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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 103501 to 103550:

  1. 2nd 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
  2. Are ice sheet losses overestimated?
    Michael @45, Try here. Also try here.
  3. Are 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.
  4. Climategate: 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!
  5. Climategate: 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?
  6. 2nd 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.
  7. 2nd 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.
  8. 2nd 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
  9. 2nd 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'?
  10. 2nd 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!
  11. 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).
  12. Climategate: 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/
  13. 2nd 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.
  14. 2nd 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.
  15. How 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.
  16. 2nd 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...
  17. 2nd 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.
  18. Climategate: 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.
  19. Climategate: 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.
  20. Philippe Chantreau at 05:41 AM on 24 November 2010
    Climategate: 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.
  21. Climategate: 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?
  22. Climategate 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?
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. 2nd 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.
  26. 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.
  27. The 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.
  28. Climategate 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" ?
  29. Climategate: 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.
  30. Climategate: 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.
  31. Dikran Marsupial at 03:59 AM on 24 November 2010
    How 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).
  32. How significance tests are misused in climate science
    BP wrote "Induction is always a messy process, never governed by an established rule set in practice." Yep, and science is a messy process. BP, you have an incorrect definition of science. What's odd is your certainty of your definition despite your lack of background as a scientist, and in stark contrast to the explicit descriptions of science by real, working scientists (including me and other commenters here), historians of science, philosophers of science, anthropologists of science, and sociologists of science. We have linked you to a multitude of those descriptions, but you have either ignored them or simply insisted they are wrong. I'm going to remind all of us of the point of this too-long exchange with BP: Some "skeptics" of anthropogenic global warming claim that the conclusions of climatologists are not convincing because climatologists do not behave like the "real" scientists in other fields. The original post by Maarten at the top of this page was taken by some skeptics as more evidence of that. Those skeptics then ignored Maarten's later points that this particular statistical incorrectness is common in scientific fields outside climatology, and does not have a profound effect on the overall conclusions of climatologists.
  33. How significance tests are misused in climate science
    Berényi - You are quite correct about deduction in mathematics; given that the premises are defined as a consistent system, without inductive input, math (and pure logic) is pretty much by definition a purely deductive system. The 55th Mersenne prime is an extended deduction from posited premises - it's already contained in the premises, even if we haven't ground our way down to it. I once took part in a graduate class where we proved the equivalence of syntax and semantics for propositional logic - that took the entire term! This had been stated (with good reason) before, but apparently the full proof had never been explicitly worked out prior to that time. But that conclusion was based entirely on the premises we started with. Now, back to the real world. At least some of the premises we use for any deductive argument about the real world (as opposed to a self-contained by-definition realm) are observational, inductive premises. Johannes Kepler could not have formulated his theory of elliptical orbits without Tycho Brahe's body of observations. And that theory was induced as a generalization that accounted for observational (fuzzy, noisy) evidence. And hence back to significance tests - they perform as tests on the strength of our observational knowledge. Enough - I will not debate this with you any further, especially as it is too far off topic. I understand, Berényi, that you do not like induction as a principle for understanding the world, and seem to object to the lack of certainty involved. Unfortunately, that is the world we live in, where we use induction to tie possible maths to how the universe works, and not the realm of by-definition premises of pure mathematics.
  34. Berényi Péter at 03:19 AM on 24 November 2010
    How significance tests are misused in climate science
    Some remarks in no particular order.
    • I have never told you induction was not a necessary ingredient in the scientific endeavor. What I keep telling it's not a scientific method, much less the scientific method. Induction is always a messy process, never governed by an established rule set in practice. It is best considered to be part of heuristics.
    • True Baconian "inductive method" was never practiced by anyone, ever. Not a single scientific discovery was made by applying those silly lists.
    • There's this persistent myth deduction cannot teach us anything we don't already know, only induction is capable to do that. That's simply not true. Just consider GIMPS (the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search). They're looking for prime numbers having binary representation devoid of zeroes. The quest is entirely deductive, but we surely acquire new knowledge as the search proceeds. The only credible way to dispute it is to fully specify the 55th Mersenne prime right now.
    • Or consider the discovery of Neptune on 23-24 September, 1846 by Johann Gottfried Galle and Heinrich Louis d'Arrest using the 24.4 cm aperture size, 4 m long achromatic refractor of New Berlin Observatory. But they already knew where to look and what to look for (unlike Galileo Galilei, who has also seen and documented the planet on 28 December, 1612 and 27-28 January, 1613 again, but failed to recognize and report it). They were simply told by Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier where the planet is supposed to be. He used inverse perturbation theory applied to Newtonian celestial mechanics to calculate mass and orbital elements of an unknown planet in an entirely deductive manner to explain observed anomalies in orbital elements of Uranus. He had made a conceptual error in his calculation of errors, so the mass and orbital elements of the newly discovered planet turned out to be outside the error bounds given by him, but its celestial position was still within limits. Calculation of error bounds was corrected only after discovery.
    • No amount of induction based alone on careful observation of Uranus' orbit would possibly lead to such a result without an axiomatized background theory. The inverse square law of Newtonian gravitation itself was of course based on induction, but originally only on a few examples (the known lunar and planetary orbits of the time) and was verified by Newton with a 4% accuracy. Which later on turned out to be more than a millionfold better. That's what I mean when I tell you in science (somewhat miraculously) much more is coming out then was put in.
    • As for "the issue about stratospheric intrusions", the small (300 m - 1 km) scale is rather instructive (it is not resolved by GCMs). Large scale stratosphere folding events are well known, now it looks like it happens on all scales in a rather fractal-like manner. BTW small scale in itself does not mean it has only minuscule effect on radiative forcing, for it can happen all over the globe. 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.
    • I'll return to Fisher 1955 later.
  35. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Ugh - when I say "uniform in temperature," I mean it uniformly decreases in temp from bottom to top.
  36. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Damorbel wrote: "Energy can only flow from a high temperature place to a lower temperature place." One of my favorites. Ice is invisible to Damorbel. Damorbel, your post #38 suggests that you think the atmosphere is fairly uniform in temperature from surface to top. After all, no energy can move from a colder place to a hotter place. Yet instrumental observations show a cooling stratosphere and a warming troposphere. How does your physics account for this?
  37. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    Actually, the rotational changes of an excited CO2 molecule occur at 10^-7 second, while emission appears to occur on the order of 10^-6 second. Hence that should be 1000 collisions before a CO2 molecule emits a photon. I read the wrong number, my apologies on the order of magnitude error! Note that these numbers are from laser work, with deliberately pumped energy levels and cascaded emission; thermal emission can be no faster than from this highly excited state. So to answer your question, oamoe, the fraction of CO2 that re-emits before sharing energy with the rest of the air mass is negligible.
  38. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    KL #144, if I did that, you'd just move the goalposts, as The Skeptical Chymist shows in #146. We arrived at OHC via the debunking of your Trenberth comment, which followed the gish gallop and associated debunking through the previous >100 posts. Will you accept you were wrong about Trenberth's position on whether "human caused global warming is as solid as ever"? The 'meat and potatoes' of this particular thread is explained by the OP in two emboldened statements - the first is above, and the second is "Has 'Climategate' changed our scientific understanding of global warming?" The ongoing challenge of improving OHC measurements, including Purkey and Johnson's discovery of some of the 'missing heat', and more relevant on the other threads TSC linked to, does not affect either statement substantially. Many independent reviews confirm these points, which is to say that there are legitimate areas of research and debate, but that we are the cause of recent warming and that it is ongoing is as certain as it was 13 months ago (in fact, more certain, as further papers and data have confirmed trends and earlier findings).
  39. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    Thanks, Ned - I couldn't remember where I had posted that!
  40. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    Argh, I wasn't fast enough! During the time it took me to link to KR's comment in another thread, KR himself/herself appeared to add a comment here.
  41. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    oamoe, you might want to check out the discussion in another thread. Commenter KR notes that the typical CO2 molecule will experience around 100 collisions during the time it takes to engage in the IR emission process. In essence, all CO2 molecules will both share kinetic energy with N2 and O2 molecules and emit longwave IR radiation.
  42. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    oamoe - At surface pressures, air molecules collide with other molecules ~1 billion times per second. The CO2 electron relaxation time for emission is about 100 nanoseconds, so a CO2 molecule on average collides with ~100 N2 and O2 molecules before it's able to re-emit. Given the statistics there, any excess or deficit of energy in the CO2 molecule will rapidly be dispersed through the air mass, meaning that CO2 will be very close to thermal energy with the rest of that air mass. And it will emit at a rate based upon the air mass temperature, and with the spectra of CO2. At lower pressures (stratosphere?) these numbers will change, but I would expect close equivalence between CO2 energies and the total air mass temperature down to around ~1/100th an atmosphere.
  43. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    Of the number of CO2 molecules absorbing outgoing blackbody radiation, what fraction re-emit the radiation, and what fraction transfer the excess energy to N2 and O2 molecules? Anyone know?
  44. The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
    Michele - Sorry if I was not clear in this posting. Multiple EM waves in both directions (not canceling, not unidirectional) between warm and cold bodies, with heat flow (total energy transfer) determined by the difference in magnitudes. I'm speaking of EM first, the heat flow is the result of those emissions. The principle of superimposition means just that - EM emissions are superimposed on each other, which (in the very limited case of coherent light) can give rise to standing patterns of constructive/destructive interference thus displacing energy along the pattern, but never destroying energy. And coherence is absolutely not a factor in thermal emission, which is incoherent - individual molecules giving up energy are not synchronized.
  45. Twice as much Canada, same warming climate
    Ned, I didn't notice that the author's had responded there also. Thanks for the heads up. Sorry for the misdirection.
  46. The Skeptical Chymist at 01:05 AM on 24 November 2010
    The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    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. Moving the subject to the "missing heat" does not change the fact you were wrong. The "missing heat" and the TOA imbalances are interesting topics, but I have no intention of becoming entangled in an different argument to that I jumped in on, I've seen this goal post shifting before. If what you really want to talk about is OHC, TOA measurements etc well there are plenty of treads on this site for those, but do be more careful with Trenberth's words in future.
  47. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    Re: skywatcher (143) On behalf of all the regular commenters, thank you! I know I'm wasting my time trying to convince the regular contrarians (and the new ones that crop up), so I remind myself to try to maintain a detached tone when rebutting. Because I read this blog for nearly 2 years before joining the discussions, I know that many others lurk here; I try to remain aware that my comments are for them, and for posterity. It's difficult to self-censor (I sometimes go back & delete comments I've just made [commenters regret] so I can re-word them to be less inflammatory and more instructive). I know at time I've crossed the line. For those times, I apologize. To you and to those I've wronged. Thanks again for speaking up! The Yooper
  48. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    skywatcher #143 Engage on some meat and potatoes - not broad non-specifics.
  49. Climategate: Hiding the Decline?
    kdkd #56 "Even if we take the idea that the "Nature trick" was dodgy, you have to ask the question: what material difference to the scientific conclusions would be made by discarding this data analysis" A post of mine has already been deleted on this matter. Please re-instate it if your SS blog is to be taken seriously. Perhaps now is the time to note that kdkd is also a 'Moderator' on this blog and has the power to purge my and other posts without explanation. If the Moderators of this(to date)excellent blog start purging opposition views whilst being partisan AGW contributors themselves - then they will end up talking to themselves and therefore stifling proper debate.
    Moderator Response: Three of your posts have been deleted. One contained direct accusations of tax fraud, and two more contained graphic descriptions of the alleged sexual practices of those who disagree with you. None of those were appropriate for this site, and the decision to delete them was straightforward. (Also, to address your concern, please note that none of them were moderated by kdkd or any other individual involved in the debate with you).
     
    Moderating this site is a tiresome chore, particularly when commenters repeatedly submit offensive or off-topic posts. We really appreciate people's cooperation in abiding by the Comments Policy, which is largely responsible for the quality of this site.
     
    Finally, please understand that moderation policies are not open for discussion in comment threads. If you would like to compliment or complain about the site's moderation policies or how they are implemented, please do so via email to John Cook.
  50. Climategate: Hiding the Decline?
    77.Albatross There would be no logic problem in suggesting a data set is insufficient to prove A while at the same time being sufficient to disprove B. You'll have to be more specific to allow us to make a call on that.

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