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Comments 101701 to 101750:

  1. An Even Cloudier Outlook for Low Climate Sensitivity
    Sorry if this is too far off topic, but I saw this article about climate feedback resulting in only 1.6C warming recently and thought it might be worthy of discussion. I have not read the scientific paper, but the linked article reporting on the results of the paper is typical of skeptic journalism, reporting one result and ignoring all other evidence. That particular journalist (and as far as I can tell "The Register" as a whole) only publishes skeptic articles.
  2. Ice age predicted in the 70s
    By whom? Popular daily newspapers & weeky magazines, e.g. Newsweek, are not reliable communicators of the accumulated scientific knowledge.
  3. Greenland has only lost a tiny fraction of its ice mass
    #7: "Greenland has had green growing plants on it at least twice during the time covered by our ice cores." I'm not sure where you think that 'discovery' goes. The interglacials did indeed allow plant growth. This ice-core temperature graphic gets posted a lot. Are you suggesting that the existence of relatively warm interglacials over the past few hundred thousand years somehow invalidates GHG-induced warming in the present? That will take some significant work on your part to substantiate; you might want to look here before trying to climb that mountain. There is even some evidence of plant growth on debris-covered glaciers. We find that alpine taxa can grow considerably below their usual altitudinal niche due to the cooler subsurface soil temperatures found on glacial debris with ice underneath and that may have significantly altered the spatial distribution of such flora during full glacial conditions.
  4. Philippe Chantreau at 02:17 AM on 13 December 2010
    The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
    Damorbel, I'm not saying that, Michele is. I know that these plants work, as I indicated. Johnson, according to Michele, says that "no energy" (that includes any and all) "can flow from a cooler object to a warmer one"; it means that no energy can flow from the colder individual mirrors to the hot concentrator. This is obviously false. I have not read the Johnson paper, I am just reflecting on the statement attributed to him by Michele. Awol, it seems there may be some confusion in how you consider your thermodynamics. If you accept that there is downwelling radiation (which you do), then you must also accept that the energy content of the surface increases as a result of that radiation. Whether it can be "directly measured" or not is irrelevant. And it does not mean that the direction of the net heat flow is going to change at any time. Everyone carrying on with the G&T stuff on the internet seems confused between heat (in thermodynamics, that means net heat flow) and energy (which can be almost anything). Heat must comply with the 3 laws. Energy can flow in a variety of ways, so long as the net heat flow of the system complies with thermodynamics.
  5. Hyperactive Hydrologist at 02:11 AM on 13 December 2010
    An Even Cloudier Outlook for Low Climate Sensitivity
    HumanityRules, By being in a positive phase as a posed to negative La Nina phase. NOAA has some good info on the El Nino Southern Oscillation. There are some suggestions that El Nino will get stronger as the oceans warm and La Nina will potentially get weaker. Currently however, there is very little evidence to back this theory up especially since ENSO (La Nina) is in it's strongest negative phase for a long time. ENSO has a huge impact on annual temperature and it is the reason why the this year will no longer be the warmest on record.
  6. An Even Cloudier Outlook for Low Climate Sensitivity
    HumanityRules at 23:11 PM on 12 December, 2010 Try Trenberth 2002, it is approachable and even the abstract explains a lot. http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2000JD000298.shtml
    Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] A free copy can be found here.
  7. An Even Cloudier Outlook for Low Climate Sensitivity
    Re: Argus (5)
    "- And are there no "major flaws" in the criticism? How come the 'good guys' are always right on this web site, and 'the bad guys' are always wrong? It looks suspicious... "
     Please refrain from characterizing things in terms of good vs bad. In peer-reviewed science there is always going to be discussion, with an eventual coalescing of opinion into a right, wrong and shades of both regarding consensus of opinion on studies. Those papers receiving such close inspection as Mann 1998 or Lindzen and Choi 2009 either end up being robustly defended because evidence supported their premise (Mann 1998) or abandoned (Lindzen and Choi 2009). Papers eventually falling by the wayside still serve a useful purpose in that a greater and deeper understanding of the science remaining is developed. But that does not make authors of failed peer-reviewed papers bad. Or those of confirmed papers good. The Yooper
  8. CO2 only causes 35% of global warming
    Continued from comments on the 'human fingerprint in the seasons' thread. #166: "Attributing these observation to a primary cause, which seems to be the intention here, seems problematic." I agree that is a very valid and significant question. In the seasonal fingerprint thread, John cited Braganza et al 2004. They looked at 5 indices pulled from sea surface and air surface temperature data, concluding Over the last 50 years, observed linear trends in the global-mean temperature (GM), the land-ocean temperature contrast (LO), the magnitude of the annual cycle in temperature over land (AC) and the Northern Hemisphere meridional temperature gradient (MTG) are found to be significantly larger than changes expected due to internal variability and changes in solar and volcanic aerosol forcing. ... Consistency between the observed and GS [greenhouse gas plus sulfate aerosol] trends in four different indices suggests that anthropogenic forcing has had a large influence on observed changes during the later part of the twentieth century. Their models include water vapor; however, your question still persists: How much GHG warming is due to water vapor and how much is CO2 and the other nasty gases? For this, look at Schmidt et al 2010. First they make this utterly critical point: The system which is relevant for our discussion of climate sensitivity consists of the atmosphere (winds, temperature, humidity, clouds, etc.) coupled to a simplified upper ocean component that allows SST to vary [Charney, 1979]. In this system, CO2, other trace GHGs, solar variations etc. are forcings, while the changes to internal prognostic variables corresponding to clouds and water vapor (that occur as a function of other changes in climate, which then go on to change the radiative transfer in the climate themselves) will be feedbacks. Among their conclusions: ... given the uncertainties, that water vapor is responsible for just over half, clouds around a quarter and CO2 about a fifth of the present‐day total greenhouse effect. Given that the attribution is closer to 20% than 2%, it might make more intuitive sense that changes in CO2 could be important for climate change. No doubt you're thinking 'Bazinga! He just said CO2 is only 20%!'. However, look next at Lacis et al 2010: This allows an empirical determination of the climate feedback factor as the ratio of the total global flux change to the flux change that is attributable to the radiative forcing due to the noncondensing GHGs. This empirical determination leads then to a climate feedback factor of 4, based on the noncondensing GHG forcing accounting for 25% of the outgoing flux reduction at the TOA for the full-constituent atmosphere. This implies that Earth’s climate system operates with strong positive feedback that arises from the forcing-induced changes in the condensable species. A direct consequence of this combination of feedback by the condensable and forcing by the noncondensable constituents of the atmospheric greenhouse is that the terrestrial greenhouse effect would collapse were it not for the presence of these noncondensing GHGs. It appears that CO2 (and the other noncondensing gases) is the driver of this car; there are four passengers, all urging the driver to go faster. The very excitable Water Vapor is riding shotgun, the back seat is full of Clouds. If the driver jumps out, the car stops because Water Vapor and Clouds don't drive. If the passengers quit yelling 'faster', the car keeps going, just at a more reasonable speed. To take this metaphor one step further, by increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration, we turned what was a very responsible adult driver into a wild and crazy teenager.
  9. DMI and GISS Arctic Temperatures: Hide the Increase?
    My thanks to Klaus for further statistical analysis and valuable input, and also to Pavel for pointing out (elsewhere) that the former USSR "NP" Arctic data was of course from drifting manned stations rather than buoys! I have now corrected this mistake (which appeared in the original advanced version).
  10. The human fingerprint in the seasons
    #166: "any primary source of warming (Human CO2, solar whatever) will always contain a GHG component because of the condensable GHG in the system." We must agree that both the condensable and the non-condensable GHGs are involved or else there's little to discuss. "Why us "if' when we all know GHGs are always playing a role?" Because 'us' is currently ~30 Gtons of CO2 each year. "All I see is that we can say we live in a warming world" Thank you! "Attributing these observation to a primary cause, which seems to be the intention here, seems problematic." I agree that is a very valid and significant question. Dana did a nice piece on this, which has yet to get any comments. As this is no longer a 'seasonal fingerprint' question, I'll put the rest of this long-winded reply there (hopefully making Dana feel better). As to your #167: 'what about clouds?', I'm going to leave that alone for now. There are some other active threads on the cloud question.
  11. The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
    Re #153 Philippe Chantreau you wrote:- " How does Claes Johnson theory fare? The way I see it, according to his theory, a multiple mirrors type concentrating solar plant can not work." I have read Claes Johnson's paper and, although he has a differnt approach - more to do with him not being a native English speaker - I don't see how you can say a solar concenterator can't work. Solar concentrators work becaust the photons arriving at the Earth, although reduced in number by the inverse square law, still have the energy of the 5780K Sun; so if you use a mirror (or a lens) to concentrate sunlight you can, if there are no other losses(!) achieve an image of the Sun not just with its original brightness but with the original temperature (Don't, for goodness sake, look at such an image.)
  12. The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
    Phillipe Chantreau @153 Perhaps you misread that which I wrote? Which was " so low that it cannot be measured." (my reply to statement D) The "it" referred to a theoretical change in temperature of the planet and not to the quantity or nature of the radiation involved. The downward radiation can be measured but my understanding, at present, is that has no effect, as its frequency is too low to raise the temperature of matter at a warmer temperature.....2nd Law of Thermodynamics...true or false?
  13. The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
    Re #159 AWoL you wrote:- "Is an understanding of quantum physics and relativity necessary for understanding of climate models?" Indeed it is. Quantum physics arose because there was no satifactory explanation for radiative transfer of energy that could be derived from classical mechanics. Classical mechanics (kinetic theory) was OK for heat in atoms and molecules but it simply didn't work for radiation, even with Maxwell's electromagnetic equations. It was Max Planck (On the Law of Distribution of Energy in the Normal Spectrum - 1901) who, basing his work on Gustav Kirchhoff's 'black body' paper (On the Relation Between the Emissive and Absorptive Power of Bodies for Heat and Light - 1862) who opened the door to understanding of the quantum aspects of radiation and matter. In turn Einstein (1905, 1909 and 1917) picked up the torch and the rest, as they say, is history. As for recommending books, that is rather difficult. There are translations of the original works and it is highly advisable to read them because the subject, as it is taught today, is widely misunderstood, particularly Kirchhoff. The relatioship between the Earth and the Sun in terms of energy is very simple in some ways but when you read in all climatological explanations that the Earth 'emits in the infrared like a black body', and 'the Earth's temperature is dependent on its albedo', the you must realise that 'climatology' has fallen at the first fence and you are completely lost, the only thing to do is to turn round and go back to the beginning.
  14. An Even Cloudier Outlook for Low Climate Sensitivity
    I guess I should know this but how does El Nino cause global temperatures to increase? I'm finding it hard to get an answer from Google.
  15. An Even Cloudier Outlook for Low Climate Sensitivity
    Argus@5: Lindzen and Choi are welcome to point out the "major flaws" in the criticisms. The fact that they have chosen to not defend their position in the face of criticism suggests that they feel the criticism is correct. Science is a dog fight. People get criticized all the time. If you think you are right you defend yourself. If you chose not to defend your position the science moves on. Look at the criticism of the hockey stick: Skeptics criticized the result and Mann has responded with more data to support his position.
  16. Berényi Péter at 23:06 PM on 12 December 2010
    Ice age predicted in the 70s
    Did scientists predict an impending ice age in the 1970s? It was most certainly communicated they did.
  17. An Even Cloudier Outlook for Low Climate Sensitivity
    This post does brush on an important point that isn't properly clarified: the short term changes caused by ENSO might lead to a different cloudiness pattern than you get with a global warming (because ENSO's pattern of warming is different to what you expect from global warming and cloud feedback is not linear in temperature, not to mention changes in circulation etc). However, models account for this, so it's a good paper that sidesteps Spencer's cause/effect so it can be used to test models: and the data from the past 10 years don't contradict the model calculations. So we can be a bit more confident in them. Which is a much more complicated 'point' than just reading the abstract suggests...
  18. An Even Cloudier Outlook for Low Climate Sensitivity
    Argus, I definitely recommend reading the criticism of Lindzen & Choi. You can't be sure their results are global anyway, and the ability to change their result by several-fold just by changing the selected periods by a few months means their approach looks seriously, seriously flawed. Unless they have a very strong justification for their time period choices, which they haven't presented.
  19. Ice data made cooler
    RSVP: You do not need to tell me about the solubility of gases. I teach chemistry, including Henry's Law. The solubility of CO2 is a complicated function related to the pH, atmospheric pressure, salinity, temperature and the ambient pressure, which changes at depth. You have no idea how to calculate the solubility of CO2 in the ocean and are using "skeptic logic" to make absurd claims. Scientists have measured the changes of CO2 and oxygen in the ocean. Your claim in 3 that O2 would be outgassed in significant amounts by a warming ocean is absurd. Provide a link to a peer reviewed paper (or even a skeptic web site) to support your wild, unscientific claims. Moderator: CO2 and O2 solubility should be declared off topic on this thread to prevent another "waste heat" thread.
  20. An Even Cloudier Outlook for Low Climate Sensitivity
    Argus @ 5: We have provided links to both the prior work and the subsequent critiques of L&C, as requested by our skeptic friend HR. You are most welcome to criticize them - scientifically. Please leave any insinuations of suspicious activities by "good guys" or "bad guys" where they belong: in the gutter.
  21. An Even Cloudier Outlook for Low Climate Sensitivity
    Argus @5 You have it the wrong way round. The guys who are wrong (because they have errors in their papers) are bad. If Lindzen et al stopped making stupid errors they would become good guys.
  22. An Even Cloudier Outlook for Low Climate Sensitivity
    - And are there no "major flaws" in the criticism? How come the 'good guys' are always right on this web site, and 'the bad guys' are always wrong? It looks suspicious...
    Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] Please see my response to you in comment #12 below. Also, please adhere more closely to the Comments Policy in the future, as comments containing insinuations of malfeasance or questioning motives will be deleted. Thanks in advance for your understanding on this point!
  23. An Even Cloudier Outlook for Low Climate Sensitivity
    "Is there any peer-reviewed criticism of Lindzen and Choi 2009?" Beyond Trenberth et al. 2010, there is Murphy 2010: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010GL042911.shtml And in effect Chung et al. 2010: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010GL043051.shtml Also, Lindzen and Choi came to the exact opposite conclusion of two previous studies ([1] and [2]) without discussing why their results differed so greatly. I can only assume this either means that Lindzen knew about these papers, but couldn't explain such conflicting results given the same data, or no longer feels like doing his homework when publishing potentially groundbreaking results. [1] Forster & Gregory (2006) http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI3611.1 [2] Tsushima et al. (2005) http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~vijay/GRC/Papers/tsushima-etal-05.pdf
  24. The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
    Composer99@154, Yes... "my instinct"=my best guess based on current experience and knowledge. If you have got precise data,rather than a best guess, then I do hope you will reveal it to all on this website which I think is the purpose of this website. Is an understanding of quantum physics and relativity necessary for understanding of climate models? If so what books would you recommend for a beginner to get up to speed?
  25. Stratospheric Cooling and Tropospheric Warming
    mars, Joe, on the adiabatic lapse rate point Science of Doom has a new post setting this out very well: http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/12/07/things-climate-science-has-totally-missed-convection/
  26. An Even Cloudier Outlook for Low Climate Sensitivity
    Trenbath et al (2010): http://www.agu.org/journals/pip/gl/2009GL042314-pip.pdf Discussed in detail here. There are several major flaws in the L&C paper.
  27. An Even Cloudier Outlook for Low Climate Sensitivity
    Is there any peer-reviewed criticism of Lindzen and Choi 2009?
  28. The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism
    Glenn Tamblyn, "refine" sounds a little too sophisticated. What I actually do is look up my argument in the long list of contradicted skeptic arguments, and I don't use it if it is there. Then I present my own theories on the cosmic ray thread for example. The ability of posters here to quickly point out flaws is exceptional. If my flaw is repetitious or obvious then someone will point that out also. If those theories seem to cohere with everything else I read, then I use those. (N.B. I am not trying to "avoid" CO2 warming theory, just imminent catastrophic CO2 warming theory). In the solutions threads in particular, the real world takes top priority and I agree with the consensus opinion in those threads. I think the difference is that it is much easier in the real world to test a solution than to test a model.
  29. The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism
    @36 Eric(skeptic) Interesting concept Eric! That you 'refine' your arguments to make them harder to debunk. Surely the point of 'debunking' in this context is to illustrate faulty logic,reasoning and evidence, not just less artful 'arguments'. Since we are discussing physical phenomena in the real world, 'refinements to the argument' won't tip the physics in or against your favour. This isn't a debating club where we 'win' if our sophistry is cleverer. This is the real world.
  30. Ice data made cooler
    michael sweet #35 "The amount of gas released relates to the change in the solubility of the gas, not its concentration in the atmosphere. " Solubility is the propensity of absorption, not an amount. If I put a dry sponge on a dry surface, it isnt going to absorb a whole lot of water. The water needs to actually be there first. So concentration or partial pressure of gases determines the amount. I suggest you go here and see what it says about "Henry´s Law". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_pressure "Gases will dissolve in liquids to an extent that is determined by the equilibrium between the undissolved gas and the gas that has dissolved in the liquid (called the solvent)....The form of the equilibrium constant shows that the concentration of a solute gas in a solution is directly proportional to the partial pressure of that gas above the solution."
  31. actually thoughtful at 17:53 PM on 12 December 2010
    An Even Cloudier Outlook for Low Climate Sensitivity
    From Hansen's paper in 1988 (and really just looking at the data) we have empirical evidence of 3.4C for the sensitivity. Nothing has seriously challenged that figure.
  32. Stratospheric Cooling and Tropospheric Warming
    Joe at 227 The way I understand it, is the work that is done, is internal to the parcel of air. Work is done when the air parcel expands and the temperature falls. During compression the work energy is in effect returned as an increase in temperature. Here I may be misunderstanding what you are saying. I was under the impression that you are saying that heat from the parcel of air is being lost to its surroundings. My understanding is that is not the case. My simplistic understanding is that a parcel of dry air cools at a rate of 9.8 Deg C per 1 Km of altitude but the atmosphere on average is cooler by 6.8 Deg C for every 1 Km of altitude. For example if the surface temperature is 16 Deg C and a parcel is heated an extra 6 degs C to 22 Deg C At 1 Km air parcel cools to 12.2 Deg C local temp is 9.2 C At 2 Km air parcel cools to 2.4 Deg C local Temp is also 2.4 C Here equilibrium is reached and and convection stops.
  33. The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
    AWoL comments @ 151:
    (C) "Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will reduce the flux of outgoing longwave radiation within their absorption bands." [Quoted by AWoL from Ned @223).] True, bearing in mind that only 1 in 2,500 molecules is involved and only a tiny part of the IR outgoing spectrum is involved.Is this a significant effect in comparison to much more obvious transfers of heat, such as conduction/convection from the surface and the very obvious role of water vapour in heat transfer? My instinct says no. [Emphasis mine.]
    Your instinct? You surely realize that relying on instinct is a sub-optimal manner of assessing scientific data, especially in the era of quantum physics & relativity.
  34. Ice data made cooler
    jimvj: I meant to say that crust is a very good insulator, and I shouldn't have implied that it was solely responsible for Earth's internal heat. I'll fix that. I'll look at the link too. Thank you, jg
  35. Stratospheric Cooling and Tropospheric Warming
    mars at 10:15 AM Read here the section on adiabatic heating and cooling, and if you still think im wrong get back to me and i shall try to clarify.
  36. Ice data made cooler
    Hi jg: Great work! Thanks very much. On one of the Energy Budget pages it says "Internal heat loss is negligible. Crust is a good insulator, keeping the core hot for 4.5 billion years." I don't think that is correct. Heat released by radioactive isotopes decaying keeps the Earth's interior hot. Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay "False Premise, Good Science" in his book "The Flamingo's Smile" that discusses this issue. (http://tinyurl.com/28utjjx)
  37. Philippe Chantreau at 12:58 PM on 12 December 2010
    The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
    Michele @ 147. Every prediction of quantum theory that could be tested by experiment thus far has proved true. Physicists have been very busy proving it's true, in other words. How does Claes Johnson theory fare? The way I see it, according to his theory, a multiple mirrors type concentrating solar plant can not work. However, they do. Perhaps I misinterpret the "energy is transferred only from warmer to cooler" bit. Does it mean energy or heat? Awol, do you have any evidence backing up your assertion that downgoing IR radiation is too small to be measurable? Did you check whether it has been measured or not?
  38. The human fingerprint in the seasons
    I don't know if this has already been covered but I wondered whether we can even say diagnostically this is a GHG fingerprint (forget human fingerprint). What about clouds? It seems changes in cloud cover would have a very similar fingerprint both in the summer/winter and day/night trends. Briefly, low clouds play two roles 1) Reflecting solar radiation out to space at the cloud top. (Cooling effect) 2) Reflecting longwave radiation back down to the surface at the cloud bottom. (warming effect) The magnitude of these two effects will alter the rate of warming. Summer/Winter - Solar irradiance in summer is higher than in winter. The cooling effect will be greater in summer than winter while the downward radiation effect remains the same for both seasons. So in a warming world with more cloud the effect is winters warm at a faster rate than summers. Day/Night - In a similar way solar irradiance is greater during the day than the night. More clouds would reflect more longwave radiation down both day and night but would only have an increased cooling effect during the day. Overall effect is a greater warming trend at night in a warming world with more cloud. Both these observations could be described as cloud fingerprints. I realise clouds are a feedback not a forcing. But I'm not sure these sorts of observations can distinguish between the two. My point isn't "this is clouds" or "this is solar" but why is this specificly a GHG fingerprint or a human fingerprint, I still don't get that. Do these studies distinguish between a forcing effect and a feedback effect? What is specifically GHG or human about these sorts of observations? (I'm talking about summer/winter trends and day/night trends). How do these observations go beyond just being consistent with GHG warming? And what warming trend in the past several hundred million years didn't involve a GHG component anyway? The more I try thinking about these observations the less I see any importance to them (beyond we live in a warming world).
  39. actually thoughtful at 11:35 AM on 12 December 2010
    Renewable Baseload Energy
    It is not "Being developed" - it is done. Here now. Ready to go. You too can save money and the environment by acting now. Failure to act puts you in the denier crowd by actions, if not by words. I don't mean to be inflammatory, but there is a tendency to wait for "someone" else to do this. We are witnessing government failure in the United States - people are choosing to stay ignorant, and democracies require an informed electorate. The only possible solution is individual action. The fact that you will save money and be more comfortable is gravy.
  40. The human fingerprint in the seasons
    162 muoncounter OK I'll ignore the RSVP stuff but..... "question seems like either a silly one or a trick" Muon I thought the silliness was contained in your statement "if greenhouse gases are causing global warming" So I replied with a somewhat silly question in #159 (which you skillfully avoided). But the point isn't just that GHGs exist in the atmosphere but that any primary source of warming (Human CO2, solar whatever) will always contain a GHG component because of the condensable GHG in the system. Why us "if' when we all know GHGs are always playing a role? This is my issue here I don't get the importance of this work. I don't get what this work is revealing to us. All I see is that we can say we live in a warming world and I think there are more straightforward ways of doing that. Attributing these observation to a primary cause, which seems to be the intention here, seems problematic. 164 archiesteel Wow, I'm always being accused of seeing conspiritorial behaviour here, nice of you to join me. Maybe mail to John might be able to confirm me and RSVP are in fact two separate minds. I'm guessing RSVP's spelling isn't quite as bad as mine.
  41. Ice data made cooler
    RSCP, When you do not know what you are doing you look stupid when you tell me I am wrong. According to your data, for a change of temperature from 0C to 10C there is approximately 100 times as much CO2 released as O2. The amount of gas released relates to the change in the solubility of the gas, not its concentration in the atmosphere. If you do not understand this basic fact you need to stop posting nonsense. Is your "skeptical logic" (from 16) to do the math incorrectly and then berate others for trying to show you the correct math? Making up absurd stories and than claiming scientists might be wrong since they have not addressed them does not amount to "logic", it just wastes everyone elses time.
  42. The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
    AWoL "only 1 in 2,500 molecules is involved" Check this quote from Waste heat vs greenhouse warming "Given that air molecules at surface pressure collide with other molecules 10^9 times per second, this energy is rapidly distributed to all the molecules in the air mass - N2, O2, CO2, Ar, H2O, etc. And once the GHG's in the air mass reach the higher temperature, they will radiate IR at the appropriate rate for that temperature."
  43. Stratospheric Cooling and Tropospheric Warming
    Joe 255 at Para 3 There is a problem here as the process is adiabatic that means no heat is added or subtracted from the system and that in turn implies no energy has either. So what did the work ?
  44. The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism
    @36 Eric(skeptic): "To each his own."
  45. The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
    Replying to Ned, post number323 (I like your step by step approach.Much appreciated) For me everything is fine until we get to step C and D and it's substeps D2, D3, D4. (C) "Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will reduce the flux of outgoing longwave radiation within their absorption bands." True, bearing in mind that only 1 in 2,500 molecules is involved and only a tiny part of the IR outgoing spectrum is involved.Is this a significant effect in comparison to much more obvious transfers of heat, such as conduction/convection from the surface and the very obvious role of water vapour in heat transfer? My instinct says no. D)"The reduction in OLR cause the temp of the planet to rise." Logically yes , but only if the proportion of IR intercepted by CO2 is high. I think it is low...very low, so low that it cannot be directly measured. So to that I would say that any theoretical rise in temperature will be so small as to be immeasurable. E)"As the temperature rises, more OLR is emitted outside the greenhouse gas absorption bands." Let's accept a small temperature rise, for the sake of argument. All that happens then is that a greater fraction of OLR by passes CO2,zooms out into space and reduces further what little significant effect(if any) CO2 had on planetary warming. F) Agreed ,as F follows from E (D.2) "Some of this radiation goes outward to space, and is lost to the planet's system. Some of it goes inward towards the surface." Yes a lot, more than 1/2, goes out to space,consequently less than 1/2 returns earthwards but produces no effect as the frequency is too low to raise the temperature of molecules in a higher state of excitation. (D.3) "This downwelling longwave radiation from the atmosphere is absorbed by the planet's surface." Problems here. It may be absorbed,if it gets there. But most of the time the surface will be hotter and nothing will happen. Or if it is cooler, most of the time a blanket of fog/mist will form. The only place where it might have an effect is in dry cold deserts.....but that, at any one time, will be but a tiny proportion of the earth's surface. So, once again theoretically possible, but in practice, relatively seldom will the requisite conditions be met for any significant heat transfer to take place from atmosphere to the surface.I can't help but feel that the height of the troposphere is one of the principal regulators of the earth's temperature. High troposphere.... lot of heat loss(Tropics). Low troposphere..... low heat loss(high latitudes). What I'm saying is that there is a high degree of autoregulation/homeostasis built in to our atmosphere and water and water vapour are the big players.The atmosphere's principal function is to provide a conduit for water vapour and water(clouds).The difference between us is that you say there is a significant heat transfer involving CO2, while I say that while it is theoretically possible that CO2 might raise the temperature of the atmosphere, the very low density and the minor quantity of energy involved, in comparison to conduction/convection/evaporation/condensation, make it difficult to accept the model that you propose. And there we have to leave it, unless new evidence or a better explanation come to pass. However if nothing else, the sticking point has been identified. (D.4) "The absorption of this downwelling radiation reduces the magnitude of the net flux of longwave radiation leaving the surface, making the surface warmer than it would have been if it were not surrounded by an atmosphere that includes greenhouse gases." Couldn't that be tested experimentally? Take a hemisphere of red hot iron. Note the cool down time. Exactly the same conditions, and place a wire mesh hemisphere(radius say 2-3ft) over the heated iron hemisphere. Will it affect the rate of cooling or not? Surely the wire mesh would act or interact with the hemisphere in a similar way to that which you say happens between the Earth's surface and atmospheric CO2? Or try the same thing in a room of air and then do the same thing in a room of 100%CO2. My instinct says that in neither case will there be a measurable increase in cool-down time. The wire mesh will simply act as a relaystation of radiation outwards,and CO2perhaps functions in much the same way.According to you the downwelling radiation from the wire will reduce the netflux of longwave radiation leaving the surface....hence lengthening the cooling time. Maybe more information could be gained if there was some way of heating the wire in a controlled manner and finding out just what temperature it had to reach to produce a readily detectable difference in rate of cooling of the hemisphere.If you have to add a considerable amount of energy then my interpretation is correct. If the addition of little or no energy still slows the rate of cooling appreciably then you are correct.If a lot of energy has to be added then you are very wrong. If none or very little then you are correct. In other words , this would not just prove that you were right or wrong ,but supply a figure as to how much you are wrong....or right.
    Moderator Response: Regarding your response to (C): The proportion of CO2 molecules relative to other molecules is irrelevant. What matters is the number of CO2 molecules in a volume of space. Many people are confused on this point because the typical way of referring to the amount of CO2 is as PPM air molecules. But that way of referring is merely a convenience to avoid the complication that the number of air molecules differs across parts of the atmosphere. If you want to continue to discuss that, probably the thread "Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions" is more relevant than this thread.

    Regarding your belief that the effect of CO2's interception of "outgoing" IR is not significant "in comparison to" conduction and convection, again you need to realize that its relative effect is not relevant; what matters is the absolute size of the effect. Secondly and more importantly, "outgoing" means "on the way to space," and what counts is whether that energy makes it all the way to space. Convection and conduction do not change the amount of energy that goes out of the Earth's whole system (land + water + air). They do not intercept energy on its way out, because they do not operate on radiation, which is the only way energy can escape the whole system.

    Regarding your response to (D), you are incorrect that the proportion of IR intercepted by CO2 is so low that it "cannot be directly measured." Actual empirical measurements can be seen in, just for example, the post "CO2 effect is weak." Also note that the "proportion of IR does not matter; what matters is the absolute amount of energy intercepted, which does map to absolute amount of IR. You might also want to read "CO2 is not increasing" and "CO2 effect is saturated." If you want to further discuss that, one of those threads probably is more relevant than this one.
  46. Greenland has only lost a tiny fraction of its ice mass
    cjshaker it's the opposite. The news is that that part of Greenland didn't melt during the LIG. You should care about the crude dating because you wrote about periodicity; no periodicity whatsoever is claimed by the authors nor could they.
  47. Greenland has only lost a tiny fraction of its ice mass
    Err, at least once. I seem to misinterpreted what I read in the first article. "With over 80% of Greenland a massive ice cap, it seems unlikely but a Danish scientist has discovered that between 450,000 and 800,000 years ago Greenland was the home to a green forest full of plants, trees, and insects." I do not have access to the original article from Science. Chris Shaker
    Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] A free copy of the Willerslev et al study can be found here. Google Scholar is a useful reference to find alternative sources for paywalled studies. Always refer to the study itself whenever possible. Newspaper accounts are frought with misunderstandings of things.
  48. Greenland has only lost a tiny fraction of its ice mass
    The point is that Greenland has had green growing plants on it at least twice during the time covered by our ice cores. Why should I care that the dating is crude? The claim that CO2 is driving the climate would seem to belong in another thread? Chris Shaker
  49. Greenland has only lost a tiny fraction of its ice mass
    cjshaker your reporting of the news is incorrect and I guess you did not read the paper; nowhere they say something about cycles. Their dating is really crude (between 450 and 800 Kyrs) and they "cannot rule out the possibility of a LIG age for the Dye 3 basal ice". You also missed the important point of that paper, the ice at the site of drilling survived several interglacials and the LIG in particular. If true, this poses the important question of where the water that produced 6 m of sea level rise came from.
  50. Greenland has only lost a tiny fraction of its ice mass
    Re: cjshaker (4) That would be a natural glacial cycle having no similarity to the CO2-driven warming of the present. The Yooper

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