Arguments
Recent Comments
Prev 1848 1849 1850 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 Next
Comments 92751 to 92800:
-
scaddenp at 13:20 PM on 15 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
I hope the answer is still YES to my actual question not your rephrasing of it. ie "do you also accept the principle that your claims must account for empirical results? Ie if the textbook interpretation of thermodynamics accounts for observation results and yours do not, then perhaps the textbook is correct and you need to do more reading? " You have untold empirical mountains to climb and excuse my extreme skepticism until that is presented. My money is on you not being able to get published given what you said to date. -
Marcus at 13:19 PM on 15 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
"Albatross : as a scientist, I cannot support any attitude of contempt of science. My criticisms about climate science are precisely issued when I find that it becomes less scientific - mixing up probabilities and certitudes, underestimating uncertainties, doing undue extrapolation, cherry picking data without a global view of realities, confusing numerical simulations and experimental evidence - all these things aren't for me good science." Well as a scientist myself, Gilles, I've yet to see any evidence that climate scientists have ever been guilty of the things you accuse them of-in spite of numerous attempts by contrarians to impugn their reputation. The Contrarians, by contrast, have a long history of misrepresenting the science to advance their own political agenda. Sorry, Gilles, but your attempts to pass yourself off as neutral on this issue just aren't backed up by your comments to date. -
Bern at 13:07 PM on 15 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
Thank you for an interesting article - Figure 2 certainly tells a story! As does Figure 3, actually - while it certainly hasn't been cooling since 1998, the rate of warming has certainly slowed down. In fact, it looks to me like a warming trend that is modulated by other oscillations. What this means is that if it doesn't start to cool shortly (and not many climate scientists are expecting that), we'll probably see the warm phase of that oscillation kick in, and the warming rate will meet or exceed rates during the 80s and 90s. Another couple of decades of that rate of warming will put us well into uncharted territory, w.r.t. global temperatures. It will make it a lot more difficult to deny that global warming is a serious problem, though being a few decades down the track, it will also be considerably more difficult to fix the problem. I'd love to perform a similar analysis done on individual station records around the world, but that would require access to all the data from all the stations, and a lot more time than I can spare! -
adelady at 13:02 PM on 15 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
OK, I've read through this twice now. I don't have the skills, but I would happily supply as much coffee, pizza, scones or biccies as demanded by someone who does while they do a bit more work on this. It looks like a candidate (which could very well not pan out as I naively expect) for one of those barely hidden human fingerprint indicators. The jump in average atmospheric temperature the first half of 20thC is always 'explained' as due to variations in solar and volcanic activity. This looks very much as though someone was lifting the trampoline under the obvious jumping so that, when particular causes for the jumps dissipated, we were left with a new baseline rather than the one we started with. Someone's name might just start with 'C'. Though much of that C would likely have come by way of releases from soil during the extended period of worst farming practices ever known to man rather than from industrial releases. -
PhysSci at 11:48 AM on 15 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
adelady @ 477: Sorry for the missing word in that sentence. What I meant was "(Note that IPCC is no longer using the hockey-stick graph)" .. The problem of perception in scientific inquiry is a psychological issue and a topic of another discussion ...Moderator Response: Your change in phrasing doesn't make your claim correct. You have been pointed to the Skeptical Science thread where your claim is rebutted, and where you must post any further comments on that particular topic. -
PhysSci at 11:42 AM on 15 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
scaddenp @ 474: The short answer to your question is YES - my new theory fully accounts for known observational results AND is in full compliance with standard thermodynamics theory, which is not the case with the current GH concept as I explained in #458. It also perfectly predicts the observed temperatures on hard-surface planets in the solar system! This is actually one of the main strengths of the new theory ... Ladies & Gents, I will be leaving you now for a while, since I've got work to do and have already stirred enough the pot for couple days ... Keep thinking about this discussion in an open-minded way and wait till my paper is published ... We will continue the discussion then. Good luck to all of you! -
Marcus at 11:37 AM on 15 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
Come on Rob, we all know nofreewind is just spreading anti-renewable propaganda. I actually checked his claims about wind farm size, & its just plain wrong. According to specs I've seen, a single turbine has a rated output of 7MW & a capacity factor of 36%-which means a *real* output of about 2.5MW per turbine. This means you'd only need 1,000 turbines to replace a 2500MW nuclear power station. Also, unlike a nuclear power station, the land occupied by those 1,000 turbines can still be used for other purposes-something the anti-renewable crowd usually choose to forget. Also, if the wind-farms were built with storage mechanisms in place (like a Vanadium Redox Battery), you'd practically *double* the capacity factor (close to 70%), which means you'd only 500 turbines to replace his 2500MW nuclear reactor-& without the waste & safety issues. As to current cost of renewable energy & electric vehicles, nofreewind seems to be deliberately ignorant of the fact that *all* new technologies come at a heightened cost, but that cost comes down with increased uptake & economies of scale. He might be surprised to learn that the first commercial coal power stations produced power at a price of around $3/kw-h-in today's money-hardly a bargain price. Also, the very first petrol-powered cars were far from cheap in today's money, & were really only owned by the rich. Of course, nofreewind's comments deliberately ignore the fact that the *lifetime* cost of electric vehicles is significantly less than petrol-powered vehicles, due to lower fuel & maintenance costs. Still, I'm very impressed by how many misrepresentations he manages to squeeze into a single post. -
adelady at 11:35 AM on 15 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
"(Note that IPCC is longer using the hockey-stick graph)." You may have to add a few pages to your monograph to elaborate on your claims about this aspect of the science. It will be a lot of pages in fact. Lotta hockey sticks here -
PhysSci at 11:22 AM on 15 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Tom Curtis @ 471: It appears to me that you are confusing the mechanisms responsibly for a planetary average temperature with those determining with the average temperature distribution across a planet. These two types of mechanisms are very different. Let me explain: The average near-surface temperature on a planet is a linear function of the total internal energy in the lower atmosphere. Therefore, that temperature can only be changed by increasing or decreasing the total internal energy. Winds, thermal inertia, axial rotational speed and other heat-transfer mechanisms on the surface of a planet only serve to redistribute that total energy, but do not change its overall amount. As a result these mechanisms can only affect the degree of uniformity of the equilibrium temperature field, but cannot change the planetary mean temperature. This follows from the law of conservation of energy (First Law of thermodynamics), for any change of average temperature requires a net change in total internal energy. I'm working as fast as I can to complete my manuscript and submit it for publication. But it takes time to explain in a clear yet bullet-proof way the new concept, simply because there has been at least one whole generation of scientists indoctrinated into the wrong paradigm. The situation is analogous to that described in this legend, where American Indians could not see at first Columbus's ships on the horizon, because they had no mental concept of what a sail ship is. It wasn't until the local shaman explained to them the new 'event' in terms they could understand that they were able to see the ships (I think this legend was portrayed in the movie "What the Bleep Do We Know"). In other words, what we believe in and are accustomed to (i.e. our worldview) determines to large extend our ability to see or not certain things. In no way am I implying that I'm the 'shaman' here and everybody else represents the 'unenlightened Indians'! The new concept I'm presenting in the paper is actually quite simple (since it's rooted in physical principles that are 150 years old). BUT it does require a shift in perception in order to fully grasp it. That is in part why it constitutes a new paradigm... :) NO, I'm not planning to submit it to E&E, although this journal has published a number of articles that have brought some important valid points to the climate debate. I can bring up a similar objection with respect to Nature as well, since that journal has published the hockey-stick temperature paper by Michael Mann & Co in 1998, which has been since discredited for its [snipped] statistical analysis both in the peer-reviewed literature and at Congressional hearings (Note that IPCC is longer using the hockey-stick graph).Moderator Response: Your claims about the hockey stick are incorrect. Regarding your claim that the hockey stick has been discredited, see the Argument "Hockey stick is broken." Regarding your claim that the IPCC is no longer using the hockey stick graph, you can see the hockey stick just by looking in the 2007 IPCC report itself! -
Gilles at 11:19 AM on 15 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
Albatross : as a scientist, I cannot support any attitude of contempt of science. My criticisms about climate science are precisely issued when I find that it becomes less scientific - mixing up probabilities and certitudes, underestimating uncertainties, doing undue extrapolation, cherry picking data without a global view of realities, confusing numerical simulations and experimental evidence - all these things aren't for me good science. "And Gilles, the world continues to consume about 78 million barrels of oil a day, and CO2 continues to increase at the upper range of the SRES scenarios (surely you do not deny that reality)." maybe, but it doesn't mean anything sensible. SRES scenario have no predictive power, they are not based on known and validated laws, they have no associated probability - it is just some set of possible histories, which may all be quite unlikely. So actually you compare reality with nothing like a model. Most SRES scenarios were already wrong when they were published, because the fuel consumption in the 90's was already greater than their prediction. Now, does the fact that production exceeds NOW a scenario mean that it will ever exceed it? certainly not. Local growth at the beginning of the century doesn't mean anything about the date of the peak production, and the subsequent decrease, nor the integral of FF burnt in the century. So it doesn't mean than the ultimate amount of FF will reach that of most scenarios. " Regarding the myth that we cannot increase CO2 to 560 ppm, you and those making that claim are sadly wrong and out of touch with reality. There are mountains of coal for us to burn through, under BAU we will reach 560 ppm and then some. " actually 560 may be reachable in the far future - I don't think that it will be a catastrophe either. " If you are concerned about declining FFs and the devastation of "industrial civilization", then you should be first in line encouraging the regulation and reduction of GHG emissions, energy conservation and efficiency etc.. Your position here makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, but I've come to expect contradictory and incoherent reasoning from "skeptics" and contrarians."" where did you see that my position was that we shouldn't encourage the reduction of FF consumption, and better energy conservation and efficiency ? -
Rob Honeycutt at 11:05 AM on 15 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
RickG @ 61... We could all note that the fertile crescent (where agriculture first started) is no longer so fertile. -
scaddenp at 10:41 AM on 15 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Actually most of the answers to what you are questioning can be found in IPCC WG1. I wonder if you have read it? -
Rob Honeycutt at 10:27 AM on 15 March 2011It's the sun
TIS... As to me being stuck on the anomaly, well, everyone is stuck on the anomaly because that is how you see the trend. The trend and related mechanisms driving the trend are what it's all about (Alfie). -
scaddenp at 10:26 AM on 15 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
PhysSci - as others are pointing out, there is in fact quite a divergence from how textbooks interpret the laws of thermodynamics. Textbook thermodynamics find GHE in perfect concordance for a start. I will aware you do not believe this, so I ask again, if the textbook interpretation of thermodynamics accounts for observation results and yours do not, then perhaps the textbook is correct and you need to do more reading? Eg. theory has no problem in making quite good estimate of planetary temperature from TSI, albedo - and GHG. Easily within a degree for moon, mars, venus, earth etc. Your theory has to be able to do the same. As to your question above, click on Arguments and look them up. If you dont find the answer satisfying, then comment on the answer in that particular thread. Back your assertions with papers and data. -
Rob Honeycutt at 10:24 AM on 15 March 2011It's the sun
TIS... You are still failing to explain how this could possibly explain the warming trend. My next question is, why do you think even Spencer and Christy present their data as anomaly? -
Bibliovermis at 10:23 AM on 15 March 2011It's the sun
TIS, How is an unchanging cycle relevant to the trend? Plants require atmospheric CO2 for production of food, i.e. photosynthesis. -
The Inconvenient Skeptic at 09:33 AM on 15 March 2011It's the sun
Rob(807) I am not ignoring the trend, I am trying to get to the relevance, but you are still stuck on anomaly. Tom(808), It isn't irrelevant and it has nothing to do with that guy who I have not heard of before, but I will take a look since you linked. Muon(809), Thank you for discussing. If there was no CO2 in the atmosphere, how would an identical Earth be different without CO2 in the atmosphere (plants breathe O2 so even plant coverage is identical). The geography of the Earth would force the same type of temperature cycle that the Earth currently experiences. NH winter would cause the Earth average to be colder and the NH summer would cause it to be warmer. The greater effect would be in the winter when there was less water vapor in the atmosphere. So the Earth would be colder by some value. The summer would have a lesser effect because there would be more water vapor that would compensate for the lack of CO2. The Earth would still not behave like a blackbody (i.e. there would still be a GHE) because there would still be convection and latent heat transfer to the atmosphere that would keep the atmosphere warmer than 254K. So the anomaly difference from normal earth would be greater cooling in the winter, but less of a difference in the summers, but still cooler. I am sure we won't agree on the magnitude, but even if the winter difference was 5 °C, then the summer difference would be less than 5 °C. If the summers were 2.5 °C cooler, then on average the Earth would be 3.5-4°C cooler than now. One helping factor would be a cooler Earth would need less energy because it would radiate away less energy. In this case boundaries of response can be established by looked at the seasonal temperature and atmospheric behavior. Would you agree that the summer effect would be lesser than the winter effect? -
dana1981 at 09:09 AM on 15 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
RSVP #140 - by "external costs", Rob is referring to their impacts on the climate (and other impacts on public and environmental health). Most alternative energy sources do not have these external costs. There are no emissions from wind, solar, geothermal, etc. energy production (other than with their construction). -
Tom Curtis at 09:07 AM on 15 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
PhysSci @472, I have never been one to trust all seeing oracles, particularly when the will not let us look behind the curtain. As you do not want to discuss your theories here, you have nothing to contribute. Come back when you have satisfied yourself that no-one will accept your theories for publication; and are therefore prepared to actually talk about them. -
muoncounter at 09:04 AM on 15 March 2011It's the sun
TIS: "why the entire hemisphere reacts more strongly than the SH." This is, of course, an entirely different question, one that leads to Arctic amplification. Yes, the geography of the hemispheres produces different thermal responses. One might suspect that it also has something to do with the fact that there is a very large ice cube down there in the basement. I looked again at TOA insolation figures: on an annual basis, the southern hemisphere actually 'receives' ~2% more than the northern. Hardly a significant difference. "over the next three months that will increase to ~16°C while the energy the Earth gets from the sun will decrease" Yes, that's been going on for a very long time. To what point? -
The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
ClimateWatcher - There was a very interesting article in last month's Scientific American, A Shifting Band of Rain. Sorry that this is just the abstract, I haven't found a full free-access copy. The band of tropical rain just north of the equator is shifting further north, now 3°N to 10°N, the furthest in that direction in at least 1200 years. Another 5°N movement is possible by 2100, drying out farmland from Central America to the southwestern US with multi-year droughts. "What basis do you have for believing precipitation zones will change significantly? Then of those significant changes, what evidence do you have of the portion of changes that would be not just adverse, but more adverse than the benefits that such a change would convey?" First - based on observations, and second, how is this beneficial?Moderator Response:[DB] KR, an openly available copy of the Sachs & Myhrvold 2011 study can be found here.
-
RickG at 08:54 AM on 15 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
ClimateWatcher: No, my point is that there's no atrocity from a couple of degrees of warming and in fact humans flourished in such an environment. They might also have flourished in a cooler or warmer still environment, and that's even more to the insignificance of small variations. But our civilization emerged in a warmer environment. It was not danger at all! CW, the world population was a tiny fraction of what it is now and they were hunter-gathers and nomadic then. There are very few places for today's population and agricultural areas to move, especially with rising sea level. -
PhysSci at 08:53 AM on 15 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
I'd like to make a clarification - I'm intentionally providing the participants in this blog with certain pieces of science facts and observations that are not normally discussed on this website (due to the blocking effect of the current paradigm), so that all of you could start thinking (critically) and evolving your understanding in a new direction. I have solid answers to all questions you have posted so far, but I do not want to discuss the details (reveal 'secrets') until my paper is published, because it does introduce a qualitatively new paradigm, which may cause an 'Aha' moment in many of you ... :-) The GH theory I present in my paper is very coherent and explains climate variations on a wide range of time scales (from decades to billions of years). For example, it readily explains observations that are problematic for the present concept such as the big swings in Earth's climate over the past billion years from 'snowball-earth' events to 'hothouses', and the giant cooling trend experienced by our planet over the past 51 million years. For those of you not familiar with paleo-climate data, the Earth surface was about 16C warmer than today 51 million years ago, and the climate was equable, i.e. with little temperature difference between equator and the poles. Current GCMs have a hell of a time simulating such an equable climate, and my theory explains it why. The global temperature has been sliding down ever since (following an irregular pattern) despite the slight increase of Sun's luminosity over this time period. So, think about the facts I presented to you as well as some other questions such as: - Where is the solid empirical evidence that CO2 has impacted Earth's climate in the past? - Why has the global temperature stopped rising over the past 10 years, and why there has been no statistically significant warming for the past 15 years despite the continuing increase in atmospheric concentrations of 'greenhouse gas'? - Why do global observations show no increase of temperature in the tropics and higher southern latitudes over the past 30 years when greenhouse gases have increased uniformity everywhere? Satellite data show that the Southern hemisphere has not had any statistically significant warming since 1979 meaning that nearly all warming was due to temperature increases in the Northern Hemisphere. In other words, recent global warming attributed to anthropogenic activity is actually not Global. - Why had the Arctic region experienced a significant warming trend over the past 100 years while Antarctica (as a whole) shows no discernible temperature trend, or even a slight cooling in some areas? - Why do variations in global temperature over the past 27 years correlate much better with observed changes in cloud albedo than with those in GH gases? - Why do reconstructed global temperatures for the past 1000 years correlate much better with reconstructed solar magnetic activity than with CO2 concentrations? (In fact, the CO2-temperature correlation over the past 1000 years is almost zero). Wishing peace and mental clarity to all of you!Moderator Response: Everyone who responds to this, please do so either by simply and briefly pointing to the appropriate threads, or by responding on those appropriate threads and posting a comment here, pointing to there. After a short grace period, I'll start deleting off topic comments from here.
- Regarding the empirical evidence that CO2 has affected Earth's climate in the past: There are several relevant Arguments on this site. Just one is "There’s no correlation between CO2 and temperature."
- Regarding your claim that the temperature has not risen for the past 10 to 15 years, see "It hasn’t warmed since 1998" and "Global warming stopped in1998,1995,2002,2007,2010, ????." -
RSVP at 08:38 AM on 15 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
RH 139 "Once you build in the external costs of carbon alternative energy generation becomes more cost effective." ...until you start tracking the "external costs" of these, or are they completely free of "external costs"? -
Rob Honeycutt at 08:22 AM on 15 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
ClimateWatcher... No, our civilization emerged in a climate able equal to where were are today, possibly 1C higher than today at the peak. Human civilization has very definitely NOT seen global temperatures that are already baked into the system. What we are all concerned about is not the 2C. We are concerned about business as usual. We are concerned about humanity driving temperatures well past the 2C mark, into the territory of 3-4C over pre-industrial levels. That, my friend, is a world of pain. -
ClimateWatcher at 08:20 AM on 15 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
Firstly it is the movement of climatic zones through the latitudes, including precipitation, not just temperature. What basis do you have for believing precipitation zones will change significantly? Then of those significant changes, what evidence do you have of the portion of changes that would be not just adverse, but more adverse than the benefits that such a change would convey? Secondly, it is the rate of such transitions that is absolutely critical i.e. if the rate of change outpaces adaptation, then decimation of ecosystems occurs. But the warming at sunrise is a great rate of change. The difference between winter and summer is a great extent of change. Life exposed to the environment experiences much greater extent and rate of change already than 1.6 degrees over a century. -
Tom Curtis at 08:19 AM on 15 March 2011It's the sun
TIS @805, people tend to disagree with what you are saying because they try to interpret it as being relevant to the debate. Because it is irrelevant to the debated, they end up misinterpreting you. Perhaps you can point out why you think this fact is relevant, bearing in mind that geography has not changed over the last century, but temperatures (and temperature distributions) have. For those trying to understand where Inconvenient Sceptic is coming from, this appears to be a lead in to George White's much refuted nonsense. -
Rob Honeycutt at 08:15 AM on 15 March 2011It's the sun
John @ 804... It's not incoherent at all! It's expected. It's understood. It has absolutely no net forcing effect over the natural annual cycle. This is just not a mechanism that is driving any warming or cooling trend. When you start focusing on the temperature cycle rather than the trend you are completely missing the point of global climate. If you ignore the trend you are just closing your eyes to any potential forcing mechanisms. So, that would be my question to you. How would a natural annual cycle drive the trend one way or the other? How would this annual cycle drive ENSO? -
ClimateWatcher at 08:09 AM on 15 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
30 Honeycutt: ClimateWatcher @ 27... Your arguments here are essentially the same as to say, "Well, humanitarian atrocities are a normal process that humans go through once in a while, so what-the-heck." No, my point is that there's no atrocity from a couple of degrees of warming and in fact humans flourished in such an environment. They might also have flourished in a cooler or warmer still environment, and that's even more to the insignificance of small variations. Regarding keeping temperatures below the HCO, that's not the concern here. We are currently about 1C below the HCO. If we could hold global temperatures steady at 2C over preindustrial, that's is essentially right about the danger point. But our civilization emerged in a warmer environment. It was not danger at all! -
Tom Curtis at 08:07 AM on 15 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
PhysSci @466, you claimed that the surface temperature of the Earth is raised, not by 33 degrees C, but 133 degrees C. You claimed this based on an integration of the 4th root of the radiation absorbed at every point over the planet, attributing the entire difference between the temperature so derived and the actual mean global surface temperature to the greenhouse effect. That is an error, as I have pointed out. A significant portion of the difference in temperature (but not all) is due to the equalization of temperatures across the Earth's surface by heat transfer by wind and ocean currents (and also temporally by thermal inertia). To determine the actual greenhouse effect, you would need to find the surface temperature distribution that equalizes incoming and outgoing radiation in the case where there is a thermally equivalent atmosphere and ocean, but no GHG (including water vapour). Taking the difference between that solution and the actual situation would then find the strength of the greenhouse effect. Alternatively, we can find the lower limit of the strength of the greenhouse effect by calculating the globally averaged temperature needed to balance globally averaged insolation, and taking the difference from the actual globally averaged mean temperature. That lower limit is a 33 degree increase in temperature increase beyond the maximum increase that can be accounted for by the redistribution of temperature. The upper bound is certainly not 133 degrees. My previous comments where not questions, but criticisms. Your answer is that its all in your unpublished paper. (I suggest you try Energy & Environment for publication, for otherwise I suspect it will be unpublishable.) That, however, is nonresponsive. Appealing to the authority of an unpublished, and hence uncheckable paper is not better than claiming your pronouncements are true ex cathedra. -
The Inconvenient Skeptic at 08:06 AM on 15 March 2011It's the sun
PS... I meant #804. This discussion is kinda long. -
The Inconvenient Skeptic at 08:05 AM on 15 March 2011It's the sun
Muon (803), If the two hemisphere's had equal geography then January would be warmer than July with the current orbital parameters. The NET energy you refer to is local. Picking London explains why that location is cooler in winter, but does nothing for why the entire hemisphere reacts more strongly than the SH. That is where geography enters into the equation. Please see #802 for why I say the actual temperature matters. None of what I am saying actually goes against global warming, but for some reason when I say something people tend to disagree anyway. I of course understand that, but it is nonetheless an interesting effect by my choice of name. -
The Inconvenient Skeptic at 07:51 AM on 15 March 2011It's the sun
Rob (802), I understand the reason why anomaly is used. Ignoring the actual temperature is not useful though. For instance. During the NH summer the Earth radiates away more energy than it does during the NH winter. That is because RHT is dependent on actual temperature. Snow, ice, humidity are all determined by the actual temperature. During the NH summer the average temperature of the Earth is at it's warmest. Enormous amounts of energy go into increasing the total water vapor in the atmosphere. Latent energy transfers to the atmosphere increase as does RHT and convective heat transfer. The behavior of the Earth is different at the two ends of the temperature extremes. Geography is the reason why those differences are real. These annual cycles are likely drivers of events like the ENSO that does show up in the anomaly charts that you are so concerned about. I pay attention to the trend in the anomaly, but I don't give it the overwhelming weighted importance that you do. The global anomaly for February is basically zero for both the UAH and RSS sets, but I don't think that is very important. That temperature of the Earth for February was right at 12.1 °C tell more about how the Earth is behaving than saying the anomaly is zero. I do think it is worth considering that over the next three months that will increase to ~16°C while the energy the Earth gets from the sun will decrease by several percent. Saying that this effect is not important is... rather incoherent. -
PhysSci at 07:40 AM on 15 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
scaddenp @ 469: What different interpretation of the thermodynamics do you mean? Can you be more specific? I believe my claims and the new GH theory I'm proposing is in 100% agreement with the classical thermodynamics. -
muoncounter at 07:37 AM on 15 March 2011It's the sun
TIS: "I am baffled ..." I'm baffled at this whole question. To that extent, I guess I am missing your point. You stated "In January the Earth gets ~7% more energy than it does in July, but July is also ~4C warmer. Explain the warmer July to me without using geography." If I am not mistaken, the 7% in question is the % difference between the Jan and July average solar radiation at TOA, as described in my comment and in this graphic. I checked the values, averaging all latitudes over each day; it is indeed 7% more in January and I agreed with that.
Forgive the ghastly colors, it was the first one I found.
By your 'July is 4C warmer,' I naturally took that to be in reference to the NH. The graph for London bears out the point that temperature follows net radiation.
I'm baffled at how you missed that I mentioned the cited source had several other examples. Here's one from the SH, specifically Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, 20S 29E:
-- physicalgeography.net
Once again, temperature follows net radiation, even in the SH. I don't deny that geography has a moderating influence, but it is certainly not a driving factor. Differential heating of land vs. ocean is in response to solar input, is it not?
But your original question said 'explain the warmer July without geography'. Your question made no mention of the difference between incoming and net radiation and that was the focal point of my response.
-
scaddenp at 07:31 AM on 15 March 2011What would a CO2-free atmosphere look like?
TTTM - I guess that depends on what you mean by "vaguely accurate". The gross parameters of energy balance dont depend on any parameterizations, so I would say GCM have pretty good chance of say estimating global planetary temperature within a degree or so. We can do it for other planets in solar system. Which parameterizations do you think are so critical as to make this impossible? -
ClimateWatcher at 07:27 AM on 15 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
28, Honeycutt: ClimateWatcher @ 10... Do you honestly not understand the difference between weather and climate? It's really hard to take you seriously on anything when you don't even understand such elemental aspects of climate. You must have missed: "adaptation/migration are slow processes. What matters is rate of change." to which I responded with examples of rate of change. One cannot claim that 'rate of change' is what matters to life forms then ignore the most intense rates of change. My point is this - species that were extremely sensitive to temperature change would have been selected out of the gene pool long ago, given the hourly, daily, seasonal, decadal, century, and millenial changes. -
scaddenp at 07:26 AM on 15 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Just a very general point. Your claims involve a different interpretation of thermodynamics from the theory that has served us so well so far. Since you are sure the textbook is wrong and you are right, do you also accept the principle that your claims must account for empirical results? Ie if the textbook interpretation of thermodynamics accounts for observation results and yours do not, then perhaps the textbook is correct and you need to do more reading? -
ClimateWatcher at 07:20 AM on 15 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
#27Firstly, current temperatures have already equaled those of the HCO, AKA the Holocene Altithermal (Hansen, 2011).
The context was the Mesopotamian era which took place near thirty degrees north. The Holocene optimum was due to orbital variation and we should recall that it was a period of more extreme climate in this regard - the northern hemisphere summers were hotter and longer AND the winters were colder but shorter. Thus the range of extremes was greater and the transition experienced a greater rate of change. Global averages do not reveals this behavior. And of course, the Southern hemisphere experience a nearly opposite cycle. In any event the Mesopotamians certainly experienced a higher than average temperature during their advancement of civilization. There are other factors to note about the reference, though. This is not a peer reviewed publication for one. Further, the temperature series is at odds with both the borehole proxy data ( which was a global land date set): http://www.geo.lsa.umich.edu/~shaopeng/2008GL034187.pdf. It is also at odds with the Greenland ice core data:
Secondly, emissions are trending at the IPCC "High" emissions level.
Look again - I was pointing out that the temperature trends are all below even the IPCC "Low" scenario. If the emissions are in fact increasing at a greater than modeled rate,
, while temperatures are rising at less than the "low" scenario, then this is an indicator of even less forcing, or sensitivity, or both.
Lastly, it was exactly the climate stability of the HCO that allowed the development of agriculture. Given what we know of the orbital variation, Mesopotamia encountered more sunshine for a longer period from spring through fall, but less sunshine than today during winter. For Mesopotamia, we may then surmise that warmer overall temperatures and longer summers aided agriculture, even though winters were colder and weather more extreme.
and the ensuing desertification to come as a result
I know of no basis for the claim of desertification above. Do you have a reference to one? The greatest example of desertification that I know of is the Sahara: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara#Climate which according to fossil records enjoyed a wet period during the Holocene Climatic Optimum - corresponding with the local wamrth! The cause of the Wet Sahara was likely more due to dynamic factors (shifting of the inter tropical convergence zone northward) rather than being due to thermal conditions, but even so, the desertification took place when hemispheric temperatures fell. I have not seen any compelling model that would indicate desertification. That is as it should be. Precipitation occurs largely where the dynamics of surface convergence can foster lifting, not something in the domain of climate models. -
Rob Honeycutt at 07:08 AM on 15 March 2011It's the sun
John (TIS) @ 801... The problem with your analysis here is that what you're saying doesn't allow a mechanism for current warming. Look at the overall temperature trend of the Holocene (even per your Penny ice cap chart). Compare it with the Holocene shown in the Vostok record and the Byrd ice core. All these put together you can see that over the Holocene we are in a slow cooling trend that is orbitally forced (Miller 2010). But we are now seeing nearly all indicators of temperature pointing one direction. Up. The planet is warming. The entire planet. That is clearly not being cause by the difference in land mass between NH and SH. John, the whole reason all the temperature data sets use an anomaly is because you have to look at the overall trend, not the annual signal. The annual signal tells you very little, if anything, about any kind of forcing.Moderator Response: [DB] Fixed date. Rob, we've been hearing a lot of conflation by commenters between temperatures and anomalies lately. It's probably time to put together a post on the subject. I can do one later this week unless someone has more time before then. -
Rob Honeycutt at 06:57 AM on 15 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
nofreewind @ 137... Regarding your comment about the laws of economics... That depends on how you add up all the economic costs. The laws of economics are, very clearly, not a fixed equation (ask any economist). The whole point to cap & trade or a carbon tax is that there are external costs to burning carbon which are currently not being captured in the overall economic equation. It's the story of "you can pay me now, or you can pay me later... but you're going to have to pay me." Once you build in the external costs of carbon alternative energy generation becomes more cost effective. -
The Inconvenient Skeptic at 06:49 AM on 15 March 2011It's the sun
Ok, I am caught up with the discussion. I disagree that this is a sun discussion because my point is the temperature of the Earth changes separate from the energy from the sun for the exact reasons that Tom states in #798. The SH varies less because there is more ocean and less land. The NH drives the global temperature because it has more land. As he also pointed out it is simply inaccurate to apply the insolation of London as a global change in energy. Rob and Muon continue to miss my point (but deride me anyway). My point is that the Earth's geography plays a very important factor in the Earth's temperature. If the Earth's orbit was a perfect circle, but with the same tilt. The Earth as a whole would receive the exact same energy every day of the year. The temperature would vary based on the geography of the land that was receiving the direct and indirect energy. Winters would be colder than they are now and summers would be hotter than they are now. I am baffled at the deriding discussion between Rob and Muon when they are ignoring the point of discussion. -
dana1981 at 06:26 AM on 15 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
nofreewind -"without politics there is hardly one single person that would...ever worry about global warming"
That's quite obviously demonstrably false."Can you imagine someone building their own solar farm when the electricity is creates will cost 50 cents per kilowatt hour?"
That's kind of an irrelevant question, since solar PV costs about half that much. Personally I'm leasing solar panels for my home, and the net cost will be approximately the same as if I bought all my energy from the local utility. So yes, I would do it regardless of politics."Who would ever consider wind"
All those bleeding heart liberals in Texas, apparently."Same goes for electric cars"
I guess that's why there's over 50,000 people on the Nissan Leaf waiting list, huh? -
nofreewind at 06:07 AM on 15 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
You guys are absolutely right about one thing. This cap n' trade and alternative energy is all about politics. Because without politics there is hardly one single person that would ever consider paying for alternative energy, nor would they ever worry about global warming. Can you imagine someone building their own solar farm when the electricity is creates will cost 50 cents per kilowatt hour? Wind is much cheaper than that, but is only built because politics demand that it will be built. Who would ever consider wind when it takes almost 10,000 turbines to match the output of a 2500 MW nuclear plant or even 4,000 turbines to match a teeny tiny 1GW nat gas plant. And the funny thing is that you have to build the nuclear plant or nat gas anyway. Same goes for electric cars. Even with the Gov't deciding to let out kids worry about paying for about 1/6th of a 42K Volt, there will be very, very takers. The Laws of Physics, which you appear to be so well versed in regarding ACC (we have to switch to AnthroClCh so everything fits, right?), apply to alternative energy too, so do Laws of Economics! -
CBDunkerson at 06:00 AM on 15 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
There are wildly varying definitions of the terms 'democracy' and 'republic' in this thread... particularly as they apply to the United States. U.S. Supreme Court rulings have established that the term 'republic' as used in the Constitution is basically synonymous with 'representational democracy'... in that a republic is defined as a system of government in which all citizens are given equal representation (U.S. v Cruikshank 1875) and are allowed to choose their government (In re Duncan 1891). In recent decades it has become popular in some Republican (meaning the political party) groups to argue that the United States was not meant to be a democracy but rather a 'republic' (alternate definition) wherein only an 'enlightened few' ran the country. This WAS the preference of some founders, but was NOT the final result adopted by the nation. Conversely, in some liberal groups it have become popular to argue that the United States is de facto NOT a democracy, but rather an oligarchy wherein elected representatives work on behalf of rich campaign contributors rather than voters. While this has certainly become closer to 'truth' over time, politicians ARE still beholden to large voter blocs as well. The United States is a republic... and a democracy. Just not a very good example of either at the moment. -
muoncounter at 05:47 AM on 15 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
Albatross, "How a nation who put men on the moon can now choose to adopt such a defeatist attitude is beyond me. republicans may think that the USA is the centre of the universe, it ain't ... they do not live in a bubble." We could do an Apollo program because we were scared of the Soviets ... and because there were moderately intelligent folks in charge at the time ... and we weren't broke. Now we lack all those ingredients, except we should be scared, but the folks in charge are so unintelligent that they think they do live in a bubble. The bad news is that even if we have a 'best and brightest,' they don't go into public service: they go to work for Goldman Sachs. -
dhogaza at 05:31 AM on 15 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
"I'd like to thank the mods, Tom Curtis and others for defending our imperfect form of government..." Defending it is one thing, mischaracterizing it as a "democracy" rather than "representative republic" is simply wrong. Note that I do defend it, including the non-democratic Senate - as I pointed out, I come from a state with 1/10th the population of California, and am glad we have the same number of Senators as California does. -
Albatross at 05:09 AM on 15 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
Dana @131, Thanks-- blush. Sorry! -
JMurphy at 05:06 AM on 15 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
RSVP wrote : "The world food supply depends on oil in a huge way, and any reduction in oil is going to affect world hunger, which means lives." I reckon (without any facts or figures at hand, admittedly) that the majority (probably ?) of the world would get their food locally, which would also be produced without much in the way of mechanical help - if only because they would grow it themselves or can't afford to get it from anywhere further than half a day's walk/cycle/horse-ride away. So, I don't think things are as simplistic as you suggest, especially as many people in what is called the 'developed world' are already actually trying to reduce their 'food miles'. -
dana1981 at 05:05 AM on 15 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
Albatross, Markey is a Democrat.
Prev 1848 1849 1850 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 Next
