmosphere of increasing CO2.
But hey- if you prefer to believe in conspiracies or simply hope its not true or…maybe, prefer the word of the blogging community..we’ll thats fair enough.
I bet that you all insure your houses, and faithfully take your medication, without digging out the research papers. Its different when your own neck is on the line though huh…
All:
I thank Louis Hissink for his contribution of recent factual evidence which supports my argument.
And I thank SJT for providing a proper dispute of my argument when he says;
“More common is the experience of Lavoisier (chemistry), Mendel (biology), Wegener (plate tectonics), etc., etc, etc.. They could not get their works published for years, and when they did succeed in obtaining publication their works were not accepted by “the boys club” until after they had died decades later.”
The only flaw in your argument is that for years, people did not accept that CO2 would be a significant influence on climate, it was the scientists who persisted with the research into such an unlikely area of science who were eventually proven right. They were the ones who went against the mainstream science. You have it completely the wrong way around.
I understand the point that is well put, but I have not got “it completely the wrong way around” because the facts are not as SJT says.
In fact, for many years the global temperature was observed to be cooling (from ~1940 to ~1970) and the paradigm was that the burning of fossil fuels was emitting soot and sulphur that were responsible for the cooling. The paradigm was so strong that a group of “concerned scientists” wrote to the US President because they wanted action to stop the emissions from triggering an ice age.
(We now know that this was wrong. Soot (i.e. carbonaceous material from combustion) combines with anthropogenic sulphur in the air and the combination provides strong greenhouse warming: ref. Jacobson MZ, “Strong radiative heating due to the mixing state of black carbon in atmospheric aerosols”, Nature, v409, 695-697 (2000). So, the soot/sulphur should have caused warming and not cooling. The globally averaged warming (i.e. radiative forcing potential) from the soot/sulphur is calculated to be powerful (0.55 Wm^-2) and is between the potentials of carbon dioxide (1.56 Wm^-2) and methane (0.47 Wm^-2) that IPCC had claimed to be the two major trace greenhouse gases).
But the real world failed to obey their climate models which indicated continued cooling, and the global temperature started to rise around ~1970. By about 1980 the global cooling scare had become untenable. But the AGW hypothesis had been around for nearly a century and it fitted the bill.
So, those who had been claiming anthropogenic emissions were causing dangerous climate change continued their claim but amended it to accommodate the new situation. They now said that emissions from fossil fuel burning (carbon dioxide) were causing the observed warming just as they had said that emissions from fossil fuel burning (soot and sulphur) had been the cause of global cooling.
People can form their own opinions of what the climate-change-scare-mongers are likely to do if the global cooling of the last decade continues.
But, throughout it all, climate realists have continued to point out that empirical evidence does not support claims that anthropogenic emissions are causing dangerous climate change. Of course human activity affects climate (e.g. cities are warmer than their surroundings) and some human activities can have serious climate consequences (e.g. deforestation can cause significant changes to local precipitation), but all available evidence suggests that the scares of global climate change are not warranted.
Simply, climate realists have continued – and continue – to oppose the unfounded scare of global climate change that is promoted by misinformation, disinformation, and defamation of disbelievers. And scientists conduct work on global climate change because it is ‘easy money’: climate change research is given at least $5 billion per year by governments (and I have my snout in the trough). But, despite the funding – whatever the scare is – the scare is not “mainstream science”.
I answer SJT’s other point below.
Irena:
You have made four posts in response to my recent arguments. They contain many words but no substance so it is not possible to answer them except to say that you are entitled to your beliefs but your ideology has no place in a scientific discussion. And somebody needs to tell you that repetition does not add cogency.
However, you ask me:
Richard- who indeed are your peers, what is your qualification and in what capacity were you an ‘IPCC Reviewer’?
That would be enlightening.
I was asked to review the recent IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007) by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and I was asked to review the recent IPCC Synthesis Report by the IPCC Chairman, Rajendra Pachauri. My “peers” can select themselves. And I fail to understand what “enlightenment” this information can provide.
Pertinent to this is SJT’s questions. He asks;
I notice at the bottom of your “hypothesis” that you were an IPCC reviewer, how was your sceptiscm viewed by your “peers” and how have they responded to you since?
I ask because it seems to me it takes a very brave individual to stick their head up against this new religion. Has it impacted on your career do you think and your standing in your professional world?
There is not space here for a full answer to this. One day somebody (not me) will write a book on the treatment of climate realists.
The IPCC ignored all my review comments. All IPCC review comments on the drafts of IPCC (2007) are availabl on-line as a result of several ‘public information’ requests. However, if you want a collated copy of my review coments then email me and I will send it.
I find that – with a very few notable exceptions – other scientists discuss these matters with me in a tone of mutual tolerance and respect. This is as it should be: science is about disputation to resolve disagreements in a search for scientific truth.
And I do not think it has harmed my proffessional activities. I cannot know if I would have personally benefitted if my views were different but – on balance – I think my views have not harmed my professional activities. I am an independent scientist conducting limited research and literature evaluations on matters of energy and the environment (perhaps of interest in this thread is that I am constantly asked to peer review papers for publication but I get no income from that). Most of my clients are politicians and governments who know the information their civil servants will provide and require an independent assessment of that information (contrary to popular opinion, most politicians are not fools and they recognise that they need awareness of alternatives to one-sided assertions if they are to avoid ‘elephant traps’). There are probably between two and three thousand independent scientists who do similar work to myself in various fields of science, technology and economics.
It is for those who are considering employing my services – and not for me – to assess my standing in my professional world. To date the requests for my services have been too great for me to accept them all. And, for clarity, I have not worked for any energy producer, supplier or agency (except governments) for over a decade because they don’t fund climate work for fear of another Brent Spar incident.
However, things are different in public employment Michaels and Legates were sacked as State Climatologists in the US and Tenekes was sacked as head of Hollands met. office because they insisted on being climate realists. Not every public employee has to be sacked for them all to get the message.
And the actions of climate activists are despicable. I have had two computer systems destroyed by concerted attacks. I am an Accredited Methodist Preacher and the Church was called on to investigate my activities because it was asserted that my climate realism was bringing discredit on the Church. Entire web sites have been established to tell lies about me. This started when I helped the late John Daly by obtaining copies of original documents from the archives of the Royal Society and Daly used them to provide a paper he submitted to GRL that proved John Hunter had fabricated data he had published in GRL. Hunter responded by setting up web sites that defamed Daly and me. His defamations were complete fabrications but they have been copied into several other web sites that only exist to defame climate realists.
But I have had it easy compared to some other climate reaists. For example, Tim Ball has had death threats and I have not had those.
Richard S Courtney
Richard; excellent reply; it has long been my contention that in this debate one side is presenting reasoned, scientific argument; the other side is doing something else. Keep up the good work.
SJT; you say you can’t compare onecentury with another; so are you suggesting that we start afresh with CO2 and temperature trends from 2001? That would be foolish; my point was that during the 20thC IPCC forcing figures for CO2 increases dismally failed to correspond with temperature changes; the 21stC has continued and in creased that lack of correlation. Or are you saying the IPCC forcing figures for increased CO2 have been vindicated. Perhaps Irene may care to comment on this as well.
“SJT; you say you can’t compare onecentury with another;”
I didn’t say that, I said you can’t compare a whole century with less than a decade. It doesn’t make any sense.
Richard, excellent reply. Please note SJT did not ask you about “how was your sceptiscm viewed by your “peers” and how have they responded to you since?
I ask because it seems to me it takes a very brave individual to stick their head up against this new religion. Has it impacted on your career do you think and your standing in your professional world?”, I did and I thankyou for your reply.
It seems to indicate that there is scope to voice your opinion and not damage your professional credibilty. That is refreshing to hear….i hope more start to do it!..if they dont then maybe there arent many scientists who disagree!?
Cohenite, SJT thinks 100 years is too little when it suits but 30 years of warming is enough to prove the case for AGW.
Irena, I would agree with you that there are few scientific reports refuting co2 as a greenhouse gas. BUT there is plenty of debate about the degree of warming likely to be caused, and there seems to be a resasonable case to suggest that most of the warming that can be attributable to additional units of co2 has already occured.
Potentially the IPCC has doubts also because it seems to hide them by referring to the first report as if it was gospel. Maybe you could read some of cohenite and barry moores ( sorry if i forgot people) comments on the last 2 co2 threads.
As Jennifer has pointed out, she is looking for causation (not correlation) in a real world context….we know how it works in a science lab……but the real world is very very different…isnt? and hear lies the crux of the issue. You have to rely on models.
It seems apparent that the predicted warming of the models has not occurred. Also the expected hot spot has not appeared. AND a significant amount of teh 0.7c warming we have seen is easily attributable to natural events,,,this doesnt leave much for co2 does it?
Also, we are yet to reach temperatures seen during the MWP much as MANN would have us believe it never happened ( and many others despite real evidence it occured that vastly outweighs AGW evidence)…and the IPCC who initially included it in their first report so conveniently managed to leave it out and use Manns debunked and potentially fraudulent hockey stick.
Irena. ‘Climate skeptics have no publications.’ So Christy, McIntyre, Lindzen, Spencer, Spencer, McKitrick et al are not skeptics, or they have not published? Whacko stuff..
In fact (deleting duplicate Spencer) it’s not whacko, it’s the politics of the Big Lie
“Richard, excellent reply. Please note SJT did not ask you about “how was your sceptiscm viewed by your “peers” and how have they responded to you since?
I ask because it seems to me it takes a very brave individual to stick their head up against this new religion. Has it impacted on your career do you think and your standing in your professional world?”, I did and I thankyou for your reply.”
What professional career? He has no more professional involvement in all of this than you or me.
SJT:
You say of me:
“What professional career? He has no more professional involvement in all of this than you or me.”
Oh!? So, you say that – like me – you are making a living from AGW and you are also one of the 400 or 2,000 or 5,000 (whatever the present claim is) “climate scientists who provided the IPCC Report”.
OK. In response to the impertinent questions from you and Irena, I explained my activities and work (but did not list my publications) on AGW. So, since you say your “involvement” is the same as my own then perhaps you would tell us what your “involvement” is, and perhaps you would state your name so we can see your IPCC Review comments (as others can see mine on the IPCC web site)?
Failing that, apologise.
Richard S Courtney
Richard; don’t hold your breath waiting for an apology;
SJT; you are being disingenuous! My original post gave you a HadCrut and a GISS temp graph for the 20thC; they both showed about 0.7C temp increase over that period; lucia’s graph shows all temp indices, including GISS and HadCrut, averaged for the 21stC; lucia’s is a continuation of the 20thC temp record, altered to bias AGW by removal of ENSO you nong; what could be fairer? But that period knocks about 0.05C off the temp history to give a temp increase over the period from 1900-2008 of about 0.65C; now match that with the increase in CO2 and compare it with IPCC’s forcing figure; now, what do you get? And stop dissembling!
Toby:
I apologise for confusing where the questions came from. I hope the answers were adequate. Please email me if you need more detail.
And the response of SJT is good example of the problem. Activists have no arguments – only assertions – so they use lies and innuendoes in attempt to smear and defame those who refuse to accept their assertions. And, in common with SJT, they usually do it behind a cowardly shield of anonimity.
Richard
Irena, You have made such a defence of peer-review and now you retreat to a report based on consensus. I’m dissappointed. Why not then just read Bill’s book: http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Change-Natural-William-Kininmonth/dp/0906522269
There has been a study undertaken by a pair of physicists. Gerhard Ehrlich and Ralphe D. Tschuesner study is titled “The falsification of CO2” (.pdf is here: http://www.mikechurch.com/joomla/images/stories/global_NOT_warming/Falsification_of_CO2.pdf).
Their Conclusion is that the laws of thermodynamics do not comport with “The Greenhouse Effect”. Furthermore, they could not replicate the Greenhouse hypothesis in a laboratory.
Certainly their work should offer a direction for further study and discussion. David Archibald has done some fascinating work with solar cycle studies and has concluded that the Sun is a far more likely culprit in climate change than the beneficial gas CO2. (http://www.mikechurch.com/joomla/daily-features/the-iceage-cometh.html)
M C
SJT: “The oceans do absorb a lot of the heat, which is why the Southern Hemisphere is warming slower than the Northern Hemisphere. Both are, however, warming. The earth doesn’t absorb that much heat, it is an excellent insulator.”
er, I specifically excluded the effects of conduction to earth and oceans in my posting – which was about increasing greenhouse gases tending to increase convection, and therefore tending to increase the rate of heat loss from the surface (by increasing conduction to the atmosphere)
There are familiar issues being drawn out again in this thread. One of them is the value of opinions from commentators who are practiced enough to write whole books on their pet subjects. This blog is very busy peddling books and supportive posts that refute works in the mainstream.
IMO motive becomes the dominant feature in most cases presented here. Let’s keep the book bazaar separate. Thanks Jennifer.
It’s been a while since I started asking myself questions like why former heads of government agencies bother to get on the bandwagon later on. Perhaps they are frustrated with their current position in society.
But then I remember how many scientific papers get published. The authors all depend heavily on their team. One such team player I recall was brilliant at negotiation with all and sundry from the faculties, governments and publishing houses etc from her desk top publishing outfit within the department. Pouring oil on troubled waters in science is a particular skill that must exist beforehand if much is to get out beyond the corridors by the labs. The same skills are necessary in medicine and anthropology.
As heads go they get more remote from the bench as time goes on and that’s a big problem with any publications repeating echoes of the past (smile). Indeed we are lucky if we get youngsters acknowledged up front early. For those dependent on books in topical science, read widely and often.
Mike Church raised a crucial point – the atmospheric GH effect could not be duplicated in the laboratory.
For empirical scientists this amounts to a rejection of the hypothesis since physically modelling the atmospheric GH effect is necessary.
What the AGW crowd do is to follow Einstein’s methodology of “gedankenexperimentum” “Thought experiments” by way of complex computer models based on a belief in a CO2 greenhouse hypothesis arrived from consensus.
Referring to Irena’s various assertions, Jennifer asked some time ago for a refereed scientific paper confirming the physical operation of the GH effect – in other words empirical proof of Arrhenius’ 1896 paper in which he proposed that a reduction of atmospheric CO2 caused the ice ages.
By virtue of the comments post on this thread and others, no one has been able to supply a paper fitting this specification.
That William, as a competent climate scientist, is questioning the very fundamentals of the GH effect as put by the IPCC should send a warning signal to the anonymice here that they should heed Oliver Cromwell’s famous statement made all these centuries ago:
“Gentlemen, I beseech you to even consider the possibility ye might be mistaken” or words to that effect.
sjt, you make some stupid comments, and fortunately i delete my responses because they will not add to teh debate. But this time you show once again how blind and religous you are in your faith. Are you infact over 18? your comment sare usually so stupid I would expect them to come from an adolescent. To use a Luke expression. STFU!
And I apologise to others for submitting this comment.
Greenhouse Students see “hot topics”
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/publications/index.html
Simply put
http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/greenhouse.htm
How we fit in
http://www.icmpa.umd.edu/salzburg/climatechange/index.php/606/
http://www.co2crc.com.au/links/
Then
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24036736-7583,00.html
and draw your own conclusions
I clicked on 3 links Gavin. One shows how many people have their noses in teh AGW trough. One shows we should be sceptical and teh david evans supports this stance as well. So obvious conclusion …be sceptical.Agreed?
Perhaps old Bill might want to comment on how survival blankets work, precisely by reflecting the radiation emitted from the bunnies inside
Oh yeah, old Bill might try this an explanation so simple even Jen can understand it tho she probably won’t admit it.
Toby; Thanks for looking.
Following my previous post I tried to be fair after sweeping Google for “greenhouse gas + evidence” and considering advanced thinking in Australia.
Your next question should be based on a similar reflection given several up front pages of links from Google
“Comment from Eli Rabett
Time September 10, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Perhaps old Bill might want to comment on how survival blankets work, precisely by reflecting the radiation emitted from the bunnies inside…..”
Right so are you saying that heavier non-reflective blankets cannot do the job? Eli? Eli you biased old prick?
Are you saying that the survival blankets do not have any effect that can be attributed to conduction?
You see our job is to differentiate the effects of radiation, conduction, and convection rather than get about bullshitting people and talking as if the whole deal is radiation and radiation alone.
I find you actually very annoying Eli you rude old bastard. Because the fact is you do know a lot of stuff yet you are so damned tendentious.
You’d make yourself more useful if you stuck around and answered specific questions on demand.
I just find it fascinating that as knowledgeable a fellow as yourself can fall for this racket, and I put it down to moral failure and the fact that you are an eccentric old git.
Richard S. Courtney said…”But I have had it easy compared to some other climate reaists. For example, Tim Ball has had death threats and I have not had those”.
Good post, Richard. Tim Ball lives near me here in Canada. I communicated with him after a terrible program was aired on Canadian television (CBC) about Tim Ball and Fred Singer (The Denial Machine). It was an out and out witchhunt, and front and centre for the prosecution was James Hoggan, a board member of the David Suzuki Foundation and the operator of desmogblog. He was not identified as either on the program, only as an expert of some kind.
Here’s a critique of the program:
http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=2c07121b-85c2-4799-9aaf-0c2688bf5ca1&p=1
As you probably know, Singer had a run in with Al Gore, who infered Singer had influenced his friend, Professor Roger Revelle, Gore’s mentor at Harvard, to make statements about greenhouse warming that contradicted those of Gore. Singer sued Gore, who backed off. Here’s that story from Singer himself:
http://media.hoover.org/documents/0817939326_283.pdf
I think it’s deplorable that any scientist should be exposed to a witchhunt mentality. I am aware of Henk Tennekes, but as I tried to point out in another thread, this goes on even in other disciplines. Peter Duesberg has had his career ruined and has been reduced to teaching undergraduate labs over his skepticism that HIV causes AIDS. In Australia, Eleni Papadopoulos of the Perth Group can’t get her papers published for the same reason.
I would ask Irena et al what good peer-review does anyone when perfectly good theories are dismissed outright simply because they don’t fit a paradigm, even if the paradigm is in great doubt.
Irena Ischenko…I don’t mean to be offensive, but you strike me as being naive. You refer people to the IPCC as if they are the ultimate authority on climate theory. Why would you think that? Is it because there are a lot of scientists involved, so they must be correct? Is it because the media have infered that or that governments have said they are right? Or maybe you respect authority.
I have looked at the same IPCC reports you have mentioned. I saw the hockey stick graph in all its glitter and prominence. It was wrong…they have withdrawn it and the inference with it that the 1990’s was the warmest decade in a millenium. They were told by the National Academy of Science that no such inference could be made from the data and that they should do better science in the future.
The IPCC papers admitted in 2001 that the satellite data was contradicting the model predictions. In 2007, they did not withdraw that observation, they covered it up in mumbo jumbo, insisting errors had been found in the satellite data. Those errors were trivial and did not change the basis for the original observation that the atmosphere was significantly cooler than the surface.
The whole point of CO2/warming is that the atmosphere will warm up more than the surface in certain regions. That has not happened, so the IPCC is wrong again.
You make reference to Boltzman et al, as if the atmosphere is a laboratory in which controlled experiments can take place. I supplied a link to a paper by Gerlich and Tscheuschner:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161v3
in which they explain in great detail why that is the case. You can’t simply look up papers on gas laws and extrapolate that to a complex environment like the atmosphere. There’s no way to do measurements, let alone observations. The IPCC papers are based on theory, not fact.
beautifully put Gordon!
jennifer said…”Spencer’s work suggests other parts of the climate system are compensating for the potential effects of warming ffrom more greenhouse gases”.
Yeah…but what would Spencer know, he’s just an expert in atmospheric physics and a world authority on the MSU telemetry on satellites. The IPCC, on the other hand, is full of scientists no one has ever heard of before their governments sent them off to the assessments. You simply can’t compare an expert like Spencer with so many unknown scientists.
I mean, how much could Spencer, or his partner at UAH, John Christy, really know? They took undergraduate courses in atmospheric physics, then graduate courses, then got their doctorates in the same discipline. No one really knows what the IPCC reviewers specialize in, but hey, they do have consensus on their side, and apparently that’s more believable than fact.
Next you’ll be quoting Richard Lindzen. What would he know about anything? He has only 40 years experience in atmospheric physics and teaches at MIT. Most people don’t have the academic essentials to qualify for MIT but he teaches there. According to Gavin Schmidt, a mathematician, Lindzen is teaching ‘old’ school’ theory while Gavin’s work is ready for textbooks.
You don’t seem to get it jennifer. You’re not playing the game; you’re not playing fair. You’re supposed to get in line, follow the leader, do the right things, cooperate. Above all, you’re not supposed to question authorities like the IPCC and Penny Wong, not necessarily in that order.
I climbed up a mountain in the tropics this week. Walking up between about 1 and 4pm I was getting cooler as the temperature at sea level would have been increasing. Walking down between about 4.00 and 7.00pm the temperature was getting warmer until the last half hour or so.
What I noticed is just how comfortable it is at this altitude. The peak is 922 metres. But probably a lot higher than that in relation to sea level.
When I say “comfortable” I don’t mean just the temperature. There is more going on here to do with the greater ability of evaporation at that level as well as something to do with what Alan Siddons says about space being akin to an insulator. In the sense that a cool breeze is not as chilling up there as it would be on the ground.
On the ground you take off everything and you run about you will be too cold or too hot and you will get itchy. Up on the mountain you can be much more comfortable in a pretty wide range of temperatures.
Thats probably why you can have people fighting in the Mountain tropics for so long. Pretty good lifestyle if the food and some financing is coming from elsewhere.
You’d have to move from place to place. But once you’d set up at the new place you could just contend yourself playing games of chance or mucking about in great comfort. Waiting for the opportunity to go down and hit a military target every now and then……. and bugger off back to altitude.
Mareeba, up in the Tablelands, must be about the most comfortable, nicest town in the country, one would think. When its cold its not chilling-cold. When its hot you get in the shade and the air is not too hot. Or you’d pull out the garden hose and wet everything, and the whole area be cooler.
Now with all that in mind lets look at the watts-per-square-metre climate model. It says nothing about compression as such. Nothing about the effect of it. Set up your flat earth model, where its noon all the time. Average out and aggregate your watts and convert it to a surface-temperature, and the compression ought to not matter at all. Except insofar as it affects the total number of greenhouse-gas molecules.
This is just not credible. And the climate of Mareeba and Cairns would have substantially converged since the 1950’s and now, if the standard model was even a little bit valid.
Thats why its science fraud to simply claim that the entirety of the alleged 30 degrees descrepancy is all to do with the greenhouse effect. People can have differences of opinion. But any clown claiming that THE ENTIRE AMOUNT is greenhouse related is really being stupid or dishonest.
Others can rule out this or that. But we all can rule out this 30 degrees gyp as obvious nonsense.
Irena said…”You need a radiative model to numerically solve this- ie at which level the maximum warming occurs. And the radiative models are not speculative- they are well backed up by theory, observations and experiment”.
First, you claim the models are backed by observation. What observation? The only observations available are the satellite and radiosonde data and they disagree with the models.
Secondly, you claim the theory calls for cooling above and warming below. You have not been keeping up, Irena. The AGW/model theory calls for a hot spot above, in the troposphere, and it’s not there.
Anyway, I asked people, preferably with expertise in physics, to read this paper:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161v3
It has an extensive section on models and why they are no good.
All I’m doing in this thread is commenting on this paper. It explains why everything you and your IPCC sources are saying is wrong.
Please don’t come back and say it’s not peer reviewed. That’s not a viable response. You either understand what is being said, and have a legitimate response, or you don’t.
“sjt, you make some stupid comments, and fortunately i delete my responses because they will not add to teh debate. But this time you show once again how blind and religous you are in your faith. Are you infact over 18? your comment sare usually so stupid I would expect them to come from an adolescent. To use a Luke expression. STFU!”
Fine, just ask him what qualifications he was required to give them to be an expert reviewer.
graeme; you obviously know eli well; what’s with the baby-talk and the 3rd person referencing?
In any event eli’s link is to a potted summary of AGW. It is an odd thing. It ignores convective heat transfer and the fact that IR absorption occurs and exhausts close to the surface; it basically is a rehash of the semi-infinite atmospheric model, which apart from anything else is defeated by the fact that MSU data does not show troposheric heating, and AQUA data does not show stratospheric cooling. What’s more the surface temp over the 20thC and into the 21st has only increased by 0.65-0.7C, well short of IPCC forcing figures for the 40% increase in CO2 during that time. I know it’s unfair to introduce actual facts into a theoretician’s musings, which is what I presume eli is, but when reality contradicts the theory, the theory should go; unless the theory is really a theology.
“Anyway, I asked people, preferably with expertise in physics, to read this paper:”
That paper is my litmus test for a denier as compared to a sceptic. Anyone who gives it any credence has to be completely ignorant of anything to do with physics and case for AGW. All it does is comprehensively attack strawman arguments, a case that that the IPCC has never made.
“When you have something very hot or very cold in a vacuum (no conduction or convection) and pour in a fixed amount of energy, it will reach a fixed temperature at the point where the energy coming in is balanced by the radiative energy leaking out of the system.”
All true but nothing to do with the real world. My contention is that the alarmist model is otherworldly flat earth science.
But standby Eli. So that people can ask you technical questions. You want to stick with your strengths.
“That paper is my litmus test for a denier as compared to a sceptic. Anyone who gives it any credence has to be completely ignorant of anything to do with physics and case for AGW. All it does is comprehensively attack strawman arguments, a case that that the IPCC has never made.”
No thats stupidity on your part. You cannot make a case without evidence. You cannot make a case based on the alleged mistakes of people who disagree with you. 0 out of 10 for epistemology.
Faux-falsification will not do it. You need actual evidence. So lets have it right here and right now.
Tell me which philosopher you think you are applying with this negative-evidence business?
SJT:
I write in hope that I may be of some help to you.
I have read each of your contributions to this forum and all of them (without exception) are to some degree mistaken (some are very wrong) and that is OK. But you do not thank those who correct your mistakes. Instead, whenever your errors are pointed out to you then you dissemble and/or obfuscate and sometimes you compound the error, and that is a real problem.
I recognise that this forum is not your ‘real life’, but if your behaviour here is an indication of how you normally behave then you must be a very sad and lonely fellow.
So, I suggest that you get some counselling to help you to come to terms with making mistakes; everybody makes them sometimes. When you can cope with the pain of recognising you have made a mistake then you may learn how to stop digging when you are in a hole. And, importantly, you may find that people start to like you.
I suspect you may not know how much pleasure is provided by having friends. So, with sincere concern for you, I beg you to please seek counselling to overcome your problem.
With every good wish
Richard
Testing
Gordon, I read the paper. I have a physics degree, although I don’t use it much in my current job. This is my second try at posting a response.
Leaving aside the poor english, the indiscriminate confusion of analysis with political comment and the apparent inability of the authors to find references:
1) The thermal conductivity of CO2 is not (and has never been) the issue. Its radiative absorbtion and re-emission is.
2) Everyone knows that greenhouses don’t work like the atmospheric greenhouse effect does. This is not a conspiracy but a bit of leftover terminology from before the functioning of greenhouses was correctly understood, (much like the common use of centrifugal force to mean centripedal force). It is irrelevant to the issue of understanding the atmospheric greenhouse effect.
3) the contention that CO2 molecules are too small to absorb IR photons because they are smaller than the wavelength of IR confuses light waves with photons. Waves can be thought of as the sum of a large number of photons, as seen in the classic double slit experiment.
4) The contention that the stefan-boltzmann constant is not a constant is flat wrong. In equation 28 they have substituted the constant term for I, the irradiance, in error. They may be trying to say that the earth is not a black but a grey body – but this is well known and they have expressed themselves extremely poorly.
5) The contention that the IPCC’s models ignore incoming IR from the sun can be easily refuted by looking at any of the radiation balance diagrams from the IPCC, which show radiation being absorbed in the atmosphere before it reaches the ground. I believe the figure is about 66 W/m2.
6) Radiation emitted sideways will be reabsorbed and go up or down eventually.
7) The authors apparently think that if something wasn’t published in german, it doesn’t exist.
8) What is the problem with the concept of average temperature? A fixed amount of energy goes in, a fixed amount comes out. Spread that energy emission evenly over the surface of the earth and you get an average. Of course it will vary from place to place, but the total energy can’t vary.
9) The contention that back-radiation constitutes a perpetual motion machine of the second kind misunderstands the laws of thermodynamics, which hold in closed systems. The earth-atmosphere system is not closed as it has a perpetual energy inflow from the sun. (This is the same reason that evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics). Furthermore, the laws are statements of net summed statistical effects over thermal physics processes; overall, the earth is hotter than the atmosphere and the net flow of energy is earth -> atmosphere, not vice versa. If back radiation did NOT occur then it WOULD violate the second law, as each molecule of atmospheric CO2 would require a Maxwell’s demon to prevent it from radiating in the direction of the earth.
10) I feel sorry for anyone being taught physics by these people. In a classic case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, not only are they incompetent, but they are unable to recognise their own incompetence and unable to appreciate the competence of others.
“What is the problem with the concept of average temperature? A fixed amount of energy goes in, a fixed amount comes out.”
No thats not right.
“What is the problem with the concept of average temperature?”
Lets just reword this:
“What are the pitfalls of over-aggregation in analysis”.
They are massive. You need to aggregate but you need to constantly think about how and why and what level or specifics of aggregation are appropriate. You are trying to pull off flat earth science. You model sucks all the reality out of climate and even the weather.
Its a model that centres around only one of the three ways that energy is propagated in the atmosphere. Your model ignores all insulative properties of gasses. Of ice for that matter. Makes me want to go and bust up a bunch of igloos and leave the eskimos to freeze and then turn around and say “LOOK WHAT YOU IDIOTS HAVE DONE TO THESE POOR ETHNIC PEOPLES.”
Your model ignores Stefan Boltzmanns disproportionate effect when temperatures are disaggregated. It ignores cumulative joules, the very essence of climate change.
Your model is ridiculous. It just ignores everything. It aggregates and averages water vapour on your implied flat earth. Your thinking is not for the planet in question but for an imagined planet: Flatland, twice as far from the sun and noon all the time. A black body even. With a fudge factor added after the fact to make up for the reality that Earth is no black body.
You ignore the effect of day and night. The effect of the perturbation on strata of the rotation of the planet. The effect of solar cycles. The effect of the planets rotation around the sun as to the timing of its release of energy. The effect of cumulative energy as a result of higher than normal solar activity. The effect of the changing rotation of the moon on atmospheric pressure zones has comes under particular derision.
You ignore the effects of resistance to oceanic circulation. Except as a purely heat transport notion. Oblivious to how Stefan-Boltzmann is implicated in climate change here. Stefan or Boltzmann was a sensitive chap and would commit suicide all over again with the lack of attention you are paying to what he has taught us.
You ignore everything that counts except for back-radiation. And then you say “Look back-radiation has to be of earth-shattering importance to surface temperature” which it surely has to be since you have ethnically cleansed everything else from your model.
You have an absolutely rigid series of steps that you go through with everything else as an afterthought and a computational fudge factor.
You start with the idea, never proved at all, that a doubling of CO2 leads to a one degree increase first up and then you make this leap that this will set off feedback with water vapour. The only reason you think this is that by processing things all the way down to watts….. instead of joules….. you have succeeded in ethnically cleansing TIME!!!! out of your perspective.
ITS JUST…… SO….. STUPID…
Its not science its just stupid and evasive climate-talk-talk.
The whole lot of you need to have your ass whipped and to be sent back to your country of ultimate ethnic origin.
We have this aggregation problem in economics. There is always the problem of how much or how little or the specifics of the aggregation that we use in macroeconomics. We have the problem of the relevant angle from which to approach a problem.
You guys are akin to a group of economists who have trashed all of economics leaving only econometrics. And yet are totally belligerent when your econometric predictions turn out to be wrong useless and misleading.
You expect the computers to do everything. You expect the computers to replace the need for empirical evidence, wipe the babies butt, take the kids to school, fill out your research grant application, let you escape from the need to think conceptually from multiple convergent angles about the problem.
Truly you are the unthinking nazis of science. The goose-stepping zombie hoards of science. The wreckers of science. “THE NOTHING” from the kids movie “The Never-Ending Story”. The never-ending story of leftists debasing all values…….. scientific, monetary and everything else.
Hey! Smilies!
8)
😛
You are an idiot Haughton. You suffer from terminal stupidity.
Nurse!
Doctor!!
What is this. An idiots convention? Ought not you people be over at Deltoid?
Deltoid is a great resource. Since the standards of thinking there are so appalling it means that I get the chance to go over to Deltoid, and pull out moronic comments from the two of you, and paste them in broad daylight here.
Beat it or say something intelligent or I’ll do this just to embarrass you cultists.
“I write in hope that I may be of some help to you. ”
I too hope that someday you may be able to be of help, too, my knowledge is only that of a layman. At present, unfortunately, you have nothing to offer. However, there are some people who post here who do have a lot to offer, and I have learned a lot from them.
Right. It IS an idiots convention. A Deltoid reunion where the crowd gets by on smug stupidity alone.
So how did you regain your confidence to be back in this position.
I KNOW.
You must have found some evidence in the interim!!!!!!
Great!!!!!!
Terrific SJT. So you’ve finally found that evidence. So lets have it then.
GO!!!!
Graeme Bird.
After I picked those random papers I actually took the time to find them and read them, not just their abstracts, and they all document the existence of negative CO2 impacts. I am sure that I could do so for days and days, but I have better things to do than your homework.
Once more, as you seem to be irreparably obtuse, I am not claiming that there are no ‘positive’ effects, and it is mendacious of you to impute so. However you are obviously stuck in an anthropocentric mindset, and until you learn how to review the field for yourself, you will not be able to extend yourself beyond your prejudiced ideologies. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of papers that illustrate my very simple statement that increased carbon dioxide has a range of negative impacts on various elements of the biosphere. Just go and look properly.
And just so that you are clear about the semantics, by ‘negative’ I mean something to the effect that the evolutionary fitness of such negatively-impacted species is compromised. Please note, that for many this might include physiological responses that you might regard as ‘positive’, but in the evolutionary context are disadvantageous for the affected species.
You have much searching, reading, thinking and learning to do. You should be able to make a basic start after about three months of concerted effort, so the sooner you start the sooner you’ll reach a decent level of education and true understanding.
Go to your local university library, speak with a librarian, learn how to do a Current Contents or JStore search, figure out how to follow citation links, and above all read, read, read.
GO!!!
Above post was meant to go to:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/09/second-attempt-to-deny-the-medieval-warm-period-new-paper-by-michael-mann/#comment-62265
“Gordon, I read the paper. I have a physics degree, although I don’t use it much in my current job. This is my second try at posting a response.
Leaving aside the poor english, the indiscriminate confusion of analysis with political comment and the apparent inability of the authors to find references:
1) The thermal conductivity of CO2 is not (and has never been) the issue. Its radiative absorbtion and re-emission is.
2) Everyone knows that greenhouses don’t work like the atmospheric greenhouse effect does. This is not a conspiracy but a bit of leftover terminology from before the functioning of greenhouses was correctly understood, (much like the common use of centrifugal force to mean centripedal force). It is irrelevant to the issue of understanding the atmospheric greenhouse effect.
3) the contention that CO2 molecules are too small to absorb IR photons because they are smaller than the wavelength of IR confuses light waves with photons. Waves can be thought of as the sum of a large number of photons, as seen in the classic double slit experiment.
4) The contention that the stefan-boltzmann constant is not a constant is flat wrong. In equation 28 they have substituted the constant term for I, the irradiance, in error. They may be trying to say that the earth is not a black but a grey body – but this is well known and they have expressed themselves extremely poorly.
5) The contention that the IPCC’s models ignore incoming IR from the sun can be easily refuted by looking at any of the radiation balance diagrams from the IPCC, which show radiation being absorbed in the atmosphere before it reaches the ground. I believe the figure is about 66 W/m2.
6) Radiation emitted sideways will be reabsorbed and go up or down eventually.
7) The authors apparently think that if something wasn’t published in german, it doesn’t exist.
8) What is the problem with the concept of average temperature? A fixed amount of energy goes in, a fixed amount comes out. Spread that energy emission evenly over the surface of the earth and you get an average. Of course it will vary from place to place, but the total energy can’t vary.
9) The contention that back-radiation constitutes a perpetual motion machine of the second kind misunderstands the laws of thermodynamics, which hold in closed systems. The earth-atmosphere system is not closed as it has a perpetual energy inflow from the sun. (This is the same reason that evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics). Furthermore, the laws are statements of net summed statistical effects over thermal physics processes; overall, the earth is hotter than the atmosphere and the net flow of energy is earth -> atmosphere, not vice versa. If back radiation did NOT occur then it WOULD violate the second law, as each molecule of atmospheric CO2 would require a Maxwell’s demon to prevent it from radiating in the direction of the earth.
10) I feel sorry for anyone being taught physics by these people. In a classic case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, not only are they incompetent, but they are unable to recognise their own incompetence and unable to appreciate the competence of others.”
Great post, so good I posted it again :). As I have said before, the paper is nonsense, anyone who believes this has a real problem with understanding the basic science behind AGW, and really shouldn’t be out there telling other people that the theory of AGW is wrong, when the issue is so important.
“After I picked those random papers I actually took the time to find them and read them, not just their abstracts, and they all document the existence of negative CO2 impacts.”
Bullshit. You are a proven liar. And now you are just trying the social-double-or-nothing.
Your bullshitartistry is established. So now you have a high bar to jump over.
Give me one study.
Just one study.
We are at the point where we must consider you to be lying unless and until you prove otherwise.
You are full of shit. Thats why you didn’t post a single available paper.