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Eclectic at 21:46 PM on 13 February 2020Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
Unsure @388 , I will add in some extra food for thought.
The "greenhouse" planet-warming effect of the GHG [GreenHouse Gasses] molecules is not simply explained in a single sentence (or three). But once you get your head around how it works, you will see that it is a straightforward basic mechanism.
You will need to do some more of reading & thinking it through. Several points to keep in mind :-
(A) InfraRed photons are emitted in all directions by the CO2 molecules ~ when each molecule has enough energy to emit an IR photon. Emission rate depends on local air temperature.
(B) The energy (to produce an IR photon) for each CO2 molecule ~ is gained from collision with neighbouring "air" molecules (almost all of which are nitrogen and oxygen). Likewise, when a CO2 molecule receives/gains an IR-photon's worth of energy, the CO2 molecule immediately distributes energy to neighbouring "air" molecules, by collision. In other words, a CO2 molecule can warm the neighbouring nitrogens/oxygens when it receives an IR photon . . . or it can (by emitting an IR photon) cool its neighbouring nitrogens/oxygens.
(C) Each layer of air is receiving and radiating IR from/to the layers above and below . . . except for the uppermost layer, where the CO2 is so "thin" that some of the radiated IR photons can escape to outer space, through the "gaps" between the nearby CO2 molecules. (Lower layers with denser concentrations of CO2, in effect have "no gaps".)
(D) All of the above, also applies to IR emission/absorption by other GHG's e.g. methane, water vapor ~ but for each of these other compounds, the corresponding "uppermost thin layer" is at a different altitude (than CO2's "Top Of Atmosphere" emitting layer). O3 is rather a special case, being mostly in the stratosphere.
And I will stop at that point, since the consequence of all this is the higher heat concentration at the planet's surface i.e. the so-called (and poorly named) GreenHouse Effect.
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MA Rodger at 19:38 PM on 13 February 2020Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
unsure @388,
The essential characteristic of GHGs is that they do not absorb sunlight. They do absorb (and re-emit) the long wave infrared. With an increase in CO2, there isn't directly an increase in the 'intensity' of this long wave infrared, be that up, down or sideways. That is, there are more CO2 molecules emitting, but there are also more CO2 molecules absorbing. The extra absorption means the higher number of emitted infrared photons have a reduced pathlength. So at any point, the surface say, the infrared recieved is unchanged by simply adding CO2. Something else has to happen to increase the infrared 'intensity'.
What does cause this increase in infrared (up, down and sideways) is an increase in global temperature. The temperature rises because the extra CO2 increases the height in the atmosphere at which the CO2-emitted infrared has a clear shot at space. This means the CO2 molecules shooting out to space are in a higher colder part of the atmosphere. Cold gases emit less than warm gases, so to balance the global energy equation the planet has to warm, thus boosting the infrared emissions into space, from all sources, not just CO2. Note that because the temperature boost to infrared is across all sources and this is to balance the reduced infrared from CO2 alone, there will still be less CO2 emissions out into space when the balance is restored.
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Ger at 19:07 PM on 13 February 2020Why coal use must plummet this decade to keep global warming below 1.5C
How about reducing coal use in the cement and steel industry? For fuel, those are using 20% of the won coal. Cement is also producing CO2 from the lime used. Actual emissions of cement (and steel) are even higher as both do require good quality coal with high carbon content. Processing such coal at the mine will also give extra CO2 emissions.
For existing steel one could use hydrogen as reductor, but will lack coke gas to produce electricity in the mill. Existing cement could switch to biomass (rice husk etc) as fuel and feedstock amendment but still, CO2 output, though biogene. For the carbon budget, the source of the CO2 doesn't matter. So both industries should have CC(S)U. Reuse of carbon-dioxide in concrete hardening. Planting a lot of trees/biomass to fix the carbon budget in the shortest time possible.
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unsure at 18:52 PM on 13 February 2020Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
If greenhouse gases such as CO2 are absorbing the sun's radiation and emitting it as long wave infrared radiation as the post suggests, why would an increase in atmospheric CO2 translate to an increase in downward longwave emissions but a decrease in upwards longwave emissions attributed to CO2 as measured via Satelite? Again, as the post suggests, greenhouse gases absorb the sun's radiation and then these same gases emit that radiation in all directions (not favoring up or down). Wouldnt an increase in atmospheric CO2 (and O3, CH4) result in an increase in both upward and downward longwave emissions for their respective greenhouse gases?
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Eclectic at 08:34 AM on 13 February 2020Welcome to Skeptical Science
JoeZ @74 , the USDA Forest Service states that the Massachusetts forest land comprises 3.0 million acres. Of which your figure of 3,000 acres would represent around 0.1%
. . . so I guess the real questions are ~ how much further is a planned expansion of solar farms going to go, and will any extra PV developments be done in an intelligent and considerate manner. And in tradeoffs (and drawing a long bow), what effect on the forests & timberlands of Massachusetts would come from a regional climate warming of around 4 degreesF over about 100 years? (We can reasonably assume 4*F would kill off the maple syrup industry. But what forest/tree-species changes ~ good or bad ~ would be likely to occur?)
Tradeoffs are a ripe area for argument !
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JoeZ at 07:23 AM on 13 February 2020Welcome to Skeptical Science
Much better description of climate skeptics.
Now regarding "mass deforestation" - now we're my area of expertise. I've been a forester for 47 years. It's not just deforestation that is a problem but possibly even more so- really bad forestry pracitices which lower the health of the forest which reduces carbon sequestration. I suggest that the vast majority of "forestry" is abusive. I've been arguing FOR imporved forestry practices all that time with immense resistance. Also, in the name of producing "clean and green" energy- forests are being destroyed to install solar "farms". About 3,000 acres of forest in tiny Massachusetts, where I live, have been converted to solar "farms" in the past several years. Not only are the trees cut- but they need to bulldoze the site to level it for the panels. Doing so releases much of the soil carbon. And, let's remember that forests produce oxygen in addition to sequestering carbon. I think we all like oxygen. And, the forests produce ecosystem services. I'm not saying this shouldn't happen- but at least those promoting solar "farms" where there now are forests shouldn't pretend this conversion is totally "clean and green". An honest evaluation of the tradeoffs is necessary.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:53 AM on 13 February 2020Welcome to Skeptical Science
Would it be better to say: "Climate 'skeptics' come in a diversity of forms including people who vigorously attack any evidence for man-made global warming and people who uncritically embrace any argument, op-ed, blog or study that supposedly refutes global warming."?
However it is stated: People resisting expanded awareness and improved understanding and its application to help develop sustainable improvements for the benefit of the future of humanity, including making rapid corrections to limit the harm done by harmful unsustainable but popular and profitable developments like the burning of fossil fuels and mass deforestation that are the major causes of human-induced global warming and the related climate changes - are a serious problem that humanity has to over-come, the sooner the better for the future of humanity (even if the corrections are a set-back for current day people who have harmfully over-developed perceptions of personal status - the Richest being Less Richest).
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JoeZ at 02:14 AM on 13 February 2020Welcome to Skeptical Science
"Climate 'skeptics' vigorously attack any evidence for man-made global warming yet uncritically embrace any argument, op-ed, blog or study that supposedly refutes global warming."
That's a bit severe. Other sciences don't have vast political implications as climate science does. Hence, little need for the general public to be concerned about the work of chemists and physicists. Many climate skeptics DO NOT "vigorously attack any evidence....". And many do NOT "uncritically embrace any argument....". So, describing all climate skeptics this way isn't helpful nor will it convince skeptics that non skeptics are playing fair. It's also the fact that not all skeptics are deniers which seems to be the belief of this blog. I find it also severe that this site implies all skeptics are fools and ignorant.
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Paul Pukite at 00:42 AM on 13 February 2020Murry Salby's Correlation Conundrum
There's a well-known physical argument for understanding why the airborne fraction of CO2 hangs around 50% having to do with diffusional random walk. When CO2 enters the ocean, it can either diffuse downward or back upward. This is the nature of a pure random walk, with the likelihood of either direction being ~50%.
So as CO2 moves so slowly to sequestering sites, when it randomly walks back upwards it has a chance to get released back to the atmosphere.
Incidentally, this diffusional process explains why the sequestering of CO2 has such a fat-tail for an adjustment time, running to thousands of years. Again this is well known diffusional physics and I can provide a citation on request.
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MA Rodger at 23:12 PM on 12 February 2020Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second
rip71749 @16,
Your arithmetic look fine although the numbers you input are not those I would use.
While the yield of the Hiroshima bomb is not known with any certainty, the usual figure bandied about is a little higher than the figure you use at 6.3e13 J.
Conversely, your calculation of FF energy production is well done given the approximations you run with. Using BP's FF energy use for 2018, it works out at 4.92e20 J for the year.
I'm not sure of the value of your 200:1 ratio. Your sixty-two bombs-per-second is calculated using, not the global energy imbalance or the climate forcing, but the extra IR emissions up from the surface resulting from a +1ºC temperature rise. We do see such a rise but it results from many years of FF burning. If calculated for +1ºC at the top of the atmosphere, the well-known 3.7Wm^-2 value would appear rather than the 6Wm^-2 for the higher surface temperatures. The surface value is not a net value, of course, as there is an equally large increase in the back-radiation coming down from the atmosphere which has also heated by +1ºC. The five bombs per second of the OP is calculated using the global energy imbalance, a far smaller quantity.
Perhaps more meaningful than the 200:1, an interesting calculation is the time required for the climate forcing from the resulting GHGs to trap an equivalent amount of energy as produced from the FF burning. Assuming those 2018 emissions were responsible for a 2.25ppm CO2 increase (mind if there had been no emissions through the year, the level of atmospheric CO2 would have dropped, so the 'responsible' level is entirely academic), the forcing would be some 0.03Wm^-2, globally 1.5e13 W. Thus the forcing would accumulate energy globally equal to the annual FF power generated every 385 days.
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SirCharles at 23:01 PM on 12 February 2020Why coal use must plummet this decade to keep global warming below 1.5C
The Minerals Council of Australia and fossil fuel lobby groups have been undermining political action on climate change for decades. It’s time to end their stranglehold on our politics.Rio Tinto, as a leading member of the Minerals Council of Australia to cancel their membership and stop paying them to undermine action on the climate crisis. Tell them:
https://act.350.org/sign/ask-rio-tinto-leave-minerals-council-australia/
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Eclectic at 17:20 PM on 12 February 2020On climate misinformation and accountability
Rose @18 , I understand how you feel Andrew Bolt [Australian far-right-wing columnist and radio "shock jock"] qualifies for inclusion in the list of journalist science-deniers.
And you are correct that he is a "piece of work" as a virulent & self-satisfied science-denier . . . as well as being generally nasty-minded (especially re Ms Thunberg).
But myself, I would vote against placing him on the list. Really, he is a "lightweight" ~ a nonentity at the international level. Basically he is just a loud-mouth fish in a small pond. Small beer.
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Rose at 16:16 PM on 12 February 2020On climate misinformation and accountability
Thank you for your excellent post explaining the basis for your collection of climate -denier statements. You offer a wonderful service with such accurate refutations of the myths that somehow never go away. When you have some time on your hands (???) please add Andrew Bolt to your list of journalist deniers. He is a serial offender in the worst way and not only denies science but attacks those who champion action on global warming. His nasty criticisms of Greta Thunberg are a case in point. Keep up the good work.
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Rob Honeycutt at 15:42 PM on 12 February 2020On climate misinformation and accountability
It's interesting how, through this whole thing, neither Pielke nor Curry addressed any substantive errors presented in any of the SkS articles.
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Ntabenende at 14:42 PM on 12 February 2020New rebuttal to the myth 'Holistic Management can reverse Climate Change'
As this is your first post, Skeptical Science respectfully reminds you to please follow our comments policy. Thank You!
The Holistic Management debate continues. In the late seventies a large ranch in southern Matabeleland had adopted HRM and ran more and more cattle as the seasons were favourable. Then in 1982, 1983 and 1984 there were three consecutive droughts and the herd was decimated from approximately 120 000 head to 30 000 head. A US trained doctor of rangeland science employed in Govt. told me that the HRM on Liebigs Ranch, Towla had completely collapsed and was a complete failure and disaster. By then the “HRM Driver” had gone off to the USA to go again. Similarly it is reported that the HRM trial at Charter was carried out in a season when there was a 75% above average rainfall season. The suggestion that bare dirt can have its sticking rate quadrupled is an interesting evangelical environmental claim? What do the cattle eat on Day 1 of HRM? 90 000 HRM cattle were sent off property at a loss rather than perish and now we read of the suggestion to quadruple the stocking rate - again? Sceptical Science has to be the best forum for HRM because SS digs deep. Reading the HRM book could be as useful as believing the election results in Zimbabwe. The book does not mention the failure at Liebigs was on a 1 000 000 acre ranch and the general manager was fired after this exercise. Now the property is a wild life conservancy - there are no cattle and it looks beautiful.
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rip71749 at 13:42 PM on 12 February 2020Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second
I use the Hiroshima atomic bomb (HB) analogy as an energy ruler when talking about climate change energies. The energy in the HB is listed as 12,000 tons of TNT (trinitrotoluene) and 1 ton of TNT is listed as 4.2 gigajoules (4,200,000,000 tons = billions). That works out to 5x10^13 joules = 50,000,000,000,000 joules (trillions). The difference in the HB and climate energy is intensity. Assume the HB energy is released in 1 second. That is enough energy to level a 6 mile^2 area. In Hiroshima 140,000 people died and in Nagasaki 80,000 people died (about half by radiation poisoning), which shows the deadly result of intense energy. Climate change energy is larger but not usually so intense, released over decades, centuries, mellinia, etc.
Assume 40 Gigaton of CO2 released in 1 year = 8x10^14 moles of CO2. Use octane, C8H18, as a proxy for all fossil fuels then 1x10^8 moles of octane were burned (Hcomb = 5,000,000 joules/mole). That works out to 5x10^20 joules released in 1 year of fossil fuel burning (500,000.000.000.000.000.000 joules = 500 quintillion). Divide 5x10^20 joules/year FF combustion by 5x10^13 joules/bombs/year = 10,000,000 bombs/year FF combustion. If there are 32,000,000 seconds/year then that energy = 1 HB every 3 seconds.
Next use the Stefen-Boltzmaann Law to calculate the energy if earth's temperature is 288K. Energy = (5.7x10-8 W/(m^2 T^4))xT^4 which is 392 W/m^2. Do the same for T = 289oC (1oC increase in earth's temperature) and I get 398 W/m^2. That is a difference of 6 W/m^2. I calculate about 5.2x10^14 m^2 as the area of earth and 3.2x10^7 seconds in a year for a total increase in energy for 1oC for the earth in one year of 1x10^23 joules (100,000.000.000.000.000.000.000 joules = 100 sextillion joules). Compare that to all of the energy of all fossil fuel combustion in 1 year = 1x10^23 joules / 5x10^20 joules = 200/1 ratio. Instead of 1 HB every 3 seconds it comes out to 62 HB every second for the extra energy from 1oC increase in earth's temperature. Look at it another way. If you eat 2,000 calories a day, you would have to up your calorie intake to 200 x 2,000 = 400,000 calories a day (every day). Pretty intense eating. If you do the calculation for 2oC increase, it comes out to a 370/1 ratio (116 HB per second) and a 3oC increase comes out to 580/1 increase in energy (181 HB per second). Also, you'd have to eat the equivalent of over 1,000,000 calories /day for a 3oC increase in energy. Some different ways of looking at the energy of climate change. Hope my calculations are correct.
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Bob Loblaw at 11:59 AM on 12 February 2020Murry Salby's Correlation Conundrum
Max:
You've been through all this over at AndThenTheresPhysics:
You are just as wrong here as you were there.
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Max Polo at 08:13 AM on 12 February 2020Murry Salby's Correlation Conundrum
I think that Dikran Marsupial's mass balance argument is fundamentally flawed. Here is why, based on his mass conservation equation referred to a certain period of time.
dC = Ea + En - Un
dC = increase of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere over a certain period of time
Ea = total human emission in the atmosphere over that period
En = total natural emission in the atmosphere over that period
Un = total CO2 absorbed by natural sinks over that period
But we must not forget that Un is the total natural sinks uptake, that obviously must account for both "natural" and "human" contributions :
Un = Unn + Una
Unn = “natural” carbon that would get absorbed by natural sinks in absence of human emissions (over that period)
Una = portion of human emitted CO2 that gets absorbed by natural sinks (over that period)
Thus :
dC = Ea + En - Unn - UnaBy definition, the variation of CO2 concentration due to just the net “natural” carbon flux is :
dCn = En - Unnso, rearranging earlier equation :
dCn = dC - Ea + UnaSince dC is measured to be approximately one half Ea, then this equation shows how nature can be a net emitter (dCn > 0) if the portion of Ea that gets absorbed (= Una) exceeds (approximately) 50% of the total human produced carbon Ea.
Therefore, the mass balance argument in Cawley’s paper, in this website, and other websites as well, is wrong, and does not prove anything.
Moderator Response:[DB] As has been noted, you've already been through this with other learned individuals who pointed you straight.
It's one thing in life to of necessity to occasionally reinvent the wheel.
There's no need to reinvent the flat tire.
Continuing to tilt against the iron windmill of science with a wet paper lance is sloganeering and in violation of this site's Comments Policy. Please familiarize yourself with it and construct any future comments here to adhere to it. And above all else, when given good advice such as reading technical material to gain a background understanding of a matter, please avail yourself of the opportunity.
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Doug Bostrom at 05:43 AM on 12 February 2020On climate misinformation and accountability
NoctambulantJoycean: "This reminds me of the debates on "free speech" vs. "freeze peach"..."
Often found running in company with "freedumb," wherein freedom to speak and worship without interference from the state is confused with freedom to dump sewage just out of sight, where it becomes a problem for somebody else.
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dana1981 at 05:20 AM on 12 February 2020On climate misinformation and accountability
NoctambulantJoycean @11 - indeed, at one point Pielke described me as "some blogger without a PhD & never having worked in a university". The only accurate part of that description is 'without a PhD' (I have a Master's degree). I'm an environmental scientist and climate journalist, and I worked for many years at UC Davis prior to graduating, including doing cosmology and astrochemistry research. But I'm not going to get in a pissing contest with Roger. Whose PhD is in political science, for the record.
There was another Tweet in which he belittled the whole SkS team in a rather inaccurate way, but I didn't find it in a quick search.
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dana1981 at 05:05 AM on 12 February 2020On climate misinformation and accountability
sailrick @ 8: while one would hope that would be a typo, it's not. It's a quote from Judith Curry using a double-negative to suggest global warming had stopped.
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william5331 at 04:50 AM on 12 February 2020Why coal use must plummet this decade to keep global warming below 1.5C
Coal doesn't have a chance. The only question is whether or not it will decline in time. With new solar and wind generation coming in cheeper than new coal generation the writing is on the wall. The only remaining question was how do we store the energy to use it when it is needed. The mega battery in Aus has answered that problem. It is on track to return almost a third of it's capital cost in revenue in the first year of operation. Economics is vastly more powerful than all of our articles and demonstrations. What CEO would have the stupidity to advocate the installation of a coal powered power generation station now. In fact in some places, it is less expensive to install wind and solar than to continue to use old coal power stations.
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Rob Honeycutt at 01:14 AM on 12 February 2020On climate misinformation and accountability
ajki... There is a very long list of tasks that those with coding skills have to do to keep up this site. I believe this one has been on the list for a long time but it's been a lower priority. Being that we were previously hacked there's a lot of effort that goes into ensuring that can't happen again.
Roger is an interesting case on a lot of levels. He definitely agrees with all the existing science. He believes we need to be cutting emissions much faster than we currently are. But, he seems to continually present materials that minimizes climate impacts.
An example was a piece he did in a short stint he had work with the political website 538, where he claimed there was no correlation between climate and severe storm damage, kind of implying "so, what are we worried about?"
Lots of people hit the roof over that and eventually 538 asked leading expert Kerry Emanual to write up a piece explaining how Roger got it wrong.
My point here is, he hasn't changed since 2013. If anything he's only become more angry. Similar with Judith Curry.
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SirCharles at 00:08 AM on 12 February 2020Why coal use must plummet this decade to keep global warming below 1.5C
Australia is world's biggest exporter of coal. The country is just preparing a new mammoth project.
Take action! Stop Adani’s Carmichael coal and rail project!
=> https://www.marketforces.org.au/info/key-issues/theadanilist/
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MA Rodger at 00:00 AM on 12 February 2020CO2 effect is saturated
dlen @582,
The difficulty I have with this discussion is that it is attempting to provide an analogy for the GHG mechanism, something which can never be exact because if it were, it would be too complex when its puropse is to be simple to understand.
You say "So the heat energy has to propagate via multiple absorptions to the top layer" with CO2 acting to "hamper this propagation process."
This is not the best of wording. It is true that the planet sheds energy solely by radiation, something like 240Wm^-2 to be in equilibrium. Yet within the planet's energy flows, very little of this outward energy is 'propagated' from the net radiative energy flux from the surface. The surface is only radiating a net 60Wm^-2, of which 40Wm^-2 is the radiation passing through the "the transmission window" (so plays no part in the GHG mechanism) leaving just 20Wm^-2 which "has to propagate via multiple absorptions to the top layer." Joining this surface radiative energy flux as it 'propagates' upward is 100Wm^-2 of convective and insensible heat transport from the surface as well as 80Wm^-2 from direct solar heating of the atmosphere to yield the full 200Wm^-2 being radiated from the atmosphere out into space. And in being able to radiate at atmospheric temperatures, CO2 does not "hamper" the process but instead assists it.Your fouth-last paragraph is entirely wrong. It is not the CO2 which warms the atmosphere (ie the troposphere) and determines its temperature profile. The temperature profile (lapse rate) is well balanced so as to hold convection back from running amok. (We would live in an interesting surface environment without this balance!!) The temperature profile (as opposed to the temperature) is certainly not determined by radiation.
The planet surface and atmosphere does of course have to warm because an increase in CO2 results in it emitting into space from higher cooler parts of the atmosphere. While CO2 is well mixed up to perhaps 50km, the effective emission altitude for CO2 is nothing like that high - more like 10km. And while the whole climate system (up to the tropopause) will warm as a result of increased CO2 to allow the radiative balance to be restored, the flux within the CO2 waveband will still remain smaller than previously, while the flux elsewhere (where the effective emission altitude remains unaffected) will be greater.
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ajki at 20:17 PM on 11 February 2020On climate misinformation and accountability
#1: "... section ... looks very out of date ..."
#1 has a point in that regard. It is true that a voluntary (free-time) approach can't keep the data up to date - but it appears to be an abandoned section.
I've noticed this myself recently in a kind of "discussion" where a "pro nuclear" guy defended Mr. Pielke, Jr., against any sort of dis-/misinformation regarding "Climate Change". When I cited some items of the Pielke, Jr., section I noticed that everything there was dated far back. That itself isn't problematic - what has been said should be noted. But the question is if (e.g.) Mr. Pielke, Jr., did something in the mean time, what Nuccitelli/Cook said above could be done by someone who made erroneous claims in the past: s/he could have corrected her-/himself in the time since then. This may be unlikely or even absurd, but it can happen.
So, when all db entries stopped after about 2013, how could I know if (e.g.) Mr. Pielke, Jr., distanced himself from public claims he made in the past? (In a way I can answer that myself: on SkS I would use the "search" for all contents regarding R. Pielke, Jr., and that way I could see more recent blog posts where the name is found - but blog posts on SkS don't have the scope of watching "denialists" correcting their false claims und so there may be no such posts)
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NoctambulantJoycean at 19:06 PM on 11 February 2020On climate misinformation and accountability
Thanks for the compliment, Eclectic. I forgot to mention something else.
Roger Pielke Jr. and Judith Curry also used another tactic: saying that SkepticalScience's writers have worse academic qualifications/credentials that the people they were criticizing. To that end, Curry wrote the following to Pielke Jr. about one of the misinformers SkepticalScience criticized:
"It gets better . . . Kary Mullis is a Nobel Laureate
https://skepticalscience.com/misinformers.php "
[ https://twitter.com/curryja/status/1226225080092413952 ]For those of you who don't know: before he passed away, Kary Mullis was one of the best-known AIDS denialists, in addition to his spreading misinformation on climate science. Feel free to look up his views other topics as well.
Curry mentioned Mullis in order to criticize SkepticalScience, but she inadvertently illustrated my point from my previous post: SkepticalScience justifiably debunks the views of misinformers, even misinformers who may have some credentials. In that respect, it's like other science communication groups that debunk AIDS denialists, young Earth creationists, anti-vaxxers / vaccine denialists, etc. I suspect David Gorski, Paul Offit, and Peter Hadfield would be proud.
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Eclectic at 17:26 PM on 11 February 2020On climate misinformation and accountability
Thanks, NoctambulantJ @9 ,
it's always a pleasure to read your well-researched "broadsides" , whatever the forum. Long may HMS Atomsk keep firing !
Master "Junior" is certainly in full whine, at present. And one of his routine echo-chambers is recently re-cycling the Pause ~ in the form of "No sea level rise for 2 years". Marvellous !
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NoctambulantJoycean at 16:38 PM on 11 February 2020On climate misinformation and accountability
FYI, Roger Pielke Jr. misrepresents your post below:
https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/1226987527468240896This reminds me of the debates on "free speech" vs. "freeze peach", where various conservatives would act as if free speech / academic freedom entailed:
- freedom from criticism (including harsh criticism),
- no consequences for what one says,
- the ability to say whatever nonsense they wanted in any forum and under the employment of any institution,
etc.Of course, freedom of speech entails none of that.
And by the flawed logic Judith Curry and Roger Pielke Jr. have been recently using, it's bullying when:
- virologists make websites correcting Peter Duesberg's distortions,
- doctors make websites correcting Andrew Wakefield's distortions,
- biologists + astronomers make websites correcting Duane Gish's distortionsThese aren't just hypotheticals; they actually happened, and I've pointed them out to Pielke Jr. He, unsurprisingly, has no cogent response. For instance, the great website TalkOrigins has a list of creationists, and numerous pages debunking creationists' claims, including creationists with science degrees:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/credentials.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/By Pielke Jr.'s implausible logic, that makes TalkOrigins a malicious attempt to blacklist scientists, make them unhirable, chill academic freedom, and make TalkOrigins "arbiters of all science". That makes no sense; that's not the point of TalkOrigins. TalkOrigins is meant to correct creationist distortions for the purpose of educating the public.
It might turn out that a young Earth creationist is unable to get hired to teach biology or astronomy, because prospective employers see the creationist's publicly-stated position being debunked on TalkOrigins. But that's fine, since one should be held accountable for what one says, when what one says is relevant to the position one is applying for. That's compatible with freedom of speech. Parallel point for people being unhirable based on their position being debunked on SkepticalScience, and their being listed on SkepticalScience misinformer's pages.
And in case folks want another example: AIDSTruth + others have lists of AIDS denialists, and numerous pages debunking AIDS denialists' claims, including AIDS denialists with science/medical degrees. Is Pielke Jr. going to object to that to? Does he really not understand the important role websites like AIDSTruth, TalkOrigins, and SkepticalScience play in correcting denialist misinformation/disinformation?:
https://www.aidstruth.org/new/denialism/denialists/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1949841/
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2015.00193/full -
sailrick at 15:18 PM on 11 February 2020On climate misinformation and accountability
John Cook
There seems to be a typo here - "no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped"
I think you ment has stopped -
jgnfld2 at 15:15 PM on 11 February 2020On climate misinformation and accountability
@3
"an accurate quote ... removed from the context of what he's saying" is merely Propagada 101. All the best deniers use that technique constantly. In particular, McKittrick uses that method almost exclusively and thinks he's fooling people. He may be right in a few cases.
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Eclectic at 15:06 PM on 11 February 2020On climate misinformation and accountability
BillWalker @5 ,
there's likely some simple explanation for Watts and Morano being missing from the list.
Probably they've exceeded their quota for falsehoods & disinformation . . . and the counter needs a manual reset.
We could ask the Washington Post to keep tab on them ~ but I suspect the WaPo is much too busy keeping a tab on Someone Else's falsehoods [currently showing over 15,000]. How does the WaPo keep up?! ;-)
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BillWalker at 14:33 PM on 11 February 2020On climate misinformation and accountability
I hadn't seen the "Misinformation by Source" page before. Nice! I'm surprised to find Anthony Watts and Marc Morano missing from the list, though.
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Rob Honeycutt at 13:39 PM on 11 February 2020On climate misinformation and accountability
Welp... I should have finished reading your entire comment before I commented. :-)
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Rob Honeycutt at 13:37 PM on 11 February 2020On climate misinformation and accountability
BillyJoe... Actually, I believe that is an accurate quote from Gavin, but it's removed from the context of what he's saying. The quote, as I know it, comes from this TED Talk. You'll get what he means if you watch the talk.
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BillyJoe at 12:19 PM on 11 February 2020On climate misinformation and accountability
Talk about Gavin Schmidt and cherry-pickin' climate deniers, I recently had a exchange with a cherry-pickin' climate denier who cherry-picked the following Gavin Schmidt quote:
"Models are not right or wrong; they're always wrong"
Of course, Gavin Schmidt did say that, but the climate denier misunderstood, either deliberately or out of ignorance, the meaning of that quote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong
And, of course, Gavin Schmidt is an expert on climate models and a trustworthy source of information on climate change, despite the implication of that cherry-picked quote that was taken out of thecontext of his TED Talk which was in support of climate models:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrJJxn-gCdo
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BillyJoe at 12:02 PM on 11 February 2020On climate misinformation and accountability
The section "Climate Misinformation by Source" looks very out of date with the most recent entries being from 2013, and some not updated since 2009. Perhaps the misinformers just recycle all their old arguments endlessly and haven't come up with any new arguments since 2013? A couple of the entries are actually blank. Also, have there been no new misinformers since 2013? Just asking because I don't know, although, off-hand, I can't think of any not included in the existing list.
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Eclectic at 11:49 AM on 11 February 2020CO2 effect is saturated
Dlen @582 , I am puzzled by what you say in your fourth-to-last paragraph.
Surely, regardless of the number of "frosted glass panes", the power arriving (upwards) at the top must always be the same* and equal to the solar heat entering the system (the system being the sub-TOA system i.e. the planet minus the stratosphere).
Of course, the same* will be very slightly more - or less - according to whether the planet is cooling or warming in transition to a new equilibrium surface temperature.
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dlen at 11:10 AM on 11 February 2020CO2 effect is saturated
@ 580 and 581.
First thx for investing thought about it, which may make things clearer.
I would like to refer to the reference to Angströms experiment in the first part of the "advanced debunking". Not all outgoing IR is absorbed, there is this absorption window (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6174548/) . But a certain IR band is absorbed by CO2, and for this band, the absorption lenght is in the order of magnitude of some meters at sea level. This is what I meant with "saturated".
BTW, this is the first point of the myth, which is actually not true, as stated above, because only the IR outside the transmission window will be absorbed.
So the heat energy has to propagate via multiple absorptions to the top layer. You are right, insofar having more CO2 molecules will already hamper this propagation process. My image for this is a stack of frosted glass, each representing one absorption length. The IR will be absorbed and re-emitted in all directions by each pane. To add CO2 means then to add a lot more of those panes. And those will increase the ratio between input and output power.
I have my difficulties with the statement, that the increase of the CO2 concentration pushes the emission layer up, where it is colder, where therefore less heat will be emitted. For me it's the other way around: because more "frosted glass panes" alias absorption lengths are stacked within the atmosphere, we have less power arriving at the top and therefore its temperature will be lower.
This - the lower top atmosphere temperature - is only the case as long as the earth is still warming up. In a new equilibrium, a couple of years after we hopefully managed to keep the CO2-level steady, the top atmosphere will be as warm as before, because it will emit exactly all incoming power. Only of course the surface temperature will be much higher than before.
With the word "complex", I tried to express a certain diffuse discontent with the explanation above. It has actually not explained, how in earth the heat, having been absorbed in the first meter or so, manages to reach the top layer in 50 km or so height nonetheless. Only if we give this explanation, we can make the effect of the additional absorption plausible.
The water metaphor is not bad, but it is a boundary - and conservation-of-energy argument. To use the actual propagation mechanism between the boundaries would imho more enlightening.
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Eclectic at 10:02 AM on 11 February 2020Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second
Thanks, Moderator @13 , for the sockpuppet notification.
I won't ask which rather puerile puppeteer it was. Being an optimist at heart, when I see a comment containing undertones of passive-aggression & deliberate fatuousness . . . I nevertheless think there's a 20% chance the comment comes from a clumsily laconic innocent. In this case, perhaps closer to a 10% chance, though !
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PenguinHype at 05:28 AM on 11 February 2020Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second
I've been keeping an eye on the increasing rise in global tempature, and decided to do a bit of investigating after Antartica's new record of 65 degrees. Little did I expect to stumble upon such researched conversation, and better yet, the intellectual slamming nearly brought tears of joy to my eyes. Reading through this banter made my day, and has left me more educated about our collective crisis. You may see my contribution to this thread as a waste, and I don't care, but for your average Joe the comparison to Atomic bombs helps put things into perspective. In case your were curious about the opinion of a "lesser" mind.
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Eclectic at 23:46 PM on 10 February 2020Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second
Franklefkin @11 , to add to MA Rodger's comment :-
the moderator was not referring to the ocean temperature rise, but to the heating (from global warming) of the ocean.
You were incorrect ~ in stating that the instruments could not determine a small temperature change (such as the 0.09 figure you yourself nominated). Was this the point you wish to dispute?
The ocean covers 70% of the planetary surface, and has an average depth of around 4,000 meters. The ocean is warming, but not uniformly from 0.1 meter down to 4,000 meters of depth. Therefore there is little point in trying to specify an average oceanic temperature rise in degrees per year or per decade. OHC (ocean heat content) is the logical measurement. Was this another point you wish to dispute?
"Metrology" arguments would belong in a different thread than this one.
Moderator Response:[DB] You make sage points, but the user to which you are responding is a sock puppet and has thus recused itself from further participation here.
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MA Rodger at 23:37 PM on 10 February 2020Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second
franklefkin @11,
You ask for "the actual temp rise of the oceans per decade" having been told-off for suggesting @5 that some unspecified "it" was warming at "~0.09 C/decade" adding that this rate was "less than the capability of the instruments to differentiate." Note that your definition of ocean temperature here is still not complete.
According to NOAA data, global SST has been rising at +0.13ºC/decade, a value evidently within "the capability of the instruments to differentiate."
Mind, the usual quantity which those suffering denial over AGW seem to enjoy bandying-about is the average increase in temperature for the entirety of the ocean's waters. That is a simple calculation. By taking the 0-2000m dOHC as representative of the entire ocean (again a value evidently within "the capability of the instruments to differentiate."), over the last 5 years we get +107 ZJperDecade /(1.4e21kg x 4200J/ºC) = +0.02ºC/decade.
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franklefkin at 22:31 PM on 10 February 2020Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second
Mod response @# 5
You say I am incorrect, yet fail to state what you feel (or what you determine credible sources state) the actual temp rise of the oceans per decade is!
What is it?
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John Hartz at 08:15 AM on 10 February 2020It's cooling
Recommended supplermental rearding:
Claims of a coming 30-year “mini ice age” are not supported by science, Edited by Scott Johnson, Climate Feedback, Feb 6, 2020
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Martin123 at 04:57 AM on 10 February 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #6
I hope this is on topic. The news roundup seems to refer to (amoung other topics) the fossil fuel industry. Otherwise, please point me to an approriate thread.
I would like to share this link to an article (in German) on undercover journalism. They talked to EIKE, a German outfit and in particular the Heartland Institute. The journalists claimed to be representatives of a German car copmany, wanting to donate € 500 000 anomously to influence public opinion. James Taylor, head of HI, explained in detail, how this would work, how you could buy statements and complete studies from experts and scientists, push buzz words on youtube, etc. He also pointed out that it would be much better to donate the money to them rather than EIKE. Even though EIKE and HI cooperate a lot. Not above stiffing their partner!
Link Correctiv
I might have suspected such obnoxious behavior. But knowing it, is something different.
Moderator Response:[JH] Thank you for your post. The comment threads of both the Weekly News Roundup and of the Weekly digest effectively function as open threads.
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MA Rodger at 20:20 PM on 9 February 2020Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second
eschwarzbach @9,
Yes, although I think it is "would be" rather than "could be".
The definitions of Climate Forcing tend not to help in respect of AGW as they describe a Forcing as the energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere. So this NOAA webpage says "The difference between incoming and outgoing radiation is known as a planet’s radiative forcing (RF)." Such a definition is fine if it concerns a one-off event. But when it is an on-going process like AGW, it becomes confusing as the TOA energy imbalance will never match the total applied Forcing as the climate will be reacting to the imbalance before it is fully applied.
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michael sweet at 09:55 AM on 9 February 2020IPCC global warming projections were wrong
My spell checker keeps changing your handle bjchip. Sorry.
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michael sweet at 09:54 AM on 9 February 2020IPCC global warming projections were wrong
I am very sorry I misspelled your handle Virgil.
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michael sweet at 09:53 AM on 9 February 2020IPCC global warming projections were wrong
Bishop,
Thank you for your insightful comment. All the OP's on SkS are written by volunteers. You could write an updated OP and submit it. Be sure to cite where you get the updated data from.
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