I can’t agree with Vincent Gray that the only true climate science is meteorology, but I can agree that meteorology as a climate science is in its infancy. There is much we don’t understand about convection, evaporation and precipitation. And interesting, as Gray explains in the following essay, they are all limited in a Greenhouse…
“THE only true climate science is meteorology. It has been built up for some 200 years from a network of local and international observations of every property which can be measured and can influence both local and more general climate behaviour.
I have written before about one pioneer, a favourite historical character, Vice Admiral Robert Fitzroy, descended from one of Charles 2nd’s many bastards (hence the name), the second son of the third Duke of Grafton, sent to sea, where he prospered to become the Captain of “The Beagle” at age 23, and seeking to establish a mission in South America to civilise the natives, he selected Charles Darwin as his gentleman companion for the voyage. They visited New Zealand, amongst other places, and he subsequently became the seconf Governor, dismissed early for his excessive sympathy with the native Maori. Although no scientist (he opposed Darwin’s Theory) he became the first Head of the UK Meteorological Office where he applied scientific measurements for the first time and issued the first weather forecast, for storms at sea. He invented a barometer.
200 years later the traditions he helped to establish have comprised a wide range of observational networks and theoretical treatments of weather and climate patterns, to provide a scientific weather forecasting service worldwide where its pronouncements are universally scrutinised and which infuence all of our lives.
Every person trained in meteorology knows the formidable task that faces a scientific study of the earth’s climate. The number, sophistication and variety of measurements and calculating power available have increased greatly but the climate has proved to provide a level of complexity that limits forecasting power to only a week or so in any one place, with reducing reliability longer ahead.
The reasons for these formidable difficulties are many, but the most important one is the limited understanding that we have of fluid motion. The scientific revolution that began with Galileo and Newton dealt with the behaviour of solid bodies. Its success is amazing. We have tables that confidently and accurately predict the motion of the planets, the behaviour of the tides, and when modified by the adjustments supplied by Einstein, even the movements of elementary particles. Newton could not have known that his results depemded on the unexpected fact that the motions of atoms and molecules in a solid cancel out.
Meteorologists know that the dominant determinants of both weather and climate are movements of air and water, of convection, evaporation and precipitation. of cyclones, anticyclones of Hadley circulation, of hurricanes and tornadoes, of gulf streams and currents, and ocean oscillations. It is these features which represent the greatest difficulties of forecasting. Our mathematics need the use of second order differential equations, often with increasingly unpredictable solutions over time. On top of these are the differences between daytime. when there is radiation from the sun and night time when there is not, the sun’s variability cosmic rays, clouds, earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. The whole system is often decribed as “chaotic”, but this is unfair. Just because current science and mathematics is incomplete does not mean that it may not improve in the future. All we know is that we are doing our best for the present, and we are all grateful for it.
Along come a group of pseudo scientists calling themselves climatologists who are so arrogant as to claim they can predict the behaviour of the climate well beyond the current capacity of meteorology, and to convince the whole world to make economically damaging changes to all our lives which it is claimed will avert the forthcoming threats they so confidently predict.
To start with, however, they do not make actual “predictions” at all. They only deal with “projections” which depend on acceptance of assumptions made by their models and scnarios of the future. These “projections” were initially so far ahead that those providing them could be satisfied to follow a long lucrative career before any check on accuracy could be made, but since these “projections” seem not to be happening they have recently been tempted to take the dangerous step of earlier projections making it possible to check them, which so far have been a ghastly failure. This seems to have had little effect on a gullible public, which has a misplaced confidence in their value.
A typical statement of the conflict between meteorology and climatology appears in “Frequently Asked Questions” No 1 in Chapter 1 of the 4th Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: A common confusion between weather and climate arises when scientists are asked how they can predict climate 50 years from now when they cannot predict the weather a few weeks beyond a few days. Projecting changes in climate (i.e., long-term average weather) due to changes in atmospheric composition or other factors is a very different and much more manageable issue.
“It seems that somehow they have managed to conjure away all the chaos that must accumulate over many years, so as to achieve “more manageable” predictions 50 years or more ahead. Why is this magic formula not available to our poor meteorologists who still struggle with “chaos”?
It resides in the nomenclature that they have chosen to describe their miracle, which they call “The Greenhouse Effect”
I have recently published a lengthy analysis of the climatic behaviour inside of a greenhouse, and the botched attempts that have been to apply it to climate models.If you want to read this it is at http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=756&Itemid=32
In this document I show that the early researches by Fourier, Tyndall and Arrhenius have been distorted by the climate scientists to provide a basis for their climate models. What I did not point out sufficiently strongly is that by treating the climate as if it resembles a greenhouse they have failed to mention the prime function of a greenhouse, which is to eliminate outside weather. The models therefore remove chaos by removing the causes of the chaos, which are the most imporant influences on both climate and weather, the movements of air and water, convectrion, evaporation, precipitation, hurricanes etc. .Their models reluctantly include a mere reference to these important influences which are referred to as “thermals” and “latent heat” but they give a completely inadequate attempt to calculate their importance, their variability, or the influence of human activity on them. They even try to claim that their models can predict the “weather” they have eliminated when it is “extreme”.
The trick therefore, has been to replace meteorology altogether with a system entirely dependent on radiation. Then, they ignore both the profound difference between day and night and several other potential sources of “chaos” and provide “projections” which are always pessimistic which possess no scientifically established measure of accuracy, replaced by an “attribution” from people paid to do so.
Meteorologists meaure relative humidity, considered a greenhouse gas, but these measurements are largely igored in order to place emphasis, and even responsibility for the climate on the minor greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, which is never measured by meteorologists because its influence is negligible. It is only promoted because it can be claimed to be causing human-induced damage to the climate.
It is a matter of astonishment that models which ignore the main influences on the climate are so widely accepted as plausible.
Vincent Gray
Wellington, New Zealand
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The problem lies with Cancun, Rio, Kyoto and so forth.
I still say that if all climate conferences were self-funded and held at the Central Kempsey Caravan Park, the number of boffins and egg-heads identifying as climate scientists would be drastically reduced.
When in Kempsey I stay at the Tall Timbers caravan park.
“When in Kempsey I stay at the Tall Timbers caravan park.”
Silvertail lawyer!
cohenite says; “When in Kempsey I stay at the Tall Timbers caravan park.”
Well, mate, when in Ourimbah I drink at the Tall Timbers Pub.
er
wait
I live in Ourimbah….
The trick therefore, has been to replace meteorology altogether with a system entirely dependent on radiation.
You are entirely right. The atmosphere is firstly a gas dynamic system obeying the Navier-Stokes equations. Its behavior is simultaneously affected by the fluxes of mass, momentum, energies (enthalpy, KE, geo-gravitational), and by the thermal diffusion and radiative radiation.
Whatever statement missing someone of this contributions is really a tale.
But it all gets back to sensitivity and that’s what’s unquantifiable except that it seems to be far less than those super computers would have us believe.
But let’s just settle for world poverty instead.
Welcome to the 13th century.
‘I expect December, January and February to experience below-average temperatures, with the heaviest snowfall occurring within the time frame of November to January across many parts of the UK.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2039418/UK-weather-Snow-forecast-parts-Britain-early-October.html#ixzz1YUdSxJZy
EG, not only is it cooling but look out the window and what do you see everywhere? Bushfire smoke!
All the taxing in the world won’t make a scrap of difference.
But these taxes and regs on business will make sure that govts will get ever larger to maintain employment as private enterprise shrivels.
Welcome to world conquest by the inept!
I think I’ll head for a Kempsey CP too.
There is a new PR paper that supports the conclusion of Lindzen and Spencer. The conclusion is that clouds can have 17 times the effect of a doubling of co2.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/20/new-peer-reviewed-paper-clouds-have-large-negative-feedback-cooling-effect-on-earths-radiation-budget/#more-47761
Just to add to the above. Pielke Snr points out that for the deep oceans to be warming that transfer of extra heat should have been measured by the ARGO buoys, but it has not.
Then we read that this isn’t measured at all but is part of another modeling exercise.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/20/pielke-sr-on-that-hide-and-seek-ocean-heat/#more-47793
CO2 warming is starting to look a little sick, just in time for our idiot govt to introduce the world’s biggest co2 tax.
Just filing this note received by email here:
“That’s one of Vincent’s best essays, if I may say, and I hope it generates some good discussion. While reading it again, though, this sentence:
‘models therefore remove chaos by removing the causes of the chaos’
(nice!) struck me as ironic – because the same models also leave conceptual chaos in their wake.”
Yes,
You know we hear about the models. The models say this and that. So and so agrees with model predictions. etc etc.
But we never see the models. I wonder why. Isn’t the future of mankind at stake with the terrible CO2? I want to see the models . I demand to see the models. Why aren’t model inputs and workings freely available to all scientists? We’ve got good reason think there may be some conspiracy here.
Well maybe the models are some formula scribblings on the back of Hansen’s envelopes.
Secret recipe for bullshit from the Grandfather of AGW.
You can’t be allowed to see those models, Mack. Those models don’t include clouds and you’re only going to find something wrong with them.
It’s all settled, I tell ya!
Sorry I just get a little bit angry over the issue sometimes 🙂 (pops a valium)
And more studies showing clouds as a -ve feedback:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/09/multi-institutional-study-group-finds.html
Things are desperate for Ol’ Travesty. He goes groping in the dark for the missing heat and guess what? his faithful GCM finds it deep in the oceans in spite of no support from Argo or SLR:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/20/pielke-sr-on-that-hide-and-seek-ocean-heat/
I had a dog like that once.
Vincent Gray’s post gives a useful summary of the mistakes to be found in KT 97,09.
The history of the greenhouse theory is well covered with links given.
Other links provided at the end of his article will allow further reading and are a useful resource.
On page 12 he says that greenhouses at night produce a warming function.
However this is not always the case.
The study below shows that occasionally at night the temperature inside greenhouses falls below the ambient outside temperature.
So much for backradiation providing a heating effect
Its also an interesting paper especially as it comes from a source with no “spin” on the AGW debate.
It also gives massive support for the conclusions of the famous Woods experiment.
Basically the project was to find if it made any sense to add Infra Red absorbers to polyethylene plastic for use in agricultural plastic greenhouses.
Polyethylene is IR transparent like the Rocksalt used in Woods Experiment.
The addition of IR absorbers to the plastic made it equivalent to “glass”
The results of the study show that( Page2 )
…”IR blocking films may occasionally raise night temperatures” (by less than 1.5C) “the trend does not seem to be consistent over time”
http://www.hort.cornell.edu/hightunnel/about/research/general/penn_state_plastic_study.pdf
On page 16 Vincent says the major fault of IPCC science is to ignore the difference between day and night and consequently the analysis is pointless.
This aspect is covered in the two recent papers by Joseph Postma.
Postma’s papers by analysing all aspects of heat transfer from Sun => Earth => Space leave no room whatsoever for a greenhouse effect.
I was a bit puzzled however by pages 16 and 17 where Vincent seems to think that “heat” is being transferred from the cold atmosphere to the warmer Earth surface.
Hot and cold surfaces will radiate to each other.
The net radiation will always be from hot to cold.
This net radiation is what is known as “heat”.
Thermodynamic “heat” can be changed into other forms of energy such as kinetic,chemical or electrical.
This transformation is usually called “work”
The radiation from the colder surface cannot be changed into “work” in the given situation and is best regarded as the radiative component of insulation.
A number of people (such as Nullius in Verba) give vague hints that the atmosphere can act like a heat pump and force heat against the temperature gradient.
However not enough detail is given to find out if they have a substantial point or not.
More updates for the next Times Atlas:
http://www.haveeru.com.mv/english/details/38339
Dear Jennifer, Bryan, et al…
As many others, I confirmed Wood’s experiment by using LDPE film instead of rock salt glass. I was extremely careful on selecting a reliable film with emittance, absorptance, transmissivity, and reflectivity as rock salt glass. The film I used in my experiment, which was absolutely controlled, was of two kinds: 0.3 mm and 0.051 mm thick pure LDPE. Initially I had acquired a film that was very thin, but it contained EVA, so I discharged it because it would work exactly as glass does.
The results of my experiment confirmed the findings of Robert W. Wood, i.e. warming of greenhouses is not due to any kind of physical process of “heat trapped by the atmosphere”. The latter is a false assumption and Wood and I powerfully demonstrated it. Greenhouse effect is not “longwave radiation trapped by the atmosphere” and I dare to affirm greenhouse effect doesn’t exist and I have well-built reasons to declare it.
My last statement is because I have conducted another experiment related with backradiation where I found many interesting things. I cannot reveal my findings at this moment until the results of the experiment have been published.
Additionally, I must say, as in many other times, that I am with Aussies on their struggle against unreason and false science.
🙂
Well Nasif mate – confirming Wood’s experiment would be one of the silliest irrelevant things you could do. Why?
Did you say (choke) you were going to publish? E&E?
Well Luke mate… confirming Wood’s experiment is to restablish true science in this world. I decided to publish it on PSI and it was a success. Now your warmist friends have change their discourse from “trapped longwave radiation”, which they have recognized does not exist after my experiment, to “backradiation from a cooler system warming up a warmer system”… LOL!
My new experiment defeats the mythical backradiation once forever.
🙂
Dr David Evan’s submission against the co2 tax, good stuff.
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/09/dr-david-evans-four-fatal-pieces-of-evidence/#more-17260
What chance does David Evans have of a full blown debate on AGW I wonder?
He’s asked Andy Pitman for a debate but I’m sure Andy will find he’s too busy or out of the country or just hasn’t got the guts to front him in an open and fair forum.
Good on you Nasif, well done, You’re keeping up the good work I see. 🙂
Gradually your work will be recognised and respected. Don’t count on our Lukebaby though.
Hunter,
I actually have a copy of a 1985 edition of The Times Concise Atlas of the World which I’ve just blown the dust off.
At the front part there is an environmental section etc. and sure enough we have the usual false propaganda picture of a curved earth with a huge thick red arch above the surface (looks about 10 miles up) with big red arrows coming down through it to the surface, small red arrows going back up to this red band and yet smaller red arrows leaving into space.
The propaganda rhetoric is even more priceless…
“Man is now so powerful, however,that he could himself suddenly upset the whole balance, changing the climate and the composition of the atmosphere.”
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 Note the subtle little change of order of the last 2 🙂
Yeah, we were pretty powerful back then in 1985.
Nasif
Its good that you can confirm Woods findings.
We notice that Luke did not ask you any searching questions about your experiment.
Instead like an Ostrich he buries his head in the sand.
Gerlich, Tscheuschnerard and Joseph Postma have shown by theoretical means that the greenhouse does not exist.
Wood and yourself arrive at the same conclusion by experimental means.
Poor Luke, the only thing going for him is his sense of humour.
Bryan if Luke only has his sense of humour to console him then he must feel like a shag on a rock.
I was thinking a bit about….
“Man is now so powerful”……
The arrogance of man eh. It reminds me of the thinking which existed with respect to the Titanic. Like the Titanic , AGW will slowly sink in the icy seas of reality, with the loss of many livelihoods. :).
Neville says of Luke
………”he must feel like a shag on a rock.”…..
Here in the UK this has a quite different meaning.
My only printable reply is “a rock or a hard place” perhaps.
:LOL:
Interesting post over at Watts by Earl Happ
‘The point of this post is that ENSO is not climate neutral. The change in pressure relativities over time explains surface temperature change quite adequately thanks very much. No need to invoke AGW.’
Blimey, Tom Wigley is still about.
‘In principle, gas-fired power is more efficient but when you consider the full range of effects of burning coal there are other problems that it creates,” the study’s author, Tom Wigley, a co-director of the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research and an adjunct professor at the University of Adelaide, said.
”Using more gas would reduce carbon dioxide emissions but it would also lead to more methane being released, and that has a much higher global warming potential,” he said.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/coal-seam-gas-could-accelerate-warming-20110923-1kpdf.html#ixzz1YrNoSaEm
Picked this up at Icecap.
‘Washington, DC – Award-winning Princeton University Physicist Dr. Will Happer declared man-made global warming fears “mistaken” and noted that the Earth was currently in a “CO2 famine now.” Happer, who has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers, made his remarks during today’s Environment and Public Works Full Committee Hearing entitled “Update on the Latest Global Warming Science.”
“Many people don’t realize that over geological time, we’re really in a CO2 famine now. Almost never has CO2 levels been as low as it has been in the Holocene (geologic epoch) – 280 (parts per million – ppm) – that’s unheard of. Most of the time [CO2 levels] have been at least 1000 (ppm) and it’s been quite a bit higher than that,” Happer told the Senate Committee.’
I agree with Dr Gray on the superior science of Meteorology as opposed to the Faux Science of Climatology. I reviewed the original draft of Dr Grays NZ Newsletter and commented directly to him on his errors in regard to Fourier and Tyndall, directing him to the excellent work of Timothy Casey at “Geologist-1011.net”. Dr Gray has provided an important outline of the correct history with a few remaining errors and omissions. In 1951 the American Meteorological Society published the “Compendium on Meteorology” which was the conclusive end to the Arrhenius fable. In 1956 the Club of Rome elitists set about to demonize humanity in order to restore feudalism. Climatology was created to provide the Alchemy figleaf for this fraud. There is a distorted historical pedigree being presented by the warmists to give credibility to their false science. A correction to this ‘revisionist Faux History’ will be published soon. In the meantime consider the possibility that there are ‘traders’ on the planet that consider Carbon to be a commodity. To complete this false market sale they needed ‘traitors’ in both the science community and the government. Unfortunately, traitors are easy for traders to purchase.