Arguments
Recent Comments
Prev 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 Next
Comments 93951 to 94000:
-
Rob Honeycutt at 11:16 AM on 1 March 2011Australia's departing Chief Scientist on climate change
BP... I also have to say your whole thesis is jaw-droppingly pretentious. You are claiming that, "...any talk on committed warming is based on conjecture, not facts." In other words, all the radiative physics related to the greenhouse effect is wrong. In one sweeping gesture you push 150 years of accepted science onto the floor so you can make your case. From that point, for you to be correct, you must completely redefine and re-explain a vast body of work spanning a wide range of sciences, something you do not accomplish in the few remaining paragraphs of your post. I'm sorry but I honestly think the moderators were doing you a favor by deleting your comment. -
muoncounter at 11:14 AM on 1 March 2011Various estimates of Greenland ice loss
We've had Greenland ice loss threads here and here, among others. The conclusion (based on evidence) is always the same. The skeptical(?) response is likewise always the same. "Not listening, not listening." To me, this graphic at CCNY's Cryo Processes Lab speaks volumes:
The figure above shows the standardized melting index anomaly for the period 1979 – 2010. In simple words, each bar tells us by how many standard deviations melting in a particular year was above the average. ... Previous record was set in 2007 and a new one was set in 2010. Negative values mean that melting was below the average. Note that highest anomaly values (high melting) occurred over the last 12 years, with the 8 highest values within the period 1998 – 2010. -- emphasis added
-
Tom Curtis at 11:12 AM on 1 March 2011Preference for Mild Curry
doghza @26, 10 degrees climate sensitivity means about 11 degrees temperature increase by 2100, with another 4 in the pipeline on Business as Usual. With that high a climate sensitivity, I think the real risk we are facing is not massive economic disruption and human hardship following drought, but of a Venus style runaway greenhouse. Of course, I'm not the one saying there is a 5% chance climate sensitivity is that high, or higher. -
Tom Curtis at 11:03 AM on 1 March 2011Climate sensitivity is low
RW1 @190 &191, given that at many frequencies, the atmosphere has an optical thickness greater than 1 (ie, transmittance is 0 for less than the full thickness of the atmosphere) than much of the IR absorbed by that region of the atmosphere that actually radiates to space does not come from the surface, but only from lower regions of the atmosphere. So an increase of absorption by 3.7 w/m^2 may have absolutely no effect on transmittance, or the atmospheric window (as you have defined it). Further, as much of the heat in the atmosphere is carried there by evaporation or transpiration, there is not even a necessary correlation between surface radiation and the thermal radiation of the lower levels of the atmosphere. Certainly that correlation is broken over antarctica in the winter, and may be broken at other places periodically as well. That is why Line By Line models use temperature profiles in developing their predictions, either a simple lapse rate (as in Modtran) or measured (or modelled) values in more sophisticated programs. Worse for your interpretation, a decrease in transmittance will automatically mean that a higher proportion of radiation from lower in the atmosphere is absorbed higher in the atmosphere, even with opticat thicknesss less than 1, but greater than 0. Because the higher gas is cooler (in the troposphere) it will radiate less energy, thus reducing the total IR radiation leaving the planet. That means a change in transmittance has more effect than simply reducing surface radiation to space. The only way to properly calculate its effect is, as the LBL models do, calulate its effect on each layer of a large number of layers of the atmosphere (in modtran's case, 33). The LBL models take account of radiation flows in both directions. That is, for each layer, they determine its emission at each individual wavenumber (or wavenumber couplet for modtran), based on its temperature. They then apply that radiation as both upward and downwelling radiation. For each layer, they also take the total incoming radiation (upward and downward), multiply by the transmittance for that layer, and apply the result as upwelling or down welling radiation from that layer as appropriate. Here is a diagram illustrating the process from Science of Doom:
Although this only indicates transmittance in one direction, be assured it is calculated in both. In the thread from which this comes SoD is developing a simple radiation model, and you can see in the code that he makes the calculations first for upwelling, and then for downwelling radiation.
(By the way, this illustration also appears in SoD's thread on theory and experiment in atmospheric radiation, from which I got the diagrams which showed the close correlation between the model predictions and observations. That thread has already been linked here. So your claim that all you have received is statements, not evidence, is nonsense.)
Because the transfers in radiation are calculated for each wavenumber, and for each level independently, there is no single calculation that corresponds to what you are seeking, ie, a level in which all incoming radiation is from the surface, and all upwelling radiation goes to space. But that does not mean that both the upwelling and downwelling emittance from each level is ignored, or that the absorption at any level is ignored which is what is required for George White's adjustment to make any sense.
Of course, in the LBL models, the total upwelling radiation of the highest level (emitted and transmitted) is just the Outgoing Long-wave Radiation. And the difference between that for 375 ppm and for 750 ppm is the increase of the greenhouse effect for doubling of CO2.
So, if you want to verify Modtran, and all the other LBL models programed by different teams around the world, and all the energy balance models also programed by different teams around the world, which all come up with essentially the same result; which just happens to match observations almost exactly, you either need to accept the observational match as confirming the models, or you need to go through the models line by line. There is no other short cut.
-
adelady at 10:58 AM on 1 March 2011Various estimates of Greenland ice loss
Flatlining? Even it it were flat, there's still the main issue. I suppose I can say I'm standing on a flat surface on each step of a staircase. However, even the most naive acknowledge that it makes a difference whether that "flat" surface is ankle-height above the surrounding level or head and shoulders above that level. We're into head and shoulders territory now regardless of the flatness of the terrain. -
adelady at 10:48 AM on 1 March 2011Preference for Mild Curry
I spend a fair time on education discussions. It just occurred to me that Curry looks an awful lot like those naive teachers and administrators who go into those out of control classrooms or schools. They have the apparently laudable objective of getting "on-side" with the trouble-makers who won't learn anything themselves and spend all their efforts on disrupting the learning of others. And where does this get these misguided teachers? The troublemakers learn that bad behaviour gets not only no penalty, but real benefits. So more students behave more badly because they see no point in hard work or good behaviour - and they too get kind words and a fizzy drink as consequence of deliberately disruptive behaviour. Sound familiar to anyone else? -
Rob Honeycutt at 10:36 AM on 1 March 2011Preference for Mild Curry
rustneversleeps @ 32... I get the distinct sense that she was firing from the hip with that statement. I don't think it's based on anything other than she wants to play both sides somehow. She wants to appease the denier crowd by saying climate sensitivity could be in the range of zero (which seems insane being that we don't have a perfectly stable climate over long periods), and she wants to appease the pro-AGW crowd to suggest that sensitivity could be a terrifying 10C. If she's building a bridge here it's not made with anything of substance as far as I can see. -
Rob Honeycutt at 10:16 AM on 1 March 2011Australia's departing Chief Scientist on climate change
BP... I read through it and I see exactly why it was deleted. Go to the comments policy statement: "No politics. Rants about politics, ideology or one world governments will be deleted." You just took it a little too far and started turning it into a political statement. We've all had comments deleted for going a little too far over the line. -
Tom Curtis at 10:11 AM on 1 March 2011Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
Shoyemore @9, this is in fact a prisoner's dilemma, which is what makes it so difficult policy wise. The trick for effective policy is to turn it into a reiterative prisoners dilemma. In a reiterative prisoners dilemma, participants can choose a policy, and observe how the policy chosen by others. Because there are multiple rounds, it becomes possible to adjust your policy based on the behaviour of others. Analysis in games theory shows it is very hard to beat a tit-for-tat strategy in a reiterative prisoners dilemma. In that strategy, you choose the "nice" option first, and then respond to other players by doing whatever they did in their last move. In this case, by targeting small steps in reducing green house emissions, you make each successive reduction a new game in the prisoner's dilemma, thus making it a reiterative prisoner's dilemma. Following tit-for-tat, you then reduce emissions in the first round. If others do not reduce, you then do not reduce in later rounds. If others reduce, you continue with further reductions. Importantly, the reverse strategy of "defecting" in the first round, and then repeating what your opponents do does poorly in reiterative prisoners dilemmas. As it happens, that is the policy we have been following. We have defected on Kyoto, and defected again last year. There is more to this, which I'll probably elaborate when deniers start attacking this analysis ;) On a side note, I do not like the terms "tragedy of the commons". It was invented as a rhetorical device to aid a political push for an "enclosure" movement for the high seas. The true tragedy of the commons was, in fact, the enclosure movement in Britain whereby the common law rights of tenants to grazing land, or inheritable leases were repudiated by land lords in order to make large grazing areas for sheep. That tragedy, the deprivation of ill defined, but actual property rights of the poor, by the rich for commercial benefit continues to today in Israel, Indonesia and no doubt many other countries; and indeed was the basis of colonialism. -
RW1 at 10:03 AM on 1 March 2011Climate sensitivity is low
Are you claiming that the 3.7 W/m^2 of additional absorption from 2xCO2 does NOT represent a 3.7 W/m^2 reduction in transmittance? What I don't think you understand is that unless the specific wavelengths are saturated, some of the outgoing surface power still passes through them unabsorbed, and this amount is included in the transmittance. Increasing the concentration of CO2, for example, will reducing the amount that passes through at wavelengths NOT already saturated (i.e. widening the band or deepening the trough). The effect of more CO2 at saturated wavelengths will just reduce the height from the surface where 100% absorption occurs. -
Alexandre at 09:56 AM on 1 March 2011Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
-
Alexandre at 09:56 AM on 1 March 2011Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
Shoyemore #10 Thanks for the link, I'll have a look. Global warming is arguably the worst-case scenario for common-pool dilemmas: no way to keep new users out of the resource, now central legal system to enforce rules, difficult to monitor, a huge amount of users (everyone in the world, basically), etc. Basically we need a rule that respects the carrying capacity of the resource, and a way to enforce it. Self-regulation usually works better then centralized ones, because they're closer to the reality of the resource, and users are more commited to it. In the AGW case, I think this can be translated as general goals (both global and each country), but different rules for countries and industries. For example, here in Brazil a tough anti-deforestation law with an adequate enforcement would yield much better results than carbon markets, for instance. But this would be innocuous in the US or Germany. Some industries would have good results with a fuel tax, others with efficiency standards (maybe self-regulated ones). International treaties will be necessary at some point, but it does not have to start there. I remember the EU made an offer to unilaterally comit itself to emission targets, and made a public statement that they would improve that target if other countries made similar commitments. That's a clever way to overcome such dilemmas. Industry standards, including tough import rules would favor exporting countries (like China) to improve their own standards - as suggested by Tom Friedman. It's really a huge subject, and I resent the fact that all this effort in responding to denialist crap prevents us to really embrace this much more important part of the debate. -
rustneversleeps at 09:53 AM on 1 March 2011Preference for Mild Curry
Andy S @ 21: "It's a pity that we have to guess what she means." I don't think we have to guess at all. On the thread where she makes the assessment, first she responds to Zeke's statement of "likely" (>66%) climate sensitity by saying: I think we can bound this between 1 and 6C at a likely level, I don’t think we can justify narrowing this further. Asked to clarify what she means, she says: That there is a 33% probability that that actual sensitivity could be higher or lower than my bounds. To bound at a 90% level, I would say the bounds need to be 0-10C. (My highlights.) She's not talking about whether the quality of the data allows you to make such-and-such a bounded estimate, or the accuracy of the measuring devices or anything like that. She is clearly saying that there is a 33% chance that the ACTUAL climate sensitivity is outside of the range of 1-6C, and a 10% that it is outside of 0-10C. I mention this only because an apologist tries to dodge this on the next thread, by talking about confidence intervals - which with enough convoluting you might be able to shy away from this. But that's NOT what Curry is saying. She is outright declaring that the PROBABILITY is that the actual sensitivities are outside those bounds. Now, yes, we don't know how she is assigning that probability to the low and high ends. But we're not guessing that this is exactly what she said. Whether she meant to say this is another matter... I suspect she'll walk back from this in some way, but if so I think we should again press for a clear articulation of what she means... -
dana1981 at 09:53 AM on 1 March 2011Preference for Mild Curry
Rob #29 -"even if Mann and others had completely cooked the data, ultimately it wouldn't even matter. If they are wrong their work will disappear into obscurity."
In fact we saw this was the case with the IPCC. Even if there are valid criticisms of the way the TAR handled the tree ring data, the IPCC was even more thorough and explicit about it in AR4. Of course, that didn't stop Curry from lumping both reports together in her extreme accusations, but it proves your point that flawed science gets supplanted. Same thing for the "hockey stick". It was a good first effort, but imperfect. Now millennial temp reconstructions all show a bit more natural variability over the past 2,000 years. The "skeptics" continue to obsess over the 11-year-old reconstruction, but it's been supplanted with even better scientific work. Including by Mann himself! I agree it's unfortunate that Curry seems to be mired over a decade in the past on a very minor issue. It's not worth wasting time over. -
Berényi Péter at 09:51 AM on 1 March 2011Australia's departing Chief Scientist on climate change
#10 Ken Lambert at 12:20 PM on 28 February, 2011 I read and copied (luckily) a long post from BP. It corrected Bern's numbers. It has been deleted without comment by moderators. It should be compulsory reading for all SKS contributors. John Cook et al; this is unwarranted censorship of a valuable contribution which will do harm to the credibility of this site. Yes, it will. The more so because I've tried to respond to the act of deletion and KR's comments on it, but that post was also deleted. Anyway, here is the original one for anyone to see. Just make sure you've passed the Age-Verification Test before proceeding, please. -
dana1981 at 09:43 AM on 1 March 2011Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
Phil #7 - it costs either country $3 to take action, plus the $4 cost from the damages of climate change if only one country took action. Thus if only USA takes action, it loses $3 and $4 (hence $3 remaining), while Australia only loses $4 (hence $6 remaining). That's why it's seemingly in each country's best interest not to reduce emissions. Shoyemore #9 - yes, those are also good analogies. Same concept. -
mspelto at 09:43 AM on 1 March 2011Various estimates of Greenland ice loss
We just experienced the warmest decade in terms of global temperature, the largest ice loss from Greenland since observations began in the 1950's, and the largest decade of glacier mass balance loss, no flat lines in sight. -
mdenison at 09:40 AM on 1 March 2011Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
Dana, I think you have over estimated Australia's emissions when an 80% cut is implemented. At present CO2 increases by about 2ppm/year. An 80% cut would reduce this to 0.4 ppm/yr. That is approximately a total of another 50ppm by 2050 assuming a linear decrease in emissions. Of this Australia accounts for 1.5% or 0.75ppm. This is a reduction of 1.65 ppm not 1 ppm. -
RW1 at 09:37 AM on 1 March 2011Climate sensitivity is low
Tom, When I use the term "atmospheric window" I mean the total transmittance - the specific amount of emitted surface power that passes through the atmosphere unabsorbed and goes straight out to space. If that is not the technical definition, then I stand corrected, but that's what I mean when I use the term. -
protestant at 09:33 AM on 1 March 2011Various estimates of Greenland ice loss
So one is not allowed to say global temperatures are flatlining after over 10 years of flatlining. But when 8 years of greenland ice mass data shows decreasing, you instantly declare "it's accelerating". You do not have the context for that, so you do not know whether it is accelerating (or even melting long term) at all. That is absolutely too short period of time. Where's the coherence on what can you say on what intervals, and what you can't? And shortly calculated, if we pick like 170Gt/a, it makes 0,006% a year, the Greenland is ice free in only 15 000 years. I think that's a rather good reason to sound the alarm. And BTW, Greenland temps are just as high as they were in the mid 1900's during the last peak of AMO. Nothing unprecedented on the temps of Greenland either.Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] "So one is not allowed to say global temperatures are flatlining after over 10 years of flatlining." You can say it all you want, doesn't make it true:
GISS, no exogenous factors -
shoyemore at 09:27 AM on 1 March 2011Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
Alexandre #3, Good interview here. Interview with Elinor Ostrom She takes a more benign view of "the commons" than Garrett Hardin. "If you are in a fishery or have a pasture and you know your family’s long-term benefit is that you don’t destroy it, and if you can talk with the other people who use that resource, then you may well figure out rules that fit that local setting and organize to enforce them. But if the community doesn’t have a good way of communicating with each other or the costs of self-organization are too high, then they won’t organize, and there will be failures." What happens when the "the community" is the whole world? -
Marcus at 09:25 AM on 1 March 2011Preference for Mild Curry
@ Tom Curtis #20. I heartily agree. Remember that the people who hacked the CRU computers got their hands on *all* the raw temperature data that East Anglia University had at their disposal, which means so did the Climate Change Deniers whose websites hosted the hacked material. Yet more than a year after "Climate-gate", have they chosen to publish their own versions of the climate data? No. Probably because, after painstaking analysis, they were left with the fact that the data was completely accurate-not that they would tell the public that. Instead they chose to release a bunch of e-mails-out of context-to paint the CRU guys in the worst light possible. -
RickG at 09:20 AM on 1 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
#418, Electromagnetic radiation is a form of energy. Trying to dance around words does not help your argument. Here's my point. We agree that all bodies emit and absorb radiation. If a source of a specific temperature emits radiation, what is there to prevent another source of higher temperature to absorb that radiation? -
shoyemore at 09:20 AM on 1 March 2011Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
Isn't this the classic Prisoner's Dilemma in another form? Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated the prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies for the prosecution against the other (defects) and the other remains silent (cooperates), the defector goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act? The position of co-operation and defection is equivalent to the reduce or not reduce position. I have heard it also posed as the co-operation go two retreating soldiers under fire, where one must provide covering fire while the other runs. If they co-operate, their survival chances are maximum, but for an individual the selfish solution is to keep running and let his partner engage the enemy. Matt Ridley, who has turned into a climate change denier, has a good book on the Prisoner's Dilemma called The Origin of Virtue. -
KR at 09:16 AM on 1 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
damorbel - The vast majority of solar energy (shortwave) passes right through the atmosphere and warms the Earth. As Dikran Marsupial and I have both said, the atmosphere is warmed by the Earth, and hence the heater/block/wood/ice analogy holds, not your warming of a room through a blanket. The atmosphere is basically transparent to SW radiation, emitted by the sun based on it's temperature. The IR radiation emitted by the Earth, on the other hand, is almost completely blocked by the atmosphere. The atmosphere does not block sunlight from the surface, and for the purpose of discussion the sunlight could be coming from underground to warm the surface. To take it back to the analogy - the heater wires could run though the piece of wood, but they don't interact with it. Energy flows from Sun/surface/atmosphere/space, in that order. -
rustneversleeps at 09:11 AM on 1 March 2011Visualizing a History of CO2
Nicely done! And, oh, what the heck... Here is another creative use of Mind Heist/Inception as the score to a video. :-p -
damorbel at 09:09 AM on 1 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Re #416 KR you wrote:- "And the atmosphere is a radiative insulator between the Earth and space." Yes KR that is true. But the atmosphere is also between the Sun and the Earth, just like a blanket with a corpse underneath it is between the (ambient or Sun) heat source. If the Earth was itself a heat source then putting a (partially) reflecting layer round it would, like for a living body, keep the heat in and the temperature would rise. But the same (partially) reflecting layer would keep some of the Sun's radiation out. The temperature of the Earth is thus not changed by the albedo, just the rate of heating and cooling. -
Rob Honeycutt at 09:05 AM on 1 March 2011Preference for Mild Curry
Sphaerica.... I have to say, I think you are exactly right. I get the sense that Curry is just not quite clear on what she's gotten herself into. It's a little like she's gone into the den of the lion saying, "Aw, you just have to make friends with the poor beast." Her whole current series of posts on "Hide the decline" is a perfect example. Given the broad spectrum of research on climate change, I can't think of a more NON-issue than that. I also can't think of one other issue that climate deniers more quickly glob onto (execpt maybe Al Gore). But there she spent the better part of a week hashing that out on her blog to the chorus of a couple thousand comments. You'll have to pardon my non-scientist perspective here but Peter Hadfield has a really great, simple video titled The Scientific Method Made Easy where he points out that, it doesn't matter if someone gets it wrong, bad science will always be supplanted by better science. (I realize that's probably overly idealized, but for the sake of argument...) So, even if Mann and others had completely cooked the data, ultimately it wouldn't even matter. If they are wrong their work will disappear into obscurity. And it's not like this is the cornerstone of the entire TAR and AR4. It's one piece of information out of thousands upon thousands. So, here Curry is hammering away on how "she" was deceived blah, blah, blah. I just want to tell her to get over it. Either publish a real response to the work or do some better science of your own. The only thing she accomplishes building this "bridge" to the deniers is to fuel the fire they've built and isolate herself from the scientific community. As far as I can see, she's done nothing at all to improve the situation, in fact I think she's made it worse. And I think you're right, a decade or so down the road she is going to very much regret having made the decisions she has. -
adelady at 09:02 AM on 1 March 2011Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
Michael, we're not as big as Spain but SA produces 15% of its current power supply from wind. It would be more if we hadn't had to abandon a really big wind project because of grid deficiencies in that area. I see no reason why other states couldn't do the same. We have abundant coal and gas supplies so we're not using wind because we lack other resources. We've just made a better choice. -
Phil at 08:57 AM on 1 March 2011Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
There is something odd about the chart, but I don't agree with paulgrace @5. The chart details funds remaining. So the on-diagonals (the Yes/Yes and No/No) look correct. What doesn't look right is that countries that unilaterally do reduce emissions cost them $7 (the blue 3 in the top row and red 3 in the bottom). The preceding text suggests it should cost them $4 or possibly $3. -
damorbel at 08:53 AM on 1 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Re #413 you wrote:- "1) Does an object have to be at a specific temperature in order to emit energy?" I am not being pedantic here! Objects do not emit energy, they emit radiation. The radiation they emit depends on the temperature of the body. Energy may or may not be transferred to other bodies even deep space; dependent on their temperature; energy may be transferred to the body in the paragraph above, again dependent on the temperature of bodies in range (deep space included) it all depends on relative temperature. You wrote:- "2)Is an object receiving energy selective to receiving energy only from objects warmer than them?" Does the first answer work here also? To sumarise: all bodies above 0K emit radiation; all bodies absorb radiation regardless of temperature; energy transfer takes place in the direction high temperature to low temperature - always! -
dana1981 at 08:52 AM on 1 March 2011Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
The chart is correct. -
Daniel Bailey at 08:51 AM on 1 March 2011Various estimates of Greenland ice loss
As discussed here, Greenland’s glaciers double in speed: The Yooper -
KR at 08:37 AM on 1 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
damorbel - The sun is directly analogous to the 1KW heater - as I posted here the solar spectra passes through the atmosphere to the Earth, affected primarily by Raleigh scattering (not GHG's), and warms the surface. The analogy is completely correct, the energy flow is from the Sun to the surface and out to space through the atmosphere. A small amount of sunlight heats the atmosphere directly (your block heater touches part of the piece of wood in the analogy); that changes only in detail, not in essentials. And the atmosphere is a radiative insulator between the Earth and space. The surface of the Earth has an emissivity of ~.97 to .98 in IR, while the effective emissivity of the Earth and atmosphere to space is ~0.612; the insulation. And that insulation makes the planet warmer than it would be without the greenhouse gas atmosphere. -
Dikran Marsupial at 08:33 AM on 1 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
damorbel@415 wrote: "The Sun/Earth arrangement has the heat source (the Sun) outside the Earth/atmosphere system." what you don't appear to realise is that the atmosphere is largely transparent to the suns visible and ultraviolet radiation, which directly warms the Earths surface not the atmosphere. The atmosphere is warm not because it absorbs a lot of IR radiation from the sun, but from the IR radiated by the surface that has been heated by absorbing SW radiation from the sun and by conduction/convection. Thus the atmosphere is acting as an insulator, insulating the warm surface from the cold of space. This has been pointed out to you at least twice on this thread. -
paulgrace at 08:33 AM on 1 March 2011Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
@ #1 Matt J is right, the chart is backwards. Yes and No should be reversed in both cases. -
damorbel at 08:22 AM on 1 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Re #411 you wrote:- "Take instead a block of metal, heated on one side with 1KW of power, sitting on the other side on a huge block of ice. It will reach some dynamic equilibrium temperature, say 100 degrees." But your system has a 1kW heat source on one side (of a block) and you add some insulator (the wood) to the other side. Of course the temperature will rise. The Sun/Earth arrangement has the heat source (the Sun) outside the Earth/atmosphere system. Although your model is set up with the Earth as a heat source this is not the case. My best model is the blanket. A blanket keeps you warm because it stops your body heat escaping, as a result you are warmer than the bedroom. If you die, your body heat stops and your body (now a corpse) cools down to room temperature. If the room temperature increases (because the Sun is making the room hot) the corpse under the blanket will get warmer too because it follows the room temperature. There will be a little delay in the change of the corpse's temperature because of the insulating effect of the blanket and the thermal inertia of the corpse but after a while thermal equilibrium will be restored. It is the same with the Sun/Earth system. The Sun streams out photons with a mean temperature of 5780K. But, because of the inverse square law, the density of (5780K) photons drops with distance (photons do not lose energy with distance - just the number/m^2 changes with distance), so the (average) temperature at a planet is dependent only on the distance from the Sun. Even if the planet reflects most of the Sun's photons (i.e. it has a very high albedo) that will only slow down the rate of heating by the Sun, the planet will just get to its final temperature more slowly (than a black body planet). PS the high albedo slows down the rate of cooling also. PPS the albedo works like a blanket, and just like MFI (Multilayer Foil Insulation). -
Yvan Dutil at 08:05 AM on 1 March 2011Various estimates of Greenland ice loss
Is it me or melt started around 1995? A consequence of the impredictable non-linear behaviour of climate? -
michael sweet at 07:47 AM on 1 March 2011Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
I posted a similar response here. In order to control CO2 all countries have to cooperate. That is only possible if developed countries with the largest past emissions lead the way so the developing countries can follow. Spain generated 16% of their electricity from wind last year!! If all developed countries did that it would really start to make a difference. -
scaddenp at 07:38 AM on 1 March 2011CO2 was higher in the past
alecpiper. You trust Easterbrook? Have a look at: here and particularly here. Of course, dont take a warmist blog word for it. Pull the data, check the references (especially the metadata) and see for yourself. -
Bob Lacatena at 07:33 AM on 1 March 2011Preference for Mild Curry
Curry is going to be reviled 20 years from now as the scientist who abandoned her profession, her beliefs, and her integrity in order to become a professional concern troll for denialism. Variations on this story line wait for Watts, Inhofe, Monckton, and any number of others. It's going to make for fun reading, and they all have it in their destiny. They can lie and distort all they want now, but the truth, when it arrives, will be "undeniable." End of story. When we reach a point where the public begins to panic, because in spite of all of their clever arguments, temperatures continue to unequivocally rise and extreme events become more and more common and alarming, then I expect Curry to try to salvage her reputation in the eyes of history (along with any number of other high profile deniers) by back pedaling, insisting that she was just being open minded, and that she really was trying to build bridges, and that she's sadly misunderstood and being unfairly victimized. I'd love to be at a major climate science meeting come that time, and to hear the intense silence that falls when she enters the room. -
hank at 07:30 AM on 1 March 2011Climate sensitivity is low
> total atmospheric window is simply the quantity No, it's not a quantity. It's a term defined in various ways in papers published in science journals. It's never defined as a quantity. -
robert way at 07:28 AM on 1 March 2011Various estimates of Greenland ice loss
Jeff T, Rignot et al (2011) is in press at Geophysical Research Letters -
scaddenp at 07:28 AM on 1 March 2011Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
"Vast riche$ await anyone who can scientifically break the chain of evidence & show the AGW is a non-worry" Lets to heart of what you are taking issue with in above statement and also the question of whether AGW is result of biased evaluation of data. I think DB is right in his statement and here is why. The motivation to find that AGW is non-worry is immense for a scientist (not a technologist though as you point out). 1/ Its hard to make your name with me-too science 2/ A Nobel prize awaits your successful effort 3/ Given the half-baked stuff funded by fossil fuel fronts, its got to be easier to get money there than from cut-throat world of conventional funders. Furthermore, since mainstream scientist employers are not accessing this money on whole, you can have the money yourself instead of salary. 4/ At a personal level, who wants AGW to be true? (Yes, there are luddites and atavistic dreamers but these arent the scientists I know). Its also important to understand the difference between "lobby science" and conventional funding sources. There isnt conventional funding for "pro-AGW" science nor should there be for "anti-AGW" science. There is funding for finding out what we dont know. The funding provider is indifferent as to whether the result is supportive or not of a given theory. On the other hand, can you imagine Cato or SPPI being pleased with results that support conventional climate theory? I also know that FF has very considerable internal research capacity. However, it is choosing to fund lobbying and disinformation rather than pursue an alternative theory. My take on climate science from an outsider is that an alternative theory is going to be tough. To get that Nobel prize will require a theory that accounts for all current observations and yet lets us off the hook. For my 2c, the unknowns that are worth pursuing are: 1/ A hidden negative feedback that will reduce ECS. Clouds and aerosols are favourite but face the problem that you need a mechanism that is working now or in future but didnt work in the past as low sensitivities make paleoclimate and 20th Century climate extremely difficult. 2/ A hidden natural energy flow that somehow mimics the signature of GHG. Any others? You can hope on those, but it isnt the way to bet or vote. -
Alexandre at 06:59 AM on 1 March 2011Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
This is a fascinating subject, and that's where the real challange lies. I recommend again the work of Elinor Ostrom, who recently won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for her work on this subject. I've read two of her books, and I recommend both, being the first more math, and the second more descriptive of the institutions: - Rules, Games and Common-pool resources - Governing the Commons -
r.pauli at 06:39 AM on 1 March 2011Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
The tragedy of the commons is the core concept facing civilization. And it leads one to observe the greater tragedy as the human failure of understanding and implementing change. -
MattJ at 06:09 AM on 1 March 2011Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
I don't know what readers Dana had in mind that would recognize the term "Nash equilibrium". And the table he gave in that context made even less sense: he said "Either side can only tie or win if they don't reduce emissions, and they can only tie or lose if they do reduce emissions." BTW: the notation of the payoff matrix also needs to be explained. For many readers, "7,7" looks like 7 and 7/10, NOT 7 for the US, 7 for Australia. For that matter, where is the equilibrium? The post should point it out explicitly and explain WHY it is an equilibrium. Finally, since, as the Wikipedia article on it points out, the Nash equilibrium DOES often lead to strategies no one would actually implement, since they are both counter-intuitive and on Pareto-optimal. Under such circumstances, the entire discussion of Nash equilibrium does not contribute much in the first place. -
scaddenp at 06:07 AM on 1 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
"I am most interested in what you write but two lines is just a bit too little to give me a proper grasp of your point." An experiment is proposed. You use your understanding of thermodynamics to calculate a result. Result is also calculated by textbook thermodynamics. Results are compared to what actually is observed. If your method fails, then do you concede that your understanding is flawed? -
Stephen Leahy at 06:05 AM on 1 March 2011Preference for Mild Curry
@16 Tom, I fear the entire Berkeley effort, even if well-intentioned, will be used as another excuse to delay action until we resolve 'the uncertainty'. Hence funding from Koch who are all about deny & delay. -
RickG at 06:05 AM on 1 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
damorbel, Two questions. 1) Does an object have to be at a specific temperature in order to emit energy? 2) Is an object receiving energy selective to receiving energy only from objects warmer than them?
Prev 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 Next
