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The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Almost; CO2 will (dependent on particular rotational and vibrational states prior to emission) emit photons over the full emissive spectra of CO2. There's sufficient variation in thermal states to cover the entire spectra, with the particular bands (aside from doppler effects and Lorentzian broadening) determined by the electron shell structure of the CO2 molecule. At thermal equilibrium emissivity equals absorbitivity - the energy, the spectra of photons going out equals that coming in. Or rather total energy in (convection, latent heat, absorbed radiation) will equal outgoing energy (convection, latent heat, emitted radiation). So the atmosphere will reach (or follow, if conditions are changing, as they currently are) an equilibrium state where incoming energy equals outgoing energy. -
Ken Lambert at 14:05 PM on 24 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
kdkd #149 Last time I checked there were two independent sets of temperature data. Surface (GCHN) and Satellite (UAH and RSS read same raw data). All the Surface temp reconstruction corrections (HADCRUT, GISTEMP etc) draw from the same data sources. My point is that we are relying on a very few people (and their teams or post-grad students) to get right this basic data interpretation. For example Willis was wrong (found cooling), then right (found warming) and now is maybe right again (found very little warming). I(and BP) are pretty sure von Schuckmann got it wrong. This does not suggest any lack of good faith the part of these scientists - just that the story can be conflicting and the data just not good enough to draw a strong conclusion due to poor measurement, flawed instruments, or poor design of experiment. -
Daniel Bailey at 13:58 PM on 24 November 2010Newcomers, Start Here
Re: Mythago (96) Ball ceased to have credibility long ago (geography professor gone emeritus, as they say). BTW, Barton Paul Levenson removed Ball's main thesis off the playing field 3 years ago with this post. Mythago Wood...read that a long time ago. Any connection to you? The Yooper -
scaddenp at 13:57 PM on 24 November 20102nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
I just looked up the science of doom page that scaddenp referred to and noticed the same trick. But a bit bolder as the author eliminates the term temperature and speaks of amounts of energy instead. Unfortunately temperature is not a measurement of energy amounts. It is a measurement of energy intensity. Firstly, SoD is text-book stuff. Secondly, I am sorry but I fail to understand your comments on temperature. Temperature of say a gas is linearly related to average kinetic energy of the gas particles. Energy in those diagrams isnt measured - its derived from temperature. Can you express what you mean by "energy intensity" in mathematical terms and relate it to temperature please? -
Daniel Bailey at 13:48 PM on 24 November 2010Twice as much Canada, same warming climate
Re adrian smits (26)"Has anyone seen the peer reviewed study that seems to indicate that cold weather is way more life threatening than warm weather! "
Ok, I'll bite (well, I do have an enquiring mind): What is this 'peer reviewed study' of which thou dost speaketh? Verily, dost thee haveth a link? Out with it man, forthwith! The Yooper -
gallopingcamel at 13:48 PM on 24 November 2010Twice as much Canada, same warming climate
The "station drop off" that affected Canada was clearly shown in Peterson & Vose, 1997. While this paper shows the extent of the drop off it does not explain why it occurred. Last month I visited NOAA in Asheville. One of the questions I asked related to the decline in the number of stations at high latitudes. A major factor was organizational changes at Enviro Canada. I was assured that things have settled down and the number of Canadian stations reported in the GHCN is likely to rise again. -
Daniel Bailey at 13:39 PM on 24 November 2010It's Pacific Decadal Oscillation
Re: WHATDOWEKNOW (13) Taking theories from some "skeptical" website run by an ex-British merchant marine dude vs Climatologists who have spent a lifetime studying and advancing the science itself? Gee, hmm, tough choice... Sorry, man. Checked my incredulity at the door. BTW, you should really double check your sources some. 1998 was perhaps the hottest year in the HadCRUT3 dataset, but the GISS and the NCDC have 2006 as hotter (see here). Smart money's on the professionals. That's what we've come to know. The Yooper -
Daniel Bailey at 13:20 PM on 24 November 2010Twice as much Canada, same warming climate
FYI: Anyone wondering about the GHCN station dropout issue and if that dropout adversely affected the accuracy and outcome of the temperature products based on it: Tamino already has done that (analyzed the station drop-out from the GHCN datasets) work for you here. The result (drumroll please, Maestro)? Dropping out of some stations introduced a slight cooling bias into the resulting temperature trend (Cha-Ching!). For a pleasant read and a ton of easy-to-digest analysis, go here wherein Tamino shares his personal analysis into, well, just about every climate-related dataset you could thing of. The Yooper -
oamoe at 13:00 PM on 24 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
KR, Thank you. So the re-emission b y CO2, then, will be of lower energy than the energy originally absorbed? And the energy from the thermal radiation from the surface that is absorbed is almost completely transfered to the higher atmosphere as heat? Am I correct on those points? Thanks again. -
WHATDOWEKNOW at 12:40 PM on 24 November 2010It's Pacific Decadal Oscillation
It is well known that the PDO cycle is directly related to the sun's torque cycle. (there is no correlation in this case, only a relation: the sun doesn't respond to the Earth's ocean or atmosphere; that be ridiculous. Hence, since there's only one way to relate; it's a relationship and not a correlation.) Since the solar torque cycle is thus also and of course independent of the Earth's atmospheric CO2 levels, the strongest causation is that the Earth's atmosphere (temperatures) respond to the ocean temperatures and not the other way around. Need additional proof? Look at the global atmospheric temperatures and how they responded to the strongest el nino in 1997/1998 (ENSO cycle, that in turn is dependent on the PDO and solar cycle too). That El Nino lasted from march 1997 to march 1998, peaking nov-dec 1997 through jan 1998. In addition, a la nina was already official in may 1998. However the global temperatures lag 6 months: peaking jun-aug 1998 ... Hence global atmospheric temperatures respond to global oceans temperatures. Now that causality has been established we can dig some more: I've been looking at the NOI data (SST for EL nino region 3.4) from NOAA available since 1950 and what is striking is that since the el nino from 1958, each peaking el nino has been stronger than the previous one, until the 1997/1998 el nino: 1958: 1.7, 1973:2.1, 1983: 2.3, 1998: 2.5, (2010: 1.8, trend reversal! more about that later) Doing simple linear regression; the peaks increase by 0.0017/month with an R-square of 0.97. That said, looking at la ninas since the 1950s; these increased in strength until the one in 1974 1950: -1.7, 1956: -2.0, 1974: -2.1 and have since then decreased (the peak la ninas that is) until the most recent one in 2008: 1989: -1.9, 2000: -1.6, 2008: -1.4 Interestingly, the decrease in la nina peaks is also 0.0017/month with an R-square of 0.97. The fact that both the el nino and la nina peaks increased and decreased, respectively, with the exact same slope is due to an underlying causation: the PDO. Adding PDO events (warm to cold reversals, vice versa, phase shifts, etc) to the NOI data we instantly see the following: The 2008 la nina coincides exactly with the PDO GPTC The 1998 el nino coincides exactly with the PDO phase shift from warm to cold The 1988 la nina coincides exactly with the highest PDO (LPTC) since 1934 The 1977/78 el nino coincides exactly with PDO phase shift cold to warm The 68/69 la nina coincides exactly with PDO's phase reversal The 55/56 la nina coincides exactly with the lowest PDO value since 1900 In addition, between 1950 and 1977 there were 126 la nina seasons (months) and 75 el nino seasons: PDO was cold Between 1977 and 1998 there were 53 el nino seasons and 27 la nina seasons: PDO was warm Hence, it is obvious that the enso cycle is highly correlated with the PDO which in turn is highly correlated to the sun's torque cycle. In addition, we've entered a trend reversal in ENSO strength; the 2009/2010 El Nino was less strong than the 1997/1998 one. Although it's only one data point to confirm this, it makes all sense using the above. Hence, the ocean and atmosphere is going from an el nino dominated 40 yr period that ended in 1998 to a la nina period of several decades that started in 2008. Now back to the global warming issue. 1998 was the year with the highest recorded temperature: +0.57 and global atmospheric temperatures have dropped since... See a pattern? Follows the PDO exactly. Now 2010 is on track to at least equal 1998, and is currently at +0.54. However, for October the global temperature anomaly is +0.42 deg, which is the lowest monthly temperature anomaly seen in what has been a very warm year: the atmosphere is starting to respond to the developing La Nina and is still in "El Nino mode". Just like I illustrated with the year 1998! In addition, I am sure if we subtract the el nino effect of the warming for 2010 we'll be left with little net warming if any at all. -
kdkd at 12:25 PM on 24 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
KL #148 "Surely short term error would be compounded when extended over longer periods." No, this is incorrect. As the sample size increases, given a reasonable signal to noise ratio the signal component will become more apparent as the signal component is non-random, while the noise component will be at best random, or at worst, systematic in some correctable way. This is of course provable in a mathematical sense, although at present I can't chase up a suitable reference for you, for two reasons. Firstly it's a basic fundamental that's not covered in detail in introductory text books on statistics, rather will be able to be chased up in the primary literature dating from the late 19th century or early 20th century. Secondly I'm not doing much applied statistical work at the moment (beyond some simple support for my colleagues), so my resources for chasing this stuff up is limited at the moment. "Drill down into these lines and you will find much cross referencing and the same prominent sources - Hansen, Trenberth, Willis, Mann, Jones, Briffa et al. They are travellers in this story too - not beyond criticism or close examination. " Here you're too fixated on names, and insufficiently fixated on measurement domains. The 'multiple lines of independent evidence' refer to measurement stystems that are independent of each other, not multiple independent researchers (although differing areas of expertise and interest mean that often this is also the case). I'm glad to clear up these fundamental misunderstandings about the scientific and statistical process for you. -
JMurphy at 12:13 PM on 24 November 2010Twice as much Canada, same warming climate
Goodness, adrian smits : such cold temperatures in Northern Canada in November ! Who would have thought it ? Anyone would think that Winter was coming. Never mind - weather often surprises some. -
adrian smits at 11:52 AM on 24 November 2010Twice as much Canada, same warming climate
Living in northern Canada all I can say is thank goodness its warming.33 below Celsius this morning with a wind chill of 44 below brrrrrr. That is dangerous cold. Will kill you real quick if your not dressed for it.Has anyone seen the peer reviewed study that seems to indicate that cold weather is way more life threatening than warm weather! -
Tom Dayton at 11:38 AM on 24 November 20102nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
h-j-m, I'm glad you wrote that two photons are equals if their wavelengths are the same. Now you need to understand that a photon of a given wavelength can come from a range of different-temperature sources. Imagine those two identical-wavelength photons hitting their target. The target absorbs them identically, because as you wrote, they are effectively identical. Which means the temperature difference between the source and the target is irrelevant. -
Mythago at 11:31 AM on 24 November 2010Newcomers, Start Here
Hi John, For want of a better place to put this I came across yet another foolish individual who firmly believes that sunspot activity is responsible for the climatic changes and he even goes so far as to advocate doing nothing about temperature rising but more about temperature falling. The web item is at this location under the heading of GM (Genetic Modification) believe it or not: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/30098 Anyway if you can make some use of it then feel free to let me know. As for Tweeting responses or even tweeting I haven't got a clue so I am not even able to get started on that line of communication. Only just getting the hang of writing:) Yeah if you believe that you'll believe that climate change is a scam. But seriously this tweeting lark is beyond my skills. Thanks for the resources. Got the app on my new android phone and it has already put a few folks straight within 24 hours of me having it. I recommended it to everyone with an Android or i phone -
h-j-m at 11:26 AM on 24 November 20102nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
KR, sorry, I did not know that meanwhile our technology is advanced enough to observe directly what happens when photons hit matter or are emitted by it. I'd really like to see that. Then I will gladly accept that your notions about emissivity and absorptivity. That a photon is a photon regardless of it's origin is outright wrong unless they are at the same energy level (wavelength). But the wavelength of a photon depends on the temperature of their source (hence different black body radiation curves for different temperatures) and yes, so to speak, they do carry their ID cards (sort of). No, I do not confuse between energy movement and heat flow, I just state that temperature plays a dominant role. While you seemingly argue that taking temperature out of the game will leave no room for the violation of thermodynamic laws. I just looked up the science of doom page that scaddenp referred to and noticed the same trick. But a bit bolder as the author eliminates the term temperature and speaks of amounts of energy instead. Unfortunately temperature is not a measurement of energy amounts. It is a measurement of energy intensity. CBDunkerson, if you would read more carefully and reply to what I wrote you might be able to get a point. And yes sunlight can never reach the earth if its source is cold and empty space, but if it's source is the far hotter sun, I think that might change things a bit. -
Ken Lambert at 11:25 AM on 24 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
The Skeptical Chymist #146 "Ken, you used the "Trenberth Travesty" email to suggest Trenberth would question that "human caused global warming is as solid as ever". He wasn't then and doesn't now and his own words confirm it, you were wrong.' Well I did not claim that Dr Trenberth's opinions were gospel - just that he is probably the best of the bunch. Address the main points of my comment: 1)Dr Trenberth: "Our observing system is inadequate.” Now, if the observing system is only inadequate to 'effectively monitor the energy flows associated with short-term climate variability' then why would it be adequate to monitor longer term climate change? Surely short term error would be compounded when extended over longer periods. and 2) So this TOA imbalance of 0.9W/sq.m is found from Hansen's 2005 model, not really supported by Willis 2004-05 OHC analysis, then used to correct the massive 6.4W/sq.m CERES TOA flux measurement, to match the **estimated global imbalance** which was taken from Hansen's model in the first place. A circular science argument!! This line of "multiple independent lines of evidence" is also getting tiresome. Drill down into these lines and you will find much cross referencing and the same prominent sources - Hansen, Trenberth, Willis, Mann, Jones, Briffa et al. They are travellers in this story too - not beyond criticism or close examination. -
2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
damorbel - Your last post left me a bit stunned. If you honestly feel that SoD "does not seem to be very well informed on the matter", then you are suffering from what is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. You need to go back and review the basics - you've certainly been directed to them repeatedly. Until you do, the points you raise won't even be wrong. -
archiesteel at 11:16 AM on 24 November 2010Twice as much Canada, same warming climate
@HumanityRules: rather than imply that the data is inaccurate, why don't you find out for yourself? Find how much more Arctic stations are added by including the Environment Canada figures, or compare other areas than the Arctic. The data is available for you to prove the author wrong. -
scaddenp at 10:49 AM on 24 November 20102nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
damerol - You said According to Wikipedia, Clausius expressed the second law (validly) like this: 'Heat generally cannot flow spontaneously from a material at lower temperature to a material at higher temperature'. That is NOT what wikipedia quotes. Their translation of Clausius is: "No process is possible whose sole result is the transfer of heat from a body of lower temperature to a body of higher temperature". This statement is correct within the context for which he made it. Again, that seems right and it doesn’t have any entropy involved in the description. I never did like entropy. It never seemed real. What do mean by "seems right"? And entropy has very precise definition from Clausius (as does 2nd law) in mathematics. You cant go drawing wild conclusions from imprecise english statements excerpted from context and claim this overturns application of a very precise mathematical framework from which the statement is derived. As I said, half-grasped ideas just lead to 2+2=5 -
Albatross at 10:44 AM on 24 November 2010Are ice sheet losses overestimated?
Michael @45, Try here. Also try here. -
michael sweet at 10:31 AM on 24 November 2010Are ice sheet losses overestimated?
The temperature the past week in southern Greenland has been as high as 11C. see arctic temperature chart. Does anyone know of a site that gives anomalies? It will be interesting to see the NSIDC summary of the Arctic when they put it in context. -
Marcus at 09:38 AM on 24 November 2010Climategate: Hiding the Decline?
Another point, Damorbel. From my reading of Briffa's data, the divergence doesn't kick in until the 1960's &-as I've said elsewhere-is believed to be the result of long-term drought conditions in the area. As I also said before, this divergence does highlight the danger of using tree-ring data as a proxy where direct temperature measurements are already available. It certainly doesn't reveal any malfeasance on the part of Jones or Briffa-no matter how much you try & spin Muir's findings. As to the impact of this divergence on the role of dendrochronology in Paleo-climate work-it doesn't really effect it at all, as long as you have other proxies to which you can compare the data. So, at the end of the day, this is a "controversy" only in the minds of skeptics like yourself-not in actual reality! -
Marcus at 09:33 AM on 24 November 2010Climategate: Hiding the Decline?
You know, Damorbel, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (a well known skeptic group), use as their logo a graph which purportedly shows global cooling over the last decade. Of course that graph contains a significant error for the year of 2003 & only covers the period of 2001-2008 (a very serious case of cherry picking). MacLean, another climate skeptic, spliced together weather balloon & satellite temperature anomalies in order to "hide the incline"-& didn't mention it anywhere in his paper-even though the paper's conclusions rested almost entirely on this spliced data. So, no doubt you're going to want to see some serious inquiries done into both of these cases of "unacceptable" behaviour-or does that only apply to people who are putting out views that you disagree with? -
Albatross at 08:51 AM on 24 November 20102nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Damorbel clearly does not believe the physics when explained to him by "warmists", so maybe Dr. Roy Spencer (a "skeptic") will be able to convince him... Please go here and here. -
Tom Dayton at 08:40 AM on 24 November 20102nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
damorbel, I think your comment 56 is okay up to the next to last paragraph where you wrote "...incoming (hot) photons from the star," and the last paragraph's "... a few high energy photons from the hot star or a lot of lower energy photons from a much cooler planet...." You might have a misconception that all the photons coming from a source have the same energy, and that single energy is higher when the source is hot than when the source is cold. Instead, the radiation from a blackbody includes photons of low energy, high energy, and shades in between. That's why each blackbody radiation "curve" is a curve rather than single vertical line at a single energy. The temperature of the source determines the relative numbers of photons at those different energies. That distribution of photons' energies is the sole extent of the relevance of the source's temperature. Each photon has no memory of the temperature of its source. (We can calculate the probability of that photon having come from a hot source versus a cold source, but that's the limit of our knowledge, and the photon doesn't know even that.) Your next to last paragraph is correct if you simply leave out the phrases "(hot)" and "from the star." The correct paragraph would be "Your temperature stabilizes when it rises far enough for you to emit enough photons of sufficient energy to match the total energy of the incoming photons from all sources." The photons don't know where they came from. Your body can't tell where the photons came from; your body accepts them all. -
Daniel Bailey at 08:32 AM on 24 November 20102nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Re: damorbel (58) If you consider Science Of Doom to not "be very well informed on the matter" then perhaps (read: no uncertainty whatsoever) you should go back to the drawing board: Learn the basics of climate science and then build on that more solid foundation rather than to spout off on that which you don't even know what you don't know. No offense. The Yooper -
muoncounter at 08:30 AM on 24 November 20102nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
#56: "an 'energy balance diagram' covered in numbers with 'W/m^2' ... it really doesn't mean very much because there is no mention of any temperatures " That diagram (the familiar IPCC global radiation budget) clearly indicates the incoming radiation is solar -- and therefore has the solar energy spectrum. Hence the temperatures are known. Same for earth surface and atmosphere. So what do you mean when you say 'it doesn't mean very much'? -
damorbel at 07:43 AM on 24 November 20102nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Re #55 scaddenp I checked your link to 'Science of doom' and this is (some ) of what I find there:- "It’s possible that the imaginary second law has taken a strong hold because anyone who does look it up finds statements like dS/dt>=0, where S is entropy. Wow. Clever people. What’s entropy? How does this relate to candles? Candles can’t warm the sun, so I guess the second law has just proved the “greenhouse” effect wrong.. According to Wikipedia, Clausius expressed the second law (validly) like this: 'Heat generally cannot flow spontaneously from a material at lower temperature to a material at higher temperature' Again, that seems right and it doesn’t have any entropy involved in the description. I never did like entropy. It never seemed real." To me the writer appears to accept that the 2nd Law of Themodynamics may even disprove the GH effect but does not seem to be very well informed on the matter. Lets face it, if he is only happy if entropy is excluded, he must be leading a very restricted (thermodynamical) life! -
2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
damorbel - "...it really doesn't mean very much because there is no mention of any temperatures": Directly, no, indirectly, absolutely yes. The 396 W/m^2 radiated from the Earth is the power emitted from the near-blackbody (average emissivity almost 1.0) of the Earth at a temperature of 14C, including temperature variations (an earlier paper estimated 390, but with insufficient attention to local variations). -
NewYorkJ at 07:34 AM on 24 November 2010Climategate: Perverting Peer Review?
Some notable comments from von Storch below...Climate Research was certainly a case of perverting the peer review process, but the polar opposite of what contrarians are claiming. “The review process had utterly failed; important questions have not been asked, as was documented by a comment in EOS by Mann and several coauthors.” “I withdrew also as editor because I learned during the conflict that CR editors used different scales for judging the validity of an article. Some editors considered the problem of the Soon & Baliunas paper as merely a problem of “opinion”, while it was really a problem of severe methodological flaws. Thus, I decided that I had to disconnect from that journal, which I had served proudly for about 10 years. ” http://coast.gkss.de/staff/storch/CR-problem/cr.2003.htm http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/deja_vu_all_over_again/ -
damorbel at 07:23 AM on 24 November 20102nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Re #47 CBDunkerson wrote:- "How exactly do you explain sunlight traveling from space (very cold) to the Earth (much warmer) in your world?" Taking space as a vacuum, it really does not have a temperature since heat, (measured by temperature) arises from the microscopic motions of atoms and molecules. There are of course always a few molecules knocking about in space but not normally enough to have much influence on a substantial body like a spaceship. I say not normally but every now and then the Sun has indigestion and belches out energetic particles with energy in the multi MeV (million electron volts) region. You can think of these particles as having a temperature and it would be well over 10^11K. But such temperatures are largely irrelevant since the more devastating effect of the particles is the ionisation of the atoms in your body! In space there is always some radiation energy in the form of photons which comes (mostly) from hot bodies like stars 3500K-100000K. Much less intense are the photons from planets like Earth 150K-350K. Finally there is Cosmic Background Radiation (CMB) at 2.7K, this is the 'cold of space' you are probably thinking of. If you are near a star you get hot because you intercept a large number of very hot photons. At a distance from a star, like the Earth, you still intercept very hot photons but many fewer, so you receive much less energy in total. Since the energy from the photons that you receive from the star heats you up, as your temperature rises above 0K (lets start at the bottom!) you begin to radiate heat also. Your temperature stabilises when it rises far enough for you to emit enough photons of sufficient energy to match the total energy of the incoming (hot) photons from the star. An important point is the fact that the same power (W/m^2) of light (same as electromagnetic) radiation may be a few high energy photons from the hot star or a lot of lower energy photons from a much cooler planet, so when you see an 'energy balance diagram' covered in numbers with 'W/m^2' attached like the one on this page it really doesn't mean very much because there is no mention of any temperatures - anywhere, not of the Earth's surface, the atmosphere nor even the Sun. -
scaddenp at 07:09 AM on 24 November 20102nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
I think that what the arguments so far show is that if you have a simplistic understanding of 2nd Law and a simplistic understanding of greenhouse effect, then you can easily make 2+2 = 5. Is 2nd Law the most misunderstood of common physics? I can only recommend, as other have done, the excellent series at Science of Doom. Of course, if someone only wants excuses to ignore science rather than understanding, then they would run a mile from this. -
kdkd at 07:08 AM on 24 November 2010How significance tests are misused in climate science
Tom #84 Strongly agree. It's instructive that BP's comment #82 does not consider the messier parts of science where exact measurements are impossible, and real experiemental designs are impossible and we have to rely on Quasi-experiments. He clearly does have an incorrect or incomplete mental definition of science. -
muoncounter at 06:58 AM on 24 November 20102nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
#53: "Ditto sunlight..." Also to this point, sunlight must indeed pass through the cool atmosphere to the warmer ground and ocean surface. Or else there is no such thing as weather... -
CBDunkerson at 06:50 AM on 24 November 20102nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
h-j-m, just stop and THINK about what you are arguing. You are claiming that infrared and other EM radiation cannot travel from substance A to substance B if B is already warmer than A... instead you say it must be "reflected". So... if we were to fire a laser at a block of iron in a cold room the laser would hit the block and warm it up slightly. At which point the block is warmer than the air adjacent to it... so the laser can no longer strike the block. Instead it must reflect off. Thus our laser can never cause the block to get significantly hotter than the room around it. The laser most slowly and uniformly warm the entire room because otherwise it reflects off the warmest part and thus cannot make it any warmer. This is all clearly not the case. Ditto sunlight... if it could not pass from the cold of space to the warmth of planet Earth then we would all live in perpetual darkness (which would prevent the planet from being warm). Even a cursory examination of the world around you disproves everything you are saying. -
dhogaza at 05:55 AM on 24 November 2010Climategate: Perverting Peer Review?
Lets see ... meerkat claims that most of published science is of poor quality ... and then complains when people actively seek to improve the quality of published science. That's just weird. -
Albatross at 05:42 AM on 24 November 2010Climategate: Perverting Peer Review?
Rob @3, Yes, frustrating isn't it. My post here (well parts of it t least) may be relevant to this discussion, follow the links. -
Philippe Chantreau at 05:41 AM on 24 November 2010Climategate: Perverting Peer Review?
The interpretation is not lenient and does not miss the point at all. The Soon and Baliunas paper should never have been published anywhere because it lacks the quality of publishable material. The real point is that so-called skeptics like De Freitas and Legates have no scruples at all in circumventing the peer-review process when trying to apply the peer-review label to a paper favoring their views, regardless how worthless it is. That is the true scandal here. Kinne did not stand behind that paper, it has been since repudiated by the journal. I don't see why it is bad thing that scientists be up in arms against a piece so bad that the journal feels the need to later recant on its publication. I note also that the change to the journal's process was not to bar papers with a "dissenting" view, it was to keep out trash. Von Storch was the one pushing that change and would not have it any other way. As for De Freitas ludicrous comment on inquisition and what not, it would be laughable if there weren't so many gullible people to believe it. -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:35 AM on 24 November 2010Climategate: Perverting Peer Review?
What I keep getting from this is that skeptics are pointing the finger of blame at Jones, Mann and Briffa for attempting to influence the peer-review process, but what is getting totally ignored is how the skeptics had distorted the peer-review process which incited Jones and others to respond in the ways shown in the stolen emails. What is the story of the staff at Climate Research? From what I gather there was a concerted effort on the part of skeptics to stage an editorial take over of that journal in order to get their papers published. Why is no one in the MSM digging into this story? -
Albatross at 05:28 AM on 24 November 2010Climategate a year later
KL @62, "I will condemn proven misconduct by any scientist who has a duty to act in good faith." What an odd statement, in your posts here have demonstrated repeatedly that you will not accept proof or evidence that climate scientists are not guilty of any scientific misconduct-- six inquiries have largely vindicated them, but they are still somehow guilty of many nefarious goings on in your mind. BUT, when it comes to Wegman, when faced with compelling evidence you say that you will accept a guilty verdict if it can be proven he is guilty. So, I'm hoping that if GMU find Wegman guilty of plagiarism, and/or deleting emails and/or not disclosing material, and/or failing to actually validate M&M's work as stated, that you will accept that ruling. I'm assuming that the above statement by you also applies to a certain statistician working with climate data, and that if found guilty and by applying your logic, all 'skeptics' by association will be guilty of misconduct and cannot be trusted etc. Just a couple of points. I did not present the example of Wegman as a counter defense, you are making a strawman argument. I was speaking to kdkd when I mused about what you might think of Wegman's alleged scientific misconduct-- although now that three independent experts have declared it plagiarism, I think we can now safely drop the "alleged". And DeepClimate has proven that Wegman did not independently verify M&M's methodology, contrary to what Wegman was instructed to do and what he has claimed to have done. Anyhow, thanks for answering my questions about your position on AGW. One more question, and probably the only one that I should have asked earlier, what do you believe the equilibrium climate sensitivity to be for doubling CO2? -
2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
h-j-m - I have seen your argument in many places before. It reflects a confusion between energy movement and heat flow. Energies move in all directions - up, down, and sideways. Heat flow is the sum of energy movements, and can be positive, negative, or at equilibrium based upon the magnitudes of the various energies. This is the failure at the core of the G&T paper that sparked this thread - it is a mistake to conflate the two. -
2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
h-j-m - your part 1 is very much in error. The temperature of an object does not affect absorbance, and when the object is at equilibrium (incoming = outgoing), the absorbance and emissivity are equal. At equilibrium the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are emitting as much as they receive, but ~50% (as spherically distributed incoherent radiation) heads back down to the ground. If an object receives a 10 micron IR photon, it gains that amount of energy. Photons do not carry ID cards indicating where they came from (unlike Arizonans)! It doesn't matter whether that photon came from the inside of an icebox (a few photons) or a plasma torch (a lot more), it's a photon. Objects cannot reject photons based upon their source. Hence your argument does not hold up - it violates physics. Temperature changes are caused when incoming and outgoing energies are not equal (heat flows). But photons are flying in all directions in some numbers. If you read the Trenberth article, there is about ~0.9 W/m^2 inequality heating the planet. -
h-j-m at 05:09 AM on 24 November 20102nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
When I started writing on this thread it was caused by the repulsive argument in it's lead article. It should be obvious that the main reason for any insulation to raise temperatures is due to an energy source within the insulation. Therefore the analogy is outright wrong. Which of cause leaves the lead article without any argument. Nevertheless the subject is somewhat fascinating and I started thinking about it a lot. Finally I had to come to the conclusion that greenhouse theory indeed violates the second law of thermodynamics. Now, here is why. My argument has two parts. The first part deals with infra-red radiation, heat with respect to the second law of thermodynamics. The second part rests on the assumption that the digram about global energy flows by Trenberth, K. E. and Kiehl, J. T. (at it's latest version on american meteorological society March 2009 page 4) reflects the greenhouse theory. Part 1. The second law of thermodynamics states (repeating the quote from the lead article) "Heat generally cannot flow spontaneously from a material at lower temperature to a material at higher temperature". Now, it should be obvious that this says nothing about directions. In essence it says that heat hitting a body that is as warm or warmer than the heat's source it can not heat up that body further. Further more, if heat hits a body at a lower temperature than it's source it will not be able to heat this body up to the exact temperature of it's source as this would constitute a perpetual motion machine which the laws of thermodynamics don't allow for. As infra-red radiation constitutes a form of heat transport the same rules have to apply here. So it needs a closer look at infra-red radiation and how it transfers heat. Now that's simple, it is absorbed by matter transferring all it's energy to it. If that higher energy level renders the absorbing matter unstable it gives the excess energy up by again emitting radiation. Part 2: Unless I screwed something horribly up in part 1 the conclusion is as follows: Due to the second law of thermodynamics infra-red radiation is bound to hit matter it can not transfer it's energy to. As it obviously cannot be destroyed there is but one alternative, it needs to be reflected. Now let us look at the mentioned diagram and look for the reflection of infra-red radiation.
Sorry, I can't see any, All infra-red radiation except for the part heading to space gets absorbed and in consequence transfers energy. As for me, that clearly violates the second law of thermodynamics.
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The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
Michele - Greenhouse gases absorb some of the outgoing surface IR (which warms the atmosphere to some degree). Based upon atmospheric temperatures, greenhouse gases incoherently and uniformly emit IR in all directions, and roughly half of this IR heads back to the ground (Figure 1, where absorption notches are clearly seen). The effect is a reduction of outgoing IR, reducing the emissivity of the planet, and meaning that in order to emit all the energy received by the sun the Earth has to be at a higher temperature than it would be without greenhouse gases (at a higher emissivity). That is the mechanism, measured, well established, and matching theory. And the measured convection and evaporative effects total only 1/4th the energy of that IR in the lower atmosphere. -
Michele at 04:38 AM on 24 November 2010The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
KR, I agree with you the GH gases cause the increase of planetary surface temperature. I cannot agree with your explanation of its mechanism. In any transfer phenomenon the driving physical property arises upstream if the induced flow encounters downstream a higher resistance. The counter flow that acts simultaneously is for me an unphysical idea. My last attempt. The spontaneous heat exchange between two bodies increases the entropy of the system. If the first body emits a specific power P1=s*T1^4 and the second P2=s*T2^4 then the increase rate of system entropy is R1=s*(T1^3+T2^3). Conversely, if T1>T2 and the unidirectional exchanged specific power is P=s*(T1^4-T2^4) then the entropy increase rate is R=s*(T1^3-T2^4/T1), clearly more and more less than R1. A higher entropy increase rate means to put forward the end of world because as higher is entropy as lower is the probability for energy exchanging and a world without energy exchanging is a dead world. As far as I know Nature uses its own energy with the highest degree of efficiency and doesn’t waste it for nothing. By the way, the energy never is destroyed but always conveyed towards its spontaneously unusable ground level. -
Marco at 04:29 AM on 24 November 2010Climategate a year later
Ken, it is NOT inappropriate for someone to let an Editor know that he handled inappropriate. In fact, as a scientist I consider it inappropriate NOT to tell the Editor he has an obligation to science. Your interpretation of Mann's words reminds me of a well-known saying: ill-deemers are ill-doers. Regarding your view of AGW: what are your credentials to be able to claim with such certainty that "there is great doubt about the relative contributions of the various forcings - their accuracy of measurement and particularly the future trajectory of the TOA imbalance and the OHC measurement" ? -
Marco at 04:24 AM on 24 November 2010Climategate: Perverting Peer Review?
Meerkat, which case are you referring to? Phil Jones wasn't the one who made the comment about Climate Research, that was Mike Mann. And it was very obvious to all involved that they were upset about the poor standard of peer review. Or, and this is getting more and more obvious, deliberate rigging of the peer review process by one editor, Chris de Freitas. Note that three editors of the same journal complained about de Freitas, noting he published studies that anyone should be able to see were flawed. In many cases one may claim ignorance when poor science is published. In this case...ignorance would be to believe de Freitas did NOT rig the process. -
meerkat at 04:04 AM on 24 November 2010Climategate: Perverting Peer Review?
Your interpretation is much too lenient and rather misses the point. These quotes look like an attempt to lean on the editorial process of scientific journals. Professor Jones for example appears to have been wanting to change the policy of a peer-reviewed journal so that it no longer published papers which contradicted his perspective. I should say I am not an onlooker (Richard Horton's phrase), having published in peer reviewed journals, including The Lancet, and undertaken peer-review. You might want to have a look at Richard Smith's critique of academic medical journals, in which he asserts that most peer-reviewed medical research is of poor quality. I suspect this applies to climate research also, be it of a warmist or skeptical perspective. -
Dikran Marsupial at 03:59 AM on 24 November 2010How significance tests are misused in climate science
Berényi Péter@82 wrote "Troposphere-stratosphere mixing has the potential to bring down extremely dry startospheric air to the upper troposphere (while freeze-drying humid air of tropospheric origin). Overall effect on radiative balance can be huge." So how about giving a reference to a paper that establishes that trophospheric-stratospheric mixing actually does have a significant effect on the measurement or definition of global radiative forcing, rather than a paper discussing an aspect of the structure of stratospheric intrusions that didn't actually provide any evidence whatsoever that was relevant to the question under discussion (i.e. it was a red herring).
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