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climatewolf at 04:56 AM on 31 March 2011Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
Hi dana1981, I agree with you and the OP that Muller paraphrased the actual email and in doing so added some potential bias to it, however that in and of itself does not invalidate his statements. The Briffa reconstruction showed a decline in temperature post 1961. As has been shown, there is a very good argument that this data was unreliable and so was not included and instead was substituted (in the graph) with instrumental data (as were the other reconstructions from 1981 onwards). So I'm afraid your points are incorrect from my understanding. It is entirely fair to say that Muller has presented his facts with a slant/bias, however he is still presenting facts. If the OP were worded in such a way as to point out this bias and paraphrasing, I would have no problem with it. I merely feel from a straight forward use of English point of view, to say Muller makes errors is not correct. I am completely open to any discussion of actual facts in these presentations that were incorrect and look forward to subsequent posts here, but in this instance I think the OP crosses the line in calling these errors rather than bias. Regards Wolf -
KeenOn350 at 04:47 AM on 31 March 2011Acidification: Oceans past, present & yet to come
Scary, isn't it? -
Albatross at 04:41 AM on 31 March 2011Arctic Ice March 2011
fydijkstra @1 and @37, Actually, CW did not address Arctic amplification in his/her posts. They simply stated what is already known about winds and currents in the region. And if the strength of the polar vortex is affected by polar amplification, and the recent wild swings in the AO index suggest it is, that will translate into changes in the winds and ocean circulation. So advection of sea ice is/will be affected by polar amplification-- as I said up thread, "The climate system is a continuum and a myriad of intertwined factors/processes modulate its behaviour.". There is also evidence that warmer ocean water from lower latitudes is now entering the Arctic (Spielhagen et al. 2011), water that is the warmest in the past 2000 years. "Here, we present a multidecadal-scale record of ocean temperature variations during the past 2000 years, derived from marine sediments off Western Svalbard (79°N). We find that early–21st-century temperatures of Atlantic Water entering the Arctic Ocean are unprecedented over the past 2000 years and are presumably linked to the Arctic amplification of global warming." Perhaps the present situation can be best be placed in context by the findings made by Polyak et al. (2010): "The current reduction in Arctic ice cover started in the late 19th century, consistent with the rapidly warming climate, and became very pronounced over the last three decades. This ice loss appears to be unmatched over at least the last few thousand years and unexplainable by any of the known natural variabilities." And yet "skeptics"/contrarians in their delusion are still trying to tell us everything is just fine. The 2011 Arctic melt season is going to be yet another interesting one...and not necessarily "interesting" in a good way. -
dana1981 at 04:20 AM on 31 March 2011Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
Wolf #84 - here are the examples of factually wrong statements from Muller outlined by John in the post above: 1) "That's the words, "let's use Mike's trick to hide the decline"." Those weren't the words in the email. He didn't just get the words wrong, he repeated the misrepresentation and claimed it was a direct quote. 2) "Mike's trick consisted of erasing that data, calling it unreliable, and then substituting the temperature data from thereon." "Mike's trick" does not involve erasing any data, calling any data unreliable, or substituting the instrumental temperature record. It merely involves plotting the instrumental record along with the proxy record. -
fydijkstra at 04:16 AM on 31 March 2011Arctic Ice March 2011
Honeycutt (3) and others: I stated, that the melting of arctic ice has little or nothing to do with the greenhouse effect. You asked: 'Isn't Arctic amplification a predicted result of an enhanced greenhouse effect?'. This question has already been dealt with by Climatewatcher (7 an 14). My additional answer: yes, the warming at high latitudes has been predicted as a result of the greenhouse effect. But that's the only point where the sea ice melting has something to do with the greenhouse effect. ( - Off-topic Gish Gallop snipped - ) You may know, that arctic sea ice has a high recovery capacity: some colder years are enough to restore it, because thin ice grows faster than old ice.Moderator Response: [DB] Many other threads exist covering the topics snipped. If you wish to discuss those, place individual on-topic comments on those other threads please. -
Rob Honeycutt at 04:04 AM on 31 March 2011Arctic Ice March 2011
Jay... Please note that in the abstract of the paper you post they say, "...the Arctic warming from 1910–1940 proceeded at a significantly faster rate than the current 1970–2008 warming..." That is not saying that the Arctic was warmer in 1940. You said, "Note that from 1935-1945, arctic temperatures were much higher than today" which would be inaccurate. -
Dr. Jay Cadbury, phd. at 03:59 AM on 31 March 2011Arctic Ice March 2011
@AlexandreDo you think NOAA did a very good job updating the public about the BP oil spill?[muoncounter] Above is off topic. http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2009/2009GL038777.shtml Sorry, this links only to the abstract, I think this is a pay journal but it says in the abstract the arctic warmed faster 1910-1940.Moderator Response: [DB] I'd recommend reading a bit more closely. The abstract clearly speaks of rates of warming, not absolutes. And those rates are relative to the global average, which we know today is much higher globally than during the earlier time period in question. In any case, an open copy is available here. -
Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
climatewolf> I agree, by specifically calling out Manns name and not that of Briffa and Jones, the statement could be misinterpreted, however I don't see where he was factually incorrect in this area. Muller's rhetoric seems to rely on implication more than direct factual statements. I don't think that should let him off the hook, especially when he's arguing that the work of all these authors is essentially worthless. -
Albatross at 03:49 AM on 31 March 2011Arctic Ice March 2011
Alexandre @33, Re the unsupported claim made by Cadbury @30 that: "Note that from 1935-1945, arctic temperatures were much higher than today" The data plotted below also agree with the NOAA figure that you posted.
Source here.
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Albatross at 03:41 AM on 31 March 2011Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
Shawn and Arkadiusz, I think part of your frustration is arising from the fact that you still appear not to grasp the intent of the OP. Daniel and others have tried to point out the intent of the OP to you, so it is now getting a little old to suggest that there is some "trick" or "conspiracy" going on to stifle your opinion (although this is a story about Muller mangling facts and words, and is not opinion or interpretation). Shawn, I asked you questions @75 to try and focus the discussion on the pertinent issues and move it forward. You are quite free to answer "no" (i.e., disagree with the OP) and explain why you disagree. But You have not taken advantage of that opportunity. You are also free to post on the relevant thread/s to discuss other issues further. Let me be frank, CA and WUWT or Air Vent would almost certainly not afford you the same courtesy, or even the polite exchange in this type of situation. As Dana says, there is probably more in the works documenting Muller's propensity to mangle his facts and to engage in rhetoric on this important issue--this was just a taster. Now that behaviour by someone of Muller's standing should concern you, whether or not you are a skeptic or contrarian. And, you can still be a "skeptic" or contrarian and agree with John Cook et al. from time-to-time you know :) -
Chris Colose at 03:36 AM on 31 March 2011Understanding Solar Evolution Part 2: Planets
Bern, The extremely high Deuterium-Hydrogen ratio on Venus suggests that there was a lot more water in its early stages than is now (and it still has some trace amounts of water vapor in the atmosphere) although there's good indication it was never within the last billion years or so, so it must have been earlier. The timeframe over which water was lost is rather unknown, and if Venus went through a "moist greenhouse" phase could remain habitable until the timescale of hydrogen loss (in this case, an ocean can still be at the surface). -
climatewolf at 02:57 AM on 31 March 2011Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
Hi All, I will start by openly admitting I am a complete layman in this subject, and continue to read this and many other sites to try and improve my knowledge. Whilst I have found a lot of useful and interesting information on this site, I do have an issue with this OP As I understand it, "Mike's nature trick" is merely a graphical tool for adding instrumental temperature readings to the end of a proxy series. "I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline." So Phil Jones email reads plainly that he is saying for the Briffa reconstruction he is moving this addition of instumental data back 20 years, to remove what is considered outlier data (hide the decline). So I agree that the use of this "trick" in Mann's Nature graph did not (as far as I am aware) involve removing outlier data from his study. However Muellers paraphrasing and presentation when looked at in this context do not appear to be factually incorrect. He did not say the method used by Mann in his paper involved erasing data, he said the use of this method by Briffa Jones did. This is factually correct (if somewhat irelavent). I agree, by specifically calling out Manns name and not that of Briffa and Jones, the statement could be misinterpreted, however I don't see where he was factually incorrect in this area. Please correct me if I have missed the point or misrepresented anything here. I continue to look forward to more informed articles here. Regards Wolf -
shawnhet at 02:56 AM on 31 March 2011Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
Phillippe, This looks like one sentence to me:"I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline." He may've just thought that hiding the decline referred to both Mike's trick and what Briffa did. Cheers, :) -
pbjamm at 02:54 AM on 31 March 2011Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
Philippe@80 it does rhyme with 'misreading' though. -
dana1981 at 02:51 AM on 31 March 2011Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
No, Muller didn't just misread a single line. He combined several different statements about different subjects into one. He then claimed that he was providing a direct quote - "That's the words, 'let's use Mike's trick to hide the decline'." Those are not the words. He then incorrectly characterized "Mike's trick". Really, there are just so many wrong statements Muller packed into just a couple of sentences, it's pretty mind-boggling. As we'll see in future installments of Muller Misinformation, this appears to be common behavior for Muller. -
Alexandre at 02:51 AM on 31 March 2011Arctic Ice March 2011
Jay #30 Arctic temperatures higher between 1935-1945 than today? NOAA seems to disagree:
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Phila at 02:45 AM on 31 March 2011Understanding Solar Evolution Part 2: Planets
BP: "Not necessarily. It depends on how hard posterity is willing to work." You seem blissfully unaware of the ironies here. -
Philippe Chantreau at 02:42 AM on 31 March 2011Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
"he misread a single line" Total BS. He gathered several lines and put them together in a certain way, so as to create a certain mental image in the listener. There is a name for that. I do not understand how one could call it "misreading." -
Alexandre at 02:35 AM on 31 March 2011Weather vs Climate
johnd at 13:23 PM on 30 March, 2011 You say: Rahmstorf used a rise of 0.33°C in the global mean surface temperature over the 16 years whereas JAMSTEC using NCEP would have used 0.22°C based on a trend of 0.14°C per decade determined over the period 1982 to 2008. This part of your answer (along with a few other bits) makes me wonder if you understood what that Rahmstorf paper is all about. He's not projecting anything, nor is he hindcasting. He did not "use the upper areas" of uncertainty nor the lower ones. He just juxtaposed observations and projections, with the whole uncertainties, and compared them. And the observations match those projections pretty well. My untrained eye would even say that global temperatures are closer to the upper limit of uncertainty ranges than the lower (of course, so are emissions as well). So, if the IPCC (not Rahmstrof) had used an even lower projected warming rate, as you suggest, it would yield poorer results. Have a look:
Of course, 16 years is not long enough for such a noisy signal, but so far, so good. And if you add the 3 last years, the projection is still just as good. We should keep watching this, but nothing here suggests the IPCC should have thought it would warm less.
About your other point:
The current understanding is that there is an energy imbalance at the TOA, and the surplus is , well, missing.
Maybe you are confusing energy balance at the TOA with the climate heat content?
The radiative difference is not missing. It's radiating back down, as predicted and observed.
Moderator Response: [mc] fixed image width -
Rob Honeycutt at 02:21 AM on 31 March 2011Arctic Ice March 2011
Yes, Jay... Citation. If you're going to make statements like that you need to be able to back them up. That standard gets applied to both sides of the debate here at SkS. -
Bob Lacatena at 02:18 AM on 31 March 2011Arctic Ice March 2011
30, Cadbury,Note that from 1935-1945, arctic temperatures were much higher than today...
Citation, please. -
Philippe Chantreau at 02:18 AM on 31 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Damorbel keeps digging while trying to impress by citing Einstein (in German, for added effect). "every time you get corrected, you change the subject." You reckon KR? I'm still waiting on how the energy of a photon is affected by the temperature of the source. I'm not counting on a quantum theory revolution any time soon. Damorbel knows just enough vocabulary to impress and confuse the gullible but he has repeatedly demonstrated the lack of understanding of his own words. I am unmoved with both him and LJR. So far, in a lot less than the 850 posts contained in this thread, I've seen the howler I cite here, the one you addressed above and LJR asking what the Earth emissivity is in the SW. But they're ready to give lessons to everyone and caution against the bold "hypothesis" of an atmospheric GH effect. What a farce. It's almost as if they are in disguise, on a campaign to completely discredit the ridiculous GH effect skepticism launched by G&T. -
shawnhet at 02:06 AM on 31 March 2011Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
Albatross, if I wanted to play gotcha, I could point out that anything except the issue raised in the OP is OT ;) Perhaps, Muller is wrong about everything in his presentation, but on the specific issue raised by this thread there is no evidence of anything except that he misread a single line. This misreading didn't affect his larger point IMO. Perhaps, at some point I will address dhogaza's concerns on the relevant thread, but frankly this whole exercise has been pretty frustrating and I am soured on the whole thing. Cheers, :) -
Philippe Chantreau at 02:00 AM on 31 March 2011Why we have a scientific consensus on climate change
TonyM, the confusion and conflation of issues and non issues in your post are so dense that I will not even bother to begin adressing them. All the answers are out there and easy to find if you actually want to look. As for why it is important to show that a consensus exists in climate science, that is because the assault on it is of a scope and ferocity that are unprecedented. Even the tobacco campaigns pale in comparison. The merchants of doubt have managed to create a perception that there is lack of agreement among scientists on the basics tenets. There is not. It is important to point that out. Science is not done by consensus and never was, that applies to climate as well. The consensus is one of research results. Climate scientists working on various aspects of the science reach similar or identical conclusions through different means. These conclusions impose themselves to anyone studying the science seriously. That is what consensus means. -
Dr. Jay Cadbury, phd. at 01:51 AM on 31 March 2011Arctic Ice March 2011
adelady, 32 years of data isn't enough to make such an ( -snip- ) prediction. Note that from 1935-1945, arctic temperatures were much higher than today, and dropped from that peak until about 1960. This tells us that the arctic can sustain greater warming.Moderator Response: [DB] Actually, this is well-documented and studied. See here for background information and studies. -
TonyM at 01:46 AM on 31 March 2011Why we have a scientific consensus on climate change
Bern, thanks for your comments. I will leave the issue on consensus open as it would need to also canvas possibilities other than the one you have focussed on. I suggest if the science is so robust it does not need a survey on consensus. I have never heard of such a survey in the hard sciences even if its intent was to educate the public. So I guess what you are telling me is that the temperatures we experience today reflects CO2 of perhaps 200-1000 years ago. This sounds like a strange consensus science community when the controversy surrounding hockey sticks, hidden data and ocean rises is all so contemporary but the real cause is somewhere in the past. No wonder Gore is reported to have bought a property on the coast. In addition the CO2 we are spewing out now will have an effect in 200-1000 years. But, non mixing oceans right now are causing faster temp rises so that many of our pollies wrongly attribute it and some extreme natural events to CO2 rises rather than, say, God. As the last half million years have seen no runaway effect with CO2 increases (and there is plenty of it available in the oceans etc) why would I want to worry about the level of CO2 rising now. Besides technology will have caught up sufficiently and energy, say from fusion, will be so cheap that we can sequester all the CO2 we want in a few hundred years if that is required.Moderator Response: You've wandered across quite a few topics other than the one that this post is about. Click the "Arguments" link in the horizontal bar at the top of this page, and skim the resulting list for appropriate posts. Further off topic comments on this thread will be deleted. -
2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
damorbel - I generally do not respond to your postings, as they seem to follow 'trolling' principles (lots of red herrings, for example), but I will on the following howler. I apologize for my tone, but this has gone on far too long. "Measuring the 'downwelling radiation' tells you almost nothing because you are far from sure about what kind of material (pressure; density; temperature etc. - for a gas) is emitting this radiation (thus you don't know its emissivity) and where it is." Measuring downward IR at the surface tells you exactly what you need to know - the amount of energy coming down from the atmosphere at the air-surface interface, and hence the appropriate values for the energy budget. That's 333 W/m^2 downward IR, repeatedly and accurately measured. Your quibbling does not change the data! Your objections are really just red herrings, damorbel, a pattern you have repeated over and over and over again on this thread for multiple months - every time you get corrected, you change the subject. We know the energies, we know (as per Tom Curtis's post) where those come from in the atmosphere, we know the upwelling radiation, and we really really do know what the IR absorptivity/emissivity of water, sand, dry and wet dirt, etc., are. And we know the physics of CO2, EM, and thermodynamics. The radiative greenhouse effect is fully supported by all of this - no other viable explanations have been put forth. ---- Back to the actual thread: The "2nd law" objection to the greenhouse effect is based upon a mistaken notion (As per Gerlich et al) that a cool object cannot add energy to a warmer object, since net energy transfer is in the other direction - a classic Fallacy of Division, as net transfer is a statistical effect, not a restriction on individual photons. Hence the "2nd law" objection is false. Are there any actual issues with this that are on topic? Moderators, might I suggest that topic adherence be strongly enforced, as we're at >850 postings on this topic, many of which are serious digressions?Moderator Response:[DB] "might I suggest that topic adherence be strongly enforced"
Agreed. In the words of the King:
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Stu at 01:36 AM on 31 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
"In the case of water, evaporation is by far the dominant heat loss mechanism for incident radiation, even Trenberth's diagram show's this. You can easily discover the figures for yourself by checking world wide rainfall; the heat needed to evaporate water is deposited in the atmosphere when it condenses. Yes evaporation is a big consideration, but I'm not sure why it trumps radiation. Locally (or indeed regionally), the latent heat flux can be massive, especially where cold air flows over warm water, but Trenberth's schematic shows evapotranspiration having an average value of 80 W/m2, compared to 396 W/m2 radiation:
Indeed if you take water to have an emissivity of 0.95 at 300 K, then it's emitting 436 W/m2 at that temperature. And regarding that value of emissivity for water:
"True, but the link doesn't say that or give any figures for different wavelengths, so I do not understand what you are driving at."
The problem then is just that you didn't read the part of the page that says "As a guideline the emmisivities below are based on temperature 300 K"
A substance at 300 K will have its peak emissive flux in the thermal infrared.
"I have read the paper you linked plus the description of the radiometer used and it merely confirms what I wrote in #875. To summarise, the energy associated with heat is constantly being exchanged between (adjacent) molecules both mechanically by (elastic) collision and electromagnetically by absorption and emission of radiation; somewhere there is a link to a paper by Einstein in this connection.
I know this sounds pedantic but it has to be said. What the radiometer used in your paper measures is the radiation from gases that emit electctromagnetic radiation because they have T>0K. What the radiometer doesn't do is measure the 'upwelling' radiation from the same gases. If you could measure the 'upwelling' radiation from the same gases then you would be able to determine how much energy was being transferred and in which direction; only then would you be able to work out what was happening to the temperatures at the various locations of interest."
When you say 'energy associated with heat is... exchanged... by absorption and emission of radiation', you need to qualify it with the fact that only greenhouse gases do any absorbing or emitting. Again, it's not just that gases emit because they have T>0K. N2 and O2 do next to no emitting and their energy has to be transferred by collision to a GHG in order to be radiated away.
Also, radiation is emitted isotropically; if you measure a certain downward flux, you can be sure that the 'layer' of the atmosphere you're measuring is emitting the same flux upwards.
I think Tom Curtis has answered your other points nicely.
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adelady at 01:28 AM on 31 March 2011Arctic Ice March 2011
Rats, it's past my bedtime. If someone wants to do the link properly, go ahead. I'm off. -
adelady at 01:27 AM on 31 March 2011Arctic Ice March 2011
drjc, I don't know about "safe, but it would be reassuring if we were to see 3 out of 5 years above the 2 standard deviation range rather than below it.
Moderator Response: [DB] Hot-linked image. -
adelady at 01:16 AM on 31 March 2011Arctic Ice March 2011
Ken, I find it handy to think of the Arctic as a bottleneck for heat. Atlantic currents drive warm water northwards which just happens to be towards a smaller and smaller area because of the NH land mass. So all that warmth has to find somewhere to go. For a few decades it's been more or less invisible because the ice has been soaking it up from underneath. But all good things must come to an end. So much warmth has gone into thinning the ice that it is finally giving up. It's breaking up into slush in many places, it's not forming the former massive slabs it used to. And those smaller, thinner pieces of ice are more vulnerable to winds, tides and currents that formerly used to circulate around, over and beneath the ice shifting and compressing most of it and moving just the edges away. Now those "edges" are all through the no-longer-packed ice and the winds and currents have free rein to move damaged ice further and faster out of the Arctic area. -
Dr. Jay Cadbury, phd. at 01:04 AM on 31 March 2011Arctic Ice March 2011
So there has been a lot of concern about arctic ice, what level of ice would be considered a safe amount. -
Bern at 00:45 AM on 31 March 2011Understanding Solar Evolution Part 2: Planets
BP: technically possible, but would it ever happen? Given the warnings given by scientists about problems a century hence due to global warming, and the marked lack of action by world governments, I hold grave doubts that they'd work to prevent a problem a few hundred million centuries down the track. :-P I recall a Larry Niven novel (Ringworld, I think) where a species of aliens was moving their entire solar system out of the galaxy due to some impending catastrophic wave of supernovae... that's probably beyond us at this point in time, but a billion years from now, if we're still around? -
Ken Lambert at 00:11 AM on 31 March 2011Arctic Ice March 2011
Graphical stories on Arctic sea ice melt regularly appear on SKS and seem to assume undue importance when the heat energy involved is considered. Only about 7% of the earth's surface is above 60 degrees North. Of the purported Earth's warming imbalance of 145E20 Joules/year, only 1E20 Joules/year is accounted for by the reduction in Arctic sea ice. That is only 1/145 of the claimed heat being gained by the Earth due to global warming. The problem is trying to find where is the other 144/145ths.Moderator Response:[DB] Actually, when the heat energy is considered, during the Arctic melt season more energy is delivered to the Arctic than the tropics (due to the much longer periods of daylight available):
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Ken Lambert at 23:51 PM on 30 March 2011A climate 'Gish Gallop' of epic proportions
CBD #17 "The point being that these values are not just randomly spit out of a climate model in complete isolation. Each is checked against real world data to whatever extent possible." Quite right CBD. The emphasis is on 'to watever extent possible', The famous Trenberth diagram of energy flows shows TSI of approx 340 incoming, roughly 100 reflected and 240 outgoing. Finding 0.9 in 240 is 0.375%. Are any of these quantities being measured to this accuracy? A small change in reflection due to cloud changes can have a big effect on a difference as small as 0.9. These are very good questions for Dr Trenberth - exactly which of the numbers are really solid and which are implied to produce the imbalance of 0.9. -
Tom Curtis at 23:45 PM on 30 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
damorbel @881, I find your comment bizarre on two counts. First, the absorption strengths at different frequencies for all common, and most uncommon atmospheric components is well documented in the HITRANdatabase. Because of that, except in those areas of overlapping absorption, the actual molecules emitting the down welling IR radiation is easily determined, as indeed is the average altitude from which the gas emissions originated. So to a significant degree of accuracy, the downwelling IR radiation tells us a great deal about the kind of material - including its temperature (from its brightness temperature) and pressure (from pressure broadening)- that emitted the radiation. Second, you talk as though observations have not been made from above the locations of observed downwelling spectra. Indeed, you do so despite the fact that downwelling and upwelling spectra from the same location are shown in figure 1 of the intermediate version of the article above. These observations have been made not only by satellite, but also by aircraft from a variety of altitudes. Here, for example, are spectra obtained by an aircraft flying at 3.7 km altitude over the North Sea:
And a comparison of those spectra with model results:
The large spike at the point at which CO2 emissivity is highest is because the cabin temperature was slightly higher than the air at that altitude, as discussed in the paper. It illustrates the point, however, that except at the frequency of greatest emissivity, radiation emitted in the atmosphere will travel hundreds of meters, and even several kilometers before being absorbed (on average). So, "to summarize", energy is constantly being exchanged in the atmosphere between adjacent molecules by collision and radiation, and between very distant molecules at a much slower rate by radiation.
In fact, the concept of "back radiation" is not premised on the radiation coming from high in the atmosphere (you are wrong about that); but your claimed refutation is based on an error. This may be a case of an ugly fact wrecking Einstein's beautiful theory, but I suspect the fact is just wrecking your misinterpretation of Einstein rather than the master himself.
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CBDunkerson at 23:43 PM on 30 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
Bern #61: The other factor generally impacting coal prices (after "digging it out of the ground") is transport costs. Oil and natural gas can be transported through pipes and/or in and out of containers fairly quickly. Coal needs to be carted around by trains and trucks and requires big shovel loaders to load and unload. Thus, any time you can put the power station by the coal mine (as would apparently be common in Australia based on your example) it means much lower costs. Hence the 1/3rd market rate you refer to... coal from abroad would add massive shipping costs. Hawaii is probably the most extreme example in the other direction. Transporting coal across the ocean to Hawaii would be prohibitively expensive, so instead they have long gotten most of their electricity by burning oil... its higher extraction cost being offset by much lower transport costs. Fortunately they are now starting to shift over to locally generated renewable power, since it is now actually cheaper than getting any of the fossil fuels to the island. -
Gilles at 23:22 PM on 30 March 2011A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
whoops something wrong with my answer ?I was just asking adelady which CH4 concentration she expected by 2020, 2030, 2040 and 2050 ?Moderator Response: [DB] Too far off the topic of this post. -
CBDunkerson at 23:18 PM on 30 March 2011The Washington Times Talks Greenhouse Law
I wasn't sure where to put this, but since it is another example of legal maneuvering around global warming I thought this thread might be appropriate; Tennessee teaching law Basically, Tennessee is on the verge of passing a law which prohibits schools from disciplining teachers who 'examine the strengths and weaknesses' of 'controversial' issues like global warming and evolution. Obviously, this is meant to allow the usual propaganda nonsense to be introduced into school classrooms, but I have to wonder if it wouldn't also be an opportunity. Imagine a teacher in Tennessee walking into class after this is passed (if it is) and calmly going through a list of global warming 'skeptic' arguments and showing how they have been fabricated, misrepresented, et cetera. Said teacher would then be protected from any reprisals by the very law meant to spread this nonsense... they were merely pointing out the weaknesses of one of the sides in the 'controversy', namely that the arguments it advances are provably false. If the matter then ends up in a court of law there are firmly established standards (e.g. Frye, Daubert, Federal Rules of Evidence) which require that scientific testimony be limited to well established information... by criteria that would exclude virtually the entirety of global warming 'skepticism'. It seems to me that, as with various examples of demonstrably false 'skeptic' testimony to Congress, there has been a tendency to 'let things slide'. Rather we should pursue something more like the course taken by the 7 states in the suit discussed in the article above. Take the fight to the skeptics... in the classroom and the courtroom. Because the simple fact is that they don't have a leg to stand on once you take away the reams of misinformation in the 'denialsphere'. Get it on the legal record that 'global warming skepticism' is as fictional a 'science' as intelligent design and it becomes harder to spread this nonsense and easier to stomp it out. -
quokka at 23:17 PM on 30 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
#60 Ger Nuclear power plants can be built to load follow. From the Areva web site: "Load follow: between 60 and 100% nominal output, the EPR™ reactor can adjust it power output at a rate of 5% nominal power per minute at constant temperature, preserving the service life of the components and of the plant." Obviously, running an NPP at less than maximum capacity factor is an economic decision, but it may be quite viable to a limited extent depending on the pricing mechanisms in the specific electricity market. -
Berényi Péter at 23:13 PM on 30 March 2011Understanding Solar Evolution Part 2: Planets
"By then, Earth will be incinerated". Not necessarily. It depends on how hard posterity is willing to work. ASTROPHYSICS AND SPACE SCIENCE, 2001, Volume 275, Number 4, 349-366 DOI: 10.1023/A:1002790227314 Astronomical Engineering: A Strategy For Modifying Planetary Orbits D.G. Korycansky, Gregory Laughlin & Fred C. Adams Revista Mexicana de Astronomía y Astrofísica, 2004, diciembre, volumen 022 Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México ISSN (Versión impresa): 0185-1101 MÉXICO ASTROENGINEERING, OR HOW TO SAVE THE EARTH IN ONLY ONE BILLION YEARS D. G. Korycansky -
Bern at 23:11 PM on 30 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
Ger @ #60: nuclear plants can actually throttle their electrical power output very quickly, by blowing steam through condensers rather than through a turbine. Not having to pay for expensive fuel to generate the steam in the first place means it's quite economical to do this. It's also very fast - you can go from 100% to 0% in a matter of minutes (basically as fast as the electrical network will allow the shift in load to happen). I'm not sure how long it takes to ramp up load in that situation, but you're already generating the steam, so it's just a matter of opening valves to send more to the turbine. I understand that many reactors can actually be throttled quickly, too - on the order of hours. But I believe you're correct, in that it takes days to fire one up from scratch. Either way, there are still massive thermal losses between energy source and electricity consumer, as you pointed out. I'm with you, though - well-designed solar thermal can provide massive amounts of heat to individual homes, even in cold climates. -
Bern at 22:54 PM on 30 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
johnd: the effective price of coal for most power stations in Australia is, as far as I'm aware, the cost of digging it out of the ground. I believe there was a recent example in NSW where the state government sold the power station, but decided to continue to operate the mine, because no contractor would dig coal and supply it to the power station for the agreed price. I'll have a dig for the article, but from memory the price was ~$40/tonne supplied to the power station, compared to a market price for coal of $115-$118/tonne, if you were to deliver it to overseas buyers. Some of the other commentators could be right, though, a large part of the difference may be due to the spot/contract price differential. -
CBDunkerson at 22:52 PM on 30 March 2011A climate 'Gish Gallop' of epic proportions
Ken, you are correct about the CERES measurements, but still lack foundation for your conclusion that 'positive warming imbalance is in question'. There are too many other measurements confirming this imbalance. Consider the standard 'Trenberth diagram' of various energy flows within the climate system. These values were not just made up, but rather each is based on measurements and analysis. That is, we have long measured incoming solar radiation and identified its range of fluctuation (fairly small)... measurements of increased 'back radiation' from the greenhouse effect have been taken at the surface and found to correlate with expected results from the models, as have satellite measurements of decreased outgoing radiation in the same bands. Et cetera. The point being that these values are not just randomly spit out of a climate model in complete isolation. Each is checked against real world data to whatever extent possible. Yes, there are many uncertainties, but when all available data points to a positive warming imbalance there are simply no grounds for claiming that imbalance is in question. -
Ger at 22:42 PM on 30 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
#48 Sean A. Without the hot air, well we need hot air as well for heating purposes (or cooling purposes). You will probably also know that about 50% of the energy in the fuel used for electricity goes up in to the air, as the hot air and into the cooling water requirements. Also large part goes away into the distribution lines. The general published figure of a 5% is the loss only in the high tension line (>= 69 kV), if it is transformed down to user level, the more likely figure is a 12%. About using nuclear plants: those are inherently bad in regulating their power output. Shuting down or going on-line takes days. Even a coal fired plant is doing much better with regulating measured in hours (5-6) instead of days. Those base-power plants do need a large grid to operate efficiently. -
Bern at 22:36 PM on 30 March 2011Why we have a scientific consensus on climate change
TonyM, you're getting things a little backward. The science of AGW isn't robust because we have consensus amongst climate scientists - we have consensus amongst climate scientists because the science of AGW is robust! In that regard, the consensus is merely an indicator for non-scientists that there is a very high probability that the AGW hypothesis is correct. It's not evidence supporting AGW in & of itself, though there's plenty of that around. Regarding the CO2/temperature thing - you're forgetting thermal inertia. Current radiative forcing is ~1.6 W/m2, if I recall correctly. To heat the oceans by 1ºC takes a phenomenal amount of energy - multiplying 1.6W/m2 by the surface area of the earth (~510e12 m2) is a lot of energy, sure (about 816 TW, if I've done my sums right), but it's only enough to heat up the mass of the oceans by ~0.005ºC per year (assuming complete mixing, of course!). On that basis, you'd expect ~0.5ºC per century. We're currently seeing about three times that, I think, which is mostly down to the oceans not being well-mixed (plus some of the heat gets absorbed by the land & atmosphere). So, basically, it takes centuries at best, and possibly millennia, for the full warming effect to be realised. This is why focussing on projected warming to 2100 is a dangerous thing. The scientists do it because it's a handy reference point, far enough out to see some real effects that they can highlight to policy-makers. But in the high-emissions (or business-as-usual) scenarios, warming doesn't end there, by any stretch of the imagination. -
quokka at 22:27 PM on 30 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
#56 Johnd, I'm no expert on coal price, but I think Australian generators would be supplied under long term contracts. Under such contracts, the price could well be a lot lower than the current "spot price" which would behave more like oil prices with rapid fluctuations due to things like supply disruptions (eg floods) and weather conditions (eg very cold winter). Incidentally, there is a trend towards the trading of a much higher volume of coal futures contracts. Whether this is a sign that we might be heading to more volatile coal prices in the future might be worth considering. Hopefully such volatility might be something of a disincentive to build more coal burners. -
Ger at 22:14 PM on 30 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
#46: actual thoughtful- we don't disagree, just mentioning that using solar heat in combination with a heat pump is reducing the CO2 footprint. Expensive is not the renewable electricity, expensive is getting it into your place through the old-fashioned type of distribution networks. Those networks do require so many regulations and securities from the generators of large scale power generation that it will increase the generation costs by a factor of two. Renewable energy (especially from wind and solar) have the additional disadvantages that is "fuel" supply is bad to control and (for biomass) that the power density is rather low (lots of moving of biomass to get your MW). -
JMurphy at 22:08 PM on 30 March 2011The Day After McLean
Are there any so-called skeptics, or their favourite websites, taking bets on this ? I fancy a wager... -
Bern at 22:07 PM on 30 March 2011Understanding Solar Evolution Part 2: Planets
Another interesting post, thanks Chris! Would conditions on Venus have ever been cool enough to allow a period of liquid water conditions? Or was insolation high enough to always push it to runaway greenhouse conditions?
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