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2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Climate_Protector - You might find Science of Doom's writeup on the 1st law of thermodynamics useful. One way to really visualize this is to think of the system as left-to-right. Sunlight enters from the left, heating the surface. To maintain conservation of energy in a steady state solution, the surface must dump that heat to outer space (far right). But there's an insulating atmosphere in between. The temperature that the Earth reaches is that which is necessary to pump 240 W/m^2 through the radiatively insulating atmosphere into space. Moving this energy through the atmosphere requires an energy differential! The Earth radiates 396 W/m^2 to the atmosphere (some 40 or so going straight through), the atmosphere acquires a temperature equal to the surface at the surface and radiates a large amount back down, and the upper colder atmosphere radiates 240 W/m^2 to space. It's insulation, pure and simple. And the more insulation between a constant input and a cold sink, the hotter the final temperature of the heated object. Total flow through the system is still 240 in, 240 out. There's just a buildup of energy at the thin link through the Earth/atmosphere interface. -
Climate_Protector at 10:11 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
To clarify regarding the back radiation I have seen. The flux changes little between day and night ONLY if you look at any particular series of 2-3 days, but it can fluctuate more than 100 W m-2 over the coarse of a season or a year. -
Climate_Protector at 10:06 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
To Tom Curtis 522 - I work in Colorado (far from any coast), and the climate here is relatively dry. The diurnal temperature range in the summer is about 10-13C, and the winter might be much higher or much lower depending on the frontal weather system we get. -
Climate_Protector at 10:02 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Was the air temperature proportional to the kinetic energy of air? I think Tom Curtis said that above. So, since back radiation is also proportional to temperature (somehow I think?), then would that mean that the kinetic energy of air is proportional to back radiation? If that is the case, then the lower atmosphere must contain kinetic energy that is larger than solar radiation, IF back radiation is really larger than the absorbed solar flux. This suggests that the atmosphere must be able to somehow store significant amount of energy. So, we come again to the atmospheric heat storage question. Correct? Something here does not add up - either we have a large atmospheric heat storage or the back radiation numbers must be wrong (or I'm profoundly misunderstand something). Do you agree? -
Tom Curtis at 09:57 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Climate_Protector @521, to evaluate your claim that back radiation at your location varies by no more than 40 w/m^2 from day to night, I would need to know the temperature range. However, two factors may be relevant. The closer you are to the coast, the smaller the diurnal temperature range, and hence diurnal range of back radiation. And the colder the climate, the smaller range in back radiation for a given range in temperatures. For instanct, a temperture range of 27 degrees (as in Mount Isa) but with the maximum equaling Mount Isa's minimum (0 degrees C) would only result in a 107 w/m^2 range in back radiation. The reported intensities in the diagram have significant margins of error (around 5% I believe), but are the best available estimates. -
chudiburg at 09:53 AM on 16 March 2011It's cooling
A quick question for all you ladies and gents with far more knowledge than myself. January and February of this year (2011) show a combined land and ocean temperature that is cooler than the past few years. I know that two months is much too short to make claims about trends, but I am just wondering why that might be. I am about to teach a unit on Climate Change and like to give updated temperature information to my students. I foresee this being a question I get from my students and I want to be prepared. Thanks -
Climate_Protector at 09:47 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
I see. So, most heat is storred in the oceans. That makes sense. It sounds like you all are telling me that there is no error in the reported intensities of back radiation, and that it is larger than the absorbed solar flux. Correct? I'm an ecologist and from working with observed met data (to drive my ecosystem models), I noticed that the diurnal variation in back radiation is much smaller than solar radiation. In fact, back radiation is nearly invariant (+- 20W m-2 or so) between day and night. This is true for sites in the NH. I'm bringing this up in response to Tom Curtis's remark that back radiation varies diurnally quite a bit. I've seen the opposite in the data sets I worked with ... Anyway, I understand that the lower atmosphere, where most of the back radiation is coming from, is heavily heated by the surface through surface-atmosphere exchange of various energies. But I'm still not clear what's making the temperature of the surface to increase beyond the black-body temperature. I guess this is the chicken-and-egg question; which is heating which? -
shoyemore at 09:29 AM on 16 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
Chris G., The temperatures in the mid century period were not "record", but there was a handful of second-warmest and third-warmest months, as if a warming period had been "damped" in some way. The "cooling" was not reflected in any coldest-month records. This may reflect a warming period somehow modified by the presence of aerosols - the months' temperatures were in the upper rather than the lower range. I am considering how this might be converted into a rate estimate via some formal Bayesian way. Fig 2 is in industrial and healthcare monitoring knows as a "Cusum" chart which is demonstrated to be the type of chart most sensitive to a process change. As you see it dates the advent of late-century warming to 1957 - earlier than any other method. I am not over-emphasising that, as it still needs some investigation. Adelady, I think you get it. Lot of work still to be done. Thanks. -
Tom Curtis at 09:18 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Climate_Protecter @522, the back radiation is a direct function of the temperature of the lowest part of the atmosphere. Because the lowest part of the atmosphere is very close in temperature to the surface, and the surface is far hotter than it would be if there were no greenhouse effect, the back radiation is also very high. Absent the greenhouse effect, the surface IR radiation would equal the incoming solar radiation. The green house effect lifts that till it is much higher, and therefore the back radiation is higher. It is as simple as that. -
Tom Curtis at 09:14 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Climate_Protector @520, the atmosphere "stores" considerable heat both in the form of the kinetic energy of motion (temperature) and as the vibrational and rotational energy of molecules (specific heat). The amount stored as vibrational energy and rotational energy is always proportional to that stored as kinetic energy, ie, as temperature. The amount stored is very small, however, compared to that stored by oceans. The specific heat of dry air is 1.026 Joules per kilogram per degree Kelvin, while that of water is over four times that. Combined with the much greater mass of the ocean, this means the vast majority of thermal energy at the Earth's surface is stored in the Ocean. However, this is largely irrelevant to PhysSci's argument. The reason the atmosphere maintains a very high back radiation is because a very high energy flux into the atmosphere is maintained, both by energy transfers from the Earth (IR, convection and evapo/transpiration) and directly from the Sun. In fact, when one of those (the sun) is removed at night, the back radiation falls very rapidly unless either: 1) The surface IR flux is maintained at high levels by being over ocean; or 2) The humidity is very high (which increases the specific heat of the atmosphere) and there is a low cloud cover (which lowers significantly the average altitude from which the back radiation comes, and significantly increases the heat capacity of the source of the back radiation). Obviously, there is some regional geographic effects, with warm air over sea water at night helping maintain a higher night time back radiation on the coast than in the interior. All of this follows because the back radiation is simply the thermal (IR) emissions of the lowest kilometer or so of the atmosphere; and therefore fluctuates with the temperature of that lowest portion of the atmosphere. Because of this, back radiation can fluctuate by more than 145 watts per meter squared in a single 24 hour period (the calculated night/day variation for winter in Mount Isa, Queensland) even without major changes in weather.Moderator Response: This sounds like a good additional Argument for the Arguments list. John Cook, what do you think? -
Climate_Protector at 09:09 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
KR 521 - Thank you. I understand the surface fluxes and the TOA fluxes, but if the heat storage capacity of the atmosphere is tiny as you suggest, how we have such a large downward IR flux (larger than solar)? That's the part I do not quite get and that's why I suspect (personal opinion) that the proposed downward IR flux may be incorrect ... -
Chris G at 09:03 AM on 16 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
LazyTeen, Nah. Unless you proposing that technicians have become less well trained over time, AND that the poorly trained ones are more likely to round up than down, then this is no cause for a systemic bias. Besides, satellite data show a compatible, positive trend in agreement with the thermometer data. So, you are worried that there is a systemic operator error bias that happens to coincide with a satellite bias, that happens to coincide with early springs, melting ice, etc. That falls off of the things I think are likely enough to worry about list. -
Chris G at 08:52 AM on 16 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
Adelady, On the other hand, it could be completely uninteresting. The cumulative total of the Tmaxrecord - Tminrecord graph being flat tells us that they were equal during this period. The statement that there were no new monthly records, combined with the flatness of the graph indicate that there were no new monthly highs either. Which might be as simple as saying that the mean was traversing ground already covered, and variance about the mean was not greater than previously experienced. It would have been easier to see this if there were a graph of subtotals by interval. -
2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Climate_Protector - The thermal mass of the atmosphere is pretty tiny; about 4-5% gets stored as warming the land mass, and about 92% goes into warming the oceans. The atmosphere is pretty much a direct in-out of the energy stored, radiating out as much energy as it receives in IR (396 W/m^2), latent heat of evaporation (80), and thermals (17). But even a simple single-layer model will show this effect of high energy in the climate system - it has to be that high in order to put 240 W/m^2 back into space. So will a zero-dimensional emissivity model - surface emissivity is about 0.98 (almost a perfect black body), and to radiate the 240 W/m^2 received back to space would be at a temperature of about -17C. The top of atmosphere (TOA) spectra integrates to an effective emissivity of ~0.612 with all the absorption dips, and to put 240 W/m^2 into space the surface needs to be at about 390 W/m^2. -
LazyTeenager at 08:41 AM on 16 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
H Pierce at #9 while the error issues and statistical issues you raised are important the way you have raised them is to general to be answered properly. However you seem to be forgetting that the whole point of taking average values is to reduce the errors regardless of the source of the error. Your weather noise idea appears to be wrong since it says that calculating an average can never produce an average temperature value with accuracy and resolution less than 0.5C. This is not true. On the other hand I do worry about manual measurements by poorly trained technicians introducing biases due bad rounding techniques. Your solution is a partial answer to that but I don't believe that it is adequate. -
Climate_Protector at 08:35 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Phil 518 - Yes, this makes sense. The question now is how much energy can the real atmosphere store (accumulate). It has to be quite a bit in order for the downward IR flux to exceed the absorbed solar flux. The atmosphere is pretty deep, so maybe it could store substantial amount of energy? I'm curious what others think? -
Phil at 08:30 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Apologies I got a cell formula wrong in the previous post; Bx=E(x-1) not D(x-1) -
Phil at 08:26 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Climate_Protector @517 My understanding (and I am not an expert on Climate) is that the fact that the downward flux is greater than the Solar input is due to heat accumulated in the climate system. You can see the results of a simple spreadsheet model of the longwave component only here. The numbers don't relate to Trenbeths diagram, I picked them so the calculation would reach equilibrium fairly quickly. Column A is somewhat badly named - it should be the amount of Solar radiation absorbed and re-emitted as longwave radiation. If you wish to replicate this, the cell formulae are: Cx=Ax+Bx Dx=Cx*0.4 Ex=Cx*0.6 Bx=D(x-1) and so this represents an atmosphere that radiates 40% of its longwave radiation to space and 60% back to the ground. I hope the spreadsheet is clear, towards the end I turn the Sun off, and calculate the time taken for the planet to dissipate the accumulated heat. At the end the energy in does indeed equal the energy out - which proves that I (and OpenOffice) got the sums right and that the model conserves energy. The main point is that, in this model at least, the back-radiation does indeed grow to be greater than the incoming Solar. As I said earlier, I'm not an expert so I would welcome corrections and clarifications ! -
adelady at 07:53 AM on 16 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
Chris G. And we come full circle to my initial point. This looks like a promising start to an analysis which teases out more information than just the simple global average temperature. You often see denialist arguments along the lines of "There's no such thing as average temperature" followed by "It doesn't mean anything 'real' anyway". This approach looks to give us 'balancing' mechanisms. It's not just warmer or cooler. It's the discrepancy between record highs staying much the same while record lows increase or decrease. Or record highs are changing while record lows are not. And thereby gain some clues about what climate mechanisms are worthy of closer examination in some periods rather than others. In the end it may come down to something quite simple like industrial aerosols can suppress maximum temperatures but have little to no effect on rising (and therefore reducing record lows) minimum temperatures driven by another forcing, like GHGs. Or we may gain some other really new and surprising insight. A really useful tool, methinks. -
Climate_Protector at 07:40 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
I suspect that there is some kind of confusion with these energy fluxes. Yes, they claim these are based on satellite observations but they also admit that the accuracy of these measurements is quite uncertain. So, I doubt that the downward IR flux is in reality larger than solar flux. That does not make much physical sense to me, unless I'm missing something. -
Chris G at 07:10 AM on 16 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
"However, it misses mid-century cooling, which did not generate any cold monthly records." That's very interesting. I'm trying to decide if it means anything. For instance, on the surface, it would mean that the cooling seen during that time was a result of lower high temperatures not associated with lower lows. What would cause that? Perhaps a reduction of energy loss forcing coupled with a slightly stronger reduction of energy gained. That would fit with an increase of GHG effect along with a slightly stronger aerosol effect, but that isn't the only possibility. IDK, but it might be easier to come to grips with Figure 2 if there were something like a bar graph coded for blue minimum records and red maximum records summed by decade. That might be kind of a bridge between totals for the interval and cumulative total. -
Climate_Protector at 07:08 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
If think PhysSci was talking about the downward thermal radiation from the atmosphere (rather than outgoing IR from the surface) that is larger than the absorbed solar radiation. Is this really true? If so, do the arguments presented at Science of doom still hold? -
scaddenp at 06:28 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
John Cook - looking through the arguments list, I dont find one for the "GHE violates the 1st Law of thermodynamics". This have been dealt with at Science of doom in some detail but perhaps a place-mark article in the arguments is needed for debate on this? Sounds like PhysSci is using this.Moderator Response: [Not John Cook] Concur. -
Rob Honeycutt at 06:23 AM on 16 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
Dana... Admitting the planet is warming would mean abandoning some of their doubt driven tactics. These guys are in lockstep. They don't want to give even an inch, even if they're obviously wrong. Ultimately this is all going to work to their detriment as climate change becomes more and more obvious. But my take is, this all about delay. Every year legislation on carbon gets delayed is billions more in profits for the FF industry. That buys a lot of votes in Congress. -
dana1981 at 06:05 AM on 16 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
Yes, you could argue that Waxman was doing the Republicans a favor by proposing this amendment. They could add it to the legislation to argue that they don't reject science, but still have justification to revoke the EPA authority on GHG regulations. Seems to me like this was a gift. Yet they couldn't even bring themselves to admit that the planet is warming. That absolutely cements the fact that they are anti-science. Heck, they're even anti-reality if they can't admit the planet is warming. -
Chris G at 06:04 AM on 16 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
The implications of the data above are not easy to fully comprehend. On the one hand, if you overlay a number of wave forms, of various shapes and sizes, but with no overall trend, you would expect the rate of the incidence of new records to decrease over time. That part is clear enough. The cumulative graph would show an always positive slope, but where the rate of change of the rate of change was decreasing. Intuition tells me that it will be an asymptotic curve, but it might be logarithmic. I'm thinking there will be an asymptote because over time the range of possible values will be more and more thoroughly sampled. I'm trying to imagine what the graph would look like it there is some positive, linear trend, and also what it would look like with some positive, non-linear trend, either with positive second derivative or negative; so that I could overlay that with what the data look like, but it is not clear to me. In any case, there will not be an asymptote because the range of possible values is changing. -
Climate_Protector at 05:30 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
With regard to the greenhouse effect - I think it works very similar to an actual greenhouse. The atmosphere does act as blanket to reduce heat loss to space and the obvious fact to support this is that we have 397 W m-2 leaving the surface and only 239-240 W m-2 exiting the atmosphere. So, the difference is actually retained by the blanket (our atmosphere). It's a no-brainer ... Also, see this recent article by prof. R. Pierrehumbert from University of Chicago, who explains very well how the greenhouse effect works making the point that the atmosphere is analogous to a house insulation in the way is prevents heat loss. Now that's real physics! http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/PhysTodayRT2011.pdf -
Albatross at 05:10 AM on 16 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
Dana @151, Goodness me, the Republicans cannot even bring themselves to agree that the warming is real, even without nary a mention of the word human or anthropogenic-- that is how deep their denial and delusion goes. The GOP are completely divorced from reality and the sooner the Demoncrats can communicate that to the people the better. This is very clearly about money and ideology for the GOP. Dark times. -
Climate_Protector at 05:08 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
To KR 455 - You make a very good point about SB law when applied to planetary atmospheres: An increase in greenhouse gases directly decreases emissivity by absorption band deepening and widening. This drops emitted energy to space. A lot of scientists do not actually understand that indeed adding more heat-absorbing gases actually REDUCES emissivity of the atmosphere. I only know a few scientists, who realize that. -
Chris G at 05:05 AM on 16 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
h pierce, I don't think you are demonstrating a good grasp of statistics. First of all, the whole point of using statistics is when you know there is variance, or error terms, and you want to make a judgment of how likely the differences between groups or the pattern you are seeing is solely a result of the error terms. There is commonly a great assumption that error terms are neutral, and it can get tricky if there is a bias. However, a bias over the last 150 years has yet to be demonstrated to my knowledge. Watts came up with his proposed bias in thermometer readings over time, but I haven't seen that he has ever published (peer-reviewed) his results regarding the urbanization and paint change study I heard he was working on. Error terms don't accumulate in how they affect the mean or the variance; one bad reading out of a 100 remains one bad reading out of 100 whether there are 100 readings or 100,000. Re: "I see a lot of climate data where a few tenths of a degree C are deemed significant. This is nonsense. Unless you have at least ca 0.5 deg C change or difference, you are probably looking at noise." Sorry, but what you just said is nonsense. For instance, say I have two dice; one is true, and the other is not. Each die will only give me integers between 1 and 6. Yet, given a thousand rolls, if the mean of one is 3.49 and the mean of the other is 3.41, I could tell you with near certainty that the second one is not rolling true and is different from the first. There are thousands of thermometers each taking at least a couple of readings a day for decades; a few tenths of a degree difference is easily distinguishable from noise. Besides, there is nothing categorically different between a difference of 0.3, which you reject, and a difference of 0.5, which you accept, except the confidence level or number of readings required to reach that confidence level. Not that climate researchers always get the statistics right, but if they don't, it is a pretty good bet that some other researcher will look at the same data and call them out. -
dana1981 at 04:53 AM on 16 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
Rob - they could admit the climate is changing and argue that the change is natural. They'd still be wrong, but at least they wouldn't deny obvious physical reality, and it wouldn't impact their funding from the Koch brothers or Big Oil. -
ahaynes at 04:41 AM on 16 March 2011Skeptical Science nominated for Climate Change Communicator of the Year
I voted. But I have to say, if I were affiliated with GMU I'd be uncomfortable with the reputation the university is developing (link). -
Climate_Protector at 04:23 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Does anyone here agree with PhysSci, or find any credibility in those arguments? -
Climate_Protector at 04:18 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
To Moderator - Yes, I agree with rational discussion, but what's rational about the crappy 'arguments' put forward by ( -Snip- )Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] Many commenters put forth crappy arguments, but the majority comply with the Comments Policy. As previously stated, dialogue is encouraged; no attempts to steer the debate or stifle free speech will be made here as long as all parties do it peacefully and respectfully. And yes, one can plainly see which are quality arguments and which are..."less so". -
Climate_Protector at 04:08 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Thanks you! So there is a moderator after all. I totally agree with you.Moderator Response: There are several moderators in addition to our host John Cook. -
Climate_Protector at 04:06 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
I've been reading through the postings on this thread, and saw some really nonsensical statements (from a physics point of view) that are backed by no evidence. I think whoever is moderating this blog (if anyone) should be more discriminating and not allow unscientific claims and statements be posted here ...Moderator Response: Thank you for your concern, but being wrong is not a violation of the Comments Policy. The idea is to educate by encouraging rational discussion, not shut down anyone due to a misunderstanding of the science. -
Alexandre at 03:46 AM on 16 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
Shoyemore Thanks. For some reason that is not all clear to me, the frog is gone and now I see the graphs. If the problem comes back, I'll resort to John as you suggested. -
Alexandre at 03:42 AM on 16 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
Kevin C Yes, maybe some input from professional communicators would help here. From personal experience, no level of communication (basic, advanced, etc) totally rules out dismissive attitutes from people who were already prone to do so. Explaining the basics really helps, but that leaves you with the problem of getting enough of people's attention to do the proper teaching. Providing context (like the recent SkS guide) also helps, even with people that did not learn the basics. I'd also add that getting there first also makes a difference. One thing is trying to teach the basics of atmospheric physics to someone that never thought of it before. Another, much more tricky thing is to try and teach someone that had already "learned" it through denialists. For these, even the concept of temperature itself may have become suspiscious. So maybe the thing to do would just be more of what we have already been doing... -
Rob Honeycutt at 03:42 AM on 16 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
Dana... That's because their purse strings are tied to rejecting the science of climate change. -
shoyemore at 03:32 AM on 16 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
I think as scientists we beat ourselves up too much. Science is a fairly clearly defined endeavour, and in the 80s there was a spate of courses in science communications and science journalism that was supposed to explain it to the man in the street. The real dereliction has been in what we can loosely call "the media" where hard-pressed editors gave up on science as a discipline and started reporting it as if it was politics or (in Stephen Schneider's words) a contact sport, not about truth but about winners and losers. Bottom line, it sold better in the "market", but it has been a disaster from teh point of view of rational decision-making and the political process. Eli Rabett had a good post on this. Churnalism -
dana1981 at 03:32 AM on 16 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
Back to the subject at hand, Democrats have tried to add a few science-related amendments to the legislation in question. One simply to state that climate change is happening:"Congress accepts the scientific finding of the Environmental Protection Agency that 'warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level."
Every single Republican (31) on the Energy and Commerce Committee voted against these amendments. They won't even acknowledge that the climate is changing. -
shoyemore at 03:22 AM on 16 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
#15 Alexandre, You should not need to get a login for imageshack. That is were the images are stored and they should be displayed here like charts in other blogposts, which I assume you can read. I and other readers seem to see the charts - suggest you e-mail John with your problem. -
Climate_Protector at 03:04 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
I happened to be a scientist as well, and claim to understand a thing or two about laws of thermodynamics and planetary energy budgets ... Satellite spectral data overwhelmingly show that earth's atmosphere absorbs strongly in the bands attributed to greenhouse gases ... what can be more proof that the greenhouse effect is real and that heat-absorbing gases are cousing it!! -
danno at 02:59 AM on 16 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
"Maybe 'climatestories.com', collecting the experiences of people who have visited glaciers, had to change their gardening habits, sailed round the pole etc." or maybe call it "anecdotalevidence.com"... your other idea was good though. -
Kevin C at 02:54 AM on 16 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
Well, I think that's what I've trying to point to. But it needs input from science communications experts and sociologists, because I'm constantly speaking beyond my expertise! But to turn what I was saying into something more concrete: Firstly SKS is brilliant. It is already in my view the best tool on the web for addressing people who regard themselves as scientific (even if they are contrarian on this one issue). It also provides invaluable resources for those of us who engage with such people. But maybe we need other things to complement it in order to address other groups. These will do some of the things many bloggers are already doing, but in a more systematic and findable way. Maybe 'citizenscience.com', focussing totally on experiments you can do for yourself with hardware or with downloaded data. Maybe 'climatestories.com', collecting the experiences of people who have visited glaciers, had to change their gardening habits, sailed round the pole etc. This is all pipe-dreaming of course. I don't have time to make it happen, and the people here are already doing more than their share. -- One other note: I think people are being thrown by my comment on the invalid methodology of citing papers. I'll try and expand to prevent further confusion. It is invalid methodology to go to the literature and find a paper that says 'antarctic ice grows in this model because of precipitation frechening the surface layer reducing overturning blah blah blah', and therefore assume that is what is happening. The valid methodology would be to search forward and back for citations of that paper, see what other people are saying, see if people are making observations to check the models, see if other hypotheses have been advanced and/or tested. Or, if you are lucky, find a good review by someone who has done all of that for you. On this basis you can then attempt to draw some sort of conclusion on whether the question is settled and how strong the supporting evidence is. That's the methodological problem I'm getting at. If we give the impression that citing a paper is enough, we are implying that every paper is right. That's a huge misrepresentation. That does impact how things are done at SKS. I don't have an answer on that one, sorry! OK, I've derailed this thread for long enough... -
Climate_Protector at 02:54 AM on 16 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Hello, Boy, this is a long thread! Can someone explain me why we are having a discussion about something that has been proved over and over again? - GW is real and it's clear as a daylight that we, humans, are driving it ...Moderator Response: Welcome to Skeptical Science! Please note this site's Comments Policy. Comments should be applicable to the topic at hand, and should refrain from inflammatory or insulting speech. These policies ensure that the science is communicated effectively. -
les at 02:32 AM on 16 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
as the conversation has drifted to Nuclear - probably for some very unfortunate reasons... "alternative" isn't an end in it's self... low environmental impact / MWh is. A quick heads up for a recent an interesting: Real Climate Economics post which includes a broad range of environmental cost comparisons, including CO2 emisions:The same literature review reported estimates of life-cycle emissions from renewable electricity generation ranging from 9 to 41 mT CO2-e per MWh, with wind and hydropower at 9 to10, and photovoltaics at 32. Fossil fuel-burning plants, in contrast, ranged from about 440 mT CO2-e per MWh for natural gas combined cycle turbines, up to 1,050 for some coal plants. Thus nuclear power [66 mT CO2-e per MWh] has much lower life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels, but higher than leading renewable technologies.
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dana1981 at 02:22 AM on 16 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
RSVP #145:"Is nuclear power considered an alternative energy source?"
Depends on your definition. In terms of external costs, nuclear power is pretty good, as long as waste and decommissioning costs are taken into account."Generally speaking, if so called "alternatives" were so attractive, they wouldnt be alternatives."
No, that's wrong. They're alternatives because they're relatively new technologies compared to fossil fuels. Alternative just means not traditional. -
Rob Honeycutt at 02:20 AM on 16 March 2011Skeptical Science nominated for Climate Change Communicator of the Year
Ken @ 17... Funny how you would be more influenced by BP than the larger body of scientific research. Why would one unpublished commenter on a blog influence you more than 10's of thousands of published research papers on a subject? For myself, this site has been a confirmation of what is happening with the climate. This is pretty much the only site that offers up fully cited blog posts on climate science issues. Science is a contact sport regardless of the issue. This is not specific to climate change. In that, it is a natural part of the scientific process to get things right. What is clear to me is that there is a very large body of evidence that all fits together very well. It's fully in agreement with research going back 150 years. And that science is telling us that we are having a dramatic affect on the climate and should be very very concerned about the potential outcome. On the other side I see ideas that come from all corners, that usually don't even agree with each other, and usually don't fit the extended body of research. It rarely offers any mechanisms for what we see happening today, and usually don't explain what we see in the past (specifically Lindzen and Spencer). Skeptical Science does a great job of clearly, and without a shrill tone, presenting this case. Kudos to John for setting that tone and encouraging people to express their views on the issue of climate science in a polite and intelligent manner. -
Alexandre at 02:18 AM on 16 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
OT - Help! How do I get to see images from imageshack? All the graphs on this post appear to me as a frozen frog with the imageshack link. I tried to register there, but it did not work.
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