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Comments 114301 to 114350:

114301. dcwarrior at 23:57 PM on 26 July 2010
        The nature of authority
        May I suggest that, given that we know people ARE mistaking the scientific authority that comes from having mastered the subject matter and mistaking it for the bullying kind, that we move on to the next question? I.e., what do we do about it? Sure we can pronounce the problem identified and go on arguing about the minutiae about little parts of the problem. Or, we can ask the people who are used to dealing with that world and see what might work. Note that there are some parents and nannies who are phenomenal at managing even the most intractable kids. There are people who are so good with animals that with a little work they can get even the most hardcore dog to behave. And -- there are political consultants and scientists who do nothing but study and teach politicians and interest groups on how to persuade people of a particular point of view. I submit to you that they are quite good at it. Any thought of drawing on their "mastery" of the subject? After all, the opposition seems to be mostly led by people in that line of work and they are eating your lunch. Re the need to behave as political animals, the great mass of posters on these science blogs and message boards seem to be like the OP who as a kid heard from the older musicians what works and thinking it's all BS. Perhaps it's time for guest posters from the world of politics, PR or public opinion to give advice on how to turn the tide?
114302. KR at 23:56 PM on 26 July 2010
        It's waste heat
        RSVP, if the CO2 molecule re-radiates the IR, the energy leaves with the photon. If not, the CO2 heats up, and hence the air mass does as well. The thing is, given the average path length before absorption for surface pressures and GHG concentrations, the photon will hit another GHG molecule before it's gone very far at all. There are so many chances for absorption that it's not going very far. So that energy will add/subtract repeatedly to the energy of the air mass, and to its temperature. If first you don't succeed, try try again... really expresses this. The only way that energy leaves/cooling occurs via LWR is if the sum of emission events is higher than the sum of absorption events - which happens at the surface (396 W/m^2 going up, 333 W/m^2 going down), between the layers of the atmosphere as it cools with height and absolute GHG concentration drops, and the top of the atmosphere (238.5 W/m^2 LWR going out).
114303. RSVP at 23:49 PM on 26 July 2010
        It's waste heat
        RSVP "The efficiency of energy capture is what matters. " Example... Depending on the material, an object placed in a microwave oven may or maynot get hot. This is how it works.
114304. RSVP at 23:47 PM on 26 July 2010
        It's waste heat
        KR "RSVP - Do you not remember our conversation over GHG's acting as an IR antenna? " I do. :) KR "The source doesn't matter, just the total energy! " I disagree. The efficiency of energy capture is what matters.
114305. RSVP at 23:44 PM on 26 July 2010
        It's waste heat
        Ned "All of your arguments about waste heat accumulating in the atmosphere apply in exactly the same way to heat from GHG forcings. The only difference is that GHGs produce vastly more heat. " The bulk of the atmosphere is N2 and O2. Most of the heat radiating off of the Earth goes up and out, otherwise we would have temperatures like the hot sidewalk midday. If a photon happens to excite a CO2 molecule, this energy may or may not make it to a nearby N2 or O2 molecule. All this describes a not so efficient heat capturing system. Nearly all the heat passing over a heat engine elevates the temperature of N2 and O2 directly (through convection). These gases in turn are not good emitters of radiation.
114306. KR at 23:44 PM on 26 July 2010
        It's waste heat
        RSVP - Do you not remember our conversation over GHG's acting as an IR antenna? Energy goes into the atmosphere (conduction/convection from your automobile radiator, household AC, LWR from the ground. The air mass from this energy acquires a certain temperature. The source doesn't matter, just the total energy! GHG's radiate over their thermal spectrum based upon the temperature of the air mass. The 'waste heat' (mis)issue is that total industrial waste heat is 2 orders of magnitude smaller than the GHG forcing, the extra solar energy held by greenhouse gas increases. Those are the numbers, RSVP, waste heat is only 1% of the problem, hence nobody is really worried about it.
114307. RSVP at 23:28 PM on 26 July 2010
        It's waste heat
        CBDunkerson at 23:01 PM on 26 July, 2010 "What then should the proper course of action be?" I personally dont think humans are better off changing the chemistry of their atmosphere. And the challeges are huge. As such, we better get our ps and qs straight. There is no guarantee that the ill effects of global warming are going to be sufficient to stop fossil fuel burning. It might even be the biggest straw man to justify continuing to do so. If on the otherhand it turns out that higher CO2 levels has profound ill effects on the biosphere (for who knows what reasons), then that is where the science and effort should be dedicated.
114308. Ned at 23:27 PM on 26 July 2010
        It's waste heat
        RSVP, the radiative forcing from CO2 (and other GHGs) only includes the outgoing longwave radiation that is actually trapped within the atmosphere. It doesn't need to "get to the atmosphere"; it occurs within the atmosphere. All of your arguments about waste heat accumulating in the atmosphere apply in exactly the same way to heat from GHG forcings. The only difference is that GHGs produce vastly more heat.
114309. RSVP at 23:20 PM on 26 July 2010
        It's waste heat
        "Ned at 21:38 PM on 26 July, 2010 RSVP, there's no difference between heat that enters the atmosphere via radiative absorption and heat that enters the atmosphere as waste heat. " I agree. Heat is heat. However how it gets to the atmosphere is different. Internal combustion engines for instance are very efficient in the way they employ convection to rid themselves of excess energy. The car's radiator heats N2 and O2 directly, pushing cool air over a large surface areas. Heat that accumulates on a boulder during the day on the contrary, cools for the most part via radiation. Most all of that energy makes its way into outer space. If this was not true, the Earth would not maintain its temperature equilibrium. The AGW theory precisely points to anthropogenic CO2 as improving the "efficiency" of the atmosphere in capturing this radiated energy, even though most of this energy passes through like a sieve (i.e. the atmosphere is IR opaque in relation to "GHG" concentration.) Another way to explain this... If CO2 heat capturing efficiency is 5% (I am making this up for sake of the discussion, and referring to the efficiency of CO2 to pick up heat that warms the air), as compared 90% efficiency of convective heating of say an air conditioner. If I have 100 joules, in the first case, I am only going to warm the atmosphere by 5 joules, whereas with my air conditioner it will leave 90 joules.
114310. Ken Lambert at 23:17 PM on 26 July 2010
        Assessing global surface temperature reconstructions
        Ned has produced an elaborate snow job. It reads like these are truly 'independent' sources of data. The critical piece of information regarding NASA, CRU and NOAA reconstructions is this: Quote: "All three have at their core the monthly temperature data from the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN), and all three produce both a land-stations-only reconstruction and a combined land/ocean reconstruction that includes sea surface temperature measurements." Endquote It is no surprise that if you run the same core data through a software processing package - you might get similar results. The only 'independent' sources of temperature data are the satellite data from RSS and UAH. I believe these draw from the same satellites. Again it is no surprise that they produce similar results to each other. What is of interest is that there has been a flattening of temperatures since 1998 in all the reconstructions, and overall, the satellite reconstructions since 1975 show less warming than the GHCN charts. Of even more interest is that theoretical CO2GHG forcings have been at their highest levels and steadily increasing over that period with increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. The surprise conclusion of this article: "The well-known and widely-cited reconstructions of global temperature, produced by NASA GISS, UEA CRU, and NOAA NCDC, are replicable." I should jolly well hope so - otherwise why are we in this monumental debate over the nature and extent of global warming!!
        Response: "there has been a flattening of temperatures since 1998"
        
        This line of thinking has been examined in detail in a recent blog post.
        
        "satellite reconstructions since 1975 show less warming than the GHCN charts"
        
        The UAH satellite trend is slightly less than the GHCN trends but the RSS satellite trend is nearly identical to the GHCN trends. The reason for the difference between UAH and RSS is examined here.
        
114311. robert way at 23:14 PM on 26 July 2010
        Assessing global surface temperature reconstructions
        muoncounter, #21: "urban heat island effect" Where have we heard this before?...etc... Firstly, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. The many people who are included in this post as being independent researchers are all focused on this issue as being the next important one to solve. I believe that the conclusion that the UHI effect is negligible is not an effective way of looking at this issue. We do know that warming is occurring right now Globally but just because we are on the side of the consensus does not mean that we should leave some issues unresolved. And about the ocean temperatures, lets be real, ocean trends in the last couple years have not been exceedingly positive. The warming could perhaps be stored somewhere else (deep ocean maybe?)but it is clear to see that the thermal expansion of the oceans has reduced compared to during the late 1990s. Even Cazenave et al. 2009 conclude that.
114312. CBDunkerson at 23:01 PM on 26 July 2010
        It's waste heat
        RSVP, let's for the moment assume that the 'waste heat' argument isn't complete nonsense. Temperatures are still rising at the same rate. Humans are still causing it (i.e. it is still "AGW"). Fossil fuel use is still the source. What then should the proper course of action be? Under this view the rising temperatures which have been observed are due to the buildup of heat from burning fossil fuels over time. Does this not argue for converting from fossil fuels to renewables like solar and wind? The only significant difference is that nuclear power is out as an alternative because it is just as much a 'waste heat' generator as fossil fuels. So... that would suggest that you should support all the changes being suggested by AGW proponents EXCEPT that you should be against nuclear power. Is that the case?
114313. Ned at 22:36 PM on 26 July 2010
        It's waste heat
        Sorry, johnd, but that's not particularly logical. Re your first statement, one could imagine a scenario where waste heat was contributing a huge warming forcing, but it was being countered by an even larger cooling forcing. The fact that the (imaginary) planet was cooling overall wouldn't negate the actual warming effect of waste heat. Re your second statement, the candles on my dining room table must "contribute" to warming the global atmosphere, too. But not in any meaningful amount! This is why it's important to quantify forcings, which is exactly what Doug Bostrom does in his comment upthread. Globally, waste heat is two orders of magnitude below greenhouse gases in its importance. Saying that non-quantitatively it must "contribute" is pretty much useless.
114314. johnd at 22:26 PM on 26 July 2010
        It's waste heat
        RSVP at 19:53 PM, to determine whether or not waste heat is accumulating and contributing to global warming, it's only necessary to go back to the very basics. If the rate at which the planet is warming is less than that which waste heat adds, then NO, waste heat possibly does not contribute to the global warming and is dissipated. However, if the rate of global warming is greater than that which waste heat adds, then YES waste heat must both contribute, and continually accumulate year upon year.
114315. JMurphy at 22:15 PM on 26 July 2010
        Models are unreliable
        Pete Ridley, if you wish to believe that the 'Climategate' enquiries are all "whitewashes", and that the "scandal" still remains (albeit only in the minds of those who don't wish to face up to the facts), then I cannot write anything that will get through to you : you only see what you want to see. I will, though, disagree with you with regard to the Met Office's Seasonal Forecasts - they had obviously already decided to scrap them before announcing so on March 5, so I doubt whether the House of Commons enquiry had anything to do with it. You, no doubt, would disagree, but, again, you must believe what you want to believe. In the same way, you believe those Seasonal Forecasts were "useless", so, again, nothing I write would be able to change your mind. To end, code written to represent the Physical qualities of the make-up of potential weather would, I would imagine, be useful not only for short-term forecasts but also as a basis for long-term climate forecasts.
114316. Ned at 21:44 PM on 26 July 2010
        Assessing global surface temperature reconstructions
        werecow writes: Very nice post! Just out of curiosity, what was the reason for the large size of the 2008 GHCN adjustment? I don't know. However, I do find it mildly amusing that certain people make aggressive claims about the GHCN adjustment process when the actual effect of the adjustment is to reduce the magnitude of the post-1970s warming trend. I haven't done a survey, but I would bet that a very large percentage of the WUWT readership assumes that the GHCN adjustments artificially inflate warming, when in truth they add a (very small) cooling trend in recent decades.
114317. Ned at 21:38 PM on 26 July 2010
        It's waste heat
        RSVP, there's no difference between heat that enters the atmosphere via radiative absorption and heat that enters the atmosphere as waste heat. It's not that one "accumulates" and the other doesn't. It's just that, globally averaged, the quantity of watts from waste heat is much smaller than the quantity of watts from absorption by GHGs. Doug kindly provides the numbers in his comment before yours. Globally, waste heat is roughly two orders of magnitude below the sum of CO2, CH4, N2O, and halocarbons. It's not zero, but it's negligible.
114318. Ned at 21:27 PM on 26 July 2010
        The nature of authority
        AWoL, "night vision equipment" is not the way to measure thermal radiative flux. You want a laboratory thermal radiometer, and with one you will verify that yes, S-B is correct. Frankly, I have to admit I'm astonished by what I see on this website right now. In another thread RSVP is questioning basic laboratory measurements of the spectral properties of gases that have been known since the 1850s. In this thread, AWoL is rubbishing the Stefan-Bolzmann constant, which was first measured in the 1880s (?). That is not skepticism. When something has been measured and applied by scientists and engineers for over a century, and is the building block for a great deal of subsequent science and technology, a skeptic demands very strong evidence to overturn it. As far as I'm concerned, if you come on this site and want to claim that Stefan-Bolzmann is wrong, or Maxwell's equations are wrong, or CO2 does not absorb longwave radiation, you need to present a detailed and explicit case that lays out exactly how and why every physicist who's worked in this field since Tyndall has been mistaken. You need to specify exactly what the problem is. Don't just waste everyone's time by tossing out ill-formed ideas or crackpot hypotheses. And of course, if you can disprove basic tenets of radiative physics, you shouldn't be wasting your own time doing it here. Write it up and submit it to Science or Nature. You will be famous, and future generations of scientists and engineers will be eternally grateful to you. Until you do that, though, posting claims here that a century's worth of physics or chemistry is wrong will inevitably tar you with the label of crackpot. And nobody wants to see this site get mired in crackpottery.
114319. tobyjoyce at 20:54 PM on 26 July 2010
        Assessing global surface temperature reconstructions
        @chriscanaris, Your opinions on WUWT do not correspond to mine. To me, it is a political rather than a science website. If you think of its readers as a "constituency" they are offered almost continual reassurance from the posters of the rectitiude of their position, that victory is assured, that reason in on their side, and that the opposition are fraudulent posers who are about to be found out. The multiple ironies are obvious, particularly in the regular accusation that climate science is a "religion", but also obvious is the resemblance to politicians interacting with their followers. Most of the threads, while obstensibly "science" or science-related, seem to be shaped with this in mind. As true science, they do not stand up to scrutiny. Most of the science projects initiated by WUWT seem to have run into the sand ... at least I have not heard much about them recently. "Citizen science" that it claims to be pushing has not much to show. Of course, many websites on the pro-side, fall into the same bracket, but are not a strident as WUWT, and have much more science to boot. But then, many of those bloggers are already professional scientists with a day job.
114320. Berényi Péter at 20:43 PM on 26 July 2010
        Watts Up With That concludes Greenland is not melting without looking at any actual ice mass data
        #56 Peter Hogarth at 18:59 PM on 16 July, 2010 On the idea that overturning rates and hypothesised lack of vertical mixing to deep layers means it take centuries to change bottom water temperatures, there is a significant amount of measured evidence that suggests otherwise. That's good news. At least we don't have to worry over ocean acidification. However, even if heat (and dissolved carbon dioxide) have an easy way to the abyss, it does not solve the problem at hand. If the bulk of Trenberth's missing heat went that deep, it would have produced more steric sea level rise than observed, as 1. for layers of equal thickness the deeper you go the less mass you have due to bathymetric constraints 2. volumetric thermal expansion coefficient of seawater increases with pressure The most likely solution is the missing heat simply went to the coldest and largest heat reservoir around, to outer space at a temperature of -270.425°C (-454.765ºF). That is, it was not trapped at all.
114321. RSVP at 20:17 PM on 26 July 2010
        It's waste heat
        RSVP errata (a) but for all practical purposes, energy that enters the atmosphere IN THIS WAY stays here on Earth. (b) can only deliver heat by convection to cooler places (i.e., global warming).
114322. RSVP at 20:05 PM on 26 July 2010
        Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line
        I have made my entry at the specified link. http://www.skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.htm I did not see this included in the grand skeptic list, but on the other hand, I didnt see an entry for CO2 being the main cause either.
114323. RSVP at 19:53 PM on 26 July 2010
        It's waste heat
        The central concern of man-made CO2 emissions has to do with its IR absorptive qualities, and for this reason it is referred to as a "greenhouse gas". Given that CO2 represents a very small percentage of the Earth's atmosphere, and in respect to the particular concerns, the implication is that its efficiency to radiate and absorb IR must contrast substantially with that of N2 and O2. The effect of greenhouse gas warming has to do with final results, such as the melting of polar caps and glaciers, and the warming of ocean water and land as well as the N2 and O2 that make up 97% of the Earth's atmosphere (i.e. climate change). Exothermic man-made industrial waste heat involves IR emission, but most of this heat consists of direct convective heating of both water and air. The idea that a significant portion of global warming could be attributed to industrial waste heat resides in the question of how N2 and O2 dissipate heat when its temperature is elevated beyond mechanisms that are normally found in Nature. While N2 and O2 (the bulk of the Earth's atmosphere) are not the best radiators at nominal atmospheric temperatures, they do cool nicely convecting to cooler water and ice, so as to provide a heat channel from one's home or automobile directly to oceans, glaciers and polar caps. On the other hand, it can be assumed this system is lossy to some degree in that CO2 picks up some of this energy and sends it upward to the heavens, but for all practical purposes, energy that enters the atmosphere stays here on Earth. For however small this energy may be, if it is accumulating, we should begin to notice it as something that is building slowly (i.e., hocky stick graph). And addressing those that dismiss waste heat on arguments based on numerics, it is not a matter of comparing a figure of forcing per square meter if this heat is not efficiently involved with radiative processes. In other words, if N2 and O2 are not GHGs they can only deliver heat by convection to cooler places.
114324. Pete Ridley at 19:52 PM on 26 July 2010
        Models are unreliable
        Jmurphy, ref. comment #210, I suspect that you aren’t aware of a relevant statement by a senior executive of the Met. Office during the first of the UK’s whitewash enquiries into the Climategate scandal. The question put by a member of the Science and Technology Select Committee was “Is there a problem with scientific software? We have had emails from Professor Darrel Ince and from Professor Les Hatton saying that there are severe problems with scientific software. Do you think that is a general problem in UK or world science?”. Met Office Chief Scientist Professor Julia Slingo (Note 1) said “At least for the UK the codes that underpin our climate change projections are the same codes that we use to make our daily weather forecasts, so we test those codes twice a day for robustness”(Note 2). So the “codes” used for UK weather forecasting are the same as those used for global climate projections - shortly after that that the Met. Office discontinued its long-range forecasts because they were so useless. (The rest of that testimony is worth reading.) It is worthwhile listening to what Professor John Beddington had to say in January (Note 3), which included the gross understatement “..that scientists had perhaps not been as good at communicating the value of uncertainty to the general public .. ”. Professor Barry Brook of Adelaide University and scientific advisor to the Australian Government on climate change was less reticent when saying over a year ago (Note 4) “There are a lot of uncertainties in science, and it is indeed likely that the current consensus on some points of climate science is wrong, or at least sufficiently uncertain that we don’t know anything much useful about processes or drivers”. Brook is a staunch supporter of The (significant human-made global climate change) Hypothesis so then goes on to try to imply that 95% of the science is understood. As Boddington said in January (Note 5) “I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper scepticism. Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can’t be changed”. Phil (Scadden), ref. comment #212, I am not enquiring here into the validity the design of the software or the validity of the underlying science of those climate models. What I am questioning is the extent to which the models have been validated and their starting parameters are “tweaked” and “re-tweaked” before a run produces an output that resembles reality. I do not have enormous confidence that those with a vested interest in convincing others that their research findings or software development skills produce useful models will present an unbiased opinion on the validity of any model forecasts. There are plenty examples in areas where the underlying sciences are much better understood than are those involved in unravelling the complexities of global climate processes and drivers where vested interest has resulted in false claims. There is no good reason to think that things are different for climate forecasting. Let’s not overlook the fact that scientists and software engineers not saints but humans with human failings. As the late Stephen Schneider said Your opinion of me is irrelevant and is bound to differ from mine. You are a staunch supporter of The (significant human-made global climate change) Hypothesis whereas I am a sceptic. Ref. comments #41/48 & 50 on the “Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line” thread, you (and others here) ought to be aware by now that the IPCC shares Dr. Gray’s opinion that those models do not provide predictions of future global climates, merely projections (based upon that unsound science). If the global mean temperature estimates produced by the Hadley Centre etc. are to be trusted (“lies, damned lies and statistics”) we may have already had over 10 years of “flat or negative temperatures while GHGs rise” so may not have much longer to wait in order to “clearly invalidate AGW”. In your humble opinion “Hansen 1988 did very well for a model so primitive.”. In mine he hit lucky to get closeish with one of his scenarios for 10 years then failed miserably after that. actually (thoughtfull?). does that answer your questions in comment #195? NOTES: 1) see http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/work/boards/council/biographies.asp 2) see http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387b/38724.htm 3) see http://www.actoncopenhagen.decc.gov.uk/en/ambition/achievements/february/john-beddington-audio 4) see http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/23/ian-plimer-heaven-and-earth/ 5) see http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7003622.ece That’s enough for now. I’ll respond to others soon. Best regards, Pete Ridley
114325. Peter Hogarth at 19:41 PM on 26 July 2010
        Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line
        AWoL at 18:02 PM on 26 July, 2010 Where is this from? Nitrogen helps to prevent extreme UV reaching deep into our atmosphere, but is too small a molecule to be active at IR. I also seriously doubt you can linearly scale as this "statement" suggests. Regardless, the point is that Nitrogen level hasn't changed, but CO2 certainly has.
114326. AWoL at 18:02 PM on 26 July 2010
        Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line
        Regarding IR absorptivity of atmospheric nitrogen, I came across this statement. "Nitrogen has 1/3000 the absorptivity of CO2, but there are 2000 molecules of N to 1 of CO2,so atmospheric N has 2/3 the absorptivity of atmospheric CO2. Anybody care to comment?
114327. Doug Bostrom at 17:02 PM on 26 July 2010
        It's waste heat
        

        Somebody's crunched numbers. Small globally, noticeable regionally: Nearly all energy used for human purposes is dissipated as heat within Earth's land–atmosphere system. Thermal energy released from non-renewable sources is therefore a climate forcing term. Averaged globally, this forcing is only +0.028 W m−2, but over the continental United States and western Europe, it is +0.39 and +0.68 W m−2, respectively. Here, present and future global inventories of anthropogenic heat flux (AHF) are developed, and parameterizations derived for seasonal and diurnal flux cycles. Equilibrium climate experiments show statistically-significant continental-scale surface warming (0.4–0.9°C) produced by one 2100 AHF scenario, but not by current or 2040 estimates. However, significant increases in annual-mean temperature and planetary boundary layer (PBL) height occur over gridcells where present-day AHF exceeds 3.0 W m−2. PBL expansion leads to a slight, but significant increase in atmospheric residence time of aerosols emitted from large-AHF regions. Hence, AHF may influence regional climate projections and contemporary chemistry-climate studies. Flanner, M. G. (2009), Integrating anthropogenic heat flux with global climate models, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L02801, doi:10.1029/2008GL036465.

114328. Ari Jokimäki at 16:00 PM on 26 July 2010
        Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line
        RSVP, #79: You said: "According to AGW, N2 and O2 are transparent to IR. I am not aware of a century of laboratory measurments dealing with this issue." John Tyndall measured the IR absorption from several gases in 1850's. Oxygen and nitrogen were among them. Plenty of subsequent studies exist on the issue, Smith & Newnham (2000) for example. These are relatively easy to find, try Google Scholar.
        Response: Thanks for the links, Ari. Perhaps scholar.google.com is more useful to non-Finnish readers :-)
        
114329. actually thoughtful at 15:16 PM on 26 July 2010
        The nature of authority
        Ken Lambert - I think the stolen emails, to have any credibility at all, need to be complete. Maybe the missing bits are exculpatory, maybe they are damning - we don't know. But we do know the thief had an agenda, and by not including the full set, they manipulated the message - exactly what they accuse the legitimate scientists of doing!
114330. Doug Bostrom at 14:20 PM on 26 July 2010
        What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
        Anyway, Al Gore? What does he have to do with climate scientists? Another canister of chaff to drop out the old bomb bay when the going gets tough, nothing about science at all, just a rhetorical stunt and a stale one at that.
114331. Doug Bostrom at 14:13 PM on 26 July 2010
        What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
        Galloping Camel is exerting a concerted effort to rewrite history, assuming he's actually read the transcript of the court's report. Here's what Justice Burton ruled on, as the Justice wrote it: The context and nub of the dispute are the statutory provisions described in their side headings as respectively relating to "political indoctrination" and to the "duty to secure balanced treatment of political issues" in schools, now contained in ss406 and 407 of the Education Act 1996, which derive from the identical provisions in ss44 and 45 of the Education (No 2) Act 1986. Here's Justice Burton's ruling: 42: There are two fundamental questions for me to answer: i) Whether, by dispatching the film, with the cross-reference in the pack to the Guidance Note, as it then stood on the website, the Defendant was not taking steps to forbid but rather itself promoting partisan political views. ii) Whether, by distributing/not withdrawing the film but accompanying it by a hard copy of the Guidance Note, amended in accordance with what has been fully discussed during the hearing and referred to in my judgment, the Defendant is now complying with ss406 and 407. 43: The Defendant does not intend now to continue with the old position, but has already amended the Guidance Note on the website, and stands ready to distribute it in hard copy if my judgment permits. There is no longer therefore any need for relief in respect of the film otherwise than as accompanied by the present Guidance Note. Mr Chamberlain submits that, even without the changes, the Defendant was not in breach of ss406 or 407. Mr Downes submits, as set out in paragraph 12 above, that the breach of s406 is irremediable, by virtue of the simple sending to schools of the film, irrespective of any accompanying Guidance Note, and in any event does not accept that the amendments to the Guidance Note are sufficient to comply with any palliative under s406 or duty under s407. 44: I am satisfied that, with the Guidance Note, as amended, the Defendant is setting the film into a context in which it can be shown by teachers, and not so that the Defendant itself or the schools are promoting partisan views contained in the film, and is putting it into a context in which a balanced presentation of opposing views can and will be offered. There is no call for the Defendant to support the more extreme views of Mr Gore – indeed the Government's adherence is to the IPCC views - but the present package in my judgment does enough to make it clear both what the mainstream view is, insofar as Mr Gore departs from it, and that there are views of "sceptics" who do not accept even the consensus views of the IPCC. The Defendant will not be promoting partisan political views by enabling the showing of AIT in the context of the discussions facilitated by the Guidance Note, and is not under a duty to forbid the presentation of it in that context. Transcript of Justice Burton's ruling Nothing about Al Gore's honesty; the case was not concerned with that matter and in fact nobody will find any remarks about Gore's honesty in Justice Burton's ruling. Unlike Galloping Camel, Justice Burton does not presume to read Gore's mind and is also apparently not infected with ideology to the point he's lost contact with reality. It's for the reader to decide what purpose is driving Galloping Camel's assertion that he knows better than Justice Burton what the case was about and what Burton's judgment was.
114332. gallopingcamel at 12:42 PM on 26 July 2010
        What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
        JMurphy (#128), Judge Burton ruled with admirable clarity so you should be able to understand him without my help. Your continued defence of the indefensible convinces me that your opinions are matters of faith rather than science. While you can point to weaknesses in my arguments you fail to see the much larger problems with Al Gore's. "Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." Matthew 7:3
114333. MattJ at 10:47 AM on 26 July 2010
        Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single tweet
        This is good news. But about presenting the evidence, please, PLEASE remember: a lot of people out there are far more quick to believe the politicians have all bought into this as a scam in order to tax the air we breathe. Why are they so quick to believe this, and so slow to look at the evidence you present them? Because 1) it [the only possible mitigation -- a "carbon tax") really is a radical paradigm shift, one that sounds uncomfortably close to "taxing the air we breathe" and 2) ever since the Vietnam War, we have been living in an era when people simply do not trust government, lawyers and politicians any more. It has only become worse with the frustrating, partisan gridlock in Washington. I am sure it is no coincidence that the gridlock is being caused by the same people who so vigorously block any serious attempt to deal with global warming.
114334. Doug Bostrom at 10:14 AM on 26 July 2010
        The nature of authority
        Sorry, AWoL, I've done what I can. Cheerio.
114335. AWoL at 10:11 AM on 26 July 2010
        The nature of authority
        Well at least we agree on one point, Mr Brostrom, "that the moon is substantially convex and does not reflect on itself" very interesting. Stefan-Boltzmann says that a squ mtr of material of typical emissivity of 90-95%,at 27degC will beam out something of the order of 459 watts. That's the energy of nearly 5 light bulbs of 100watts each. Does it? Check it for yourself by using night vision equipment. Dead simple.It's wrong. The prediction does not match the result. The constant is a theoretical concept and simply,in it's present form does not match the real world. Yes I would like to see the constant modified and I wish some physicist would hurry up and get on with it. As to the greenhouse remark. I think I made a very valuable contribution to the AGW debate by pointing out that the improper use of this term implants a totally erroneous idea in the mind of the layman and the politician.The world of science should stop using it if it doesn't want to be accused of the employment of slick and disingenuous language used by advertising agencies and snakeoil salesmen.
114336. scaddenp at 10:02 AM on 26 July 2010
        The nature of authority
        JohnD - but you are trying to infer information from that data which I suspect is imappropriate for that purpose. It is inappropriate to make such attempts without consultation with the data collectors. Furthermore it is in direct conflict with published analysis the same problem. "given they are significant factor in the energy balance" - but are they? They are both positive and negative feedback and may be close to neutral in the energy balance. You cant develop proxy but you can infer past climate sensitivity and these studies do not indicate the low sensitivity that you are trying to imply. As to the CO2 effect in interglacial warming. Huh? Models with conventional understanding of CO2 and other forcings work do not have a problem reproducing past paleoclimate from estimated forcings - see the various papers in the IPCC. They have sensitivity of around 3.
114337. actually thoughtful at 09:29 AM on 26 July 2010
        It's waste heat
        In 1983 I asked my Dad if it was warmer outside because everyone was running furnaces to heat their houses. He said yes.
114338. RSVP at 08:36 AM on 26 July 2010
        What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
        DarkSkywise "What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?" You dont know? Definitely a warmer room, and a slighter cooler planet until you open the door.
114339. Doug Bostrom at 08:26 AM on 26 July 2010
        The nature of authority
        No go, AWoL. Here's how somebody knowing better than you or I describes the situation w/regard to Stefan-Boltzmann and non-plane surfaces: ...any differentiable surface can be approximated by a bunch of small flat surfaces. So long as the geometry of the surface does not cause the blackbody to reabsorb its own radiation, the total energy radiated is just the sum of the energies radiated by each surface; and the total surface area is just the sum of the areas of each surface -- so this law holds for all convex blackbodies... If you care to have another go you may try rewriting the science starting here. The moon is of course substantially convex, does not reflect on itself in a significant way. The rest of your point w/regard to Stefan-Boltzmann appears to be entirely fictitious. "Apply a modified constant..." is simply making things up to suit your rhetoric. If you want to try changing the constant, start here. Your "greenhouse" remark is just as sophomoric as your correction of DarkSkywise's spelling, pointless and of no utility to this discussion. The term is an unfortunate semantic hangover and has no bearing on the science in play here, the fact you refer to it is diagnostic of naivete on this subject.
114340. Ed Davies at 08:23 AM on 26 July 2010
        Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single tweet
        Funny, most of the tweeps I follow write English (apart from a few silly words like "tweeps" and rather specialised uses of proper words like "follow", of course). There's selection bias here, though, as if they didn't I wouldn't follow them.
114341. AWoL at 08:03 AM on 26 July 2010
        The nature of authority
        Replying to Doug Bostrom, post 125, I'll have a go.1st is the fact that the constant(S-B) deals with a plane surface and not a 3-d body.The limitations of this became apparent at the time of the moon landings.The difference between the theoretical predictions of Lunar temperatures and actuality were gross. Trouble is that things get even worse when you get to phenomena involving radiative transfer at temperatures conducive to life, say circa 0-100degCie planet earth.The figures for radiation emitted for temperature bear no relation to reality, yet they are used to demonstrate a "greenhouse" effect. Apply a modified constant for lower temperatures and it turns out that the surface temperature of the earth,devoid of atmosphere,far from being -19degC would be, when illuminated by the sun, midday,at the equator in the order of 50degC. So the atmosphere cools the surface by day and reduces to a variable degree(largely dependent on cloud cover,and not CO2) by night.One thing that is for sure is that CO2 does not act like a greenhouse, which raises temperature by limiting convection, and not by entrapment of radiation. In other words the employment of the word "greenhouse" is entirely inappropriate, and its continued usage has nothing whatsoever to commend it other than "tradition"
114342. RSVP at 07:31 AM on 26 July 2010
        Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line
        Doug. Sounds good. Thanks.
114343. Doug Bostrom at 06:18 AM on 26 July 2010
        The nature of authority
        AWoL presumably you can explain to us "the misinterpretation and misapplication of the Stefan-Boltzmann constant"?
114344. DarkSkywise at 05:59 AM on 26 July 2010
        The nature of authority
        AWoL at 04:50 AM on 26 July, 2010: "(should be independent)" Thank you, Oh Great Unwashed. ;) Since English isn't my native language (which is Dutch), a few spelling errors are bound to creep in every once in a wile. Sory.
114345. AWoL at 05:56 AM on 26 July 2010
        The nature of authority
        One of the fundamental errors of the AGW concept lies not in el nino this, or ocean acidification that, but of the misinterpretation and misapplication of the Stefan-Boltzmann constant. The model is miles off for temperatures relevant to living things. It is misinterpreted by pro-AGWs and anti-AGWs alike. Yet the whole premise of AGW is founded on this utterly ludicrous(for low temperatures) law. In future, when wishing to solve a problem of radiative heat transfer, remind me to consult a Nigerian witch-doctor, for he is just as likely to get the right answer as a climate scientist.
114346. Doug Bostrom at 05:40 AM on 26 July 2010
        The nature of authority
        AWoL, your term "monopsony" is cute and appealing but explains nothing, certainly not in a logical fashion, instead leans on an unproven assumption depending on a hugely unlikely set of imaginary circumstances. You'll need to show in detail how at least a plurality of independent lines of scientific inquiry and results are incorrectly conducted and derived in order begin supporting what I take to be your belief that a broad swathe of scientific knowledge is "snakeoil." Don't get your hopes up; most of the evidence indicating a problem with anthropogenic global warming has roots quite far removed from the theory itself. By the way, circumspection is arguably a key trait of skepticism.
114347. Doug Bostrom at 05:14 AM on 26 July 2010
        Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line
        Hey RSVP, I'm wondering if there's a fundamental "talking at cross purposes" thing going on here w/regard to waste heat. I've not followed the the conversation (which apparently has popped up on several threads) but it seems some of us think you're positing that waste heat from human activities is responsible for some amount of observed warming. Is that the case? I did a search for "waste heat" and found a pristine, empty thread for this topic apparently waiting to be populated, here. In the interest of coherence it seems like a good idea to continue the waste heat discussion there if indeed that's your hypothesis.
114348. dhogaza at 05:09 AM on 26 July 2010
        The nature of authority
        RSVP:

        "Charles Darwin,as a die-hard gradualist and staunch supporter of Lyell's uniformitarianism, himself would have been a skeptic of AGW, I suspect." The connection is not so clear (to me), since AGW is by definition not a process of Nature.

        The principle of uniformitarianism would lead one to believe that since CO2 from natural sources leads to forcing and feedbacks responsible for about a 33C rise in temperature from what we'd see on earth without it, that adding CO2 from whatever source will lead to temps rising even higher. The non-uniformatarian claim is that just as people start adding significant CO2 to the atmosphere, either it stops being a GHG, magic negative feedbacks kick in, etc and therefore doing so can't warm the planet.
114349. RSVP at 05:03 AM on 26 July 2010
        Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line
        I am also asked to provide a link for reference purposes. Here is one... http://www.epa.gov/heatisld/ It contains the following statement... "The annual mean air temperature of a city with 1 million people or more can be 1.8–5.4°F (1–3°C) warmer than its surroundings." I assume this heat island thing has nothing to do with CO2. Maybe I am wrong. Anyway, there are currently around 6000 times 1 million humans on planet Earth.
114350. AWoL at 04:50 AM on 26 July 2010
        The nature of authority
        Darkskywise. There's a word doing the rounds amongst the great unwashed, of which I am a member, and that is "monopsony". And to the great unwashed, it explains why "multiple, independant(should be independent), lines of "evidence" do indeed, indicate an agenda. Maybe no likee, but it is, erm, LOGICAL.

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